In a continuation of book marketing week on the blog, I feel extremely fortunate to have one more expert guest blogger. M.J. Rose is the bestselling author of THE REINCARNATIONIST and THE MEMOIRIST, which will be published by Mira in November. She is also the founder of the book marketing service AuthorBuzz, and writes the extremely awesome blog Buzz, Balls & Hype.
In the comments sections of Michelle Moran’s guest posts, there were a few questions about whether book publicity really works, how much money should be devoted to a marketing campaign, and whether, at the end of the day, the book will just sell itself (or not). M.J. Rose took the time to shed some light on these questions, and I can’t thank her enough for her post.
Hi guys. This could take a book to answer but here are a few facts.
1. No one will buy a book that they do not know exists. People won’t go looking for it on line or in the store if they have never heard of it. That is the goal of marketing and pr. To expose the book, the cover, your name to as many people as possible when the book comes out.
2. 85% of all books get less than $2000 in marketing from the publisher. And more than 85% of all books sell less than 1000 copies.
3. 95% of all bestsellers get more than $50,000 in marketing and pr and often it’s upwards of $150,000. There are never more than two or three books a year that break out on a fluke with no marketing and pr and when you search deeper those that do are almost almost always religious books that get help from very tight communities with systems in place to spread the word.
When people say “if advertising and pr worked every book would be a bestseller” that’s the opposite way of how to look at it.
The question is how many books have succeeded without any pr and marketing and the answer to that is very very few.
The reason advertising and pr can’t make every book a bestseller is because not every book is good, not because most advertising and pr sucks. Believe me, it is much easier to write an ad to make people stop and read it than to write a whole book someone will spend their hard earned money on.
Not even the most brilliant pr and marketing can sell a book people just do not want to read. More on this later.
4. PR and Marketing cannot make a bestseller but it is almost impossible to have a bestseller or even a good seller or even a seller without pr and marketing.
5. The difference between marketing and pr is that pr is a gamble that can pay off big whereas marketing is guaranteed and you get what you pay for. A publicist will never be sure they will get what they pitch but marketing is buying space and running ads/announcements.
They are different and both valuable so I tell people that if you have the right book and the right publicist – yes hire a publicist but for every dollar you spend with a publicist spend a dollar with a marketing company so that at the end of the day if the publicist doesn’t get a lot you still will have gotten exposure.
6. Exposure does work. If you take 100 books and look at the ones that had pr and marketing dollars spent on them and 100 that had none – you will absolutely see that as a group the ones that had the pr/marketing outsold the others more than 10 to one. The problem comes when you look at one book at a time.
For instance. I can have done AuthorBuzz.com and blog ads campaigns where I have proof that over 10,000 people clicked through and looked deeper at the book but ultimately the sales for the book were less than stellar. What happened? We got attention for the book but when potential readers picked it up and really looked at it – they passed.
Equally I’ve done campaigns where we did the only marketing effort and the book went back to press which the publisher never expected or the book listed higher on a bestseller list than they expected or it simply sold through at a better rate than other books in the season/genre.
PR and marketing can’t sell books.
It’s worth repeating.
PR and marketing can’t sell books.
PR and marketing can and do expose books to potential readers and then the book – the words and the premise and the first few pages or the flap copy – have to sell the book.
In advertising there is a saying – nothing kills a bad product better than great advertising.
7. What to spend? What I do for myself and what I tell everyone is keep your day job or a freelance job and spend as much as you can.
I’ve worked with authors who spend $985 and others who – between my services and other efforts spend $50,000.
The rule of thumb is: if you are going to look back and regret spending the money don’t do it. But if you are going to look back and say – if only I had tried maybe the book would have succeeded – then do it.
Nora Roberts said you should spend 10% of your advance. James Patterson spent all of his and kept his job.
You can also learn to do a lot of it yourself. I teach a class once a year – (https://www.bksp.org/content/view/141/2/) – online for six weeks that does just that.
