In our Logical Marketing work with partner Peter McCarthy
over the past couple of years, helping publishers with the next-phase
challenges of digital marketing, we have identified three specific
cross-functional opportunities that exist in every publishing house that
are especially difficult for the biggest ones to address internally.
All three of these can unlock substantial revenue and save the house
from going down costly rabbit holes trying to address pain points that
are clearly felt but not so clearly understood.
All of them are obvious to one degree or another (and have previously
been talked about in some fashion on this blog), so they are being
addressed in ad hoc ways. But structural barriers, most importantly
organizational silos, make it hard for companies to evaluate them fully
and come up with solutions that maximize the opportunities. The effort
to take a systematic approach would have a big payoff for any of these.
For that to happen, they’d have to be elevated to strategic issues being
examined by the highest levels of the company.
1. AUTHORS. Author activity is becoming an increasingly important component
of any book’s marketing impetus. Publishers not only don’t control the
author efforts the way they do the marketing the house executes itself,
often what the authors do isn’t even evident to them. That means the
work by the authors is not included in the overall picture house
marketers have of what is being done for the book. (And that can lead to
some misleading analysis of effort and reward.)
In most houses, editors
serve as the point people for interacting with authors. They are
neither trained nor supported for the increasingly critical and
multi-dimensional role of advising on marketing and assuring that house
and author efforts are, if not integrated, at least aware of each other.
This effort depends almost entirely on the skill and initiative of the
individual editors. There are few, if any, repeatable mechanisms in
place to coordinate the author-based marketing efforts with the house’s other efforts.
2. GLOBAL. Both online accounts, most importantly Amazon but others as well, and Ingram have global reach that grows every day.
The publisher’s metadata, telling accounts where they can offer the
book and at what price, and the publisher’s marketing efforts combine to
influence how effectively sales opportunities outside the home market
are exploited. The reps who call on Amazon or Ingram are not adequately
supported to address this the way they should be. They neither have
enough understanding about where U.S. Amazon or Ingram can sell
effectively nor about the house’s marketing efforts now being directed
to offshore markets where real sales could result.
The marketing piece
is definitely non-trivial and how well it is done varies both across
houses and, within houses, across markets. Developing and
applying audience understanding, market-specific pricing, and scaled
global marketing and publicity to many disparate markets worldwide is
a huge challenge.
3. BACKLIST.
Allocating incremental efforts to marketing backlist titles, which is a
clear opportunity in the no-shelf-space digital age, defies the basic
organization of any large publishing house. Publishers have time-honored
processes and rules to allocate marketing spend and effort to books in
their initial push, but not after it.
Unlike the other two challenges, this one has no “natural” in-house
owners. But no matter who ultimately owns the decisions, information
needs to be developed to support them that isn’t aggregated and
delivered now.
Some books have a big built-in “margin advantage” because
their advances will never earn out — the house gets to keep the part of
the sales dollar that would go to royalties — and anybody managing
these decisions would want to know that. They would also want to know
which books have living authors and for which books the author is dead.
They’d want to know which books have authors still active with the house
or were signed by editors still active. And they’d certainly want to
know which books had active marketing still taking place by an author or
any other interested party. In other words, there needs to be the right
combination of marketing information, technology, and staff for
backlist organized into a workflow that does not yet exist anywhere.
All three of these opportunities are very difficult for anybody
in-house to analyze and referee, even if there is high-level recognition
of the opportunity, good systems-development capability (because the
existing systems will not be adequate), and the will on everybody’s part
to cooperate. The fact that they are cross-functional means there is no
natural “home” for ownership of the solution in any house (even though
the author and global opportunities would appear to have nominal owners —
the editors and the account managers — in the current configuration).
All of them require marshaling data that is not routinely assembled
in any house now. They require some funding. And they require placing
authority — or at least some very powerful levers for persuasion — in
somebody’s hands to do things that will still want substantial support
from their colleagues and, perhaps, take some decisions away from them.
