Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 8 -- Guest Post by Flying Pen Press on Headlines and Titles

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 8
Guest Post by Flying Pen Press
Headlines and Titles

To round off our discussion of Marketing Fiction, we have this Guest Post from the publisher at Flying Pen Press, David Rozansky. 

Last week we examined Headlines and Titles, -- and there is much more to be said about choosing a title (which is what a Headline is).  This week we hear from a publishing company that has a marketing perspective on Titles with a focus on query letters.  Read carefully. 

Flying Pen Press does not specialize in Romance but is widely knowledgeable in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Gaming markets, and understands mixed genre, though is not publishing Science Fiction Romance right now.  Publishing is a business -- learn to think like a publisher from this post, and apply that knowledge as you shape your query letter to a Science Fiction Romance publisher. 


Here are previous posts in this series on Marketing:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_11.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_25.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_18.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

This guest post gives you an insight into how Marketers think, and how a publishing company shifts and changes with the marketing winds often indicated by the most recent Headlines.

You can meet David on Twitter.  See the end of this post for his contact information.

I sent the following questions and got the following responses. 

Absorb this information fully.  It could save your writing career. 

----------QUESTIONS-----------

1.  As a publisher, what genres do you look for especially, and how do you determine when to change the genre-mix of your output?

>>
Our focus is mostly on marketing print, with the practice of making ebook editions a collateral product of importance.

In that regard, we have a "platform-centric" regard for the books we publish. This has three paths to pursue:

1. We seek authors who have a fan base or a viable platform like a popular blog or a bit of fame, at least within their own niches.

2. We try to create a niche platform and find books that feed that readership. Right now, we are building a tile list for readers of Colorado-focus books and another tile list aimed at writers, such as writing guides and workbooks.

3. There are natural platforms that we wish to exploit. These develop in the news or just with popular culture. Our title The Official Rules of Poker is an example of this. When poker was the hottest thing, there was no modern book of poker rules, and so I asked Kelli Mix to write one. Without much marketing at all, it has done well, simply because it fills a demand from a natural platform.

Things are always changing. We published a bit of science fiction because early in the company's life, we knew we needed a "full" catalog, and we arranged to be publicly visible at DenCon, the World Science Fiction Convention that would be in Denver--our home town--that summer. We had a good initial launch with science fiction.

Now, we are not able to sell science fiction much at all. I believe it's due to the explosion of competing publishers and self-publishing authors, which has dramatically increased the marketing costs of the genre.

The way we choose genre mix is mostly related to "return on investment." I have a really nice proprietary list of writers, and reaching Colorado readers is as easy as stepping outside with poster board and a marker. At the same time, we see holes in these two markets where books are now needed.

And as to when we make that decision, the market tends to force our hand. This summer was just terrible for us in all genres of novels. To survive, we have to do something different. The market is always in flux, and those publishers that adapt best to change are the ones that succeed over time.

<<<

2. In the Marketing end of publishing, have you run into reader-resistance at
a) certain price-points,
b) certain title keywords,
c) certain kinds of cover-images (e.g. the old fashioned brass-bras female fighter image).

>>>

The resistance the market holds is not so much related to price-points as it is to price in general. Higher-priced titles generate fewer buyers. It's also related to value, especially with non-fiction and buzzworthy novels. Competition in a subject or fiction concept is also a factor in the impact of high-pricing, so niche books often sell better despite higher prices.

As to titles, I've seen taboo words, such as Fuck and Bitch, become acceptable in humor or edgy genres. My current writing project, Fishnets and Platforms: The Writers Guide to Whoring Your Book, has drawn positive buzz because I use the word whore in the subtitle.

However, in most all cases, Carlin's Seven Words and other expletives should be avoided, especially pejorative terms. Don't toss such words into a title unless you have good reason and good market research.

As to cover graphics, each culture and generation has its own sensitivities. In addition to images, quality is important. Consumers always judge books by their covers. Art that seems amateurish or cartoony will not sell books.

<<<

3. What sells best into your market -- and would you define your target
market?

>>>

What sells best are books by authors who have a good platform. We are acutely aware that readers follow authors, not publishers.

The target market is different for every book, and there is no way to know what submissions will appear in our inbox, so we can't say that there is a specific target market in general.

