Tag: Mike Nappa (Page 17 of 24)

Reason #51: My Marketing VP Is Unfairly Prejudiced Against You

/ Mike Nappa

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:

Reason #52: My Marketing VP Doesn’t Care About Your Topic—And Doesn’t Think Anyone Else Will Either

/ Mike Nappa

A Marketing Team reason for rejection

Elizabeth Gilbert has made gobs of money—and generated a huge amount of media coverage—with her memoirs Eat, Pray, Love and Committed. That means your memoir of transformative living should have equal appeal to a publisher, right?

Wrong.

Because, despite the documented, exceptional success of people like Gilbert or James Frey (root canal anyone?) or Julie Powell, memoirs remain a category of low reader interest overall. In fact, according to a Zogby study commissioned by Random House, 99% of readers out there couldn’t give a flying fig about those books. That’s right, only 1% rated memoirs as a “favorite.”

How about a biography of Nat King Cole, then? Legendary singer, extraordinary life. People will eat that up, right? Well…it could happen. But it’s not likely. According to that same Zogby poll, only 5% of readers favor biographical topics.

Here’s what my Marketing VP knows about publishing: subject matter matters. In significant numbers, readers report that a book’s topic is the thing that “first draws” them to a book, and also the “most important factor” in their most recent book purchases.

That means, if my marketing team wants to get public attention for a book—in magazines or newspapers, on the internet or TV or anyplace buzz can build—they’ve got to be sure that book’s topic is compelling. Hey, my Marketing VP isn’t stupid. It took a lot of schooling and real-world experience for her to get where she is today. So before she’ll give a thumbs up on your newest book proposal, she’s going to ask herself, “Do I care about what this book’s about? Does anyone?”

Chances are good that my Marketing VP is going with her gut on this one. If it doesn’t make her care, she’ll assume no one in the real world will care either. And that means your book never gets a chance.

What You Can Do About It

1. Do the obvious: Write about something that lots of people care about.

What do you care about? Make a list of your top 10.

If you’re like most people, these are probably on your list: Family. Health. Love. God/Religion. Work/Career. Why do I know this? Because those are basic needs and interests of just about anyone. If you write a book on one of those topics, chances are good that people will care about it—especially if you can make sure your approach to the topic is unique and different and relevant to your target reader.

Does that mean you can’t write about anything else? Of course not. But it does mean that, no matter what topic you choose, it’s up to you to make sure it somehow relates to something that lots of people care about. Is there a way to write about the social habits of fire ants and somehow make that appeal to your reader’s need for family connections? Probably, if you’re any good as a writer that is. How about a novel centered on commerce in the ancient Egyptian world? If you can bring out themes of love and work in your story, sure people will care about that.

The real question is whether you’re paying attention to the themes in your book. If you are, then you should be able to write something that my Marketing VP will care about.

2. Highlight themes in your work that are similar to themes my marketing team has succeeded with previously.

Again, this isn’t a suggestion for you to copycat someone else’s work. But it is a little advice to help you point yourself in the right direction when it comes to choosing topics for your books.

Go ahead and look at a publisher’s website, or on bestseller lists, or in the pages of your favorite glossy magazine. See which books are getting lots of attention from media outlets—those are the ones that are giving marketing people success. These books could be any genre or any category—nonfiction, historical, fantasy, western, even memoir. Identify the core themes that these books are about, and then pair them up with the responsible publishing house.

When you next pitch to a publishing house, see what themes you paired up with them. Then highlight how those topics show up in your book as well.

3. Memorize this principle: “Subject matter matters.”

Then, when you’re choosing what to write about next, make that decision with more than just you in mind. Ask yourself, “What do I like that millions of other people also like? And what can I say to them on that subject?”

If you’re careful to make your subject matter matter, the odds are pretty good my Marketing VP will care whether or not your book becomes part of my future publishing list.

Looking for more? Check out these links:

Reason #53: Bottom Line—You Weren’t Good to Mama

/ Mike Nappa

A Marketing Team reason for rejection

In the hit movie musical, Chicago, Queen Latifah plays Matron Mama Morton, a media-savvy, happily dishonest Warden at a women’s prison. As a way of welcoming new inmate, Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger), Mama sings a little melody that gives the basic rules for success within the walls of her prison. What it all boils down to is this:

“When you’re good to Mama, Mama’s good to you.”

