book marketing – Page 5 – Patricia J. Parsons

When is a book review not a book review?

Posted on 26 Mar 2014 by Patricia J. Parsons

It seems simple enough. You write a book, someone reads it, likes it (or not), writes a review, and other potential readers interpret the review for themselves, deciding whether or not to read your book based on their own criteria. One of the most important factors readers might use to interpret a review is the identity – and therefore perceived credibility – of the review writer.

For example, for some readers there might be a big difference between a review written by the New York Times and one penned by Oprah (or at least endorsed by her). Or between the writer’s spouse and someone who doesn’t know that writer personally. That may be the line we cross into territory where a review is not really a review – it is an advertisement. And these are not the only kinds of ‘advertisements’ masquerading as book reviews.

There can hardly be a writer or ‘wanabe’ writer around these days who is unaware of the current book review scams visited upon readers.

In August of 2012 The New York Times published an article titled: “The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy.” Author David Streitfeld reported on what appeared to be a newly established business model: writing book reviews for cash. He tells the story of Todd Rutherford’s gettingbookreviews.com, a business based on writing online book reviews – paid for by the writer. One of the service packages he offered was for him to write 20 online book reviews for $499. What could be better? Twenty reviews proclaiming a book to be worthy of 5 stars, the work of a literary genius. In my view, what would be better would be some honesty.

And Rutherford was merely one among myriad businesses that have been springing up all over the place to provide exactly the same service to writers desperate for sales. Quite often, the entrepreneurs offering this service are themselves wannabe writers.

But what happens when a reader finds out the truth of the review? Maybe the book is a good one; but maybe it isn’t. Readers searching for new, indie writers will soon become jaded from being burned. Buying book reviews hurts everyone.

So if a book review is not a book review when it is written for money, what about when it’s written by your spouse (or mother, or sister etc.)?

The Amazon review by a certain party whose last name is the same as mine was not penned by a relative.

I was mortified when I went onto Amazon.com to see that one of the reviews (and a 5-star one at that) of one of my historical novels Grace Note was penned by someone whose last name is PARSONS. I’m quite certain that anyone looking at that would make the reasonable assumption that it was written by one of my relatives. It wasn’t. I’m just glad the reviewer liked it! The bottom line, however, is that a review by one of your nearest and dearest isn’t really a review either.

So…and here is the one where I’m going to get myself into trouble… what if the review is written by a member of your co-dependency group. These are those writing groups, usually virtual, or Twitter communities, wherein everyone gushes about everyone else’s books mostly so that when yours is published everyone will do the same. I have to admit that this really bothers me. It puts me off buying the promoted books, which is a shame for the writers. However, I just don’t trust these reviews.

I follow a number of otherwise interesting indie authors who also review books on Twitter, but I find that the reviews are always 5-star ones, or very close to it. I’m presuming that they only tweet their 5-star ones (surely there are books they dislike?), but I’d like to be directed to one that might be a 4 or even a 3 ½ star review so that I can make up my own mind. When everything is ‘awesome’, then nothing is ‘awesome.’

Let’s get back to some truth in advertising among writers and publishers. Please.

Social Media

5 ways your social media platform might be turning toxic

Posted on 21 Nov 2013 by Patricia J. Parsons

At least twice in just the past week I have acquired new Twitter followers who themselves boast over 10,000 followers. Imagine that! 10,000+ followers! I always surf over to see the profiles of my new followers and never cease to be astounded by these huge numbers. But before I click to “follow” back, I always hesitate in these instances. I always seem to have the same question for myself: “Why in the world would I want to follow someone (or some organization) with that many followers unless I’m looking for their information. They certainly won’t be interested in anything I have to say. Dear god, they’ll never be able to find it!” And I’m left wondering how anyone can possibly be in a balanced give-and-take situation when there are so many hangers-on involved.

In my day job, I’m a university professor. To be more precise, I teach in a communication studies department with a focus on public relations and corporate communication. Throughout my long career in the real world and in academia, I’ve specialized in two areas, one of which is strategy. In that capacity, I’ve helped hundreds of students develop successful promotional plans for non-profits and small businesses, and was an early adopter of social media, teaching our first undergraduate course in the new applications some years ago. It’s funny now that I’m looking at my own promotional work, I’m struck by a number of oddities in the world of social media – and authors.

My last post found me wondering if publishers really care about a writer’s life on Twitter, and thinking about that led me to contemplate the problems of social media ‘platforms’ in general. So, at the risk of alienating all of those authors and wannabe authors that I might be connected to online, here goes.

A social media platform no doubt supports sales of independently published books. Okay, I’ll buy that – but with a few caveats, the most important of which is that there needs to be some recognition of the point of diminishing returns.