I've often said that a publishing house finds its path in the marketplace blazed by serendipity. Once we had a few successes with science fiction, we built our marketing plans around that genre and took on more science fiction.

Now we're having success with Terry Grosz's memoirs of his life as wildlife law enforcement agent, which has a strong regional interest. Are changed to regional titles.

The stiffest competition we now see comes from the self-published authors. Self-publication is now a real a game changer. It affects our business to the point that we just cannot compete.

To survive, we need our own platform reader. I come from the world of magazines, I'm used to building a leadership and then finding authors to fit content to those readers. I am now using the magazine publishing model for books via direct-response catalogs and a new title list tightly focused along niche-genre lines.

In 2014, we plan to produce catalogs for Colorado titles and catalogs for writers' guides and reference books.

Meanwhile, if we should find a manuscript with great market potential, we will certainly publish it on it's own under the Flying Pen Press imprint.

<<<

4.  Looking back at the Headlines of 2013, which issues and affairs would
seem to you to be ripe for dramatization in a novel format?  Which would translate best into a galactic-setting, which would fare better in Fantasy, and which do you think would sell better as comedy?  Please give a basis for each judgement call.

>>>

Is a little hard to say because 2013 was "The Year We shoulda seen Coming."

For example the entire NSA surveillance story was foretold in Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. Fracking could make a good plot device, but it would just be another corporate malfeasance/man-made ecological disaster story.

Still, these are both issues that can drive thrillers and spy novels.

One news item in recent years is that of the tsunami. Nobody yet has written a novel about a California tsunami and how it would impact the city of Los Angeles.

We often see New York City hit by tsunamis in disaster films, usually as a result of an asteroid strike in the Atlantic Ocean. However, despite the news of Hurricane Sandy, we don't see a tsunami novel aimed at New York City on the East Coast.

The future of galactic-setting science-fiction is wide open. The field of astronomy has exploded with ever-increasing discoveries of exoplanets. This makes science-fiction ready for complete reinvention. There is a whole lot of new science just waiting to be developed as novels. Just recently China became the third superpower to reach the moon. It may be time to reopen plots about the three superpowers engaging in a new space race, especially regarding the Moon and the exploitable Solar System.

Fantasy, we need to pay attention to business stories, especially in the field of entertainment. Hasbro, with its Hub channel, and Disney's new success with the Disney Junior channel, have developed many new franchises that are beginning to influence fantasy novels.

Watch for structuring of rights to the Dungeons & Dragons franchise for television and film. Hasbro, through the Wizards of the Coast subsidiary, is about to publish the next edition of Dungeons & Dragons, with a big product launch. If a Dungeons & Dragons show appears on the Hub network as well as a film at the same time a new edition is published, I predict a resurgence in sword and sorcery novels, led by R.A. Salvatore.

As far as humor, I think Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert-style political satire will be the way to go in the face the next election's initial rumblings.

<<<

5. As an acquisitions editor,  would you think it's too soon for writers to
use Headlines such as the 9/11 attacks as novel sources?  That was 12 years ago, but is still active headline material with continued Terrorism attacks.  Can Terrorism per se sell well yet?

>>>

Terrorism has always been good fodder for thriller novels. I don't think it was ever too early to use 9/11 is a setting for a story of courage.

However, the sensitivities of people directly affected and of people who watched it on television must be considered, at least until that generation passes into history. The same can be said for such horrible events as Pearl Harbor, Columbine, and the recent tsunamis.

<<<

6. Given the current media focus on individuals -- whether terrorist
connected or just crazy -- shooting or bombing crowded places, do you think there is any way for a publisher to market an entertainment vehicle such as a novel (or film, or webisodes) depicting either the shooter or a victim as Hero?

>>>

Any story where Good triumphs over Evil, even when Good resorts to violence, can be a good story.

Consider the film Inglorious Bastards. The good guys lock Hitler and top Nazi officers in a movie theater and blow it up.

Now, I live near the Century Theater that was the scene of the Aurora Theater Massacre. I know people who were caught in the crossfire and I often attend that theater myself. Nonetheless, I find Inglorious Bastards to be an enjoyable, albeit violent, story.

