From the archives - Marketing: What You Really Need to Know Before & After Your Book is Published

For the next few months, we are going to be talking about marketing on the blog - so stay tuned for tips from TBA clients, posts from our agents, and lots of interviews.

To start with, we have a very helpful interview from the archives, originally posted by Susan Hawk in June 2013:

Today, I’m excited to have a guest visiting the blog, Nellie Kurtzman, a Director of Integrated Marketing at HarperCollins Children's Books.  Nellie has worked on a number of remarkable books – launching campaigns for the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan, the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, Lemony Snicket’s Who Could That Be At This Hour?, The Dark by Lemony Snicket & Jon Klassen and Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl in Cold Town.  Currently, she's working on Soman Chainani's The School for Good and Evil and the soon to be released Dumplin' by Julie Murphy.

Nellie and I worked together some time ago at Penguin Books for Young Readers, when she was the Advertising Manager and I was in Library Marketing.  I saw then, and it’s only become more true, Nellie is one the savviest, most creative people in kids books.  So I'm delighted that she took some time to chat with me about how she approaches marketing, especially for debut books.  Here are her thoughts on what’s really important for a writer to consider, what marketing to undertake before your book is sold, and once it's about to hit the bookstore shelves!

You’ve created marketing plans for plenty of debut authors.  When you have a new debut to launch, is it helpful if the author has already done some marketing on his or her behalf?   What kinds of marketing efforts make the biggest difference?

It helps if a writer has a social media presence; otherwise, you’re starting from scratch.  What kind of presence to go after is a changeable thing, as various outlets rise and fall in popularity but right now for a commercial teen or upper middle grade book, I’d suggest Tumblr; for a book that will have a big home in schools or libraries, Twitter.

Facebook can be used more generally, and I’ve seen it be most effective once a book is published and has some traction.  A robust Facebook page will draw readers and that’s usually more possible once the book is out in the world.

An author website is also important, because most likely the publisher won’t be able to create one for you, and if you have a strong, existing site the publisher can piggyback off that and work with you.  Blogs are especially useful for books with a strong school and library presence.

Outside of social media, I love it when a writer has a clear understanding of who their reader is; what market will be at the core of her sales.  Is your book very commercial?  Is it the kind of book that will garner library and school awards?  Is it for younger readers, or older?  This information is the basic building block of every plan marketing and sales will create.  If you have a good sense of this, it will help you understand your publisher’s approach, as well as inform decisions you make in your own marketing efforts. 

It’s also great if an author has taken the time, early on, to think about any contacts and connections they have, and how to leverage them.  If you have a marketing idea you’d like to share with your marketing group, think it through so you can pass it on when the publisher begins building plans for your book.  Though your publisher may choose to go another direction, if you have the details ready it’s helpful. 

Once the book is published, what’s good for writers to do?

Keep up with the social media you’ve created!  Establishing a presence isn’t enough, sites must be fresh and varied.  Of course you can post about upcoming appearances and accolades, but be sure to include content that is incremental to your book.  For instance, if you have a fictional book about baseball for MG, highlight new info about the sport.  Post images that resonate with the subject and tone of your book.  You don’t want the sites you’ve created to become dormant, or too exclusively self-promotional.  Readers are as interested in the subject matter of your book, as they are in you -- think of social media as a way to extend the world building that’s inside your books.

It’s also important to keep your publisher informed of all your marketing efforts.  This way you won’t replicate each other’s work, or send mixed messages.  For instance, if you plan to use a tagline on your book site, run it by the marketing department first, to be sure that you’re both using the same one.  This is true for all marketing efforts, not just those in social media – if you’re planning an appearance, creating promotional material – anything – let your publisher know.

Are there any marketing tools that you think aren’t that impactful – maybe something that people typically do, but may not need to?

Videos.  Writers often request that we do a video, and if something does catch on, it can help.  But these days, video content is pervasive, and the chances that something will break through dwindles accordingly.  And if only 500 people see your video, it won’t have an impact.  Don’t sweat it if your publisher doesn’t plan to make one. 

Do you have any tips for writers about working effectively with their marketing department?

The first step is to find out how you’ll be communicating with the marketing department.  This varies from house to house, so ask your editor if you’ll be talking directly with someone from marketing or publicity.  If not, ask your editor if she’ll be relaying information to them.  Most houses begin creating marketing about nine months in advance of the publication date, so check in before then.  You want to make sure that lines are open so that you can send updates about your social media, etc, as discussed above. 

And one more small parting piece of advice.  Before setting up an appearance, talk to your publisher first.  This way you can be sure that you’ve got the right info to pass along about ordering books etc.

Good luck with your marketing!

From the archives: World Building (with Harry Potter Studio Tour Photos)--a post by Gemma

This post was originally from July 2013, and we are re-posting as this month on the blog we are focusing on editing. 

So this blog post isn’t just an excuse to post pictures of my trip to the Harry Potter Studio Tour, I promise. But I will post some of them, because it is a blog about world-building, and the Harry Potter books are a excellent example of this. 

The Great Hall

Dumbledore's Office

When we talk about world-building, it can be tempting for authors who write contemporary stories to switch off, but world-building isn’t just for fantasy and sci-fi writers. If your book is set on the street you live on, or at your old school, you still need to build a world on the pages of your novel and show it to the reader. He doesn’t know your school or its layout! This means that you need to know everything about your world and what its rules are, even if some of these details don’t appear on the page.