8. Less than a dozen debut books a year breakout. But breaking out is not the only way to success in this biz. Your goal as a writer is to keep writing better and better books and to help those books sell well enough so you can keep getting contracts and writing more books until you write the book that a publisher finally says – THIS IS IT – and they spend the big bucks and break you out. They say it takes ten years or ten books to really break out. Sure some people do it faster but some do it slower. Don’t expect the effort to pay off on the first book.
9. If you are going to hire a publicist or marketing firm – please don’t believe anyone who promises you sales. No one can and if they are starting out lying you are going to get screwed. And make sure when you look at their testimonials they have worked with some authors/publishers you have heard of!!!!
10. Lastly, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not true. Like the people who try to get you to pay money to attend teleseminars on how to become an Amazon #1 bestseller. It won’t get you anything. All it means is you have manipulated the system and got 100 friends to buy the book within an hour. Don’t pay anyone anything for stuff like that.
Hey MJ, question:
When you quote these statistics do they include ALL books including very small press books and self published books, or are they statistics for the major trades. It seems like apples and oranges to me when we’re talking about the trades vs. a micro-press.
Thanks!
Zoe
Also, it has always been my understanding that advertising and marketing aren’t the same thing. Advertising is a part of marketing but when we speak of marketing we’re really talking about all promotional efforts. Seeking publicity is part of that. So it threw me when you said PR and marketing are different and that marketing is paid advertising.
Mr. Bransford,
My work performance this week has suffered as a result of the prevalence of guest blog posts this week. Please space them out accordingly in the future.
Much obliged,
Dan
Hi, M.J.,
But breaking out is not the only way to success in this biz. Your goal as a writer is to keep writing better and better books and to help those books sell well enough so you can keep getting contracts and writing more books until you write the book that a publisher finally says – THIS IS IT – and they spend the big bucks and break you out. They say it takes ten years or ten books to really break out.
… I think that’s one of the most difficult, painful parts of being a writer: the long journey, often without pay. Writing better and better is a worthy goal in and of itself, but painful to pursue. Holly Lisle wrote a really great piece on this, comparing the discipline needed to concentrate on writing to a warrior choosing the sword and cold water over a banquet:
https://hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/community_future.html
Thank you for your advice. I’ve done much of what you and Michelle have recommended, and it has paid off, although not in total royalties, as distribution to bookstores was limited. Still, I was invited onto many radio programs, sold a good number of books for small press, and now receive about 7,000 hits to my website each month. At the present time, I’m working very hard at writing another novel – a long, lonely process.
MJ–
This is an excellent post–thank you for hitting some points hard. When I asked my editor what I could do to make sure my debut did as well as possible, she told me “go home and write another great book.” Of course, I’ll do more than that (look for me to consult your services as I near my pub date), but her point is well taken. In the end, you have to have a book readers want to read (and buy.)
Yes, I love this post, many thanks! I am grateful that I do love the process of writing, getting published completely aside. It’s something I have to do, almost to flush out. So, I’ll just keep on, and trust the lengthy process!
First thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge. We both know people always say that crap before they go into their own rarara blah blah blah.
I think in the system of publishing the way it is-in the real world as it stands… You are giving excellent advice and have mastered the art of dealing with the system the way it is.
My contrarian opinion is a overarching view that:
“The system is broken.” Just like so many other systems. I wrote for thirty years before I even dreamed of trying to get published. Now publishing to me is nothing more than doing the best I can and getting a really nice book making company to make me fifty beautiful leather bound copies to give to the people I love. In bold face type “screw the publishing business’
You are a rare individual who was able to navigate and educate and adapt as the industry changed and that is to be recognized and applauded as a real accomplishment and example of evolutionary survival.
But… From the outside the business is “DEAD” on arrival. I’ve been researching the ins and outs and am a 49 year avid stock market fan who just tripled his fortune on other people’s misery and fall from grace and I know the pyschology of survival.
If any of the publishers weren’t bleeding money I would own there stock. I don’t follow their list of publications I follow their balance sheets.
To personalize, I think hiring someone like you would be a wise move in this environment. But… the publishers need to stop publishing “crap” and focus on their traditional product which is “Literature.”
The small publishers used to do the pulp fiction not the great big houses. What insightful work they do publish follows certain stock politic corectness formulas.