My stomach has completely turned against Batman, however. The day after the massacre, the Hot Topic retail chain displayed Batman-franchise clothing, including all the stores in the area. This lack of sensitivity will keep me out of Hot Topic forever, only because I feel a sense of dread just seeing the Hot Topic logo (or even just writing about it now).

That's how devastating bad taste can be to a business.

A novel of Jewish insurrectionists rising up against the Nazi incursion can also be a great novel of heroism.

Nazis make great villains upon which to unleash fictional terrorism.

When good-guy terrorists are "freedom fighters" and victims are purely evil tyrants or wartime enemies, it works. But if innocent lives are taken by the freedom fighters as collateral damage, there will be a public outcry--proximity to current events notwithstanding.

In storytelling, Good may resort to evil means against Evil so that good may prevail. Good may never harm innocents, nor allow harm to come to innocents. It's not unlike Asimov's Laws of Robotics.

<<<

7.  If a writer is looking to rip a story from Headlines, how long ago
should they look to find dramatic material?  When does material become "Historical" and when is it still too raw on the nerves of readers?

>>>

Have you ever noticed that schools don't teach recent history? Basically, if there are witnesses around who may dispute the history book, it's generally not taught.

Novels are marketable on current events for about the life of the news cycle. For some events, this can be one afternoon, and for others it could be a century or more.

When the news is sensitive, stories pulled from that headline must exercise great care and avoid jumping to conclusions. Many aspiring writers will likely jump on the news cycle, often in bad taste, so it's probably best to avoid the story altogether.

When the news cycle is completed, there is a period where the story is "stale." The duration of this period seems to be related to how many writers jumped on the news story in the first place. For example, we are  in a period where Desert Storm stories are too stale to be marketable.

Then there comes a period where the event is "historical." The bigger the event, the sooner and longer this period. World War Two is still a marketable setting, the Vietnam War has waned (although the '60s Antiwar Movement is still a healthy setting for novels).

There are events that keep returning as popular settings for novels. Each generation has a need to relive Pearl Harbor, it seems. Nine-Eleven will likely fall into this category, I suspect.

Writing a story pulled from the news cycle usually results in an also-told story trying to sell during the stale period. The historical period does not pre-announce itself and often occurs in the wake of a bestseller that completely saturates the topic.

Thus, writers are often warned against pulling stories from headlines.

However, there is a type of news that serves well as plot devices during or shortly after the news cycle. These events spur public debate and controversy. Even when the news is ghastly or macabre, if it becomes a political issue, it loses the "raw nerve" factor. The original Law & Order TV series successfully told such stories.

An example of this would be the Terry Schiavo story, which prompted a debate of compassionate euthanasia versus the absolute value of human life. Stories based on this news item flooded the cultural panorama, apparently unable to saturate the market.

Essentially, any fiction pulled from controversial news seems to be accepted by the public as part of the debate.

<<<

8. If a writer wants to deal with a very current, raw topic, is there an
approach to marketing that would sell such a Work?  What "slant" would a writer need to use?

>>>

With the previous answer in mind, I would frame the novel as part of the debate on a controversial topic.


----Comment by Jacqueline Lichtenberg -----------
As I've discussed at length in the various blog series on THEME -- what you extract from a Headline is not the setting, characters, historical veracity, or the actions of various people.  The writer has to distill out the THEME that the Headline defines for a large number of people who read the specific genre the writer is working within.
----End Comment-------------------

<<<

9. What Headline topics work better as non-fiction or docudrama than they do as fiction?

>>>

Almost all news does better as nonfiction or docudrama. Isn't that why people watch the news? That is when the news is at its most compelling moment.

<<<

10. Staring at their inevitable rejection slip pile, a writer may become discouraged from marketing their chosen Headline topic.  What personal considerations of the acquisition editor should a writer take into account when evaluating a rejection that says something simple such as "This is not for us at the current time."

>>>

Acquisition editors are extremely busy. They receive hundreds, perhaps thousands of queries, yet it takes a full two weeks to fully evaluate one submission. The reasons for rejection are usually not explained, or if they are, explain only vaguely and briefly. It just takes too much time to write even the shortest of rejection letters.

It is good practice to remember that acquisition editors and book editors are real people often under stress.

