The Publishing Contrarian

The publisher arrives at her office and boots up her computer. Her password doesn’t work. No big deal she thinks, those security-obsessed IT guys must be making everybody change passwords yet again. She reaches for the phone to tell them she is being denied access. Strange, she thinks, that she should have to leave a voicemail message. She’s so important and no one is responding to the neon flashing of her name in Caller ID.

She shuffles around her office, sipping her latte, fairly paralyzed without access to her computer and fuming because she can’t get to her email. At some point she notices the sound of cardboard boxes being dragged across carpeting and down the corridor between the cubicles. The sound grows nearer and louder.    Ah-hah, she thinks, at last they are getting rid of that #$@%^ down the hall. But no, the sound of sliding boxes inches ever closer. Good heavens, she wonders, why in the world are they are stopping outside my door?

Yep, it’s Judith Regan’s turn to be frog-marched to the curb. 

Frog-march: to seize from behind roughly and forcefully propel forward –Merriam Webster Online Dictionary.
 
In the Wicked Witch’s experience frog-marching usually involves two hulking guys on either side of you, practically lifting you off the ground by your elbows while your feet go through the motions of walking. Not unlike the frantic paw action of the family dog being lowered into the swimming pool.
 
Did Judith Regan make anti-Semitic cracks? According to The New York Times yesterday, Rupert Murdock personally ordered Judith Regan’s ousting. Not, evidently, because of the O. J. Simpson book debacle over If I Did It, but because of comments Ms. Regan made in a phone conversation “with a company lawyer on Friday that…were deemed anti-Semitic….” Slurs are never justified, but are utterly incomprehensible in a milieu where many of your colleagues, not to mention most of your bosses, are Jewish. (Here, let me hand you your own gun to commit professional suicide.) 

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The Wicked Witch of Publishing has had a brilliant idea. Yes, a Christmas bulb exploded over her head while she was planning her December visit to the James A. Farley Post Office in midtown Manhattan in New York City to comb through letters to Santa Claus. This holiday season, why can’t book reviewers, authors, literary agents, libraries, publishing companies, bookstores, community service organizations, local associations and individuals—along with a new doll, video game, or warm coat—send great books to needy kids and families? 
 
More than 100,000 letters from around the world are sitting at the James A. Farley branch right now, and millions of Dear Santa letters are being read by caring people at local Human Services Departments, Rotary Clubs, churches and synagogues around the globe.  
 
Dear Santa,
I am the mother of three (3) beautiful childs of the 5, 13 years old and one of eight month (8)… The most important thing I want is to give my childrens happiness sadly enough I can’t buy the basic thing in life. I would be so grateful if Santa Claus would send things. Luis is 13, pants size 16-18 sneakers 9 coat sweaters = 16-18. Magdalena is 5 years old Pants = 6, sneakers = 13, coat and sweathers = 6 Emiliano is (8) month old pants 18-24 m sneakers = 4-5 Coat and Sweathers = 18-24 m. Thank you, Santa Claus for making dream be come true.

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If the first thing a bookstore browser sees when picking up your book is the book title and the jacket design, shouldn’t that title and jacket just blow him away? And once he plucks your book from among the thousands in the store, shouldn’t the jacket promotional copy just sizzle and scorch his hands on the way to the cash register?

Of course it should, but more often than not (given the number of books that fail to ignite in the bookstore), the promotional copy on the book jacket is so lackluster that the potential buyer doesn’t even bother to take that critical next step—a peek at the first paragraph of the first chapter—before tossing the book back into the pile and moving on in search of a book whose jacket copy leaves him breathless!

The Story Can’t Sell Itself

Well before a book hits barnesandnoble.com, borders.com and bookstores, a huge mix of promotional elements must be in place to set the stage for robust sales. The most obvious pushes come from the author’s reputation for writing blockbuster stories. Charles Frazier’s Thirteen Moons soared onto the top-10 fiction list in the New York Times four weeks ago because of the success of Cold Mountain. The extraordinary publicity The Audacity of Hope received when Barack Obama appeared on “60 Minutes,” “Today,” “The Ophrah Winfrey Show” and the front cover of major magazines has catapulted this nonfiction book to the No. 1 spot on the New York Times nonfiction list next Sunday. Winning the Nobel Prize for Literature or The Booker Prize doesn’t hurt either (though they don’t always help.) A publishing company can also back a book with advertising, fire off extra author review copies (ARCs) to book reviewers, and even spend money for preferential shelving. All of these strategies, individually or in combination, work to move a book to the cash register or online checkout in the days or weeks immediately after publication, but the question is: how do you generate sales once the initial publicity push is over? (more…)

“Greetings, my name is [–] and I’m the director of [–], you are slated to do a book signing with us…. I want to know if you are a black/African American person.”

