Kisses from a Distance just celebrated its third anniversary, and as books go, it’s getting a little long in the tooth. Although many readers have commented that the story is timeless and will endure, it continues to take effort to keep the title in the public eye, and hopefully generate sales.
It was only natural to expect book-related activities to slow down, simply because it is difficult to keep up the drumbeat in a crowded marketplace. After all, there were some one million titles published last year, all of which are considered to be competing for the same entertainment dollars.
Nonetheless, surprises come in occasionally and I just booked three lectures for interested groups in the next few months. Some of this activity has to do with publicizing the accolades I received from a previous appearance. A few months ago, after a lecture, I received a complimentary note from the group’s program director, and who also booked me for an encore presentation.
What a delightful afternoon! I so much enjoyed meeting and talking with you before the meeting. Everyone I spoke with was thrilled with your presentation. It had just the right mixture of genealogy, history, and human interest…
It is always gratifying to receive accolades and brings me to the subject of what authors can do to market their work—since publishers no longer have the resources to do so. Many writers lament this situation and blame the lack of sales on their publishers for not doing a good job of promotion. Let’s face it, the marketplace has undergone drastic change in the last decade and many of the dinosaurs in the industry have become, or are on the verge of becoming, extinct. It’s in the natural order of things to evolve, and publishing is no exception. The marketplace has changed dramatically, due in large part to the rapid encroachment of technology—the Internet being one of the chief competitors to the publishing enterprise. We must not forget, however, that publishers are in the business of making money and marketing is an expensive proposition. Publishers just don’t have the resources to do it any longer. So, we as authors must adapt and stop lamenting the lack of support from our publishers.
When I was working for a living (that’s a joke son), I did several stints in marketing/selling. Marketing is an often-misunderstood and maligned concept, especially among those involved in artistic pursuits. Many think it involves only the selling of a product when in fact it includes devising strategy and formulating plans, as well as actually making the sale.
The milking stool metaphor I used in the title is apt because without all three legs intact (first is writing, second is publishing), the author’s work will collapse into a pile of cow dung (pardon the graphic metaphor). The marketing leg has increasingly become the hardest to support because just as not all markets are equal, neither are all marketers. Professional in the field recognize that markets are continually changing, fragmenting, and transforming into barely recognizable entities. Marketing is where artistry meets commercialism head-on.
It should not be hard to imagine that all the different publishing genres actually have different markets. Neglecting the few among us who read just about anything, there are definite market niches for romance, mystery, fantasy, and the various non-fiction categories, etc. Authors should, just as any successful businessperson does, ask of themselves the following: What market am I in? Who are my customers? How do I reach them?
The old business model where publishers stood behind a stable of authors and pushed their work to reviewers, award granting organizations, and booksellers, is long gone and lamentably so. Thus, the burden of marketing falls to authors, most of whom are unprepared for the task, if they understand it at all.
Authors must seek help if they are not up to it and, as Hamlet once said, therein lies the rub. Books are among today’s best values when placed in competition for discretionary entertainment spending. If one were to calculate the cost per hour of reading enjoyment versus going to the movies or a round of golf, books come in way below many entertainment choices. I mention this because it speaks to the lag in book pricing versus increased costs in other leisure activities. Accordingly, potential author remuneration is correspondingly low when you consider the amount of effort required to write, publish and market book products. The bottom line begs the question: Who can afford professional marketing help when the returns versus cost are so low?
It necessarily becomes incumbent on authors, who really believe in their work, to muster the effort to master the elements of marketing their work. I will go into detail about the techniques I used with my book
Kisses from a Distance, what worked and what didn’t, in a subsequent post. However, I will say this: I personally sold over 1,200 autographed copies of my first book through personal appearances, my web site, word-of-mouth, and selective mailing campaigns – both snail and Internet. It was a lot of work that resulted in my publisher getting the benefit of many sales through my marketing efforts.
The bottom line, as many a businessperson is wont to say, is to recognize that, like it or not, you are in the marketing business, and you will have to spend some effort to learn the basics. You must also understand that everything you try will not work, but you won’t know which ones do or don’t until you try. Do not underestimate the work involved because no matter how much you’d rather sit alone cranking out deathless prose or poetry, in the end the marketplace must validate your work.
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