Marketing Fiction and Poetry 2

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Continued from a previous post discussing differences between buying fiction and nonfiction, in which I noted that my experience as a bookbuyer suggests that some marketing techniques that work for nonfiction won’t work as well for fiction.

There’s one more thing I realized before I put this site up, back in May:

Poetry Is No Longer a Popular Consumer Art Form

“Huh?” some readers will say. “There are poetry sites all over the web. It’s probably the most popular art form there is, in the sense that it’s written mostly by ordinary people who’ll never be professionally published.”

Yup. That, precisely, is the problem.

Writing good poetry isn’t any easier than any other sort of imaginative writing, and most amateur writing is bad. Sometimes it’s very bad. Good amateur poetry exists, just as good amateur prose fiction exists; but it’s often hard to sort through the vast quantity of bad stuff to locate the good.

But something else — something worse — has happened with poetry.

Byron’s Commercial Success

In the early years of the 19th century, Lord Byron originally wanted to refuse all pay for his poetry; but he had debts to settle, and thus ended up accepting remuneration for his work —

Wait.

How does one make any money worth considering with poetry?

Two things:

1. He wrote good poetry. Sometimes he wrote great poetry.
2. Poetry was a popular consumer art form back then, as novels are now — that is to say, enough people were interested in reading professionally-written examples of the art that you could make significant money at it. Byron sold 10,000 copies of The Corsair on its first day of publication.

There are still good poets about. Some of them sometimes write really good poetry.

But #2 is no longer the case. There aren’t enough people interested in reading professionally-written examples of the art for poets to make significant money at it.

Why is that?

First, poetry and prose fiction both face competition from visual storytelling. The appetite for stories hasn’t diminished, but people can now watch stories, practically whenever they want, on television. And it generally costs less to do so than it would to buy enough books to fill the same hours.

In spite of that, prose fiction is still commercially viable. Poetry isn’t. So what’s different about poetry?

Tags: Byron, marketing fiction, marketing poetry
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Marketing Poetry and Fiction 1

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

Some things about marketing poetry and fiction I knew before I launched this website. Other things I’ve learned as a result.

Selling Nonfiction is Selling Information

Long ago, when my only access to books was through physical bookstores, it was easier to buy fiction than non-fiction. Coincidentally, I had more time free to browse the shelves; and most bookstores stocked books meant for entertainment. If you wanted nonfiction — especially if you were researching obscure matters most people didn’t care about — you had to hunt in second-hand shops, order from specialty catalogues, or read the Books in Print Subject guide to place special orders at the store.

The net — Amazon, I’m looking at you — suddenly made it much easier to buy nonfiction. A subject search in the database will immediately turn up books on the topic I’m interested in — books I’ve never seen (and most likely never would have seen in earlier years), by authors I’ve never heard of. A description of the book’s scope is then often enough to tell me whether I want to buy it. All I require for the presentation is that it be reasonably clear (and I can deal with academic gobbledygook if I have to).

Outside of Amazon’s database, the same effect prevails: a keyword search is a subject search. It’s well adapted to locating information.

Selling Fiction is Selling Style

With fiction it’s another matter. The closest thing to a subject categorization, for fiction, is genre. Learning that a story belongs to a genre I like is a point in its favor; but it isn’t enough. What I really want to know is whether the author approaches the tale in a manner I find entertaining. And I can’t search for that.

I can read the pitch on the back cover (or in the description box). And I can read an excerpt (which is essential, and which has to be long enough for me to decide I’m engaged with the story.)

I can ask Google to find me fantasy fiction online. I can’t ask it to find me a fantasy story with an intriquing premise, recounted in an interesting voice.

Not unless I already know I like the author. Once I’ve discovered an author, then I can search for more of their work. But I can’t search directly for some of the characteristics I’m looking for in fiction.

All this was clear to me, based on my experiences as a book-buyer, before I put the website up. I already knew that some of the tactics often advocated for marketing nonfiction wouldn’t work as well with fiction.

But just how well do they work, anyway?

I’m not trying to sell anything yet. I’m not finished with my major work in progress. And I may never try to sell The Winds of Winter: I always planned to give away the e-text, and if I never go to print, there’ll be nothing to sell.

But I have got some information, based on the last five months’ experiments. It’s going to lead me to keep up some of the things I’ve been doing. In other ways, I’m going to alter my approach.

More anon.

Tags: Amazon, marketing fiction, marketing nonfiction, The Winds of Winter fantasy poem
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