The above is an email message posted by author Millenia Black on her blog Millenia Black—Taking Care of Business. Click on the link above and scroll down to March 13th to see the entire posting.

This blunt email message sent Black into paroxisms of indignation. She felt her race was nobody’s business when it came to book promotion and she was incensed that the director of the bookstore would even dare ask such a question. So insulted was Black that she canceled her appearance and left the director in the lurch, forced to locate an alternative author to make an appearance. And 25 out of 26 commentors joined the rage-in:

“The frickin’ nerve of some people! I’d make sure this idiot looks like the dumb shit he is.” – Lynn Ray Harris

“I think I would call the store and ask to speak to the manager. I would try to get the person who did that FIRED!!!” —Anonymous

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Raise your hands!

Is your anger and resentment so all-consuming that you can talk about nothing to friend and family other than how awful your ex is being toward you, how mistreated and marginalized you were at work, or how loathsome and certifiable your neighbor is? Are you cornering virtual strangers in the supermarket and subjecting them to your indignant tirade, when all they wanted was help getting a can of peas off the top shelf? When you saw Charlie Shanian, Tori Spelling’s ex-husband last week on “The Dr. Keith Ablow Show,” did you scream: BOOK ME!

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It took me just a jacket-read at Book Hampton to understand why Kim Edward’s book, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, became a creeping, then raging bestseller through word of mouth. In fact, even had it been the most poorly written book in the history of publishing, I know it still would have ignited a brushfire in sales.
 
Given the usual routine whereby publishers blast 300 author review copies (ARCs) into outer space, hoping against hope that they’ll somehow land on an interested reviewer’s desk, writers need to write with clever marketing ploys in mind and editors need to capitalize on the ancillary (meaning other than a good plot) elements that authors can weave into a book to make readers eager to buy. Sure, everybody hopes the book is good, but sales don’t have to be completely plot-driven for a book to be successful in monetary, if not literary, terms.  
 
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I’m still laughing! The cover story of Newsday.com on May 29th had me in stitches. Jeff Pearlman’s article, “Pulp friction, or hey, buy my book!,” is an hilarious account of his efforts to try and promote his newly released biography of Barry Bonds, Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero. I can see the image of a rain drenched Pearlman, drops dribbling off the end of his nose and ear lobes while handing out promo flyers for his book outside AT&T Park in San Francisco, home of the Giants.

Jeff, I am assuming that the book was so offensive to the stadium/team that your publisher, HarperCollins, was unable to strike a deal with them to buy thousands of special-order copies for free distribution to the fans holding tickets to the worst seats in the stadium? Not free binoculars, but a nice perk for them. (Strike one!) Nor were they able to convince the Bonds promo machine to buy your book in bulk, customize the cover, and offer it along with the Barry Bonds 715 Women’s Logo Cap-Sleeve Baby Doll T-Shirts and Authentic SBC Park Infield Dirt Coins that he hawks in his Web site store. (Strike two!) So let’s assume Bonds is huffy about the book. Too bad. Who said, to paraphrase someone, that any publicity is good publicity, even if it’s bad publicity?

I don’t think it’s coming as a big surprise to many authors anymore that, as Kim Lionetti, a literary agent with Book Ends, LLC, says in the same article, “There’s a real demand for creativity.” She means, of course, on the part of the author to sell his own book! We know that, I think.

Jeff Pearlman, you are not the roundheel you claim to be! You were wearing sensible shoes, not teetering on hooker high heels outside that park. You were showing the requisite characteristics of a successful author. You were building momentum for your book, while risking pneumonia for the cause. (Where was your editor that day? Having a power lunch in a posh Manhattan restaurant and discussing Updike’s Terrorist and the current state of fatwas?) I’m sure everyone outside the stadium remembers that pathetic author with his waterlogged, unreadable flyers. Some might even be talking about it right now on the way to the bookstore. I give you CREDIT, but buy some foul weather gear.

Jeff, you were smart enough to write about a very popular (okay, now notorious) figure in a national pastime sport. And yes, even though you have a lot of competition from Game of Shadows by Mark Faina-Wada and Lance Williams, I wouldn’t worry too much about a book that was released one month ahead of yours (although I am sure William Shinker, President & Publisher of Gotham Books in New York City is cartwheeling). There are plenty of rabid baseball fans who, once they finish reading Game of Shadows, will pick up your book.

