Marketing vs Sales
K
Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you’d like to be welcome to the Writers Triangle, a podcast about publishing and all things books. And today we’re going to be talking about marketing versus selling your book. Those two things are completely different things, for example, sells is by my book and marketing is about discoverability. And what discoverability is exactly what it sounds like is how do you get people to know that your book exists? And how do you get people to know that you exist as an author? Now, it’s marketing or types of things that we put under the heading of book marketing is everything from setting up your book, all the way through, like all the advertising and everything until it’s time to sell your book. And I think that talking about how you set up your book is really important, especially when it comes to genre and understanding what it means when you put your book onto a platform. Like if you decide to self pub, and you go strictly through Amazon, Amazon, for example, no longer has a middle grade category. Amazon has children’s and teens and young adults. So they’ve got rid of middle grade. And they’ve also gotten rid of Y A, and what was traditionally y a is now y A and new adult that covers a much broader age range than it used to. And I don’t understand why Amazon made that choice. I know it makes it difficult for if you print your book through a different service, rather than use Amazon printing, it does make it a little trickier because you have to go in and manually change and then you have to follow up and ask them, Hey, can you make these changes because different printers have different categorizations. And also different retailers have different categorizations like Walmart and Barnes and Noble. They don’t have like a why a middle grade and teen or new adult, they have an age range, where you just give them the age range. And for bonus number four middle grade, some people say middle grade is seven to 11. Some people say that middle grade is eight to 12. And looking at when you get beyond the age 11. For some places, 12 starts ya and for other platforms. A lot. 11 is the end of of middle grade. So when you’re looking at marketing your book, and you’re thinking about discoverability, not made that metadata becomes really important. Every platform that you put your book onto, and that is going to print or distribute your book, you have an opportunity to adjust the metadata, and be patient and do it in advance. Because first time, you might not get all of the metadata that you want, because they don’t actually publish. Most companies don’t publish a warning that, hey, this is how we categorize. So you do have to look for the information. And you do have to do your research and study and make sure that you’re getting in the right age range. Most of our middle grade books because of our printer and the way our printers does it. And the way our printer classifies, is different than the way some of the distributors classify. So we know when we put a middle grade book out that we’re going to have to go back in and communicate with each and every seller of our book to make sure that they know that that book is middle grade, all of our metadata is middle grade. But that because that’s not a standard convention. And the way that most most authors think it is, you really need to do your homework. And if you’re doing new adult versus ya, again, you’re going to have to really do your homework and decide whether you’re going to go the adult route where it has adult only content, because some of the places that you upload your books you can do why a with adult only conduct only content or teen young adult with adult only content that will indicate that it is new adult, so do your research and do what is best for your book. And I think a great way to figure out what’s best for your book is to have beta readers, you can get beta readers from Fiverr. Or you can get beta readers from critiquing circles. And I think the great thing about this is when they’re reading and critiquing your book and getting feedback on your book, you can ask them what age range would you put this book in? And know that that is not a guarantee? If you follow what everything that your beta readers say that they’re gonna say yes, I agree with that because we have a couple of new adult books that people like this book is strictly why a and they’re not their new adult. And how we gauge it is that we actually feed it into at what grade level is the reading for this book. And that’s how we base as one of the factors that we use to base our categorization on is what’s the reading level of the book, and what is the content of the book. And we think of what would the most conservative parent expect and feel safe buying for this age range in this book, and I feel like with ya, especially young adult and new adult, that young adults are probably buying their own books and not being very well supervised. And I feel fine with that, I feel like more conservative parents are probably supervising more. But at the middle grade level, I want the parents to really understand what our content is, and that our content is for, you know, eight, I really think for like a young minded eight year old or a really advanced reading seven year old. And so I’m going to put a book in the middle grade category, it really has to meet that standard, I’m not thinking about the readers at the higher end of the range when you’re looking at an 11 year old because most 11 year olds are really reading why a and if you think about middle grade readers are actually like the kids that are reading at that level are usually between the ages of six and eight, if we’re completely honest. And I think but marking it for six to eight, it doesn’t really give parents a good understanding, and laypeople and industry experts a good understanding. So when you’re setting the age range for your book, you’re not setting the age range for your book for your target reader, you’re setting the age range for the industry. So keep that in mind. And that’s where critique circles really come in handy. Knowing that it’s not going to protect you from bad reviews. And I’m sorry for that. And it’s not going to end up in perfect marketing, because it may be I mean, you’ve had this happen where we we’ve sent a book to a popular magazine that was middle grade, we marked it as middle of middle grade. And they felt no, this was more ya to me. And they changed it and just put it as ya. And you have to decide, would you rather burn a relationship with the magazine over the difference of opinion? Are you going to let it ride and trust that they understand their audience and they understand their readers? We’ve had books that are my clearly as middle grade that people say the book is written too young to be in middle grade, not really not a little bit confusing. So like, well, teens like to read middle grade, and I’m an adult that likes to read middle grade. Therefore, it should have a lot of easter eggs and a lot of double entendres. And I think, okay, that is one direction ago, absolutely. But here’s the thing, when I think about all of these things, I think you still know the name of my book.
