Book Marketing 101: What Works and What Doesn’t

Part 1: Start with Great Content

This is the beginning of a series of posts I am calling, “Book Marketing 101: What Works and What Doesn’t.” I have wanted to write this series for a long time. There are so many opinions when it comes to marketing books. I certainly don’t have the last word on this topic, but I do have some experience.

I have been involved in the book publishing industry for 30 years. My career has included working at three different publishers, serving as a marketing director, marketing VP, acquisitions editor, editor-in-chief, publisher, chief operating officer, and now, of course, chief executive officer. I was also a literary agent for six years and have written four books, including one that was on the New York Times bestsellers list for 28 weeks. I am currently writing a new book called, The How of Wow.

I’ve been able to experience first and second-hand what works and, mostly, what doesn’t. But before I give my perspective on the various marketing tools and vehicles, I would like to set forth a few basic principles based on my own experience. These are generalizations and there are definitely exceptions to every rule. But I think these apply 95% of the time.

Let’s start with content. What does content have to do with marketing books? Everything.

Several years ago, when I was the publisher of Nelson Books, I had a button made for my staff. It said, “It’s the product, stupid.” I am still convinced that this is the most fundamental truth about publishing. It all starts by acquiring great manuscripts.

Great products make everyone’s job easier. When you have a great book, sales people want to sell it, producers want to book the author, bloggers want to post about it, and booksellers want to carry it.

But we have to be careful how we define “great product.” I am not referring to a book’s literary merit, scholarly research, or enduring value. Instead, I am talking about the book’s commercial viability.

As is the case in the movie business, what the reviewers like and what the general public likes are often two very different things. For example, I have heard many publishing insiders pan The Shack. And yet millions of readers love the book and have bought them by the caseload to pass onto their family and friends. The same could be said of numerous other books, including The Purpose Driven Life.

David Ogilvy, the advertising pioneer, once said, “Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.” Why? Because it contributes to negative word-of-mouth. If the marketing induces people to try the product, and if the product doesn’t deliver what the consumer expects, then the product dies. This is true of consumer products, and it is true of books.

In the book publishing world, when a book is successful, the author usually gets the credit. Conversely, when the book fails, the publisher gets the blame. But I have seen the reverse happen many, many times. The publisher creates a good, perhaps even brilliant marketing plan, but the book doesn’t take off because the content is mediocre.

Again, the yardstick for measuring great content is not the author’s opinion of his own work. Most authors think their work is brilliant. The standard of success in commercial publishing is consumer acceptance and enthusiasm. If the public doesn’t like the book, as demonstrated by purchasing enough copies to recoup the publisher’s investment and enable him or her to make a reasonable profit, then the book is a failure.

Even in the best case scenario, the publisher’s marketing budget will only carry the book so far. The real goal is to ignite word-of-mouth marketing. When this happens, the book “sprouts legs” and begins to run on it’s own. If this doesn’t happen, then the book dies and the publisher moves onto the next project.

The dirty little secret of book publishing is that most books fail. Based on research I have seen through the years, something like 90% of all books published sell fewer than 5,000 copies. And by almost every commerical publisher’s standards, these books are failures. If this is accurate, then it means authors have a one-in-ten chance of being successful. These are tough odds.

But they are even tougher if the content is medicore. If the book is brilliant and the marketing plan is mediocre, the book can still succeed. But the reverse is rarely true. I have never seen brilliant marketing overcome a weak book. The publisher may get the book placed, but it will ultimately boomerang back in the form of returns.

The bottom line: Authors must write great manuscripts. Agents must represent great projects—and have the guts to tell their clients when they have missed the mark. Acquisitions editors must buy great books for their publishing houses. If they don’t do this, all the marketing in the world will not be sufficient to make the book successful.

Question: If you are an author or a publisher, are you willing to pay the price to create great content?

Comments

[anne jackson]

timely. :) thank you.

[Mary DeMuth]

I am absolutely willing to create a great book. I'm not one who automatically thinks my books are brilliant. I tend to spend time praying through my books, asking for His insight. And I also have my small critique group read my words. By the time it's delivered to my publisher, the book has been through a lot of checks and balances.

The frustration comes when you do feel you've created great content, but no matter what you do, you can't seem to get it into consumer's hands. When consumers get the book and love it, I am so excited! But figuring out how to make that kind of synergy happen has not been as simple as some would make it sound.

Creating buzz is not easy.

I rest in the lines of an old Keith Green song: "Just keep doing your best, and pray that it's blessed, and He'll take care of the rest." That puts the responsibility on me to do my best at writing and marketing and publicity, but it also helps me to entrust the results of that hard work in God's hands.

