Book Marketing: It’s About Data, Not Promotion [Smart Set]

Welcome to the weekly The Smart Set, where I curate new smart reads about the publishing and media industry. I also point to issues and questions raised, and welcome you to respond or ask your own questions in the comments.

“To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.”

—Terry Tempest Williams

Scared Money Never Wins by Chris McVeigh

After attending an industry event in London, consultant Chris McVeigh argues that marketing in traditional book publishing in broken and largely fails authors. He writes:

It isn’t broken because the people working in marketing departments are stupid or lazy, it’s broken because they’re under-resourced, badly trained and over-stretched. There are too many books coming across their desks every month for anything more than a cursory, tick box approach to be taken for the majority of titles. In the face of incredibly tough market conditions which have seen competition and technological disruption from almost every direction – many publishers have lost their way and lost their nerve. As an industry I think we’ve become timid and our marketing reflects that. 

McVeigh goes on to say that publishers are excellent at promotion when they realize they have a hit on their hands, but that good marketing has nothing to do with promotion. He defines it as data-driven: “It demands a fundamental understanding of data and statistics. It’s often boring. Tediously so. Hours spent hunched over spread-sheets tracking tiny changes to sales copy or plotting graphs of google rankings -v- keyword selection.” Read the full post.

Thoughts & questions:

• After reading McVeigh’s post, I think all of us are wondering: Where do we go to learn this kind of marketing? Who is doing this training? And/or who can we hire to do what he’s describing? He promises another post that will perhaps offer insight.
• I do know of one outfit that is focused on data-driven marketing: Logical Marketing, a partnership between Pete McCarthy and Mike Shatzkin. It would be wonderful if they offered a boot camp on this topic. I’d be first in line.

Nostalgia and Newspapers by Clay Shirky

Shirky, a well-known figure in digital publishing/futurist circles, doesn’t often write blog posts, but when he does, you immediately see evidence of it on social media, with people responding, sharing, and debating. Last week, Shirky pointed a finger at adults who are “lying” to young people (specifically college students studying journalism/media) about the future of print. He writes:

The most important fight in journalism today isn’t between short vs. long-form publications, or fast vs. thorough newsrooms, or even incumbents vs. start-ups. The most important fight is between realists and nostalgists. …

A year or so ago, I was a guest lecturer in NYU’s Intro to Journalism class, 200 or so sophomores interested in adding journalism as a second major. (We don’t allow students to major in journalism alone, for the obvious reason.) One of the students had been dispatched to interview me in front of the class, and two or three questions in, she asked “So how do we save print?”

I was speechless for a moment, then exploded, telling her that print was in terminal decline and that everyone in the class needed to understand this if they were thinking of journalism as a major or a profession.

Read the full post.

Thoughts & questions:

• I detect some of the same nostalgia at work in book publishing, as many people emphasize the “leveling off” that has occurred with ebook sales/adoption. However, as with newspapers/magazines, print books too are in terminal decline.

Self-published books + library distribution: a selection of pieces

In the last few months, more channels have opened up for self-published authors to get their ebooks distributed and available within library systems. However, even for someone like myself, I find it really hard to drill down to the facts of what’s possible for authors and how these systems work. Here are a few places to catch up on what’s happening:

• OverDrive Carries Self-Published Books, But Don’t Worry, They’re in a Ghetto (Passive Voice): Rather than sending you to the original piece, I’m linking to Passive Voice because of the valuable comment thread. In a nutshell: Smashwords has an agreement with OverDrive (which distributes ebooks to libraries) to distribute its titles. However, how those titles are (so far) labeled and discovered in the system has worried some indie authors. Mark Coker of Smashwords responds to concerns in the comments section. Be sure to read the discussion for the full scope of what’s happening, and understand the situation is very fluid.
• BiblioBoard and Library Journal have launched a self-pub ebook discovery service called Self-E. The Digital Reader has a good overview of the program.
• Getting Your Self-Published Book Into the Library, Tips from Librarian Marlene Harris (Lindsay Buroker). This piece is a couple years old now, but offers valuable tips and insight.

Thoughts & questions:

• If you have any experience with distribution to libraries—or know of helpful articles—please leave a comment!