K
And for me, that’s when I read books that have gotten bad reviews and have loved them and written a positive review. And with everything going on in social media, if your book is completely trashed, you have the opportunity to be like the worst reviewed book content for someone that might have a different opinion. So I don’t believe that any one review or any one platform will make or break a book. And the reason I have such a strong opinion about this is that in the industry, I actually have spoken to an author that have the unique experience of being on Dr. Phil and I talked to another author had the unique experience of being on Oprah. And both of them were completely shocked that the day after their appearance, zero sales for both. I was stunned. I was like if if I wasn’t talking to the person who had actually live that I like, there’s no way, Oprah’s the kingmaker when it comes to books. And I’m finding out not and you would think in the nonfiction space, especially for psychology, a platform as big as Dr. Phil and internationally American television show that that would be for sure. And I had an author that went on a UK morning chat show that had zero sales afterwards. So that really was quite shocking to me. And then you can pair that with the fact that over 66% of Penguin Random House books sell less than 1000 copies. And they’re one of the big four and that, you know, 15% sold under 12 copies for their books. And this is one of the big four. Right? So Mark, that’s why I say marketing is not selling marketing. It’s about book awareness that might come around and might one day pay off that really for me my getting feels like buying a lottery ticket. And I hope that this hits and we had a book you know recently that became a best seller because somebody with a rather small following on Twitter made a tweet that then went viral and causes the book to be a best seller. They were a very small account when they made that tweet. And now they’re a very big account. And the book is now a best seller Bravo and I’m sorry they countered. number, the name of it because that’s not actually it’s not actually what the focus is. But I will put a link down in the description for a couple of critique circles and how to find beta readers. And I do not have any experience with the critique circles. We’re very fortunate that we have beta readers as part of our team. And not all of our team is able to do BETA readers. And we provide critique and feedback for all of our authors, which is why I don’t have any lived experience with the critique circles. And I haven’t asked our authors about the different Christian circles that that they belong to. Another thing that that marketing, I touched a little bit on interviews, and reviews. And so for me, I look at like the Dr. Phil example, if you’re in the nonfiction space, I do think that that certifies you as an expert, and does give you credential credentials, and does give you the ability to stay as seen on Dr. Phil and use that as part of your promotion. But believing that any one interview or any one review is going to make or break your book, I think, is just not factual. We had a book, get a really favorable review and Paris reviews. And that didn’t move the needle at all, on the book. And we were really shocked, I always hold parish reviews in very high esteem. And we’ve had some other very big name, publications, interview, review our books, and come back with really stellar reviews, five star reviews, and that hasn’t moved the needle on sales. And then we had an author that has a relatively small following on social media, tweet something that got a lot of attention, and sold 100 copies that day, and a single day from a single tweet that an author did, which I thought was Bravo, I’m super happy about that. That’s awesome for us and for them. So looking at what moves the needle, and sometimes I’ll do a tweet. And I like to celebrate any bookstores and any press base and sometimes celebrating those indie bookstores will result in any bookstores, being aware of the book and purchasing the book and wanting to do business with us. Because they know that we’re the type of company that is going to support them and is going to elevate their voices and maximize their voices as we grow and, and with our our platform.
