Follow The Reader
Readers are abandoning printed books. Maybe you should too.
The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) reports that 44 million books fewer sold in 2004, than the year before. In spite of this (and possibly due in part to the growing POD and self-publishing movement) the number of books published grew to almost 175,000 in the same year.
More titles and fewer books makes it more important than ever for you to take and active role in promoting your book and not just assume some publisher is going to get your books into bookstores and that is going to get them read.
So how do you increase the chances that your book gets read? Well, with almost 174,999 titles competing for your readers' attention (not to mention all the classics and last year's 'must reads' and the new paperback versions of last year's best sellers), you can't afford to use the tried and true (the dried and dusty) promotional methods book publishers are still using.
Great
Content
The first thing you must do to get your book read is indisputable. You must have great, great content. There is simply no way around this. Without it, you might sell ten copies to your nearest and dearest, but no more. Nothing will stall sales of your book (or help boost them) more than having a simply great book; one that is compelling, well-edited and stylishly put together. Nothing.
Go
Online
Second, how about NOT taking the advice you'll find in every 'how to publish and promote' book out there, that every other savvy author is reading? How about looking at where the readers of those 44 million fewer books sold went, and follow them there? Granted, it's tough to get your story on the big screen, but, contrary to popular opinion, that's not where most of the readers are going. They're watching DVDs at home, playing computer games, and most importantly for you, they are going online.
The DVD and computer games nuts are going to be hard to crack unless you sell your content to a games publisher or convince an independent film maker to turn your book into a smash art film. Luckily the other venue, the Internet offer a myriad of ways to chase down readers.
For starters, get online. Create great content online to market your published book and then start spreading the word to all those people on your mailing list who love to forward jokes and '20 Things You Didn't Know About Me' list to everyone THEY know. Tell them to forward information about your online content instead, then continue creating compelling content.
Neil Gaiman, an author who wasn't exactly short of a few readers anyway, has hooked many, many more (me included) by posting
a regular blog about his life as a writer. It is well-written and offers a fascinating glimpse into that life for fans of his writing and for other aspiring writers. It doesn't relate to his books at all (except to update readers on how the latest project is going, or where he'll be signing books this week), but it is so entertaining that it is a must-read for thousands of people.
Wil Wheaton (who starred in Star Trek: The Next Generation as an awkward teen and before that in the movie Stand By Me) has transformed himself from struggling actor to surprisingly successful writer by writing, then print-publishing
a blog about his life. People recommend the blog to their friends not because they enjoyed watching him play the badly-written Wesley on Star Trek, but because his entries are well-crafted and entertaining.
What can you offer your readers?
Make
A Noise
And again, on the same track of following the retreating reader, consider making other editions, such as audio books and ebooks.
People aren't sitting in armchairs of an evening, reading books and drinking cocoa, but they are commuting, waiting to pick up their kids from practice, killing time on the subway, and they are reading on screen and listening to their MP3 players. Here are some ways to make your content accessible to these people:
Break up an e-book to blog-entry length and use a service like
lulu.com
or Amazon's Honor System
to charge a little something for each excerpt.
Make other editions, such as audio books and ebooks.
Podcasts are the new, hot thing, offering the audio equivalent of blogs, to be listened to on MP3
players or computers
Get your content into the form that the consumer demands and list it at the many online portals for these formats.
Don't
Panic
I know you might not know how to do any of these things yet, but neither did the first people who did them (Podcasts were only invented a year or so ago by a couple of guys who thought "Gee, wouldn't it be great if...").
Get up, get out, figure out how to make things in these new forms while it's still all bootstraps and grassroots, before they get snapped up by the corporations and standardized and roped off, and before you need to be one of the privileged few.
That's where the print industry already is, and readers are fleeing the sinking ship like so many rats (although you may find it helpful NOT to refer to your potential audience as rats, in your online content).
So jump ship along with your readers, chase them ashore, and give them your book in a format they can use.
***
If there are other questions you need
answered about publishing and book selling, email me at jd@jdwrite.com.
If I don't know the answer, I'll try to find someone who does.
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