These three challenges are all being addressed in some fashion at the
big houses. But the need to respect existing structures means they are
addressed in a haphazard — situational rather than comprehensive —
fashion. Every big house has coordination with authors on marketing
taking place. Every big house has export sales through Amazon and other
online retailers and Ingram in places the U.S.-based sales team never
thought about in the past. And every big house tries to get digital
marketing and sales benefits for its backlist.
What no house we’ve seen has managed for any of these three cases is
the development of policies and workflows to maximize the potential
opportunities across the entire output of the company. The opportunities
here are, one book at a time, almost unavoidably obvious, so they are
addressed in some fashion. But we know of no house where there is
specific ownership of any of these challenges with somebody having the
power to assemble the information and, as needed, implement
cross-functional processes to address them. What inevitably results is
ever-more-widespread recognition of the missed opportunities without a
commensurate capability to fix the problem.
Oddly enough, smaller houses have some advantages here because they
don’t suffer the handicaps of scale. Far fewer books means that ad hoc
solutions are proportionately more effective. They have less bureaucracy
keeping the author tethered to the editor relationship, so it is easier
for marketers and editors to collaborate around promoting synergistic
marketing between the house and the author.
Fewer titles and the greater sharing of information inherent to a
smaller house also make both the global and backlist opportunities
easier to grasp. Of course, they also have less in the way of resources
to help authors with tech, or to do marketing work that will pay off in
far-away places.
And the challenge of maximizing the backlist is orders of magnitude
easier with a total title output that everybody can keep in their heads.
Big publishers with literally tens of thousands of backlist titles need
systems and rigorous monitoring of data and metadata to identify where
to put additional effort.
Within each of the big houses, the first requirement to move on any
of these is an overall situation assessment and some quantification of
the size of the opportunity they present. That requires both
data-gathering and collecting insights from key operators.
No matter what is found through that discovery effort, there will be
choices for a house to make among possible solutions. There is no single
universal answer — no “magic bullet” — for any of these.
What’s best
for each house will depend on existing procedures, personnel, culture,
and capabilities. For some houses, the biggest challenges will be around
developing and implementing the tech they need.
For others, the bigger
hurdle might be imprint silos. In other cases, a lack of transparency in
international markets might be the largest obstacle.
The questions that need to be addressed are pretty clear and those
are the same across houses. Should editors continue to handle all
marketing conversations with authors, or should there be designees from
the marketing department to take that role for some things? (We’ve seen
that solution implemented in some places, but not systematically.)
Do
the Amazon or Ingram rep teams need to have global or export specialists
(perhaps some already do), or should books just be allocated among the
existing teams with foreign market opportunities being one of the
considerations when they are divvied up?
Does somebody in each
publishing group take responsibility for marketing backlist, or is that
role assigned to the sales department? And, in all cases, what systems
are they using to do what they do?
Since no house we know has started with an assessment to bring
organizational consensus to the reality of the opportunity and its size,
these questions are addressed from the subjective perspective each
imprint or function brings to the conversation.
Only by starting with an agreed understanding of each of these
opportunities can there possibly be any consensus formed about how to
address them. And as long as that it isn’t done, revenue is being left
on the table and marketing money is being spent in something less than
the most effective possible ways.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Tuesday, January 05, 2016
10 Habits of Highly Effective Writers by Robert Blake Whitehill
10 Habits of Highly Effective Writers
All writers dream of knocking out thousands of words a day, publishing multiple books a year and seeing them all skyrocket to the top of the bestseller lists across the country. We dream because it’s a difficult task and not everyone has the drive to take the right steps. But of the people who do, they generally have instituted these 10 habits into their writing life to make sure that they are giving themselves the best chance to write something great. Here are the good habits you should develop and add in your writing life if you want to find success.
