Marketing Your Novel

Mix of new release books, most are hardcover or larger 6 X 9 Plus size paperback. Notice the top row of yellow images seem to get lost even though the guy with the amazing abs might grab a women's fiction or romance fan. Third from the top and bottom row are a number of black covers.

 

Marketing your novel today means even if you are traditionally published by the biggest house, you need to be aware of the arena you are playing/ selling. This post will show you some examples of a couple genre areas in the Barnes and Noble bookstore near where I live and talk about the other places your work will show and how to plan out the best cover design for your work. Today even a traditional publisher might use a formula layout for your cover but here I suggest you go deeper into your market as the visual part of picking the book off the shelf or buying online directs sales. While I was taking my iPhone photographs three readers who were browsing the Young Adult section chatted with me about what compels them to purchase a new book. They all cited, "the cover art" is the most influential part of paying money for an unknown author. 

On this science fiction shelf there is more variety in colors, most images are illustrations or photographs that are photo-shopped to look like gouache or paintings

 

The trend for publishers seems to be to copy rinse and repeat whatever was the last big seller. The black background with stark single image photograph with perhaps only red highlights still dominates (think Twilight series). Also illustrations with simple bright colors seem to pop in orange, yellow or red.

 

Mystery titles have larger font and graphic Author names that scream out at the reader, "buy me."

 

Here is another mystery genre stack of all paperbacks. More than half use red as the predominant color scheme.

 

A few rules which I would suggest:

Do not use borders; they don’t align well when printed. They can often appear goofy.

Stay away from an all-white background as on the Amazon or Barnes and Noble sites the background is already white and your book will be more difficult to notice.

View the color green that Barnes and Noble uses and the yellow Amazon uses and take these into account as background either complementary or contrasting colors for online purchases.

Author biography notes really need not be on the cover- you will have space on Amazon for a full video of you dancing or illustrating your books. Save the rear cover for endorsements of the book, blurbs that tease a little, a subtitle or two.

It used to be the Title goes first and Author name second. This is a dumb rule. As you can see the point is to scream your name proudly. FONTS fonts fonts are your friends and learn to use one that speaks your language. Font style and placement and size all speak about you and your novel.

I hope you got some headshots when you were young and pretty, or put them inside the book. No one buys a painting of an ugly old man – even if he’s a president or your grandfather.

Top Teen Pics: YA and Young Adult It is necessary to have an attractive girl usually a photograph of her face or romanticized lifestyle.

Teen Fiction (not certain how that differs from YA) ... wait ... I want to put a plug in for Ellen Hopkins who now dominates a whole shelf and two other areas of Barnes and Noble. :)

Biography requires a photograph of the person written about. These images are black and white or sepia as to appear "artistic."

 

 

Including one of my recent favorite versions of the black cover, Nick Tosches Me and the Devil really jumps from the Amazon page - see the golden yellow and blue arrow that are Amazon trade colors.

 

Teen Fiction Covers with variety of photographs. A couple cliches I'm tired of: stay: the back of the girl head cut off, the lady in a gown with no face, and Author with hair over face. The idea is to not be so specific in illustrating what the female lead looks like and have the reader focus on the cover image, but to allow one's imagination to run with their own idea.

Win The Pulitzer Fiction Prize

"Writer as Circus Dog Howling Stories"


No one wins in fiction?
It seems Un-American.

As a writer, I sometimes feel the marketing, competitions,

and ranking is contrary to creating art.

Winning a Pulitzer is after all, big business. A Pulitzer sells through your next couple of books, aligns paid speaking engagements and lines up the glory of tenured professorship. Thank you very much Columbia.

All three are shortlisted books are five stars.  However, I am going to speculate on why none of the front runners actually "won." My opinions here are as from the mind of a judge, wringing their hands on making the right decision. I believe failing to make choice is wrong, bad and flawed .

Three books were "shortlisted" Swamplandia by Karen Russell, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. It is not that there were no good books to read in this past year, I believe the problem is in the three choices. 

First, Russell's (I loved it- the southern topic and the dazzle of her writing) -but book is quirky right from the cover. It is an American story, but a tad too contrapuntal with the ordinary and the bizarre the first person narrative jumping to third. The Pulitzer for fiction is ultimately supposed to represent the best American telling a great American tale. Second, Johnson's Novella though beautiful and moving is just too short to win. I can only fault the number of pages as the reason why it cannot stand in history with some of the other big boys  (save two exceptions) And finally The Pale King, Wallace's look into the dull soul of the IRS and the lonely secrets of mindful moments. It is a wonder. Again I add my hat on head as Pulitzer judge, it is unfinished and I dare say having met the man and read the other works some of the voice is "over-edited," (may not all be his ?).