In the end I am not predicting the death of the publishing business but I am predicting a tsunami of the same type that hit the world wide banking community. Because….
Writers should write.
Merchants should merchandise.
Its that simple.
Find a good product and sell sell sell sell.
I think you have adapted and that is truly laudable and admirable. But you are the exception that proves the rule. You write good books and you have the extra energy and skill gaining and integration abilities to survive.
I tease you here to let you know I absorbed your info and took it serious: “Your like a frog who learned to live without water.”
I am a frog who shall go on writing forever and probably never get published. And thats OK.
Thanks again for all the cutting edge information
and the time you spent relaying it.
If I knew someone trying to survive getting their first book or two published I would recommend you.
In the old days it was the librararians who ruled the book world. Not blogs and adds on the sides of buses.
Yours truly Steppe
PS. As an afterthought: Why do the publishers not hace a small army of people like you. Maybe that’s the question.
Steppe-
I guess I’m confused how in one breath you can bemoan the financial state of publishers and in the next one suggest they should publish less crap and more “literature.” Do you think publishers would make more money selling “literature”?
Great post MJ!!!! Thanks for coming over!
I’ll be around a few times to answer questions today. Thanks all for the warm welcome.
Zoe – which stats specifically?
To answer the question about the marketing/pr.
A marketing plan would include everything being done for the book- but when I talk about it, I separate it into PR and marketing – hiring a marketing firm versus hiring a publicist. A publicist tries to get press/editorial/reviews. Marketing folks get paid placments/ads/other things that cost money.
In other words, as an author one needs to do as much as is feasible to market yourself, your book, and do it effectively. You give some good info as to why this is all true! Thanks so much for the follow-up post.
P.S. Nathan, did you change you comments format somehow? It looks different.
Aubrey-
Looks like a new blogger feature. I’m a fan.
“2. 85% of all books get less than $2000 in marketing from the publisher. And more than 85% of all books sell less than 1000 copies.”
Many great points, but this one stuck out for me as an eBook author. Does this statistic have a certain genre attached to it, or does this have across the board relevance?
If it’s across the board, I’m going to have to adjust my internal assumption on what is classed as ‘being successful’.
Zoe –
Advertising is considered part of marketing. The difference between marketing and publicity is this: marketing involves paid placement, buying ads, or paying to have merch created. Publicity is generally free placement or promotion: reviews, features, interviews. However, you may still need to pay for an outside publicist to try to do these things for you.
If you go to this post on my blog, I tried to break down those differences for writers. Hope you find it helpful.
You should also be reading MJ Rose’s blog regularly as well. It’s full of great information.
Hey MJ, great post. A fan from way back (to CompuServe/LIP SERVICE days); congratulations on your success at following your own advice… hard to argue with!
What’s your nurshell view of some of the more indirect publicity techniques — blogging, Twitter, et al.?
nurshell = nutshell. Duh.
Oh, and a very good new blog that focuses only on book publicity is The Book Publicity Blog.
Thanks for the great post.
My first reaction is to be depressed by what I see is the slender chance of becoming a successful new author, but I can’t help but keep trying.
clindsay–
Thanks for providing the links in your comment. I’ve checked on them all and can see I have some web-reading ahead of me. Ugh. Don’t you realize I have a book to write?!
Hi – this is really interesting. Can you tell us a bit more about the balance between a significant advance and your career versus a smaller advance? And do publishers tell the author how the book is doing based on expectations?
Kim
(And how much does pixie dust cost?)
promo and marketing are two things I’m still trying to figure out. They are also the two things about this biz that I abhor…
Kim, most publishers would never tell author the truth based on expectations. In fact, many publishers are loathe to even part with sales numbers. Sadly, some authors only discover whether or not their book has performed well if and when they’re given a new contract.
This is a great post. Thanks!
The one universal thing I keep honing from all of this material is: “In order to succeed, write a really good book.”
Hmmm…I wonder what that might have to do with it. 😉
Thanks Nathan and MJ
Great advice. Thank you. I was wondering, if put on the spot and you had, say, $500 to spend – what would be your top one-three recommendations of how to spend it? I wondered if the US market may have different standard practices from those in the UK, or rest of Europe? And would it differ for non-fiction?