[Maurilio Amorim]

Great insight Mike. The book has to deliver first and foremost. We have a saying at my company that mirrors your Ogilvy quote: "You can throw money on a bad idea and it will still be a bad idea."

Unfortunately even good authors sometimes fail to produce manuscripts that deliver. That's often when the Publisher gets blamed for their failures.

[Raymond E. Foster]

I hope you keep up the posting on this topic - Seems like a no brainer - you got to have content before it will go anywhere. As a writer, damn, I have never sure, stuff I think is absolutely brillant the market sees as tepid, stuff I thought was pretty freaking simple, the market (readers) really likes.

Would like to see you go more indepth about what AUTHORS can and should do to market.

[Timothy Fish]

No--absolutely not—as an author and sometimes publisher, I am not willing to pay the price to create great content. The price, as evidenced by The Shack, may require an author to throw the Bible out the window, forget the teachings of his childhood and ignore his own convictions. I refuse to accept that market viability is the only thing. Yes, it is important, but as authors we have a responsibility to not only give people what they want to read, but to do so without compromising on our responsibility to communicate the things they need to hear. For Christian authors, the heart of that should be the Word of God.

[Chrissy]

Question: If you are an author or a publisher, are you willing to pay the price to create great content?

Answer: Yes, after reading The Expert's Edge, by Ken Lizotte, I now know the holes that I need to fill in getting my book written for my audience I believe could benefit the most, because it will pay off in the long run.

It essentially outlines a road map for successfully navigating your way from professional with pearls of wisdom to savvy expert / thought leader.

In my opinion book marketing can work.

[Joe Tye]

It is important for the author, as for the entrepreneur, to know where he or she falls on the mission-market continuum. Michael Dell created a company that is primarily market-driven; they survey markets and pursue them. Steve Jobs created a company that is mission-driven; they don't survey markets, they create markets. It is, of course, not always an either-or trade-off, but the mission-driven entrepreneur or author is usually taking a much bigger risk.

As a personal vignette, several years ago I set out to write a simple self-help novelette on the ageless theme of tragedy-trial-triumph, but one of the characters kept insisting that she wanted to be a poet – and a mermaid to boot. "The Healing Tree" is now a self-published novel in which original poetry is woven throughout the story (www.Healing-Story.com). I will sell a lot fewer books, but I could not have let Maggie down. In this case, mission triumphed over market. Time will tell whether the mission eventually creates a market, but I would not trade the experience of having written the book for anything.

[Jill Savage]

I'm looking forward to this series of posts--thank you for tackling the subject.

As an author, I am willing to do what it takes to create great content. My books also go through alot of critique by the time I turn them into the publisher. But I would agree with Mary DeMuth that sometimes it is hard to get the book into the hands of the consumers.

With my first book the publisher placed it in alot of secular bookstores and it took off. Other projects after that were only placed in Christian bookstores and they simply weren't as available to the general public and they didn't sell as well.

I think it's definitely a mix of responsibility between author and publisher.

[Rick Frishman]

Mr. Hyatt- What a wonderful post! Cant wait to read part 2. You tell it the way it is. I have promoted books for over 30 years. You hit it on the nose. Don't expect your publisher to do the heavy lifting. You the author must take charge- and start 4 months before pub date! Yes - good content is first step- but you must promote, promote, promote-every day and don't stop.
It is easy to get lost with so many books coming out every day- but don't give up.Listen to the master- Mike has got it right!

[John Young]

It seems like when publishers sign a deal nothing stops a title from coming out even if the landscape has changed since it was agreed on a year before release. Let's say you and Gail were building a house and it looked dandy on paper and suddenly the kitchen just wasn't working. Would you stop, revise and redo the kitchen? Yup.

In former times a pub with an unknown author had media relationships, sent out review copies and followed up consistantly even giving a sales pitch. Now it's email blasts that may or may not get past junk filters and "marketing" is often waiting for someone to call for followup. Thank goodness other businesses aren't this casual.

Company's get caught up in their "Brand authors" for most of the attention and a manuscript from an unknown like William Paul Young comes in with no agent and everybody passes. Then "The Shack" becomes a big seller and from business to leadership to many devotional books, customers tell me a lot of content looks the same.

It might just seem tough because we're living in post-Jabez, Left Behind, Purpose Driven days when multiple copy sales make it easy.
But when Stephanie Meyer had 4 of the top 5 recently, I think we could agree, something is wrong with this picture.

You're on to something because without using the economy as an excuse, many would agree publishing content has just been rather uninteresting this year and we have the lack of sales to prove it.

Maybe fresh starts will correct this with revised policies and people. Isn't Nashville a city where many of the same people bounce from one publisher to the next without a lot of new people coming in?
Maybe the old fact of having to know someone to get published is part of the problem.