Nope, I don’t think you are quite as hapless as you paint yourself in the Newday.com article, so I’m not going to worry about you and your book. Not at all. In fact, despite skulking about Barnes & Noble and moving your book to a more prominent position—while no doubt bumping into lots of other lurking authors, and letting your high school alumni association know you have another book out (ah, the glory!), I actually think you are pretty savvy when it comes to the P&P of book marketing—promotion…and prostitution.

• Somehow you wrote a book. (Home run!) 
• Somehow you created a promo Web site. (Home run!)
• Somehow you managed to be published by HarperCollins. (Home run!)
• Somehow you got ranked on Amazon.com with 4.5 stars. (Stand-up triple!)
• Somehow you goosed your book from Amazon Sales Rank of 5,427 yesterday to 2,982 today. (Line drive through the shortstop’s legs!)
• Somehow you managed to write the cover story for Newday.com. (Yet another home run!)
• Somehow you wrote an article that was forwarded to The Publishing Contrarian and the Wicked Witch of Publishing blogged about you. (Out of the park!)

I’d say you’re batting .700! 

Not only am I laughing, I’m impressed. You are doing what every author should do: Exploiting any and all opportunities, while moving steadily away from the minor leagues and into the majors.   

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™: I’m trying to think of the worst possible, most debasing thing I have done to promote my books! Let me think about this. Meanwhile, thank you David Buda for emailing me the link to this article!

Target: Blog-trotters, Internet passersby, New England English Springer Spaniel Rescue, my entire address book, all those people from whom I receive massive group emails that contain dumb or funny jokes, photos, chain-link emails, or another Dr. Phil survey (I scored 48, thank you, on the latest one)–and every single name within the group email, whether I know who these people are or not.

Objective: Well, we read, therefore we should be surveyed, but I, for one, never have been, nor have I ever heard of anyone I know being surveyed about his or her book buying habits. Let’s cast our own net and see if we can draw some independent conclusions ourselves about the state of online publishing and where we should be putting our efforts and our money. 

Could I ask you to take the survey and write your answers in the comment section below? Comments, by the way, don’t get posted until after I read them so I can delete the weird and the spam. 

Setting the Survey Scene: There is a huge storm and outage in your area and the neighborhood goes dark about 4 p.m. Nothing connects you to the outside world: no Internet, no phones (land or cell), no satellite, no nothin’. (Where are the old kerosene lamps you thought you’d never use again? In the basement along with the board games, but it’s DARK down there.) You dig deep in the back of the utility drawer and find an old battery powered radio from which you hear that it will be several days before you will be reconnected to the outside world again in any way. O Pioneers! You allow the water from upstairs pipes to drain into the pots in the kitchen. You open and quickly close the refrigerator. (Survival: it’s all coming back to you now.) Thank goodness you have those scented candles in the bathroom and some long white candles in the drawer in the dining room; you’re going to need them. You gather your family. They are in despair, frantically pointing the TV-remote toward the TV and pressing and repressing the “Power On” button and plugging and unplugging the computer, trying to reset it. Yes, the worst has come to pass. The family will have to READ by candlelight or spend the evening sitting in a dark room, making spooky faces at each other by holding the precious flashlight under their chins or casting shadow birds and rabbits with long ears on the wall with hands and fingers until the batteries die.

1. What books are you and your family actively reading that you can grab? By that I mean eagerly reading, not idly thumbing through hoping it will make you drowsy so you don’t have to sneak another shot of whiskey or drop an Ambien to reach REM sleep.
2. Were any of these books from online, self-publishing companies such as the much maligned (by traditional publishers and your friendly bookstore) iuniverse or lulu? Are you even aware of these websites as sites to buy books? Now that you’ve looked, what do you think? Would you buy a book from them if the author was someone other than a self-published friend?
3. Were any of your books free, online books in PDF format or had you planned to read them online, and are out of luck, on this dark and stormy night?
4. Did any of your books come from seeing author websites similar to A Woman from Cairo—very sophisticated, The Kill–trailer caused my dog to stroke out, or The Alphabet of Manliness—eek, eek, brace yourself? Do websites that sell books find you or do you find them? (I’m not talking about the big guys—Barnes and Noble, Borders or Amazon. I mean authors who are attempting to attract you to their websites.)
5. Did any of these books arrive at your now-darkened and chilly house because you purchased, say, directly from Random House, Simon & Schuster, William Morrow, Knopf or Rodale’s online bookstore? Have you ever purchased a book directly from the publisher’s website?