The challenge I find is the difference in expectations that authors have of the length of time it takes to build up results from publicity compared with reality, hence they can’t afford a campaign over time needed to see results. Instead I ask for copies of the book up front to use for publicity and I will base my earnings only on quantity of books sold. I am just starting out, and have worked with only two books so far for trailers and PR. Will follow your advice with interest.
I have to thank you all for these great nuggets of gold, I have been printing them out and keeping them for early next year when (fingers crossed) I get a chance to implement them. I agree with Dan – I too have missed much work due to these posts.
I guess I am lucky having worked in event production and therefore have experience in promotion and staging. Trust me, I have a weird plan for the launch of my book but your practical advice has really clarified and brought me down to earth on some of the realities of the publishing world.
I guess in any instance regarding exposure – any form of showmanship couldn’t hurt.
What would be the most interesting / weird publicity or marketing campain you have implemented?
Kim, most publishers would never tell author the truth based on expectations. In fact, many publishers are loathe to even part with sales numbers. Sadly, some authors only discover whether or not their book has performed well if and when they’re given a new contract.
I’ve always wondered why publishers operated this way. (I’m unpubbed but have heard authors complain about this issue.)
Wouldn’t more transparency be better? If an author knows their sales numbers aren’t where the publisher wants them to be, the author could step up her marketing efforts. And if sales are great, the author will know her efforts are working and can do more of the same.
I’d love to know the reason publishers are loathe to share too much. Tradition? Some sort of fear? (And what are they afraid of, exactly?)
I really love your blogs! They are always so interesting, and I always learn something. Thank you, Linda Scarlett
Hi Jes.
And about the publishers telling us how we are doing – they do – they have to. They get weekly velocity reports the first six weeks at least of the book being on sale and the agent can get those numbers weekly.
Also – we know they expectations because they tell us what they are printing. The real numbers they are shipping.
And if you are not getting those numbers you need to have a serious talk with your agent about why he/she isn’t getting them.
Publishers don’t own our books – we do – they are printing them and publishing them – they can’t do it without us and we can’t do it as well without them – but we’re partners and any good agent will make sure that the relationship is dealt with that way.
Anon: I’m not sure why publishers hold back on releasing numbers, I only know that for most authors I’m friendly with, getting numbers is like pulling teeth, though if an author is really desperate, they can ask their agent (or wait for the royalty statement which comes every six months).
If an author knows their sales numbers aren’t where the publisher wants them to be, the author could step up her marketing efforts. And if sales are great, the author will know her efforts are working and can do more of the same.
The thing is, most authors aren’t doing marketing on their own, they’re doing publicity. My house has been very generous and open with me, particularly my wonderful editor Heather Proulx, and her openness does help me to determine how long a campaign should run.
Maybe the hesitancy to disclose numbers comes from the fact that authors would be asking for figures every week if they knew their editors provided them. In some cases, that would lead to complaining, and in many other cases to questioning whether the figures were good/bad/otherwise (and who wants to tell an author… well, the numbers really stink this week. Sorry!).
The $500 question.
If what you have is $500 then I’d suggest you spend $400 on a website design and the rest on it on books on marketing and spend your time – about six hours a week for the six weeks before your book comes out and the ten weeks after the book comes out marketing the book yourself and driving a lot of traffic to your website and your pages at booksellers online.
I know a lot of authors who spend their entire five figure advances on marketing their books and feel in retrospect it was money well spent.
Ideally $5000 and up will do a lot.
But there are things you can do for less of course. Authorbuzz for instance starts at $985.
I’m a little curious about #7, and how much to spend. And I’d be interested in knowing the opinions of writers who have already spent between a thousand and fifty thousand dollars. It’s clearly a gamble, a big gamble and the odds don’t look good for anyone except the person getting paid between one thousand and fifty thousand dollars. And maybe that’s why publishers, who are good business people, don’t invest too much.
It all sounds great, but I’d still like to hear from people who bought into this, spent the money, and how they are looking back now.