While authors work on content maybe publishers could work on context. Couldn't hurt. A lot of opportunities to reach an audience was lost due to quantity of releases vs quality of product.

[Colleen Coble]

I'll be watching this series for sure, Mike! Another thing that helps create a great book is great editing. Editors are too often overlooked as one of the key pieces of that great book. Ami McConnell is the best. She's worth being at TN for just to have her on my team! She's willing to say the hard things even when it hurts us both. THAT'S a real editor!

[Colleen Coble]

I just realized how my previous post might have sounded and I KNOW my books aren't the great novel. LOL But if any of us ever hope to write it one day, we need that great editor. :)

[Addie Owens-Donovan]

Personally, I never want to deliver a product that is mediocre. I would rather hear that what I have written is junk, than be strung out on the media clothes line and beaten like a pinata.
It seems as though everyone has a book deal these days. I read today that Tia Tequila just "wrote" a book. I can't imagine that being a book worth the paper it is written on. My hope is that publishers would stop feeding consumers junk. If they know it's junk when it is first written, why publish it? Thank goodness for publishers like Thomas Nelson, who deliver a great product more often than not!

[Mike Rapp, Generator LLC]

Allow me to be so bold as to speak for all publishers when I say this: Nothing fires up a marketing director more than an author or artist who is the most committed, hardest working person on the team.

Conversely, nothing pours cold water on a marketing fire faster than the feeling that the publisher will have to "do it all."

While it is true that 90% of all books sell 5,000 or less, a successful book can be measured by just 15,000 units sold. That may not be enough to sustain a publisher relationship long term, but 5,000 to 15,000 can then easily become 30,000...or, 80,000.

Most of the time, success can be the simple byproduct of the word of mouth that comes from one fan telling another. And I definitely believe the future of all publishing is going to amount to precisely that.

It bears observing that Garrison Keillor retired from Prairie Home Companion because he felt no one cared -- and then his overnight success happened. He actually had to un-retire to catch up with the tidal wave of "success!"

The fact is, publishers relish authors who get their hands dirty and do what they can to find their own audience, whether the book company gets it or not. If an author wants a big marketing budget, then make your publisher feel like they are going to leave you hanging if they don't do their part...because by golly you are doing your part REGARDLESS, and you won't stop until it's done.

If the publisher won't or can't hire a publicist, YOU hire one. If they won't buy the ads, offer to pay for some if they will get you their discount. Don't know how to do email marketing? Ask your publisher for a good reference and for a fair price. Find someone who knows how to do it and get them working pronto.

Let everyone feel the angst of not doing enough, and see how far the team will go to make sure you don't fail alone.

Successful brand marketing begins with the product, and the product is not a book or a record. It's the author and artist, first, and last. And no matter who does what, the bottom line is this: YOU are the leader of your company.

Ask yourself: Would you follow you?

One of my heroes is Dave Ramsey, who started his career right over at Nelson. He's still there hammering out top selling books and now does curriculum, web sites, television, radio, and anything else. No doubt you know Dave, so you ask yourself, do you think Dave is sitting around waiting for Nelson to do their thing so he can do his? No way. Dave is leading the entire charge, and his publisher is working like mad to keep up. Not too long ago Dave was a total unknown outside of Nashville. He's on Fox News almost as much as Neil Cavuto now. The man personifies his brand; His books simply reflect his leadership.

[Roger C. Parker]

Your post, and its emphasis on content, is very refreshing. I, too, will be watching the series unfold and recommending it to others.

I agree with your emphasis on content as the generator of reader satisfaction and word-of-mouth recommendations, but your emphasis on content raises numerous questions that I mentioned in my Published & Profitable blog.

For example, how can "reader satisfaction" be quantified and optimized before the printing presses are turned on?

Another question is, "How long can authors and publishers wait for a book's Tipping Point?" Are there things that can speed-up word of mouth recommendations?

Thank you and congratulations on what I hope will be a long and provocative dialog.

[Lynn Squire]

I am willing to write to the best of my ability as unto the Lord - and to continue to learn and grow so that my ability becomes greater. However, because I would write as unto the Lord, does not guarantee that what I would write will be what readers want to read.

Personally, I believe that most readers just want "their ears tickled" and to be entertained. There is a place for entertainment, especially when the focus of such is to glorify God, but to write merely to gain readership is equivalent to coveting. And truthfully, I don't believe this is the only nor the primary goal of most, if not all, Christian publishers (I believe most have the heart to edify Christians). In today's market, is it possible to publish life-changing works like "Pilgrim's Progress"; "In His Steps"; "Redeeming Love", and other classics? These books can still be found in bookstores, but if an unknown author wrote such books, would they get published today and would they gain readership in today's market?