K
So it’s really important that you do everything you can to increase your own credibility as an expert in your genre category. And as an expert in what your brand is. And I know it’s icky to be talking about being a brand. But if you’re an author, you are a brand. And I noticed that we recently sold, and we recently had an uptick and books because somebody tweeted out that we’re an activist press. And after that tweet went out, we sold a bunch of a bunch of books, and I love it so much that I put it in our bio, because I’m like, Hey, is this something that the public cares about? That we are an activist press me Do we have a political position that makes us an activist. And so as I write on, this was something that that sells books. So when you’re marketing, paying attention to what is moving the needle, and what is not moving the needle. And sometimes things come back around that a year later, people end up purchasing your your book based on something that they had been sitting and watching and waiting for. And so for me, it’s really important to understand that it’s an investment in your future. It’s not an investment in today, if you’re doing marketing with the sole purpose of making sales today, and making or doing marketing with a specific focus on I want to have 150 pre orders. That’s my goal. For me, if I approached marketing, that way, it would be soul crushing for me, because then it would feel like every bit of marketing failed. And that would be just a bummer, you know, and for some books, it would do great and then comparing how books did and we get bash orders all the time, sometimes just out of the ether. Like I don’t know why this book is our top selling book. And when I look at all of the marketing is that all of the marketing was equal. And then when I started looking at, Okay, where did the batch sales come from? And interesting enough, we have an author who’s really big in the nonfiction sector, and what they’re doing in nonfiction, meet people interested in their fiction, which is completely unrelated. And we saw an uptick in across all of their books to have more multiple books with us. And they had a nonfiction piece of writing really hit and really resonate in an industry that I didn’t think would have any relation. And then it resulted in all three of their books having an increase in sales. That’s why I say marketing and sales are really unrelated. And making sure that you are always kind, making sure that you’re always personable and a good representative of who you are as a person, and what people can expect when they interact with you. If they can expect respect and kindness and generosity, they’ll like you, and they’ll be more interested and wanting to engage with you. So we do see an uptick of sales, of course, during launch week. And I think that when you see that uptick during launch week, and all of that, that you have to remember that, especially if you’re a first time author, you’re competing with best selling authors, and there are millions and millions of books published every year. So just cutting through and having someone noticed you, I suppose they talk to small content creators and, you know, do partnerships and getting a critique, circle and agree to promote each other’s things to really help your platform grow, because your platform is the best way of marketing. And, you know, for us, I think that it’s really important, not for the whole marketing team, our marketing, our cell team are two separate, separate teams. And our sales team is aware of what our marketing team is doing. Because we get marketing can generate hot leads for sales. And when marketing generates hot leads for sales, then we do push and, and hit and there are certain times of years and certain genres do well. We have a lot of books in the LGBTQI plus space. And we find that during the month of June sells for those books tend to go up because that’s Pride Month in the United States. And in several other countries pride season as basically, I want to say for us pride season internationally goes from February to July. And we do see some increase in sales for that.