One terrible example happened on Friday, December 13, 2013, a gunman entered Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, not that far from my daughter's school. It happened right in the middle of #SciFiChat, a weekly Twitter chat I moderate.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg was the one to break the news to me live on Twitter. I quickly began to mobilize parents and journalists I know who have connections to the school. I also frantically culled all the information I could from the Internet, to find out if my daughter and her school were safe.

In my email, sandwiched between the lockdown notice for my daughter's school, and the safety procedures report from the Denver Public School District, there was a query … a query I wish I'd never seen.

The query was for a YA Thriller titled High School Hit Men. The protagonists are high school students who are secretly government assassins. These protagonists must deal with their school's ubiquitous bully delinquents.

At first, I was shocked. Was this some kind of cruel prank? No, worse; this was a legitimate query.

If this was a dystopian novel, where the protagonists are fighting the tyrannical government that has so violated them, I might not be as outraged. But this query made it seem that this is an acceptable reality.

Obviously, the author found that Flying Pen Press was the closest publishing house to Arapaho High School, or saw my frantic tweets on Twitter with the hashtag #Arapaho.

I'm still not sure which is more offensive: that this author was so opportunistic so as to query me with such a story at my moment of greatest horror and distress, or that the author was approving the exploitation of minors as government-trained killers.

Like Hot Topic, I will never forget this author's name, and I will never stop associating it with a sense of dread.

<<<

11. Give your contact information and URL for submission guidelines.

>>>

I can be reached at Publisher@FlyingPenPress.com, and our website is FlyingPenPress.com.

However, we are about to drastically change our submissions guidelines as we move to Colorado titles and writing guides, so please wait for the changes shortly after the New Year.

The best way to reach me is through my Twitter account, @DavidRozansky.

<<<

Keep 'em Flying,
David A. Rozansky, Publisher
Flying Pen Press

Email: Publisher@FlyingPenPress.com
Address: 1660 Niagara Street, Denver CO 80220 USA
Phone and Fax: 303-375-0225
URL: FlyingPenPress.com
Twitter: @DavidRozansky

---------
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

TITLE as Marketing Tool -- Part II

I'm sure many of you can document exact dates for these historical turning points that are different from what I'm suggesting. Remember that there's a lag between when something "happens" and when that event becomes integrated into the mind of the general public. And it works the other way too -- the general public may have an embedded notion that doesn't affect changes in Business or Hollywood for a number of years.

Books are often published 10 or (in the case of Marion Zimmer Bradley's CATCHTRAP for example) 20 years after they are written. Influences overlap before and after the fact, blurring the pattern.

I'm showing you a pattern here -- bringing it to the surface. Don't get distracted from the pattern into the exact dates or what you remember from those years. Pay attention to the pattern. Once you can see it -- look for other kinds of hidden patterns in today's world. You will find plenty!

TITLE AS MARKETING TOOL - PART 2

----------------

Star Trek was the first TV show that appealed to -- guess what? READERS. That 5% slice of the American public that bought and read actual BOOKS (not just newspapers and magazines) fell in desperate love with a TV show.

In the 1970's we saw BOOKS BASED ON STAR TREK - both non-fiction and fiction - come onto the shelves in the chain stores.

I remember when the first separate section for STAR TREK BOOKS appeared in WALDEN BOOKS. It had been a single shelf on the bottom of the SF section and contained only the latest publications. Suddenly it became a whole floor-to-ceiling section with all the back issues.
Then the section became not STAR TREK -- but TV-TIE-INS and NOVELS based on other TV shows appeared.

Yes, publishing had done things like this before, but in the 1970's what happened was huge -- just totally huge. Remember, the 70's is renowned in financial circles for the flat stock market and STAG FLATION and huge gas lines -- corporations were in serious financial trouble and couldn't grow to meet stockholder demands. This had never happened before in financial history and corporations didn't know what to do. It was theoretically impossible to have inflation and no-growth at the same time. GROWTH CAUSES INFLATION (they believed).

Something very fundamental underneath the business structure of this whole world changed in those years. It indeed had been impossible to have inflation and no-growth before. Now something changed -- and made it possible. I don't think the scholars understand the 1970's even today.

Today we're in yet another paradigm shift as massive as the 1970's with "productivity growth" where we have great increases in what we produce and a shrinking work force.