Why is that important for you to know? Because, in the world of publishing, the role of Matron Mama Morton is played by my Marketing VP. (Well, except for that “happily dishonest” part). That person holds the keys that can set your book free from its unpublished prison and send it on to its rightful renown. The problem is that we authors most typically aren’t good to Mama. In fact, we view Mama with contempt, or irritation, or worse.

For instance, when a book fails after publication, authors will almost always point a finger at the marketing department. “My book just wasn’t marketed the way it should have been,” we’ll shrug and say. “It never had a chance.” By the same token, when a book succeeds, we authors generously ignore the marketing team and soak up the credit for ourselves, assuming it was our writing skill and passion that was rewarded by an adoring marketplace.

The truth is, professional success as an author depends equally on your ability to write and your ability to market your work. Ask just about any self-published writer. It takes much more than mere talent with words to make an impact with the book-buying public. It takes a proactive, productive partnership between editorial and marketing to be the driving force behind any significant sales success.

And marketers know that. What’s more, my marketing team is sick of being blamed (by you, by the sales department, by your editor) for failures—past, present, and future. They want to contribute to, and be credited for, making a book a successful publication.

And so the bottom line is this: If you can make yourself a valuable contributor to my Marketing VP’s success, you will be successful yourself. You’ll have transformed that generally negative person into one of your biggest allies in the decision-making process.

Remember that the next time you want to publish a book. Be good to Mama, and she’ll be good to you.

What You Can Do About It

1. Make yourself indispensable to my Marketing VP.

Marketing guru, and mega-bestselling author, Seth Godin says, “If you’re not indispensable (yet) it’s because you haven’t made that choice.”

Mr. Godin is right. If you’re not yet indispensable to the Marketing VP at my publishing house, it’s because you’ve chosen not to be. Over the last few dozen reasons for rejection in this book, I’ve given you a quick glimpse at what my VP needs to get her marketing team excited about making your book successful. I’ve shown you, pretty clearly, how to make that VP think you’re indispensable to her own personal success.

Trouble is, most authors want to skip over the marketing requirements for publishing success. “That’s someone else’s job,” we tend to think—and sometimes even say out loud. Still, writers who are in the early stages of their careers simply don’t have the luxury of that kind of attitude.

So make the choice to make yourself indispensable to my marketing team. No, it’s not easy. But if you do that, you’ll find you have a productive future in publishing after all.

2. See yourself as an ally of the marketing team.

This is simply an attitude change on your part.

Look, my Marketing VP is already biased against you. She’s going to shine a spotlight on all your weaknesses and argue against taking any real risks with an unproven author.

So what? You can either fight that criticism and take whatever lumps make come in the process. Or you can picture yourself on the marketer’s team and make yourself an ally of my VP by creating something that she actually wants. Guess what? When you do that, she’ll shine her spotlight on all your strengths and become a vocal advocate of you and your book to all the other members of my publishing board.

And believe me, having a Marketing VP as an ally goes a long way toward publishing success, both before and after your book is contracted.

3. Be good to Mama.

Before you send anything to an editor, ask yourself, “What’s this editor’s Marketing VP going to ask about this proposal?” Seriously, go ahead and make a list of anticipated questions that will concern the marketing team about your book.

Next, figure out how to answer all those questions in ways that are “good to Mama”—that is, in ways that show the Marketing VP you’re doing the best you can to make the marketing team’s job both easier and more successful.

This may take some thought on your part, and some questions may strike you as impossible to answer. But if you can think of the questions, you can bet your editor’s Marketing VP is going to ask them. So tackle them head on, and be that rare author who actually makes Mama happy with a new book proposal.

Looking for more? Check out these links:

Reason #54: You Are Not A Celebrity

/ Mike Nappa

A Sales Team reason for rejection

Wow, this reason for rejection is so unfair.

And it’s not even legitimate, really. Lots of celebrities write books that never crack a bestseller list and which shouldn’t have been published to begin with.

