Tag: Marketing (Page 4 of 5)

A Marketing Team reason for rejection

I learned this lesson the hard way early in my career, in my first year as an acquisitions editor for a mid-sized publishing house. 

I brought to my publishing board what I thought was a very strong candidate for publication—a non-fiction book for teens. I’d done my homework. We’d had initial success publishing for the youth market recently, and this particular book was powered by strong writing and a credible author. I had good first-year projections from the sales team, and unified support from editorial. 

Time came for me to present, and things were going unexpectedly well. Voices of support were cropping up all around the table, and even my typically skeptical Marketing VP seemed to be nodding his head in agreement. The only person who said nothing was my Publisher. 

Perhaps I took for granted that my Publisher was already on my side. Or maybe I figured he wouldn’t concern himself with marketing issues, since his real strength was in editorial. But I shouldn’t have ignored his silence…

About four minutes into my pitch, I felt like this book was a shoo-in for approval. Then, while I was actually still speaking, my Publisher stood up. He walked to nearby bookcase and, in one swift motion, swept an armful of books of the shelf. Barely looking, he tossed them all onto the middle of the boardroom table, right in front of me. Then he did it again. And again. And he kept burying us in books until there were about 200 of them spread out in lumpy stacks before us. Again without saying a word, he finally walked back to his chair and sat down.

Then he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Your book is no different from any of these.”

And that was it. 

Discussion over. 

Decision made. 

We didn’t even bother to vote on the proposal I was advocating. I’d been unable to compellingly differentiate the book I was pitching from the hundreds of books on our table—let alone the hundreds of thousands in the marketplace at large. I should have easily predicted the final decision:

Rejected.

What You Can Do About It

1. Don’t get caught unprepared when the books start flying. 

Being able to significantly differentiate your book from the competition is simply a non-negotiable for just about any publisher. In your proposal, this should fall under a section called, “Competitive Analysis,” or “Market Analysis.”

Typically what this includes is a list of three to five prominent books that are currently popular in your selected category. (For instance, if you’re publishing in the Cookbook category, then you’d probably include titles by people like Paula Deen, Jillian Michaels, Anthony Bourdain, and maybe even Julia Child.) 

For each of these potential competitors, you’d then include a short summary of content (I usually just copy this, with credit, straight from Amazon.com). Then you’d show two things. First, how your book compares favorably to the popular one. (For example, “Like Paula Deen’s work, my cookbook has classic homestyle recipes with immediate appeal to middle class families!”). Second, you’d show how your book will differentiate itself in a unique way to attract buyers to yours. (“Unlike Deen’s book, my cookbook delivers remarkably tasty recipes without overindulging in high-risk health habits for family members, like excess butter and fat.”)

It’s a balancing act, true. You have to show that your book has a similar audience appeal like the popular one, and yet you also have to show that your book is better. It takes practice, but it’ll pay off if someone on the publishing board likes to throw a few books around the table.

2. Take a lesson from Grand Central Station 

On a chilly Saturday in 2007, Grand Central Station came to a standstill. That’s when about 200 “agents” from Improv Everywhere showed up on the Main Platform and simply froze in place. The result was a dramatic, attention-grabbing spectacle—and one of the best visual examples of the power of differentiation that I’ve ever seen.

No, these “agents” didn’t loiter around reading books. But they did enter a “crowded marketplace” and, in only seconds, made themselves clearly stand out from the competition (the thousands of others in the station) in such a way that everybody took notice.

So here’s what I’m suggesting: First, watch the online video “Frozen Grand Central” (available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo). Then ask yourself these questions: Why did just standing still make thousands of people stop and take notice? What principles do I see at work in this situation that will help me to differentiate my work? How can I apply those principles in my next proposal?

If you can answer those questions well, my Marketing VP will notice your book…even in Grand Central Station.