SF, Asimov and Heinlein and John Campbell all predicted this trend. Many novels have been published showing how technology can restructure the world to where 5% of the work force works and the rest are on Welfare.

So in the 1980's we had a phenomenon we called PAC-MAN-PUBLISHING (after one of the first computer video games where one character ate all the others). It just came out of the blue and knocked everyone over -- it kicked a lot of the really REALLY great editors right out of the business.

Behind the scenes (I found out much later) attitudes toward "publishing" had changed, very radically and very suddenly.

The corporations who owned the publishing houses looked at their "balance sheets" and decided they couldn't afford to continue to support non-performing assets like publishing houses.
Heretofore, they needed the publishing houses as tax write-offs.

Go look who was President in the 1970's, and who controlled Congress -- and what kind of tax laws were passed that actually caused Stagflation and how that could well happen again in the 2010's because very similar forces are in play.

Under the new tax laws of the 1970's, corporations could no longer afford to own publishing houses as tax write-offs.

So they sold them. (to other corporations, of course).

The independent publishing houses sold themselves to corporations.

Newly minted MBA's had to make a name for themselves causing corporate growth in a world where growth couldn't happen because of the tax laws.

So JUST LIKE THE BANKS TODAY, corporations took drastic action and seized an opportunity to "grow" by gathering up non-performing, money-losing, worthless assets all together and streamlining them into profit-makers.

Today those non-performing assets are Mortgages. Back then, those non-performing assets were publishing houses. The Business School principles are identical, and the motivation identical (tax code changes). With Banks today -- it was the Law passed in 1996 (or 1994?) by a Democratic controlled congress that forbade banks to do what was called "Red Lining" (drawing a line around a section of the city and refusing to lend mortgage money there). It was seen as racially based behavior and the law tried to stop it.

Corporations did what Business School teaches -- take a challenge and turn it into an opportunity. Since they were forced by Federal Law to lend to non-qualified buyers, they found a way to do that and make a profit (huge-gigantic-insane profit) by "securitizing" the mortgages (bundling them with top-qualified mortgages) and selling them abroad.

The Banks did just exactly what Corporations did with Publishing under the same kind of tax-code changes that caused stagflation in the 1970's.

Banks used to make loans person-to-person in a community -- loaning to home buyers who "ought" to get the loan. Publishing used to publish books that "ought" to be published.

One of the tax laws that affected publishing had to do with stock kept in warehouses.

When stock stored (at considerable expense) in a warehouse is taxed while it sits there -- that means the publisher has to shorten print runs. That means books that sell slowly never get reprinted even though they are successful. That means the NEXT book by that writer doesn't get published. It has nothing to do with how many people want to read that writer's work or how important those ideas are -- it was (and still is) a tax law that prevents ideas from being published on paper and distributed through chain stores. It's all economics of tax laws.

So under these new tax laws, it wasn't the "face of publishing" that changed -- it was the foundations. Tax laws forced corporations to turn their publishing houses profitable just as laws forced banks to turn sub-prime loans profitable.

Prior to this makeover of publishing into a for-profit business, editors chose books to be published because they should be published, because they should be read, because they SAID SOMETHING.

After the makeover, editors were hired for their knack of choosing books to publish that made a profit. Packaging, promotion, distribution, = MARKETING was all that mattered.

The way publishing houses decide to buy or not-buy a book changed.

Formerly, they hired an editor who had a sense of what the world needs to hear said and gave that editor an annual budget to spend publishing books -- hopefully breakeven or some profit, but nevermind. The writer or agent submitted a manuscript and the editor, all alone, decided to buy it or not.

Now, most Houses use a committee. The "editor" only gets to pick out and present some manuscripts to a committee consisting of her boss (managing editor), art department, marketing, sales reps, accounting, maybe other editors in other genres -- none of whom have read or will read the book. The "editor" gets to "pitch" (yes, just exactly as is done in the film industry where writers get to "pitch" projects are producers) the possible books she'd like to publish. She gets perhaps 15 seconds to pitch each book. One or two of the ten she's presenting may get chosen, get the OK so she can buy it from the writer.