This guest post is by Robert Blake Whitehill. Whitehill is a classically trained actor, a critically acclaimed novelist, and an award-winning screenwriter. He has earned film festival wins at the Hudson Valley Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival, and has written many highly rated episodes of the Discovery-Times Channel’s “The New Detectives,” “Daring Capers” and “The Bureau.”
He lives in Montclair, N.J., with his wife and son, and when not cruising on the Chesapeake, or knocking around the sky over Tangier Island in a Cessna 152, Whitehill blogs and posts on Twitter about his home waters, and has crafted a number of articles for Chesapeake Bay Magazine.
For more information, please visit robertblakewhitehill.com.
1. READ
Yes, this really is about writing. So, I mean it. Read everything. Authors can get so swept up in our core writing, feeding the ravenous social media beastie, and schlepping hither and yon for signings, that the window for reading narrows into a gunslit blocking all but a ray or two of literary sunlight. Focus on your subject area, but also broaden your tastes.You’ll have a deeper reservoir of tropes and details in which to dip your quill. Refreshing your inner author with invigorating reading will help prevent your style from becoming stale. The evocative power of reading is what inspired you to write in the first place, isn’t it? Stay connected to that wellspring of fresh ideas.
2. MANAGE TIME
When will you write? Before work, or after? On the weekends, or during the week? One hour-long session each week? Longer? More often? Be very specific with yourself, especially starting out, about the time you will commit to writing.Log and track your hours if you need to. Act like your own unreasonable boss. A few weeks of practicing mindful diligence will teach you how many pages you can produce in a given time period, and help you understand how to set and meet your goals.
One thing effective, productive writers do not do is wait for inspiration. They go looking for it on a schedule, usually finding it very close by their computers or tablets.
3. SET GOALS
You somehow knew that was coming, didn’t you? Set goals you can easily achieve. Set the bar low, then lower it even more, so you always step away from your writing session with a success, with a win, with progress. Whether you commit to two pages a week, or to twenty-five, as I do, make sure you get your pages done.If work, family, or any other facet of life glints you into distraction, stay up a little later that night, or get up a little earlier next day, so your goal is achieved. Fast or slow, stay on track like a freight train.
4. MANAGE SPACE
What kind of writing space do you need to be productive? In the past, I sometimes wrote in busy cafes. For a time, I wrote between calls in the map room of the Montclair Ambulance Unit where I served as an EMT. Later I rented an office at C3 Workplace, where the only sick people were the characters in my head. Now I happily work in my home. Find or create the right space, the feng shui, the décor, and the soundscape that helps you do the work before you.5. SET BOUNDARIES
Family and friends must get used to the idea that your writing is important to you. [Like this quote? Click here to Tweet and share it!] It requires time apart from the folks you love best, and who love you dearly. Repeat as kindly, and as firmly as you can that whatever else your roles in life might be, you are also a writer. Writing is not your hobby. It is not something to do to pass the time while waiting for folks to be available to distract you. Honor your calling. Honor your loved ones.Demonstrate a passionate devotion required by this consuming commitment to your people, and to yourself. They might grumble now and then, but they will get used to it. They will also share in your pride of accomplishment down the road.
Need an idea for a short story or novel? Look no further than
The Writer’s Idea Thesaurus. Organized by subject, theme and situation categories,
it’s the perfect writing reference to break out out of any writing funk.
Order now from our shop and get a discount!6. FINISH
Complete your drafts! Don’t be the writer with that over-edited first chapter that’s been spun into absolute gold, but has nothing readable following it. [Like this quote? Click here to Tweet and share it!] I had a chance to hear Professor Charles Stegeman tell his Haverford College painting students over and over again to cover the whole canvas right away, then go back to polish the details. Was I painting then? No, I was modeling for the class, naked as a jaybird, and still as a stone, so I heard this exhortation plenty. By the end of every class, I also saw the wonderful results.Some days, yes, I warm up for writing by rereading the last couple of pages from the day before. Sure, I might toss in an easy edit or two. Then my daily goal beckons me forward into mysterious new territory, ever onward to completion of the draft. Now please stop thinking about me naked. That was many cheeseburgers ago.