3. Don’t overdo it.

While I can’t emphasize enough the absolute necessity of being able to effectively differentiate your book from the competition, I do want to warn you that there are risks to going too far with this. Remember, the goal here is to show that your book delivers some unique benefit that others don’t have—not to give an exhaustive list of every book published on a similar subject. 

I remember one time looking at a book that I thought had potential—until I saw the Market Analysis. The author had certainly done his homework. He’d listed close to 20 other books on the topic, most of which I’d never heard of. All that did was convince me that his subject was currently over-published and unable to sustain a new entry in that category, so I rejected on that basis. 

So be careful to stack the comparisons in your favor. Stick with three to five competitors, and you should be fine.

Looking for more? Check out these links:

• Mikey Can’t Sleep blog
• Mikey Timeline
• Fan-Favorite Books
• Mikey on Amazon

A Marketing Team reason for rejection

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Only six words, but they evoke the gamut of emotion in the reader: Curiosity, tenderness, joy, and sorrow. 

In fact, this is a complete short story written by Ernest Hemingway, and one that he called his best work. Well, with that kind of skill, Papa Bear must have made his Marketing VP proud indeed. 

Now, you don’t have to be a legendary writer of fiction in order to succeed with your latest pitch to a publisher—but you should be able to quickly, succinctly evoke the desired emotions when talking about your book. This will happen primarily in the content summary section at the beginning of your proposal. And, unlike Hemingway, you have much more than six words use! But you’d better be able to do this quickly, most likely in 50-60 words (or less). 

Why is it so important to be able to evoke desired emotions when talking about your book? Because emotion dictates decision-making. Neuroscientist, Benedetto de Martino, is just one of many researchers to confirm this connection. After his lengthy experiment on decision-making among gamblers, he reported, “We found that everyone showed emotional biases; no one was totally free of them.”

In How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer chronicles medical studies on patients with damaged emotion centers in the brain to arrive at the conclusion that “emotions are a crucial part of the decision-making process…a brain that can’t feel can’t make up its mind.” So, in the content summary at the beginning of your proposal, you’ve got about 60 words to make the brains of your editor, Marketing VP, and sales VP feel the right emotions that will prompt them to buy your book. Use those words wisely, and you’ve just increased your chances of actually making it to the next publishing board meeting.

What You Can Do About It

1. Take charge of your reader’s emotions. 

Of course, in the case of your content summary, your readers are the editor, Marketing VP, and Sales VP—but since you know who they are that gives you more power than you likely have used in the past. When composing your content summary, read past the words and into the emotions those words evoke. Take charge of what your reader will feel when he or she first encounters the quick description of your book.

For instance, are you selling a book about solutions to dolphin de-population in the Pacific Ocean? Then you’ll probably want to open with a statement that evokes concern in the reader (“When all the dolphins are gone, humanity will be next in line.”) Then you’ll want to move into a statement that brings relief and/or optimism (“But that’s not going to happen while you’re around.”) And you’ll close with a line that sparks enthusiasm and/or heroic impulses in your reader—and which maximize your book’s importance in those feelings (“This book will show you how to save the dolphins…and save your world.”)

2. Be careful not to unintentionally evoke the wrong emotion. 

We live in a politically correct world, and that means paying attention to potentially offensive terminology (unless, of course, your intent is to offend). Regardless of how you feel personally about political correctness, it makes no sense to offend when you don’t have to do so. 

If you open your summary by casually referring to the Holocaust as myth, for instance, you’ve immediately irritated a majority of your readers. If you use a word like “niggardly”—even though this word refers to being miserly and has nothing to do with a common racial epithet—many will still feel anti-racist sentiment toward you and your work as a result. 

So, as you’re writing to evoke desired emotion, be careful that your words don’t unintentionally evoke the wrong emotion.

3. Pay attention to how you feel.

Try this creative exercise for writers. First, list seven motivating emotions, such as anger, curiosity, excitement, and so on. Then assign each emotion to one day of the week.