Nonetheless, I have on several occasions sat in a room with a group of salespeople and asked the question, “What kind of book would you most like to have to sell to bookstores next season?” One of the first answers has always been, “Can you get us a book by a celebrity?” They don’t even care who the celebrity is, just that the author is one.

Why do salespeople want books by celebrities? It’s actually a brand/buy issue. If I give them a book by, say, Jimmy Fallon, the brand for the book is already established and successful in the marketplace. When they start contacting book buyers for Barnes and Noble or Wal Mart, my sales team doesn’t have to spend a lot of time explaining and cajoling those people to stock the book in their stores. The book buyers already know who Jimmy Fallon is; they know their customers know; and they know many people will go ahead and brand/buy the Fallon book sight unseen—that is, they’ll buy it simply because they’re already sold on the “Jimmy Fallon” brand name from late night TV.

So … what if you’re not a celebrity with a built-in brand name that can guarantee a certain amount of sales simply because of your popular recognition?

Unfortunately, that’s already one strike against your proposal. The fact that the overwhelming majority of authors aren’t celebrities never figures into the equation. (I know—stupid, huh?) Neither does the fact that book publishers fail more often with built-in celebrity books than they succeed with them. Nor the fact that publishers can actually make you a celebrity by publishing your book and investing marketing, publicity, and sales dollars into the promotion of it. In a publishing board meeting, those truths are irrelevant.

To the VP of Sales, either you’re a celebrity or you’re not. If you are, he’ll be happy to vote in favor of publishing your book. And if you’re not? Well, that could be the reason for your last rejection.

What You Can Do About It

1. Um…Quit Writing and Pursue a Celebrity Career?

Honestly, from a purely pragmatic perspective, this is the best advice for people who really just want to publish books without doing all that silly “writing” part. If that’s you, then go ahead and get on Survivor, become a pro athlete, win American Idol, move to Los Angeles and become a movie or TV star, pursue fame as a YouTube sensation, fly to the moon, become a superhero, go partying with Paris Hilton, whatever you can do that will get you into the ranks of the notable and well-known. You’ll never truly be an author, but hey, you’ll get published, and that’s what you want anyway, right?

Or you can…

2. Go Back to Reason for Rejection #32, and Review Strategies for Building an Author Platform

If you’re not ready to abandon writing so you can become a celebrity and get published, then start thinking seriously about ways to improve your author platform.

By its nature, an author platform extends an author brand name. If you can extend your author brand to the point where becomes a brand/buy name—a recognizable, and trusted, name that prompts people to buy—then you’ve achieved a measure of celebrity that will carry weight with both the Sales VP and Marketing VP at a publishing house. Sure, you may never be as famous as Jimmy Fallon or Paris Hilton, but that’s OK. Minor celebrity that’s translatable into brand/buy sales still makes a difference. A Sales VP won’t overlook the work you’ve done on the marketing side to build your author platform.

3. Get a Few Celebrities to Endorse Your Book

If you’re not a celebrity yourself, you can still draw on the power of celebrity that a Sales VP finds attractive. How? Get connected with a few celebs who might be willing to provide an endorsement for your book. This is, of course, easier said than done. But with celeb access through websites, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other options, it doesn’t have to be impossible.

First, DON’T stalk a celebrity, either online or in person. I mean it. Just don’t.

Next, try to connect with some of the people who are within your reach. Maybe through a friend or a friend of a friend. Maybe through a fan letter. Maybe through a note on a web blog, or through your agent or a shared editor. Maybe at a writer’s conference or through a professor at film school. You get the idea.

True, most celebrities will probably ignore you. But if you can deliver even as few as two celebrity endorsements for your next book, the Sales VP will definitely be interested—and it could be enough to tip that person’s vote in your favor.

Looking for more? Check out these links:

Reason #55: There Is No “Brandwagon” Trend You Can Latch Onto

/ Mike Nappa

A Sales Team reason for rejection

Were you around back in 1999 when that whole “Y2K Virus!” end-of-the-world nonsense dominated everything?