I'm looking forward to this series.

[Cezar Elmi]

How can an artist become a marketing expert without the help of a marketing expert? It is a totally different business. The publishers, agents and publicits are the experts and it is their job to sort out good works from the bad. Their recommendations based on their experience is like gold to the author. The publisher can sell alot of books just by asking their best selling clients to comment on it. I don't think it is as hard as many say it is as long as people are buying books. If they are not, then that's a totaly different argument. Also, it is a shame the way some of these so called "Christian agents" treat the unknown author as if he or she is better off knocking on someone elses' door. Let them try pouring sweat and blood on a project for five years.

[David in Nashville]

Michael

Thank you for the insight into the industry.

I wonder what thoughts of "markteting" were on their minds as some of the greatest writers ever penned their thoughts in the "greatest book ever written."...God's Holy Book.

Personally, I doubt that merketing ever crossed their minds as they poured their hearts and souls out to their brothers and sisters and closest loved ones as the Holy Spirit gave unction.

Praise God...He provided pen and paper or whatever was necessary to record these heartfelt words and preserve them for generation after generation.

I guess it gets to the core when asking yourself these questions:
"Why am I writing this anyway?"
"Who is my real audience?"
"Should I write it if it will not sell?"

How many authors penned "The Good Book?"

Praise God...each of them had the greatest marketer and publisher that ever lived...God himself and His Holy Spirit.

Where would we be today if some marketing consultant or publisher rejected those "letters of love" written to the ones they cared about most?

[Michael S. Hyatt]

@David:

Actually, I think there was a kind of “market acceptance” in the process of the church recognizing those works as having been inspired by the Holy Spirit. Scores of books were written in the first three centuries that claimed to be inspired. Some were heretical, some merely edifying, a few actually inspired by the Holy Spirit.

It wasn’t until 367 AD that we find the first listing of the books in the New Testament canon. This was in large part a listing of the books that Christians everywhere had begun to acknowledge as different (or holy) than other writings.

Books that were not inspired didn’t have to be banned. They just didn’t gain any traction with the early Christians.

So again, I think the audience ultimately recognizes great writing and rewards it by reading it, promoting it via word-of-mouth, and keeping it in print.

Thanks,

Mike

[Robert Treskillard]

Great post! Here are two comments I want to highlight.

Mike Rapp said: "Most of the time, success can be the simple byproduct of the word of mouth that comes from one fan telling another. And I definitely believe the future of all publishing is going to amount to precisely that."

Roger Parker wrote: "Are there things that can speed-up word of mouth recommendations?"

Assuming great content, Mike, how *can* a publisher and author together encourage word of mouth?

I have some strong ideas (patent pending) on this subject, but I'm waiting until I have an agent to share them with a publisher.

Looking forward to your thoughts!

[C.J. Darlington]

Thanks so much for doing these posts. I am listening carefully. I want to be the best author I can be, and I appreciate this first principle---write a great product. Sometimes that's overlooked, and it encourages me to keep honing my craft and never settle.

[Larry Shallenberger]

@Timothy Fish,

Come on, The Shack's theology (such as it is)didn't make it a great product. It was great story telling.

Remember how Christians flinched when the DaVinci Code and the Golden Compass came to the big screen? Those movies had no traction in our culture because the movie version of the product stunk.

The idea that you can't write a great product without compromising your understanding of scripture is a cop out.

[g wagner]

Totally agree this is the rule of thumb and the ultimate goal. The fact is however, sometimes "stupid" things work. Like "low cut jeans", "no-payment plans".
Consumers are fickle. I have won awards for projects we all thought were great yet at the end of the day...the consumer said, "No".
Product development and marketing is not for the weak at heart. It takes marketing intelligence and meeting needs, and lots of prayer. Maybe if we spend more on last, we would see better results. Most of the time it's a continuous practice with lots of errors.

[Jeff Goins]

Thanks, Mike, for this blog. I love books. I love marketing. And I love great products. It wasn't until I started reading Al Ries that I realized what a waste of money many advertising dollars can be. There's something to be said about a marketing dept. that invests some of its budget into product development. I love that "fail faster" quote, by the way.

Regarding David's comment about the Bible, I think that this only supports Michael's point that ultimately great products succeed and poor products don't. Given that so many people's lives have been changed by the Bible, you can't argue with a billion testimonials. So, in a sense, the Bible is one of the best-marketed books out there and has been using millenia-old tactics of word-of-mouth appeal that are now just beginning to become cutting-edge in the book industry.

Amazing, if you ask me.

[Paul Merrill]

LOVE the photo - brought back some fond memories.