K
Do that are created because it’s the time of year and people are gearing up their stock. And sometimes those orders come in as early as February or January, when you’re looking at sales. Sales is different sales is about going into a bookstore and pitching them to put your book on a shelf and giving away advanced reader copies to hear. I’ve done my marketing, you’re aware of me, you’ve heard of me. Now I want you to buy my book, going in asking bookstores to shelve your book. That’s direct sales. And direct sales are when II trust your platform and your distributor to make that approach for you. But some entity needs to be approaching books, and I advise all of our authors Be shameless. Take your author copies and give them to bookstore owners in your area. Go around, introduce yourself, be personal, be kind, ask if you can leave a copy of your book for them to read and consider shelving. That is a sales activity, not a marketing activity. And if you’re wanting to get your books into Barnes and Noble, which we’re very lucky enough to get your book to our books and Barnes and Noble. And we do have books and physical stores. The thing with Barnes and Noble and Walmart, two of the biggest and person physical distributors, retailers have books rather, is that we don’t have to get a book that will be an every Barnes and Noble store. That’s really hard to do. Even the Big Four can’t manage that for all of their books. Hence, you know 16%, selling less than 12 copies. They’re not in Barnes and Noble. A great way to get into Barnes and Noble is to have a distributor that has a relationship with Barnes and Noble, pre existing, because having that distributor and check out our episode on our platforms, having a history that has a relationship with Walmart that has a relationship with Barnes and Noble, the two biggest retail outlets for books. What that does is it gives you the collective bargaining of all of the books that they distribute. And that lumps your books in with it and gets your books noticed and gets your books listed in these places. So for us our sales team, because we’re, we’re global and we don’t have boots on the ground sales team. We’re not rolling around to individual indie bookstores, but we do reach out and we do call and talk to any bookstores and we do communicate with any bookstores online about our books. That’s how you’re going To generate those sales, I think keeping healthy expectations for sales and healthy expectations for what does it mean for your book to succeed? If you’re thinking about, you know, the fact that there are 30,000 books that in 2022, the Penguin Random House couldn’t sell more than 990 copies of, they didn’t sell 1000 copies of those books, a lot of authors come in with the with the goal of, they’re going to have a best seller. And looking at the big four less than four tenths of percent of their books, some more than 100,000 copies, less than seven tenths of less than 2.2, less than seven tenths for servants. Get the night so more than nine 9000 copies, and less than 2%. So more than 50,000 copies. And you can go online, and you can look the lawsuit where Penguin Random House had to open up their books and get the numbers, they’re quite sobering. Your book is not a failure, you haven’t failed. If you’ve written a book, I want authors to know this. Understand that, believe it, embrace it and have it be true in the amount of your bones. If you have written a book, congratulations, you succeeded. So many people want to write a book and never do. So many people have a great idea and have a great concept that they can’t turn into a book, writing a book is hard, is not easy to do. So give yourself kudos for that.
K
Creating a book cover writing the back blurb, deciding on a platform, having your book out and publish all of the decisions that went into that, while still maintaining your life. And hopefully, your good will and your happiness while doing it. All of those are cause for celebration. If your book is published, you have succeeded. If you have finished writing a book, you have succeeded. I know we all want to be best sellers. And that’s my hope and dream for everybody. So do contact best selling authors and see if they’ll read your book. You know, they had a guy they had a TV show made out of his books that still didn’t sell after he had a whole TV show made about his books. So how to sell books. And what sells books really is, if we’re honest, it’s a bit of luck. It’s the right book at the right time read by the right person who has the right voice and the right amplification to get that book sold, which is a really tricky, tricky combination. So I advise authors to not focus on book sales so much. My view on book sells is publishing as a long game. And when I buy a book, I’m I’m committing to that book for the rest of my life basically and promoting that book and doing what’s necessary to raise the to improve the platform that cinnabar moth has and improve the market share that cinnabar moth has in terms of brand awareness. And I hope that you’re making that same commitment if you’re a small press or an indie author. And remember to celebrate yourself, celebrate your milestone, understand that sales and marketing are two different things. Sales is right now today here by my book, marketing is buying a lottery ticket that’s something you do in the marketing space is going to make someone choose you and choose your book over what everyone else is doing. And keeping those two things separate, I think will really keep your heart healthy and really keep you hopeful in the marketing space and motivated and the marketing space. So I hope this is helpful if you enjoyed it and you’d like content like this, please think about subscribing and hitting the like button and leaving a comment to help out the channel and support indie presses and indie authors and I want to thank all of our beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you want to be and you don’t have to be a moth you can be a butterfly. I’m not Mariah Carey I’m not trying to bite her rhyme. Talk to you soon. Bye.