I submit that a there is a point at which a writer’s online, social media presence morphs from supportive and beneficial to toxic. So here are some symptoms of toxicity that I’ve observed. You might be developing social media toxicity…

When you find yourself falling victim to group-think. It’s so easy to retweet mindlessly, to find yourself nodding in support of ideas that you hadn’t really given enough time to figure out on your own. I’ve noticed that except for the odd outlier, most reply tweets are supportive, and I even find myself falling into this trap, ignoring the tweets that I think are just plain stupid. And note that on Facebook and even Linkedin there is no “dislike” button.
When you have an over-inflated notion of how many books you should be selling based on your number of followers, friends etc. I have to hearken back to my last blog post where I began to find research to support the notion that online ‘likes’ don’t translate into behavior.
When you fall victim to that co-dependency problem. Codependency is known in mental health circles as a relationship addiction, excessive social or emotional reliance on another person who often has a problem. I’m suggesting that writers who toil in isolation often look for support among other writers who understand them, and this begins the cycle. Over-dependence can become toxic leading to inertia and the next symptom of toxicity…
When your social media activities become a major time suck. This can happen so easily. It’s like several of my students suggested the other day in class: they find themselves spending inordinate amounts of time on assignments as a result of keeping their electronics devices at their elbow and responding to every ‘ping’ as texts and tweets arrive. My advice: just turn them off!
And finally, when your admiration is seriously misplaced. I’m talking about the odd phenomenon of actual best-selling writers like Sheila O’Flanagan having fewer than 5,000 Twitter followers (and wisely following far fewer yet selling books in millions) while some indie authors who have sold a few thousand books having tens of thousands of followers. It might be worth the unknown writer’s (like me) time to follow the ones who have been on the real best-seller lists. Maybe we could learn a thing or two.

So, you might conclude that I’m just sour because I have a very few Twitter followers. But I’m not. I might have at one time when I thought that those followers might actually buy and retweet to actual buyers about my work. But that rarely happens in reality. It’s a bit like viral video: You can’t plan to use one for promotional and marketing because you have no way of knowing if a video you produce will catch fire or not.

I’m going to spend less time on my social media presence and more time on my writing. At least for now.

Book covers

The book cover debate: Here we go again

Posted on 18 Jul 2013 by Patricia J. Parsons

Almost two years ago to the day, I wrote a backstory about my book cover adventures. Then back in May of this, I wrote about the beginning of my newest book cover adventure starting with the news from my editor at that, as he said in an email, “Time and budgetary restraints being what they are, we’re unable to ask our designers to come up with a cover completely from scratch. Rather, it falls to you (and to me)…” And that’s what got me thinking about the differences (or lack thereof) between traditional and independent publishing. At that time I lamented that if I have to design my own cover, what in the world are publishers paying those designers to do exactly?

So, I went on to the web site where this publisher buys stock photos and drawings to search through thousands of images using a variety of relevant search terms. I narrowed it down to a few, modified them in Photoshop, added the appropriate cover text, ran the design by my in-house consultant (my husband) and sent the mock-up along to my editor. A month or so later (he apologized for taking so long to get back to me – evidently during conference season it’s hard to find their marketers. It occurs to me that if you’re at conferences selling books, then you are a sales person. If you are a marketer, I thought that you worked on marketing strategy including cover design – but I digress), he emailed me telling me that my cover mock-up was clever, but they didn’t think it really represented the book very well. Never mind that I don’t think a single member of the ‘marketing team’ has actually read the book.

Then he sent me a stock photo that they thought was appropriate. It. Was. Not. And it wasn’t clever. And it wasn’t interesting. And it wasn’t an image that a single one of my intended readers (this is targeted non-fiction this time) could identify with or would even click on to get further information – and make no mistake, that’s how books are bought these days, particular this kind since they are not designed to go to book stores.

life without end — My first-ever book published by a now-defunct Toronto publisher. Twenty-four years ago, designers actually designed clever covers. It’s time for them to start again.

As any writer of book-length work realizes, the old maxim “You can’t tell a book by its cover” is becoming more and more irrelevant. You might not be able to tell a lot about what’s behind that cover just by seeing the image and text, but in my view (a) you ought to be able to, and (b) that cover really does need to be dynamite these days.

I recently read a marketing study where eBook covers had been changed and sales tracked before and after the change. Just as you might expect, improving the cover increased sales. Although this is not an eBook (but there will be an electronic version naturally), sales will accrue through online channels. This means that the potential buyers will be moved to either explore further or not by what they see on that cover. The truth is, though, that no one has the definitive answer to the question of what makes a truly good book cover design. That’s because each book is unique. So where does that leave us?

Just by coincidence, or perhaps serendipity, The New Yorker online published a piece today titled The Decline and Fall of the Book Cover. The writer Tim Kreider says,”… publishing houses hire professional designers for books’ covers and allow their authors very little say over them…” Clearly he doesn’t know about smaller publishers who seem to have less than no money these days for design. He did however describe his own recent experience in which he seemed to have embarked on a similar back and forth between him and his publisher on the design of his book cover. When he suggested that the cover he liked the least was always the one they seem to like the best, I was on his side again. However, he seems to think that well-designed book covers are on their way out, blaming the electronic book trend for this phenomenon. Book covers, he believes, are dull and getting duller. I happen to think that book cover design is going to be even more important as we move ever deeper into electronic purchasing and electronic reading.

I will say that I was completely in agreement with him at the end of the piece when he and his publisher finally agreed on the cover design for the new book. He describes it this way: “…a result nobody would voluntarily have chosen but which everyone could acquiesce to, if only out of exhaustion.”

I am sorely afraid that this is what will eventually become the cover my new book. And it had better happen fast because it’s on the publisher’s fall list.

Again the question: What makes a good cover design? No one really knows these days. While I await my editor’s next move (back to the drawing board he said yesterday after he finally, a month later, responded to my email detailing why I thought his suggestion was lame) I’d be interested to know what draws you into a book that no one has actually recommended to you. Is it that cover?