And what is the key feature on which that decision is made? TITLE!!!!! Maybe a two sentence description of the market it will attract, and a sentence about the story. If the sentences support the TITLE -- and it "fits" the sales rep's notion of what's been moving well lately -- it may (or may not) get bought. All those 10 titles were GREAT -- but only a few get chosen.

That's the new editor's job now. Very different from what it once was. And what these new editors saw in the computers when computer-tracking first became available is that TV-TIE-INS SELL -- they sell as good or better than "how to mow your lawn."

Why did computer tracking become available? Because how ELSE can you run a publishing House for profit? Before computer tracking and computerized warehouse inventory, it wasn't really possible to do this for a steady profit, predictably.

So editors and their bean counters saw that NOVELIZATIONS of FILMS sell.
They sell at big profits. It doesn't matter who writes them. They sell.

If the TITLE has STAR TREK (or another film or TV series) in it, it sells. Title is all that matters -- ALL THAT MATTERS. Just title and nothing more controls sales volumes.

Puzzling over what's inside those books that gets people to buy more and more, editors tried to find other things to please those book buyers. Because editors are readers, they kept operating for a long time on the assumption that something about the content had to be attracting these book-buyers.

But eventually editors began to believe the sales-computers as "modeling" became more accurate in the programs, and more stores kept computer records. Sales depend on title and cover drawing - not content. Sometimes, but rarely, on author name.

I'll bet they teach that in school now.

But in the 1980's, gradually they changed what's available on mass market chain store shelves so that the books that have the best chance of appearing before your eyes so you can ignore the TITLE are the books structured like movies (or TV series) -- or even blatantly imitative of them (Buffy-type Fantasy universes abound in fantasy novels all of a sudden.)

TV of the 1960's (i.e. Star Trek) changed PUBLISHING by re-creating it in the image of TV (and/or Film -- remember Star Trek led the way from the small screen to the big screen and one very VERY large reason Star Trek got that opportunity was the sales of those STAR TREK NOVELS.)

But now track the percentage of people who buy all the books sold in the USA. I haven't seen this year's statistic -- bet you though it's fallen bellow 10%. There are well over 300 million people in the USA now. Maybe with election non-fiction and Harry Potter we might have edged up to 15%.

Now, in the 2010's, the INTERNET and e-book may give us a chance to get back to the kind of editing that chooses books because they "ought" to be published and read -- because they contain ideas that people really need to know about whether the people think so or not.

You see, by packaging ideas in fiction (especially Romance or Comedy -- or Romantic Comedy) you can get people to consider them even before they know they need to know.

So, we as writers, are now living through the third huge paradigm shift in our industry in a lifetime. Definitely INTERESTING TIMES!!!

First there were Movies and Movie Magazines promulgated ideas of how a woman should look to attract a man. (men?)

Next there was TV (I LOVE LUCY) that delineated Relationships between Husband and Wife, and created the TV-TIE-IN NOVEL. (and novelizations of TV episodes, too).

Now the INTERNET -- which is moving from text to images and animated or video images, too.
And we are selling novels using a BOOK TRAILER -- Trailer being a term taken from Film, which contains the SET PIECE moments from the script.

All of this is what I call The Fiction Delivery System (analogous to Health Care Delivery system). No matter how the links are arranged between the Imagineer's Mind and the Fiction Imbiber's Mind, the point is to move ideas, feelings, concepts, and most important the amalgam of all that into a Point Of View from one mind to another.

That's what Shamans did around camp fires -- that's what we do today via novels, TV shows, Movies.

To do it for a profit (i.e. commercial fiction) you must follow the public's thinking. To do it the way it used to be done (profits catch as catch can) for the sake of the ideas, you can LEAD public opinion.

Combine the two -- Mass Market paperback series, online e-book series in the same universe -- and you can affect the direction of the next paradigm shift.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.slantedconcept.com

TITLE as Marketing Tool - Part One

I think Margaret Carter, in her Thursday July 24th post, has missed an important point about MARKETING. The Newspaper she sites was of course writing to readers and the reporter was probably unaware of the Point Of View differences.

I've been studying "Marketing" a bit lately, so I may be doing what the reporter did -- failing to connect with you, the book-buyer. But I'm going to try to explain how it looks from the Publisher's point of view.