7. NO SHOPPING
I learned this from my father, short-story author, and novelist, Joseph Whitehill. Do not shop your story ideas. Tell not a soul. Keep your thoughts secret. Say nothing until that first draft is complete. Don’t fear your idea will be lifted and plagiarized. That is possible, but unlikely.There is another kind of thief much closer to home. If you try to beguile and fascinate your family, friends, or lovers with the precious coin of your creativity too soon, it’s possible you will vitiate and squander that soul-twisting impetus to get it all down on paper. Ignoring my father’s advice, I regaled this friend, or that object of my desire, with some very juicy plots. Didn’t I have to justify calling myself a writer somehow? These cool plots were ample proof I was the genuine article, right? Wrong.
It had the opposite effect on my output, and on my self-esteem. On more than one occasion I awoke the next day to discover that I could not even remember what my grand idea was. It was gone, leaving only a smoky, taunting wisp of a notion behind, like a half-forgotten dream receding into oblivion.
To make matters worse, no one to whom I blabbed ever asked how that idea I confided had turned out, or when it would be published. Sit with that agonizing hot clinker of story burning in your gut until you’ve written it all down. Then, tell your friends. Hell, tell the world, because now you’ve earned the right.
8. CULTIVATE YOUR TEAM
In addition to helping your loved ones understand how important writing is to you, you will need a few folks in your corner with specific roles beyond missing your face while you are holed up at your work. Your committed listener will field your emails or calls about how you are sticking to your page count goals every week, or even every day.Your editor, as Richard Marek (Robert Ludlum’s editor on the Bourne series) did for me, will tell you the truth about your work, and offer suggestions on how to make it better.
Your proofreader will give your manuscript that polished, professional look, as Suzanne Dorf Hall does for my stuff.
You will need a cover artist to make your book leap off the shelf into a reader’s hands, as Studio042 does for my work.
Perhaps you need an agent, or a manager, like my indispensable friend and confidant, Liza Moore Ledford.
Whether you opt for independent publishing, or a legacy publishing deal, you will need a brash, dazzling PR team to help the world find you. For that, I go with Shelton Interactive every time. Find the people, the companies, who understand your work, and who are committed to your success not only as a writer, but as an author.
9. LOVE YOUR READERS
I don’t mean that you necessarily should have warm feelings for your readers. Real love is not just a feeling. It’s a job description. For the sake of argument, let us imagine a reader can comfortably tackle one page of a book every two minutes.This imaginary reader has an average heart rate of 70 beats per minute (except during the riveting parts of the story where that rate better shoot up. A lot.) So, that 400-page book will take about 800 minutes to read, or around fourteen hours for those of you playing the home version of our game.
More to the point, that means your reader expends at least 56,000 irretrievable heartbeats on your work, out of a finite allotment of 2.25 billion lub-dubs. Put that way, you can see this is a truly enormous commitment. Honor and appreciate your readers’ investment by doing your very best work. It cannot be about the money for you. Be sure that your readers’ time feels well-spent, and not a pointless sacrifice.
10. COMMUNICATE
Be available to your readers. Give them an email address where they can reach you, confident of your eventual reply. In addition to doing your best work, this is how you build a community of devoted readers. It may sound tedious, but after writing my first book alone for so long, I found that meeting and hearing from readers—my very own readers—made it all worthwhile, far outweighing a considerable financial return.Some writers might believe that good work is all that’s due and owing to one’s public.
Now you know I disagree. In addition to hearing from readers, you might find yourself fielding questions from other writers in need of advice. This is a great compliment. Offer what thoughts you can. Be the author you wished you could talk to when you were starting out.
As evidence of my sincerity, I can be reached at rbw@robertblakewhitehill.com. It would be a pleasure to hear what you think of my Ben Blackshaw Series, or to answer any questions that come to mind.
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