The trick with world-building is not to just give a laundry list of descriptions and overload the reader. I talked in an earlier post about ‘less is more’ – if you give the reader too much information in one scene, they’ll forget everything. Better to give them one key memorable description and then fill in little bits of information over time. 

Chamber of Secrets Door

Portraits

Like all parts of writing a novel, as much as possible your world should be shown to the reader and not told. Describe how your character interacts with and fits into the world, rather than just being descriptive. Think of the world as a character itself and flesh it out like you would any other.

It might be a good idea to draw a map of your setting, so that you always know that if your character turns left out of English class, she will end up at French class next. Or that she has a shop on the corner of her street. If your book is set during school time, give your characters a timetable, so that when you have scenes happening after lunch on a Friday, you know what class they are in.

J K Rowling had enough of a world built to cover seven very long novels – all with new places to visit and things to learn. She developed her world by adding all the fantastic details like the titles of spell books, the rules of Quidditch, and famous wizards of old on the chocolate frog trading cards. She created Diagon Alley and filled it with shops – even one selling magical sweets (which really do have vomit flavour in them).

Buy your books in Flourish and Blotts

Bertie's Every Flavour Beans (which made me sick)

So, some key advice on world-building:

• Keep a notebook handy when writing so you can easily refer back to complicated bits in your world (timetables, characters’ ages, dates of birth, locations, maps, etc.)
• Give your secondary characters a back story (again in a separate notebook). You never know when you’ll need these, and adding in details about someone’s past can really make a 2-D character become a fully fleshed-out 3-D character. Also, this is helpful if you are writing a series, as you may decide you love a secondary character and want to use him more later. Creating the world that your secondary characters live in will develop and inform the world your main character lives in.
• Give description in small doses so as not to overwhelm your reader. Show key details which will be memorable.
• If you plan your book as a series, don’t give away all the best bits in the first book! Hold some information back.
• Think through how the rules of your world work. For example, if your world has no men in it, where do all the babies come from? It’s okay if this is the case, as long as you convincingly explain to the reader how the world works without men.
• Be aware of the geography of your world. If your main character spends time in different locations, how is she getting between these settings and is she doing this in realistic time? If you have your character meeting someone at 4:00 p.m., can she get there after school? Does she walk? Take the bus? If she takes the bus, does she have money?

Tom Riddle's Grave

Drinking Butterbeer outside Privet Drive (very yummy)

World-building, if done well, means the reader can really see the steps your character takes and picture the setting in his mind. And you never know — if it’s done really well, you might one day see it on the big screen.

From the archives: And how does that make your character feel?--a post by Gemma

Another popular archived post on editing for your weekend reading pleasure: 

Last year, I did a series of posts with some tips on how to polish your manuscript before submission, including:

• Dialogue tags

• Editing ‘as’ and ‘in’

• Similies, less is more, and where is the noise?

• You won Nano, now what?

I thought I’d covered a lot of the familiar editing notes I make in manuscripts across these, but recently when out with a group of my lovely clients, they were laughing about all getting tattoos of ‘and how does that make your character feel?’ because that is apparently something I’ve said to all of them on many occasions! 

I’m known for preferring character-led books with a strong voice, so usually I’m looking for characters with big personalities who lay their emotions out for all to see. I don’t want passive characters who just observe the world around them, so I suppose I do use this editing note quite a bit.

I use this note when something happens in the narrative and the main character (MC) doesn’t react to it. For example:  

He moved closer to me, so close that I could feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek. This was it, time for my dreams to become reality. I pressed my lips to his.

“What the...?” He jumped up startled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean...”

“Oh, no it was me! I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Let’s just put the movie on.”

He dropped back on the sofa and wrapped his arm around me, like nothing had happened. 

So in this quickly dashed off example, the POV character should be confused, embarrassed, angry or something! She needs to react to what has happened, and let the reader know how she is feeling. Otherwise we’re left guessing. This reaction could be done physically – ‘I felt blood rush to my cheeks.’ Or it could be a mix of emotional and physical: ‘My stomach churned as embarrassment mixed with the pizza now threatening a comeback.’ But we need to get inside her head. 

Another example is when I see the MC witnessing dialogue between other characters. ‘Mum said X, Dad said Y, Mum said Z,’ etc. The MC is observing the interaction between other characters, but not reacting to what she’s observing. You need to break into this dialogue with the MC’s thoughts on what is being said. 

Think about it like this – in every scene, a net hangs over everything your MC can see and hear. So when any movement or sound happens, a ripple effect means the MC is affected by this movement or sound. How does this make her feel? 

People are constantly thinking and making decisions all the time and you don’t want to overload your narrative with too many feels, but you can’t just have your characters just observe, especially in first-person POV. 

With third-person POV, you need to watch out even more for scenes where the MC is just observing and not interacting with what is going on around them. Anyone who has ever read any of Rainbow Rowell’s books will know that you can get tons of emotion and feels from third-person POV MCs if done well. Read her books if you want a masterclass on this!

So when editing, look back at your key scenes and ask yourself, ‘And how does that make my character feel?’

And clients, if you’re reading this, please don’t get those tattoos!