Wait! I think I see a light on down the road! Wow! A reprieve! The refrigerator is humming. Computer lights are flashing. The cell phone just beeped. Quick, try the light switches. Someone flush the toilet!

End of survey. Reminder: stock up on batteries, candles and…books.

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing: I’m taking the survey, too. See my answers in the first comment box!  

It’s Monday, 9:01 a.m. I’m sitting in my office, feet up on the desk. I may look like I am doing nothing, but I’m actually thinking, and thinking hard, about which author’s book will get my attention first. The phone rings. Caller ID tells me which author it is. I ignore the call and let it go into voicemail. The phone rings again. Another author. Another ignored phone call. The phone rings a third time. I grab the receiver. Why? It’s my favorite author, Publisher’s Pet! 

Teacher’s pet. Publisher’s pet. It’s a good thing.

No one gets more of my attention than an author who can help me do my job and make me look good doing it. I’m crazy about authors who can write well, understand marketing and sales, and will roll up their sleeves to promote “our” book.    

I want a well-thought-out marketing plan attached to every book I have to launch, and I want it to come from the author, who should know his market even better than I do. Yes, authors fill out an Author’s Questionnaire, but these forms are rarely taken seriously and are often ignored. The marketing plan is as important as the quality of the book.  Actually, with a great marketing plan an awful book can succeed! People will buy it, though they may not finish it! (I’m thinking Nabokov’s Ada, but feel free to disagree. I just don’t want to hear it!)

Last week I sat in on a writers workshop and listened to members read excerpts from their previous week’s writing. One aspiring writer had completed a lengthy, turn-of-the-century novel and was fine-tuning it by reading it out loud to the group before trying to find an agent. I talked to her about some of the critical sales tools she might use to separate her from the pack: the upbeat covering letter, exciting book outline, and smart marketing plan that would accompany sample chapters of her book. It never occurred to her to develop a marketing plan. Big mistake. And good luck finding an agent.

Unsolicited manuscripts “in them thar hills” of the slush pile may well get a serious read if you attach a marketing plan that proves you know your market and how to reach it with your book. Otherwise, the reader, associate editor, acquisitions editor or agent will just get another paper cut while shoving your manuscript into the self-addressed, stamped return envelope.

I’m good at sussing out a market and moving books, but I’m even better and faster with a helpful author who has taken the time to understand the book’s market (fiction or nonfiction), supplied me with every idea, from the harebrained to the brilliant, that he has, and then sat down to work with me, side-by-side, to combine my harebrained and brilliant ideas with his into a primo marketing plan virtually destined to bust through the competition. 

But to really lock in the position of Publisher’s Pet, I want a proactive author. (Not a pest, asking me what I’ve done lately to promote his or her book and why I haven’t sent a copy to a friend of a friend who works in publishing.) I want someone “out there,” flogging the book with me, implementing those parts of the marketing plan to which he has committed and sustaining the effort. 

James Brady, columnist and author of The Scariest Place in the World and The Marines of Autumn, gets it. We bumped grocery carts in Amagasett last summer and chatted. This author never, ever stops promoting his books. In a telephone conversation we once had, he told me ”flogging” his book came first.

William Hood, coauthor of A Look Over My Shoulder–A Life in the CIA, doesn’t get it. He’d been away for months, and I had assumed he was promoting his and the late Richard Helm’s book. Smart, I thought, but no, he had been summering in Maine. Bill told me he left the publicity entirely up to the publisher. Not smart, I thought.

Rigel Crockett, first-time author who wrote Fair Wind and Plenty of It, a memoir about working on a tall ship as it circumnavigated the globe, sort of got it. He booked himself on his own speaking tour at places like The Explorers Club and Mystic Seaport, but was hesitant to ask his publishing house for reimbursement of some of his expenses. After we spoke, Rigel went back to the publisher, and sure enough, the publishing house found a few pennies to help cover his expenses.  

Sandy Jones, coauthor with Marci Jones of Great Expectations–Your All-in-One Resource for Pregnancy & Childbirth, gets it. She supplied me with well-thought-out marketing plans that included an analysis of her competition, lists of doulas, ob-gyns, associations, and radio and TV shows specializing in family issues. She targeted major companies manufacturing baby products and became a consultant. While Sandy was busy pitching in, I got her a multipage spread in Fit Pregnancy and a massive commitment for content exposure and links to Barnesandnoble.com on Ivillage.com, the #1 women’s network with “25 million unique viewers each quarter.” Sandy, my Publisher’s Pet.