Pony who leads the show

In the light that no choice was made I ask all my writer, reader, and friends with opinions to vote for the Pulitzer. You may nominate your own work, you may vote as many time as your little heart desires. Open your heart and your brain to vote in my comments section. Vote for one of the three above.

You ask - Prizes?

Winner with most votes (comments) will be mailed the Not a Pulitzer trophy ( being created from duct tape as you read this), $20 Amazon gift Certificate hopefully you will be buying books, and some nice brain cactus ( if your country of origin allows me to ship).  

Copyright ©2012 Caroline Gerardo

All photographs are Caroline Gerardo's and not to be used in any format without written permission

User Comments Brand Reviews

Drink Me Five Stars

Reviews my neighbor leaves behind

User generated comments in product review in social commerce.


Amazon just quietly erased a million some product reviews written by persons paid to write a positive post. The cottage industry of bloggers offering book reviews for $ 25- $100 a pop are temporarily thwarted. Amazon deleted anyone who wrote these listings and gave five stars to novels they likely never read without warning. This is only the first phase in Amazon’s attempt to clean up a flawed premise that sales will generate the best to the top. A theory I equal to keep stirring the pot and the bones will pop up.

Amazon does not have an editing staff that checks how you review the latest ginzo knife. They have relied on consumers to honestly rate products and sellers. Amazon has a small staff that deletes obvious or reported spam posts and unrelated drabble. The reviews list in chronological order. A few enhancements to the system have been rolled out, but none so clearly (and silently as Amazon does not announce nor want to reveal future changes) will make the playing field level. No longer will posters ask for throngs to tag their product for a dollar. Amazon added “questions” and “rate the reviewer” type features that they hoped would make the system less “scammy.”

Durable goods, wholesale product manufacturers all started to realize that if they open a Facebook Page, or some industry website then ask people to like them no-one will come.  However, if they offer prizes, incentives and money they can get an individual Facebook page that generates interest in their brand. Facebook has added so many bells and whistles using a Facebook page seems to also have lost its lightening as a method to connect with consumers.

A woman I know made a fortune selling Google page rank, she is one of many black hat SEO experts who touted herself as a marketing wizard. Google can now identify the thirty some methods used to game page rank and they are silently erasing websites that use the cheats from searches without any notice or recourse to “webowners”, or brands. She’s now selling IRS illegal tax credits knowing that her past associations are all crumbling. This same person rather maliciously posted reviews with intention to harm on Amazon as a regular course of entertainment. Seems all her reviews have now disappeared.

If reviews are merely a fringe portion of buyers (Reviews on Travelocity, Amazon, CNET, Epinions, Consumer Reports… gazillion other sites are less than .08% of purchasers) why do buyers even bother to read them? We are human, we care what others think.

How will all the information gathered, collected, graphed and monitored about us as individual consumers typing words on the internet be used in the future for brands?

What I want to know is how is this going to change how books are reviewed and rated in the future? What do you think?

Amazon Buzzards Come and Get Me

On Sunday the revision was final.

I deleted one ending and have chosen two.

I am emailing pdf copies and a paper copy to:

a writer buddy beta reader, a friend from twitter who fits my demographic and my friend in London. All three are men because

I believe that is who will most enjoy the narrative. This one is pretty dark, and this time frame since Thanksgiving has been the inkiest buzzard swarming betrayal in my personal life. But the story has a hopeful quality in his Don Quixote quest to connect and ultimate acceptance of who he is in the soul. A character as anti hero transforms through the diving in the pool as a lifeguard through fire, violence and electric shock. My editor in the U. K. only read two chapters and is clapping his hands to hurry me along. Editing for me is a tedium and a torture. Dean Wesley Smith in his Killing the Sacred Cows says not to use the slow process I have chosen, but there was backlash critics who sniped at me for my writing style.

A couple of the posters on Amazon are not critics of my work,

they are mean spirited individuals who know of me.

However, manipulation of Amazon is widespread. The more novels,

short stories, poetry and work I complete and publish

- the easier it is to take a swing under my chin

to break my neck.

Little do they know I am ready with my left.

Photograph copyright Caroline Gerardo 2011- yes there are buzzards in that foggy tree waiting.