Ebooks
“2. 85% of all books get less than $2000 in marketing from the publisher. And more than 85% of all books sell less than 1000 copies.”
This is a pretty much across the board number. As for how many copies make a success it’s all relative.
A book that has a $15,000 advance and that sells 15,000 copies would be a success. A book with at $150,000 advance and sold 15,000 copies would not be such a success. And if it got $500,000 and sold 15,000 copies it would be not successful at all.
Anon – I can tell you because I work with so many authors. In the last year I’ve done a few $30,000 campaign. One the book was a bestseller for six weeks and we did the only advertising the book had.
The other was a literary novel that was expected to sell about 5000 copies and we sold about 15,000 and the book went back to press several times and everyone was thrilled. We got a 70% sell through which matters so much as things so – not what they print but what percentage of what they print sells.
On another we sold 21,000 books and got a 64% sell through and that book went back to press in the process.
Every big campaign I’ve done for good book that had a publisher who got out a decent number of copies and got decent coop space has succeeded.
I’d say about 25% of the authors I talk to who are not happy will what they did had huge expectations. Or they had really ordinary or badly written books.
Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.
The biggest disappointed authors I know in terms of spending money are those who spend $10,000 – $20,000 on publicists without really doing their homework on who to hire or really understanding if their book can get publicity.
“Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.”
That’s worthy of a t-shirt. 🙂
So what is someone supposed to do with no or little marketing budget? I don’t want to give up because my book is one of those 85% that didn’t make the big cut… any strategies for the struggling book marketer?
I agree. Good post.
Dear Bookmarketer –
No money – no problem – you just need time. You can buy Buzz your Book at amazon – by me and Doug Clegg. It costs about $9. It tells you what to do to do it yourself. We wrote it pre blogs so when you read it all the advice for other websites than your own applies to blogs too.
And if you have a bit more than that – my class starting in Jan – that I linked to in the original post teaches you how to do it yourself and we brainstorm ideas together. It’s an online class.
Here (https://www.bksp.org/content/view/141/2/)
A big thank you for all the valuable info!
Nathan and Michelle –
Michelle, said this yesterday…”Sadly, some authors only discover whether or not their book has performed well if and when they’re given a new contract.”
And it made me think about something I have been wonderintg. Do authors usually get contracts before a book is finished with a publisher they already have? Do they ever get commisioned for a book that they don’t know what they are going to write?
As in the movie version of the author who locks him/herself in a hotel room to write that novel that is due by the end of the week that they have had a year to write, but they have no ideas?
I guess this just intrigued me as an idea, because IF I ever pursued publishing my book, got it published and had no ideas to write something else for a while, I wouldn’t want to be pressured like this to write something.
I tried to comment on yesterday, but was having some difficulty with the blog.
Anywhoo…. I just wanted to say that MJ, you have given very valuable advice regarding marketing and public relations.
Thanks so much!
Do authors usually get contracts before a book is finished with a publisher they already have? Do they ever get commissioned for a book that they don’t know what they are going to write?
Stacey, yes and no. In many contracts, there is a provision which grants the publisher the right to acquire an author’s next project. It’s usually referred to as “the right of first refusal”. There is often a period of time associated with this, for example: 60 days from the time of publication. So the author drafts up a proposal for his/her next book, sends it off to the publishing house, and they have a 60 day time frame (after pub of the author’s last work) to make a move.
Now that doesn’t mean the pub house will necessarily wait until after publication to make an offer. If a house is really enthusiastic about someone they’ll sign up a new project (based on the proposal the author submits for a one, or two, or even a four book deal – the latter is more common in SFF) as soon as an edited manuscript comes in.
This is what I meant when I said that sometimes an author doesn’t know if they’ve lived up to “expectations” or not until their next contract. Because if an author hasn’t heard anything about a new contract (again, based on their proposal, which can be as short as one paragraph describing the proposed book or as long as three sample chapters for fiction) and publication time has long since come and gone, it’s not the most promising of signs. I’m not an agent, so I’m sure Nathan can give a much more detailed answer, but enthusiastic houses don’t drag their feet about offering new contracts. If they do end up turning down a particular proposal, the author then has several choices. They can draft a different one, go to other houses with the current one, etc.