When Publisher’s Pet calls, I reach for the phone every time. Pronto.

How many years ago was it when I was in the movie theater in East Hampton, New York and the first product advertisement appeared on the screen? No, this was not a movie trailer; this was not an over-loud cartoon enticing you to buy overpriced popcorn and over-ice-cubed sodas in the lobby. No. This was a polished, sleek advertisement that revealed what it was at the end. The audience sat in its seats, stunned, for about 15-seconds, and then all hell broke loose. We screamed, howled, threw popcorn at the screen. We wrote letters to the editor of The East Hampton Star newspaper. At every dinner party that the great, the near-great and the great-pretenders of “The Hamptons” attended for the next few weeks, we didn’t hear the usual vapid, fare. (Did you see how fat Alex Baldwin got? What was Lauren Bacall thinking dressed like that?) That summer it was clear: we would not stand for commercials with our popcorn and movies. Would NOT stand for it.

I went to see the movie Mrs. Henderson Presents this past weekend at the East Hampton Cinema. Passively, stoically, as the buttery smell of fresh cooked popcorn wafted through the theater, my fellow movie-goers and I sat slackjawed watching commercial after commercial.

But not books. Not precious books. No advertisements there. Not for the tweedy set of publishing. No way.

Surprise! Remember the hoopla and outrage back in April 2005 when it was revealed that O, The Oprah Magazine had struck a deal with Dove soap. For $500,000, Dove ran two-page spreads featuring its “Real Beauty” campaign inside the front and back covers of a “keepsake” book containing Oprah Winfrey’s “wit and wisdom.” The book (96 pages and pint-sized) was packaged with the fifth anniversary issue of the magazine and was a freebee for 2.6 million Oprah loyalists. No? Don’t remember the brouhaha that ensued? Not even after The New York Times ran an article on April 11, 2005 with the headline “Buy the Oprah Magazine and Get the Book, Too.” 

Of course you don’t remember because what you heard was…silence. Silence from the literati. Silence from the business end of publishing. Perhaps a few editors “tsk, tsk, tsked” about it, but there was nothing like the great eruption that would have ensued and the industry-wide shunning that would have taken place twenty years ago or even ten years ago if Farrar Straus, Norton, or Simon & Schuster had been so crass, so commercial, as to contemplate placing an advertisement in (gasp) one of their books.

Just a few weeks ago Jane Freedman, President and Chief Executive Officer of HarperCollins Publishers, hinted (was it in PW?) at some sort of tie-in between ebooks and advertising. (Ah, hah! I thought. Here we go.) In Dan Mitchell’s “What’s Online” column in the New York Times today it was announced that ”for the first time, a major publisher is offering a book online at no cost to readers, supported by advertising.” That publisher is (drumroll) HarperCollins.

Of course, the book isn’t literature. No, it’s a 2004 business book called Go It Alone! The Secret to Building a Successful Business on Your Own by Bruce Judson. You can read it for free (there’s that word I hate so much) through the author’s website. But unlike Cory Doctorow (see yesterday’s blog posting), who gave away 650,000 free downloads of his book,  Bruce Judson must have learned something by being a fellow at the Yale School of Management because his ebook may be free, but the ad space is not. (Hum… does he hold the ebook rights?)

A quick trip to Judson’s website does not reveal 1/4-page ads or full-page ads. There are however, small ads and links for Collins Business Journal, Exclusive Wealth Marketing, 3-Step Plan Home Business System (with audio), Wealth Strategy Group LLC running down the left-hand sidebar of the web screen, and links within the text of Go it Alone to companies Judson references like www.guru.com, ”a marketplace for individuals with full-time jobs seeking part-time evening jobs.” Did he get paid for that link?  It doesn’t look like you can download. However, you can download the book for $8.76 from amazon.com and booksamillion.com or $18.26 directly from HarperCollins. (Welcome to the world of book pricing! I’m just shaking my head.) Judson’s website, by the way, looks fabulous. The audio intro is warm and friendly, and the book is very easy on the eyes to read. 

As a marketer, it makes sense to me that we should start advertising in books. My dirty little secret (well, one of them) is that about two years ago I  tried to get a publishing house to cut a deal with a diaper company that would have brought in a huge chunk of change. All we had to do was give a subtle reference to nappies by brand name within the text of a book, which was mentioning diapers generically anyhow. 

“No” today, but “yes” tomorrow. You watch. It’s coming.  

Can 1/4-page ads and spreads be far behind?

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing: Will a double-page-spread advertising a Ferrari appear in a novel where the protagonist drives one?  What do you think?