Take a notepad with you as you go through your week, and every time you feel that day’s assigned emotion, jot down the circumstances or catalyst that prompted that emotion to surface in you. This could be something as simple as watching a beer commercial or being cut off in traffic. 

At the end of the week, review your journal entries and ask yourself, “What principles can I learn about evoking emotion from these experiences? And how can I use those principles to evoke emotion when I’m talking about my book?”

Looking for more? Check out these links:

• Mikey Can’t Sleep blog
• Mikey Timeline
• Fan-Favorite Books
• Mikey on Amazon

A Marketing Team reason for rejection

All right, first I’m going to tell you the reality behind endorsements, then I’ll tell you why that reality is irrelevant. 

By now you probably know that endorsements on the back of a book are nothing more than people doing favors for each other. They rarely reflect actual praise for a book. In fact, most times, the people who wrote the endorsements didn’t even read the book. (Of course, that’s not true of the endorsements on the back of this book…wink wink, nudge nudge.)

Here’s the way it works. I do a friend a favor—say, endorse her book or help him find an agent, or introduce her to my editor. She’s subsequently a hit in the marketplace (yay for her!). So when my next book rolls around, I politely ask her to do me the small favor of endorsing my book. 

Well, she knows two things: 1) she may want a return favor from me in the future (say, a foreword for her next book), and 2) if she puts her name on the back of my book, that means all my readers will see her in a positive light…which could create add-on sales next time she publishes. So she graciously writes a sentence or two saying how wonderful my book is, and we both go on with our lives. 

This is why it’s so important to network in the publishing industry, to make friends, and to stay friends with people of influence and/or people who might become people of influence. And that’s why the reality is that most (not all, of course) blurbs showering praise on a book and plastered all over the back cover are really just a you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours sham. 

Now, here’s why that reality is irrelevant: Because endorsements impact sales. 

Believe it or not, more than one-third of American readers say they “buy a book because of a quote from another author.” Crazy, huh? But true. Plus, stellar endorsements give a marketing team another hook to use when shouting about your book to the media—and they create PR goodwill from people who view the endorser favorably.

In fact, I’ve even had a book denied in publishing board simply because I couldn’t promise one specific person would endorse that specific book. Again, crazy, huh? But that’s the way it works sometimes.

So, when you’re preparing the proposal for your next book, be sure to include a section that highlights people to whom you are somehow connected and who, when asked, are likely to endorse your book. If the names on that list are recognizable, you’ll definitely get my Marketing VP’s attention.

What You Can Do About It

1. Stay networked. 

This is the key to securing solid endorsements for any book. Like most things in life, it’s not what you know but whom you know. So be someone who knows a lot of people. 

When you attend a writer’s conference, be the person who meets people. In some cases, go ahead and schedule appointments even though you don’t plan to pitch anything to a certain agent or editor. Tell them that you just wanted to meet them. Get their advice on the industry. Let them know you exist in case you send them a pitch sometime in the future. 

Join online writer’s groups, write reviews of books by authors you like, post comments on author blogs and websites. Just stay in the game, so to speak, even if you don’t yet have a play to call. Next time you need a great endorsement, that networking may just pay off. 

2. Don’t assume only authors can be endorsers. 

My wife once published a book called The Low-Fat Lifestyle. (Great book by the way—sincerely!) If you look at the back cover on that book you’ll see an obligatory endorsement from a prominent women’s author/editor. Above that one, however, you’ll see an endorsement from a guy who’s never written a thing in his life. 

So why does he rate as a significant endorser for this book? He’s a medical doctor, an accomplished physician, and an expert in the field of health and medicine. That makes him a person who immediately lends credibility to the healthy ideas my wife included in her book. 

So don’t assume your endorsers must always be other writers. Find credible experts in the field who can lend their authority to the material covered in your book. Sometimes that carries more weight than even a bestselling author.

3. Stay on good terms with your editors.

John Maxwell is a New York Times bestselling author, one of the nation’s foremost experts on leadership, and a well-respected business guru to millions. I personally have never met, nor spoken to, nor even exchanged emails with Dr. Maxwell. Yet he wrote an entire foreword to one of my books. 