Now, I’m sure there’s all sorts of extenuating circumstances in which a publishing house might not be able to get back to an author about a proposal by the 60 day time frame (or whatever the contract specifies). I’m speaking in generalizations here, and from what I’ve seen.
As for your second question, many publishing houses like to space out fiction books one year at a time, but the author usually has a general idea of what they’re writing because they’ve summarized it in their proposal. It’s up to the author when to start writing. I know one writer who waited until the last eight weeks to put pen to paper, so to speak. I can’t say I would recommend that, and neither would she, but that particular author had had a very difficult year and by the time she caught her breath, almost a year had gone by and her new book was due.
Hey MJ, sorry that was quite a generic question, lol.
I meant “85% of all books get less than $2000 in marketing from the publisher. And more than 85% of all books sell less than 1000 copies.”
Which books? ALL books (including small press and self published) or major trade published books? Because I would think self published and small press books would skew those numbers downward.
Thanks!
Ah, MJ, thank you for that clarification. That does make sense and I can see why you used your terms that way now. I was getting hung up on marketing being ths sum total of everything, but I get what you’re saying about a marketing firm and a PR firm handling different things.
Thanks for the column, M.J.
And thanks to Nathan for the guest-host posts this week.
Thank you for the info Michelle! And I want to thank nathan and MJ for thier input over the last few days as well! It was wonderful info for all of us, published or not!
MJ –
So, how do you decide a book is “ordinary” or “badly done”? (your terms)
And, do you tell the author that opinion before he spends money on your service?
Or, are those terms applied retroactively when a book fails to succeed?
And, regarding point #6, 10K click-throughs is good, assuming that the eyes have been properly sourced and the ad designed to pull people who will be interested in the actual book being advertised. But, everyone has experienced movie trailers that were, plainly, lies. The “Water Horse” movie trailer promised a Disney-type comedy, and delivered a bittersweet war story. Too bad, because the actual movie was pretty good.
Assuming that your ad was accurately portraying the book, then either the quality of the book, or the quality of the conversion vehicle (for example the blurb on the sale page) must have been at fault. But, then again, was that analyzed in advance?
Real product marketing groups do test-marketing to verify that a marketing channel will work for a particular product, in this case to test the conversion rate. Was this done for the failed book? Was the landing page for that ad properly tuned for the eyes that would be pulled?
It’s an open question, and something that writers need to think about before dropping a large amount on a PR campaign.
Test marketing, for instance pulling 100 eyes to each of three landing sites and seeing which sells best, is a critical part of the mix.
Twill -we test market all the time. On many of the larger campaigns we do very small tests to see which ad works best. And I do detailed research in where to place the ads. And also I don’t do any PR.
As for what’s ordinary – I don’t decide that.
The reality is that there are a lot of books published that for whatever reason don’t resonate with readers. I’m not an editor and don’t pretend to be one. But its pretty much a given these days that with 10,000 -15,000 novels being published a month by traditional houses (up 3x from what was published in the 90’s when reading up way up freom where it is now) – there are too many books making it to market that are not as good as they should be.
The point I was making is that a reader is in a store and wants to buy one book and we can do ads so that my book is one of six they notice and remember and pick up but then its up to the book to make the sale.
Yes you could test that but I’ve yet to meet an author who wants to:)
A fabulous post in a series of fabulous posts–I’ve linked to it from my blog. Thanks for this, MJ and Nathan.
I signed up for the class. I don’t have my book out to buzz yet, but I’m an optimist.
I appreciate the fact that instead of bemoaning how hopeless it is, you’ve offered us positive steps we can take to see that we’re the cream that rises to the top PROVIDED we’ve written books that will hold up to public scrutiny. We hear enough doom and gloom already, and if we were the easily discouraged types who were actually going to listen, we’d never have written our books in the first place, now, would we?
You’re telling us a good book deserves success, and here’s how to help our books fare as well as they can in the marketplace, because we shouldn’t rely on anyone else to do it for us.
Seems to me that message applies to most everything that is worthwhile in life.