Marketing Poetry and Fiction 1

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

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Book Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.