How did I pull this off? Well, I stayed on good terms with an industry friend who went on to become both my editor and Dr. Maxwell’s editor. When the time came for collecting the foreword and endorsements, this editor did me a huge favor and contacted John Maxwell on my behalf. (And hey, if you’re reading this, I still owe you one Mark!)

Like I said, it’s not always what you know, but whom you know. So stay on good terms with your editors—even through all the waves of rejections. Those people may one day do you a big favor when it comes time for endorsements.

Looking for more? Check out these links:

• Mikey Can’t Sleep blog
• Mikey Timeline
• Fan-Favorite Books
• Mikey on Amazon

A Marketing Team reason for rejection

One of the hard facts of life is that past experience influences present expectations. That means you are often judged by the failure of people who came before you, regardless of whether or not that judgment is fair.

Robert Cialdini, professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University, explains it this way: 

If you are asked to pick up a ten-pound weight in a gymnasium, it will appear lighter if you had first picked up a twenty-pound weight and heavier if you had first picked up a five-pound weight. Nothing has actually changed about the ten-pound weight—except your perception of it. This psychological process is not limited to weight; it holds for almost any type of judgment you could make. In every case the perceptual process is the same: Prior experience colors perception.

Few things color a Marketing VP’s perception more than failure. In the high-pressure world of publishing, every perceived failure in promoting a book carries with it the threat of a lucrative marketing career cut short. Someone still smarting from that kind of recent failure is unlikely to do anything that might bring the same results again. 

So, if you come to my publishing house with your great new idea about the joys of deep sea fishing, my Marketing VP is going immediately to think about all the wasted time, money, and effort his team spent on last year’s book about fly fishing. And he’s going to start shaking his head at the mere thought of possibly going through that again. 

“We tried that before,” he’ll tell me. “Didn’t work. What else you got?”

No, it’s not entirely fair. But the rejection letter you get is the same anyway.

What You Can Do About It

1. Justify your target audience. 

Following the suggestions included back at Reason #6 will help you with this, but the main idea here is to target an audience that is both clearly identifiable and of significant size to support a book’s publication. Then show how and why that audience will absolutely want your book—even if they didn’t want a similar book in the past.

If you can use demographic statistics here—for instance, the number of deep sea fishermen and women in the United States or the annual sales figures of the deep sea fishing industry as a whole—that certainly helps my Marketing VP reframe his experience in terms of your potential. Add on ways you intend to help your publisher reach that audience—say through speaking at the National Deep Sea Fishing convention, or by writing a column in Deep Sea Fishing Monthly magazine, or whatever—and you just might make my VP forget there ever was a fishing book before yours came along.

2. Differentiate. Differentiate. Differentiate. 

Remember, you’ve got to be able to show that your book is uniquely positioned for success in the marketplace anyway. If you do a good job of that up front, then it could be irrelevant that my marketing team failed on a previous book because your book is so much more prepared to make an impact in the market. 

If you still feel fuzzy on this, go back and re-read Reasons 45, 46, and 47 until you could teach a seminar on that topic alone. Trust me, it’s that important.

3. Find a company that’s more successful in the areas you want to sell.

In the big picture, a publisher that has trouble selling books similar to yours may not be the best place for you to land anyway. After all, an attitude of failure toward a certain topic or category of books can often become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “We’ve never been successful with these kinds of books in the past, so why try to be successful with this book in the future?”

A Marketing VP who turns down your book because of past failures with a similar one may actually be doing you a favor. That VP is giving your book an opportunity to succeed with a different publisher that knows how to sell in that area.

So if you find yourself getting rejected because of someone else’s bad experience in the past, take it as a gift instead of a curse. Do a little more homework and find a company that’s better equipped to contribute to your book’s success. It may all work out for the best in the end.

