Pimp my Words
"A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was… Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless."
By SANDRA RUTTAN
MASTER YODA seems to be illustrating the gap between what I believe authors were typically inclined to be, and what they’re under pressure to now become. Focus on craft has been replaced with a focus on fame and developing a following, and the increasing pressure on authors to handle their own marketing is impacting the bookselling business on several levels, with potentially devastating consequences.
Rich Author, Poor Author
“Congratulations. Join Murder Must Advertise. You’ll need to start thinking about marketing.”
The e-mail was one of the first messages I received after the announcement about my book deal. The ink wasn’t dry on the contract, I hadn’t even done my edits yet… And an author was telling me to start thinking about marketing.
Months later I was sitting at my computer. It was after 4:30 pm - time to wind down for the day, time for family - when I received a message.
“Marketing Ideas.” That was the subject line. The e-mail was from my agent.
It was less than four months until my book would be released. I’m familiar with the advance deadlines on receiving review copies, programming for conventions, ordering ad space and arranging bookstore signings. Time was running out.
I read the list and before I was finished it felt like an electric drill was burowing into the back of my left eye. It was exhaustive. Monthly newsletters. Blog tours. Blogging on amazon. A book trailer. Attending conventions, Book Expo, bookstore signings, producing promotional materials…
To do even half the things on the list would cost double my advance. It didn’t take into consideration money already spent on convention costs a few weeks before the release, and the cost of ARCs I produced and mailed out, because the review copies from the publisher weren’t ready and I’d been asked to get blurbs. Seventy percent of my advance had already been allocated to expenses prior to receiving this e-mail, and that doesn’t even include the regular costs of maintaining a website, domain registration and other business expenses.
For the most part, unless an author is already successful there isn’t much of a budget to promote their title. The marketing staff do not have unlimited resources, or time, and even if the author has good ideas they rarely receive publisher funds.
This has resulted in frantic attempts by newer, less-established authors to try to find ways to bridge the gap, but how can one compete when Michael Connelly and Stephen King are producing professional book trailers for their books, with bigger budgets for that one promotional item than many authors earn from their advance? The results are self-made, rough-around-the-edges efforts, and even the trailers that are quite good suffer by comparison to the quality of what Connelly and King have done for them.
Writing Time
There is a finite book-buying audience on the internet. Maintaining a website, a personal blog, doing blog tours, blogging on Amazon and having MySpace and Facebook pages result in overlap, with authors presenting themselves in different venues to the same audience. These options may also be free, but they consume an enormous amount of time without significantly raising an author’s profile. I see it already, on the few forums I participate on: the same names over and over again. If I have the same friends on each network, I can reach as many with half the time invested.
No wonder many authors are burnt out.
It’s worse than that. You do not start writing a book because you want to be a marketing expert. You do it because you love writing. However, as pressure to promote drains financial resources, time and energy, there is less time to spend writing the next work. The majority of debut and newer authors I personally know delivered their second book late, and each one cited the same reason: promotional time cut into the writing time.
The result is that the gap between the successful authors and the newer ones widens further. Not only do the established make more money, they can afford not to promote. In fact, limiting public appearances drives up demand, so there are times the publishers are happy for them to withdraw from the spotlight.
Meanwhile, the newer authors and those struggling to break through are spending their own money, taking valuable writing time doing promotional events, and ultimately their work suffers because they’re spreading themselves too thin. Even if their initial efforts yield enough sales to keep them published they may risk losing the contract if they produce substandard work that doesn’t maintain a readership.
Although some would dismiss me as Chicken Little proclaiming that the sky is falling, this is one of the most dangerous byproducts of the promotional push authors are facing. If the ultimate result is the select few successful authors overshadow new writers with both their marketing and their product we’ll see fewer authors in print as publishers determine they can make a lot of money with little effort off the work of a few, without investing in new talent that isn’t selling yet. We’re seeing the early stages of the impact of this already, with the imitation novels based off bestsellers. DaVinci Code and Harry Potter clones are starting to fade, and the search is on for the next mega-sellers and the knock-offs that can capitalize on the demand for the new hot theme.
