Do publishers REALLY want authors on BookTok?

On big houses expecting authors to take the reins of their own marketing.

This is part two of a three-part series. Read part one here.

So I asked “Andrew,” my Big 5 marketing-publicity-sales mole on the inside, the following: if an author doesn't have a celebrity status or some sort of platform already, does it make a difference in terms of sales if they have a big social media platform? His response…

I tell all of my authors that if they're not interested in having a social platform then there's no need for them to have it, and I really, really believe it. Of course I'm thrilled if we acquire a book by an author who knows how to use the Internet, what a TREAT, we will absolutely do something with that. But the ones that don't and who try to force it, yikes. Almost always bad news. 

I fully acknowledge that not every marketer approaches it from this perspective, and that a LOT of authors get leaned on to build a platform. I think this is a terrible practice and if I could coach it out of all of my colleagues, I would. Having a platform can absolutely make a difference in your sales, but the platform isn't the point, how you use it—and who you are, and who follows you, and why—those are the points.

Self-help authors with huge mailing lists and six-week seminars and preorder incentive campaigns and their own podcasts—yeah, those people can sell a lot of books, but that's their whole JOB. (Those people are basically full-time marketers!) Public personalities who appear on television and have famous friends and rich contact lists—yes, those people can sell books with their platform. Novelists who tweet a couple times a month and don't interact with anyone else, no, those people aren't selling books with their platforms. 

NOW, it's not like I've never seen an author turn their track around by building a platform, but that's a rare occurrence! And it acquires a lot of dedication, and a huge time commitment, and it really, truly, TRULY, requires the author to be creating something of value for the Internet. But that shouldn't be a requisite. 

Allow me to shout that out one more time for those in the back: THAT SHOULDN’T BE A REQUISITE. 

During our chat, I threw out the idea of an independent marketing agency where traditionally published authors could opt in with a membership fee. Now, these types of publicity agencies obviously already exist, and Andrew pointed out that a lot of authors opt to hire publicists outside of their house for various reasons and it's fine.

Independent marketers don't really exist, at least not on the same level, but if Andrew were to recommend things that an outside marketing agency could do, he would say you would want to have someone who can build websites because that's something that a lot of authors really need, along with social media coaching for people who are interested, but he emphasized again that all you need as an author is a website that tells people who you are and how to get ahold of you.

Marketers also take care of your book’s appearance, and where they are and if they're visible, because you can't trust retailers to do that right for you. I’m paraphrasing here but Andrew said something to the effect of “a lot of what a marketing director does is just asking Amazon to stop displaying a book backwards and upside down.” 

As far as advertising goes, if you really wanted to you could hire someone to run Facebook or Google ads, but the issue that everyone encounters when they do advertising online for books is that there isn't a direct buy funnel. 

When you buy a book on the internet, more often than not you buy it from Amazon, but you could also go to Barnes & Noble or to an Indy...almost none of those places will tell the marketer if the person has actually bought the book so you can't see how well the ad is actually doing. So most ads on the internet are optimized to go to a specific shopping cart so you can see the cart data but you can't do that from the outside. It’s a problem for outside marketing and it makes advertising books on the internet really hard—with the exception of Amazon ads, where you pay Amazon directly to place an ad on Amazon. Very annoying. 

Saturation is key with digital advertising, which is its own problem in publishing. I told Andrew about how I read a ton of thrillers and I get tired of hearing about the same three thrillers per season over and over. Can I hear about some new books, please? Alas, Andrew said that that level of saturation is basically what's needed for a digital marketing campaign for a book to be successful. 

Think about how many times you've heard or seen an ad for Coke or Nike or Apple versus how many times you've heard an ad for one specific book. I had not thought really about comparing books to other products in terms of marketing until I talked to Andrew. But as he said, there is a certain amount of space in digital marketing and sadly, books do not take up a large percentage of that at all. Andrew said as publishers we are “bottom feeders” when it comes to advertising, so we're just looking around for deals. 

Last week, we talked about retail consolidation and its effect on a house’s ability to market its books. But another point Andrew brought up was buyer consolidation. 

There are fewer major buyers than ever before, which means fewer people making decisions, which means a lot less diversity in taste. Obviously, there’s Amazon and Barnes & Noble and indies. But what about merch or big box stores like WalMart, Target, Costco, and airports? Ever notice that the selection at these places tends to be similar? That’s because they’re all served by a company called Readerlink. Sometimes the buyer works for the store and sometimes they work for Readerlink, and some of these places do want more more editorial authority, like Costco, which has their own book club selections. But overall, yeah. Very similar, VERY limited selections here. 

All of those things that I mentioned that can work against a book—the budget changing, lack of internal or buyer support, even those scary acquisition meetings—all of that can also fall in an author's favor. Probably the most wonderful thing that can happen—and it happens regularly!—is when a book gathers momentum thanks to really good early reads (internal and external). It's difficult to quantify this, but it's something we all look for in the development stage of a campaign. If we start to hear back from booksellers and reps and early readers and the word of mouth is really good, that means something, and a good publisher will pay attention to that and act on it.

I wanted to mention this specifically because I think a lot of things we covered do fall under the umbrella of "these things are outside of an author's control," but there is one thing an author does control, and that's writing a book that connects with readers in some way.

A phrase that gets tossed around a lot is "it's in the read." It's genuinely in the read! Beyond all of the external factors that might sell a book, there has to be a good read. Publishers want to find those books, and they want to sell those books. "Buzz" doesn't always mean "this book sold for a lot of money and now let's see if they can back it up." Sometimes it genuinely means "I heard this book is amazing and I can't wait to read it." Not every successful book is to everyone's taste, I know, but by and large if a book is succeeding, it means it found an audience. Imperfect as they are, all a publisher ever wants to do is connect a book with an audience. 

I hope this was informative! Next week in part three, we’re talking about the role Amazon has played in the changes in traditional publishing and how the opportunities they’ve created for self-publishing comes with some pretty heavy caveats.

---

The posts I publish here will remain free. But I have a series called Ask the Editor, which will publish every Friday. The short pitch: Dear Abby for writers.

The longer pitch: paid subscribers ($5/month or $50/year, cancel anytime) will receive a link to a form where they can submit pretty much anything within a two page limit. Things like…

• Queries

• Synopses

• Pages from their novel

• Questions about writing or traditional publishing

• A current problem or situation in their writing journey (ie: trying to decide if an agent is a schmagent, disagreeing with beta feedback, etc)

• A rant about this whole “trying to get published” endeavor to a sympathetic ear

Every Friday, I’ll respond to/critique as many submissions as I can and publish them together in one post. Because they’ll be behind a paywall, there’s some privacy—your query, pages, or rant about that one really horrible rejection won’t be online for editors to discover when they Google you.

That’s it! I hope to see you over there. :)

Michelle