NEW BOOK MARKETING (A Positive Approach for Negative Times)

Friday, August 7th, 2009 | Posted by: Christopher Meeks

Many novelists I know are a bit like Rodney Dangerfield, feeling like they get no respect. Yet after diving into publishing three years ago. I remain optimistic. Before I explain why, let me remind you of the state of publishing. Book advances continue to diminish. Imprints are disappearing. Red ink flows.

New York magazine in an extended article called “The End” shows that up to 25% of all books published in New York get shredded. The article’s author Boris Katchka writes, “Sales at the five big publishers were up 0.5 percent in the first half of this year, bookstore sales tanked in June, and a full-year decline is expected. But pretty much every aspect of the business seems to be in turmoil.”

My agent in New York, too, isn’t coming up with happy results for my comic novel, The Laughter and Sadness of Sex, which centers on a thirty-five-year-old physicist run amuck in Denmark. While my agent loved the story enough to sign me on, he reads me letters that sound at first like acceptances: “Thank you for sending me Christopher Meeks’s new novel. I found the book compelling, and I often laughed. I read it with pleasure. It’s clear Mr. Meeks is a fabulous writer. However, the book is a ‘tween,’ which is to say it falls between genres. I just don’t know how to market it. Sorry to have to pass on your submission. Please let me see his next manuscript.”

My agent Jim McCarthy

Three weekends ago, I read part of my recently published novel, The Brightest Moon of the Century, at Book Soup, a fabulous bookstore in West Hollywood. I was joined with a handful of other novelists whose latest works are gems. One of the writers, John Morgan Wilson (Spider Season), just wrote that the glow of our reading was later dimmed by new publishing news.

He said, “St. Martin’s is not renewing my contract for more novels in my Benjamin Justice series. After eight novels, an Edgar, and three Lambda Literary Awards, it’s effectively finished. The reason, according to my agent: The chain bookstores will no longer order a new book by an author whose last book fell below the chain’s specific sales level requirement.

“This applies, she tells me, to all genres and even to new novels from the author in a different genre (which I’m writing now, my eleventh). It’s one reason so many authors are using pseudonyms on their new books, trying to make a comeback and beat the system under another name.

“With Amazon and Barnes & Noble cannibalizing our hardcover sales by offering them used and much cheaper online almost as soon as they come out, our chances of keeping our credited sales levels high enough is difficult, even as we expand our readerships (via those cannibalistic used book sales). A major publisher who pays decent advances can’t afford to publish an author whose next book won’t be carried by the dominant chains, so contracts are not renewed.

“Of course, there are always the small presses, which pay little or no advances. I’ve been published by small presses and have great admiration and respect for them. But for writers like me who make a living at it, working for little or no money turns writing into a hobby, not a trade–which, I suspect, is going to be the continuing trend for most of us, writing as a labor of love and little more.”

This takes me to my optimism. Because I’ve been publishing literary fiction, I’m in a niche even more squeezed than John, so my expectations have been lower. With my first book, The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea, a collection of previously published short stories, I was realistic with it: who reads short stories? Some people do, but short story collections are not as popular as novels. They aren’t bestsellers. (And with every rule, there’s an exception, such as the bestseller collection Unaccustomed Earth by Jumpa Lahiri. That only adds to my optimism.)

My first agent told me that big publishers only publish short story collections as a favor to their best-selling novel writers. He’d told me then that there was so little advance for collections that it wasn’t worth the postage in his mailing out my manuscript for consideration. He didn’t want to be involved.

As I approached small publishers on my own, I discovered they were inundated with collections. Then I had a marvelous realization. Because I’d worked for a book publisher for eight years as its senior editor, I knew every step of the publishing process. I should create my own press.

Thus I did. White Whisker Books.

Because I worked for a dozen years in a public relations office after publishing, I knew how to write press releases and more. The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea was reviewed well in the Los Angeles Times and more than a dozen other places. The book received a huge mention in Entertainment Weekly on a short list of great independent books. I was onto something.

My second collection of short stories, Months and Seasons, was nominated for the prestigious and lucrative prize, the Frank O’Connor Short Fiction Award. My play I published, Who Lives?, received a fabulous production earlier this year in Los Angeles.

Thus, being my own publisher is working. Why? The books are not all me-me-me. I have a freelance staff. I also don’t rush to publication. Quality is a huge issue.

Boris Katchka in the New York article foresees that new publishers or older ones who can adapt will “try to reduce advances and returns, put out only a few books, and focus on cheap Internet marketing. They will publish quality books, and “the kind of targeted, curated lists editors would love to publish will work even better in an electronic, niche-driven world, if only the innovators can get them there.”

In an attempt to build on my successes, I’ve joined Backword Books, a new publishing enterprise out of Los Angeles. Backword Books fills a huge gap in the publishing business, according to founder and literary author Henry Baum (North of Sunset). “With the changing landscape of the publishing industry,” says Baum, “and the countless new avenues for authors to directly reach readers, there has never been a time like this. There’s a perfect storm brewing.”

The perfect storm is that publishers are less willing to take chances with literary fiction while, says Baum, “Emerging media make it easier for quality writers to reach readers. Backword Books is a new approach to the book business.”

Seven literary authors make up Backword Books. We are united in purpose under one banner to accomplish three primary goals:

• Attain mainstream media coverage.
• Generate sales.
• Bring an aura of professionalism and legitimacy to high-quality self-publishing.

“The writers in Backword put a lot of care into their work,” says Kristen Tsetsi, author of the novel Homefront. “We’ve all hired editors, book designers, and have acted truly as publishers. The reviews bear us out.”

My new novel, The Brightest Moon of the Century, joins Backword Books, an enterprise only a month old. We’re trying a few things immediately:

1. We’ve created a Backword Books website, this very one you’re on, so that you can read our blogs about writing and publishing in this environment.
2. We’ve pooled our money together to distribute media releases. So far, we’ve sent out two in the last two weeks. You can see one by clicking here.
3. One of our members, R.J. Keller (Waiting for Spring) is creating a video, which should be out in a couple of weeks.
4. We’re selling a number of Backword Books gift items–click here to see.
5. We’ll be giving away our books in a contest next month.

And we’re thinking up other ideas.

Already I’m starting to think what I’ll need to do to publish my comic novel that publishers have enjoyed but don’t know how to market. The first thing I’m going to do is pay good money for a great editor. I used one editor already to get it in shape for submission, but I want another viewpoint. Perhaps something besides marketing caused the publishers to turn it down. If I’m going directly to readers, I need to be sure every page is solid.

Second, I’ll hire a great book designer: Daniel Will-Harris. He’s done my previous covers.

Third, I’ll do some market research, giving the book to select readers for their feedback, and getting feedback on different cover possibilities. I’ll create a publication date with at least four months of lead-time so that I and/or a publicist can send out advance reading copies. Then I’ll join the book into Backword Books’ marketing stream.

This is all an experiment. I can’t say what we’re doing will beat Random House’s top books. It’s highly doubtful. Still, it’s being proactive. One web surfer who visited our site called us and anyone who self-publishes delusional. Yet we just heard Publisher’s Weekly is writing a story about us for next week.

If you believe in yourself, you have to do something, and do it well.