Here's the point that's overlooked in Margaret Carter's last Thursday post on Titles.

Titles don't sell books to READERS.

Now go back and read her post and the comments once again, understanding that Titles have nothing at all to do with manipulating book-buyer's behavior.

So stipulate that the point and purpose of the TITLE in the Book Publishing Business Model is not to sell books to READERS.

The question then becomes what is a title and what is it for?

Titles are vital -- the correct choice of title is vital -- and makes or breaks sales. All the time.

Absolutely. Without exception. Proven by computer analysis. THE correct title is absolutely necessary to make sales figures soar.

Now how can that be if book-buying readers like Margaret ignore it? And after reading the book, forget the title!

We as readers mostly forget or ignore titles -- rarely does an intriguing title result in an impulse buy. Why is that?

Because intriguing titles attract the eye and mind to the book cover, but when you flip it over or look at the inside blurb, or first 3 paragraphs -- the book is not about what you imagined it might be or wanted it to be about.

WRITERS take that experience and go write the book that "belongs" under that title. Writers find great titles inspiring.

READERS just pass on, feeling frustrated, cheated and disappointed, and buy a guaranteed good read.

So why are titles so ultimately make-or-break for a book's sales? Don't they sell books to readers?

Well, no, "they" don't. Readers aren't actually part of the Publishing Business Model, any more than "voters" are part of the Political Machinery Business Model.

The PUBLIC (i.e. the Book Buyer) responds to advertising, regardless of their personal opinion.

That's the assumption behind much of the Marketing Paradigm, and more than 50% of the time, that assumption is proved accurate. (Personally, I think readers are harder to influence which is why "publishing" is the poor stepchild in every corporation that owns a Publishing House. We just don't respond in predictable ways to promotional advertising in the same way that people over 40 years old just don't respond to advertising. )

So where in the Publishing Business Model does the TITLE go? Who is it supposed to SELL TO if not the book-buyer/reader? If not the end-user, then who?

The answer is THE SALES FORCE. Titles exist to bait, intrigue, energize, jazz, inspire, and awaken greed in -- THE SALES FORCE. The Marketers.

The TITLE sells books not to the READER but to the SALES FORCE, the Marketing Department, The BUZZ MILL (editor, agent, publisher execs over lunch talking about it).

The TITLE sells not to those who will read the book (none of those professional sales people will read the book!), but to those who MARKET THE BOOK.

So the title is crucial to sales because if the title is not RIGHT, the book will never (ever!) make it to the shelf before reader's eyeballs to give book-buyers a chance to choose it. It might be "published" but won't be in the Book Chain Stores. Since the Independent Book Stores are totally vanished from the scene -- that failure to make the Chains is a deathnell even if the book is "published."

Books get chosen to be on Chain Store shelves in a number of ways. One way is at the annual Book Expo -- the TRADE SHOWS. The INSIDERS, the BUZZ NETWORK, -- what people are saying to each other while walking the aisles of that trade show -- determines if a book gets picked up for stocking in the chain stores.

Even on amazon which doesn't have "shelves," this has become true.

Why even on Amazon?

Because as Amazon has grown from a big reader-fan organization to a powerhouse marketer, they've started taking those standard bribes from publishers that book chains invented.

The Publisher PAYS to have your book in front of the store -- in the window -- in the "NEW" section, or shelved cover-out instead of spine-out -- or shelved in two places (SF and Romance).

The publisher pays? Well, no, the publisher's MARKETING DEPARTMENT (not one person inside which has ever or will ever read any of these books) decide which books to pay to put in front of the store or in the window.

On Amazon "up front" means it turns up in your Recommended section when you log in -- the more the publisher pays the higher in your Recommendeds it will appear. Or even be promoted in an email. Or now given away to amazon reviewers in the Vine program. (yeah, some chosen amazon reviewers get offered free books now! But only books publishers throw into the Vine program which is NOT all the publisher's titles. The select few get promoted.)

How does the Marketing Department decide which books to pay to have put in front of book-buyers eyeballs and which to leave out (so nobody can choose to buy it -- thus determining the sales figures.)

BY THE TITLE. And only by the title. That's what affects sales volumes -- despite what you and I, the inveterate reader actually do when looking at the book.

What does MARKETING look for in a title?