Looking for more? Check out these links:

• Mikey Can’t Sleep blog
• Mikey Timeline
• Fan-Favorite Books
• Mikey on Amazon

A Marketing Team reason for rejection

Let’s see…for this one we’ll call our hero Andy. 

Andy is a novelist I’ve worked with on several occasions. He’s an outstanding writer of fiction, a hard worker, and just a great guy to boot. When I worked for awhile acquiring suspense fiction, I lured him away from a competing publisher and locked him up with a three book contract. His first book out of the gate hit our industry bestseller list. Happy days.

A few years later I joined a different publishing company, and one of the guys on the sales and marketing team had come from that competing publisher where I’d stolen Andy away. 

Well, for me, bringing Andy to my new publishing house was a no-brainer. So he worked up a proposal for me, I prepared it for presentation at publishing board, and away we went.

Except for that other guy. For some reason (I still haven’t figured out exactly what it was), when he saw Andy’s name on the agenda, he immediately started badmouthing my author to anyone who would listen—especially to my Marketing VP. 

“We could never sell Andy’s books at my old publisher,” he said. 

“And yet you published more than a dozen of them,” I said. 

“We could never get people to notice him in the marketplace,” he said. 

“And yet, every person here knows who Andy is,” I said. 

“I’d never publish Andy,” he said. 

“I did publish Andy,” I said, “and he hit the bestseller list.”

It was surreal, and awkward, how determined this guy was to sabotage Andy’s new book. And he almost won. In the end, the Marketing VP appeared convinced by this one negative guy, but the Sales VP and Publisher overruled him and voted to publish. 

Still, if Andy hadn’t had verifiable market success already, that kind of unfair prejudice against him would have derailed his chances with my company. And people in publishing board can be prejudiced against an author for all kinds of strange reasons—because of a topic, or because of a personal encounter with the author, or because of genre, or religion, or political bent, or because of a friend of a friend who didn’t like a book, or whatever. 

Hey, if it can happen to Andy, it can happen to you.

What You Can Do About It

1. Let your talent do the talking. 

I once had a fantastic proposal from a successful romance author for our company who wanted to branch out into romantic suspense. The president of my company wouldn’t let me publish it. 

“She’s a romance author,” he said. “She can’t write suspense.” 

But did I mention it was a fantastic proposal?

This author didn’t waste time complaining to me about how unfair we were being toward her and her chosen genre. Instead, she took that book to a different company. They recognized the potential that I did—and then some. Today she’s one of the most reliable romantic suspense authors out there. In fact, you’ve probably seen her hogging up shelf space at Wal Mart and quite likely have read one of her books (if you like romantic suspense). 

In the end, she let her talent do the talking, and that was more than enough.

2. If you can help it, don’t piss anybody off. 

Yes, I know, sometimes you can’t help it. Especially in this industry where so many people are egotistical jerks. So I’m not saying you should never make anybody mad at you (hey, I’m fairly certain there are people out there who grimace when my name is mentioned). But I am saying that, if you can avoid it, don’t provoke an industry colleague into a fight. Don’t call people names. Don’t demand satisfaction or chew someone out because they dunya wrong.

That kind of stuff always comes back, and sometimes it’ll return to you in ways you can’t even see (like in a closed-door publishing board meeting) but which have significant impact on your publishing career.

So the age-old advice of the golden rule still applies: Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.

3. Increase your odds.

This goes back to market research and knowing who is publishing the kinds of books you want to publish. If you’ve only got three legitimate companies as your target publishers for a book, and you’ve already managed to piss off somebody important at one of them, that knocks out one-third of your opportunities just because of a personality conflict. 

On the other hand, if you’ve got 10 potential publishing partners, and one of them is unfairly prejudiced against you, that still leaves 90% of your options open. So go ahead and play the odds a bit, and make sure you target a good number of editors with your next proposal.

Looking for more? Check out these links:

• Mikey Can’t Sleep blog
• Mikey Timeline
• Fan-Favorite Books
• Mikey on Amazon