The result is fewer works of quality writing and originality to get excited about, and if we lose our core readers because we’re recycling instead of innovating the damage to the book business may be irreparable.
It’s Never Enough
The e-mail from my agent made me feel frustrated. My existing plans had been made months earlier, and the lengthy list seemed to infer what I was doing already wasn’t good enough. Whether intentional or not, the message I took from it was that I needed to do more. With most of my advance already spoken for that simply wasn’t an option.
However, the author is the one that has the most to risk by not ensuring there’s adequate promotion for their book. It is necessary to sell books in order to stay published. With more authors competing for less shelf space in bookstores the process begins by selling your book to retailers and convincing them that they should carry it, ensuring reviewers get copies about four months before the release, and ultimately trying to woo readers.
On a regular basis we’re inundated with news about declining review space and speculation about waning book sales. And many authors treat marketing like a perpetually running Merry-Go-Round. They don’t take the time to analyze the options or their effectiveness. They simply jump on board and follow the advice of often self-appointed “experts”, some of whom make a considerable amount of money off of desperate authors who are overwhelmed.
Celebrity Authors
“I'll do what doesn't make me feel sleazy, and even that will probably swallow the advance whole, but the desperate way people spend a fortune on promotion suggests they're more interested in being famous than in writing,” says American author Barbara Fister, directly addressing the rise in the cult of personality that’s becoming part of the common marketing strategy for authors. From name branding to maintaining a strong web presence, authors are under increasing pressure to develop a following, and draw people to the work not for the writing and content, but because of the celebrity status of the author.
Fister adds, “Being famous may be self-justified as, ‘But I have to strive to be famous or I won't be published again.’”
This is the new push. How to get on Oprah or, in the UK, Richard and Judy. The mantras are recycled. “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” “Any press is good press.” Authors are prostituting themselves unlike ever before, looking for any angle to put on a personal story that might be considered newsworthy enough to get them media attention.
I felt the fear when I realized that industry insiders had determined before the start of 2008 what the best books of the year would be. I knew review copies of my work hadn’t been circulated yet and I have two books out this year. Because I didn’t have people talking about me at the start of the year my books seemed already doomed to irrelevancy. It didn’t mean they weren’t every bit as good and possibly better than the books being discussed. It meant that because they hadn’t gotten into the right hands yet, they couldn’t get that press.
This is why newer authors feel a constant pressure to stay in the spotlight, to produce their own review copies and circulate them widely. To schmooze, network and be seen and mentioned in all the right places.
“Mixed in with the desire for fame,” Fister says, “is the quivering fear that one is actually a failure, which also has little to do with writing, but is a big motivator. In fact, that's probably why so many people promote themselves to authors, rather than readers; that's the in group they are desperate to belong to.
“What if we all said we're not going to do it anymore? No more ass-kissing… No more giveaway promotional crap that ends up in landfills. No more indulging in the idea that sales mean people love me. We'd all save a lot of money. We'd be saner. We'd cause less damage to the planet. And probably the same number of books would be sold.”
When you lack the confidence to step away from the public domain to concentrate on the writing it’s a clear sign you’re putting more emphasis on your public profile to maintain your career than the quality of the books. And even for those of us who see that, we’re intimidated by the climate of fear that’s contributing to the pressure we feel to sell ourselves and our work. Inexperienced as we are, we bow to our agents, publicists and peers, secretly hoping we can attain enough success so that we can be liberated from the promotional nightmare before we collapse from sheer exhaustion, and have spent every spare cent in the bank.
SANDRA RUTTAN has been described as “one of crime fiction's hot new voices” by Rick Mofina. Ruttan’s short stories have appeared in Out of the Gutter, Crimespree Magazine, Pulp Pusher, Demolition and The Cynic. The editor of Spinetingler Magazine, Ruttan had her first newspaper column at the age of 13, and is also a reviewer and interviewer. For more information visit her website at www.sandraruttan.com
Check out Sandra's Pulp Pusher short ... here