It's called HIGH CONCEPT, and I've been harping on this topic -- BOOKS AND MOVIES ARE NOW THE SAME -- on this blog for quite a while.

There's a vital point to consider here. This connection between books and movies and Marketing isn't something I just somehow missed learning as I grew up.

IT IS NEW. It has never before in the history of the world existed. OK, all right, PUBLISHING is relatively new -- few hundred years if you don't count hand-copying.

But let's take a long look at the history of publishing over the last few decades -- just decades.

When Margaret is discussing TITLE -- she's discussing it from the point of view of about 30 years ago.

In the 1970's and 1980's Publishing underwent a huge, big, monstrous, paradigm shift.

The really frightening thing about that change is that, though it was discussed in various newspapers (there weren't blogs then) and magazines -- the general book-buying public and people growing up with the ambition to "become writers" didn't get it -- didn't understand the nature of the change and its implications.

To this day, the real significance of this change hasn't sunk in.

There's a whole generation of new writers (and editors, too) who have grown up in the modern paradigm and don't really know there ever was anything different. They just know they don't like reading old books.

And there are those readers who are still forlornly searching for new novels written for the old paradigm.

What is the shift? What is this vital, earth shattering, vastly significance CHANGE?

I bet you already know and are bored that I'm saying this again.

Publishing went from a business that barely broke even, and was actually designed to LOSE MONEY as a tax write-off for the corporations which owned the Houses, to a business designed to MAKE MONEY.

It went from non-profit, or anti-profit, to profit making.

It sounds so simple. Who could miss that or not realize the full significance of it? Corporate America invaded our space. So?

Well, novels used to be written to communicate about interesting points, about emotions, philosophy, love, politics, religion -- incendiary topics. To be a "novelist" meant to be a THINKER -- no more, a LEADER OF THINKERS. Not really an "Intellectual" because "we" write for the "pulps" and Mass Market, but novelists were saying things that went way over the heads of most of the population.

That was proved out by sales and surveys. I recall the published figures in Publisher's Weekly from decades ago. It went from about 5% of the population of the USA buying books to read to maybe as much as 10% of the population in the 1960's and 1970's.

What changed?

Movies in the early part of the 20th Century didn't drive people to reading novels. They did however sell Movie Magazines. Mostly pictures. Those pictures changed how women dressed. Did you know that Max Factor makeup was at first ONLY for Hollywood stars when they were on screen -- and via the Movie Magazines, became known, and started making a beauty-parlour version and then went to Mass Market? Women adopted the bra, and other tricks of the stars, because of Magazines. Pin-ups. What guys wanted, girls provided.

Movies pitted us normal girls against "stars" -- and Movie Magazines changed the world.

Films reached a much bigger audience than books ever had. But it was much later that the NOVELIZATION was invented.

The big revolution of the 1960's was just a slow continuation of the 1950's which was a gradual, creeping revolution started in the 1930's and 40's. What was that revolution that affected publishing?

TELEVISION.

From a few stations in New York, Networks exploded. In the late 1950's the three big radio networks went coast to coast with TV networks of the same names (ABC, CBS, NBC). Remember Kinescope? No? Now you see my point.

Kinescope was the big revolution that allowed recording a TV show and showing it in California 3 hours later than the original broadcast in New York -- a technological miracle that unified this country. At 8PM everyone watched Milton Berle, even if you had to go over to the neighbor's house who had the only TV on the block. (about 7 inches across diagonally).

What happened to Television in the 1960's? Color TV, yes, big screens, and one more really significant thing I don't think any historians ever paid attention to.

STAR TREK!

Oh, you knew I was going to say that, didn't you?

So I'll give you a week to think about it. Really think - put the pieces together. If you can understand what happened, you will begin to understand what is happening now in such a way that you can take advantage of it and make yourself a profit.

Part II of this post next week, but I'll be on my way to WorldCon (see http://www.worldcon.org and choose this year from the list) so I'll have to ask Rowena once again to post for me.

After I get through with the Historical Review on titles in publishing, though, please someone remind me to discuss how to choose a title for your book that will propel it into the top of the list from which salesforces choose which books to promote. I can't claim to be really good at it, but I think I do have some ideas that will help.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.slantedconcept.com