There were disaster novels and tech manuals and business books and more. That was a classic example of a “brandwagon”—an overarching topic of interest to a broadly-based audience, with multiple avenues for exploitation in product offerings. If your book connects to a current brandwagon, sales folks like that. If it doesn’t have a brandwagon to ride on, that doesn’t guarantee rejection…but it doesn’t help sway salespeople in your favor either.

Think about it. When the Lord of the Rings trilogy was in theatres and the Harry Potter books were selling millions, there was a sudden glut of new fantasy authors and books that crowded bookstore shelves. Some of these copycats were great (the Percy Jackson series comes to mind), others—not so much. After 9/11, any book having to do with Osama Bin Laden or terrorism in general was suddenly a must-read. Then there was The Da Vinci code, which spawned a cottage industry in Da Vinci Code response books. Then The Purpose-Driven Life took over, and suddenly everything was some kind of “driven” (I particularly liked the title for women, The Purse-Driven Life). Then the Twilight saga took over and the world was full of undead people talking about their feelings. Then…well, you get the idea.

The lesson here is finding a hot topic and latching onto it with an associated book in time enough to profit from the fad before it fades. If (as we noted in Reason for Rejection #54) you have the obvious bad luck of not being a celebrity, being able to brandwagon on an existing trend early in its development is a nice substitute. Why? Because the brandwagon fills the void left by your lack of an author brand name. Instead of celebrity, all you need is expertise or relevant association to the fad.

If, for instance, vampires are what readers are craving and you happen to be an authority on Vlad the Impaler, then your expertise might possibly be enough to cash in on the trend. Does it always work like this? No, of course not. But it does happen often enough that salespeople will definitely give a brandwagon book a second look.

I remember one time a certain book on prayer was dominating bestseller lists for an extended period of time. I was also writing a book about prayer, so I suggested to my editor that maybe we should change the title of my book to take advantage of the brandwagon effect. My publisher agreed and we were on our way.

Several months later news came out that two other publishers were also releasing books on prayer—with titles that were exactly the same as mine. And all were hitting bookstores within one month of each other. I panicked and asked to change the title of my book back to its original. Fortunately, my publisher disagreed. When the books came out, all three (mine included) hit industry bestseller lists. Brandwagon had carried the day—and that’s why salespeople are often swayed by a brandwagon appeal.

Of course, the flip side of that equation is also true. If I’ve got a Sales VP whose done homework in the market, he or she knows what kinds of trends are making money. If that Sales VP is looking to cash in on some currently popular trend, and your book doesn’t fit into any brandwagon opportunity, then that gives him or her yet another reason to reject your book. “Nobody’s interested in this stuff,” that VP will say, “what they really want are unicorns that talk about their feelings…”

Tough break, but that’s the way it happens sometimes.

What You Can Do About It

1. Be a trend-watcher.

Pop culture defines America today the way a military culture defined ancient Rome or an agrarian culture defined the South during the Civil War. In ancient Rome, everybody knew what a soldier looked like. During the Civil War, every southerner could talk comfortably about what it took to grow tobacco or cotton. And today, every American knows what happens on TV, in the movie theatres, and to some extent, with the songs that are on the radio.

So pay attention to entertainment trends. Be on the lookout for big movie releases on the horizon. Read a variety of bestseller lists to try and spot topical trends that have real staying power. Listen at your work to discover which TV shows people keep talking about. Basically, become a trend-watcher until your reach a point where you can predict the next big thing—and write a book to take advantage of the brandwagon opportunities that come with it.

2. Learn how to spot gaps.

Of course, it’s not enough simply to spot a trend and then try to pile on with another book on that topic. In order to effectively brandwagon a book, yours has to be

a) somehow associated with the trend,

and

b) completely different from anything else associated with the trend.

Yes, it’s a delicate line to tread, but if you do it well you can be very successful—and make your proposal something a sales team can’t wait to get their hands on.

So learn how to spot gaps in the trend. Find those areas that are not yet being exploited, yet still fall within the scope of the popular theme. Be creative with that, and have fun. When you find that opening that no one else has yet to see, pounce on it as fast as you can.

An example: A few years ago I was acquiring non-fiction for a religious publisher., Everyone in the office kept talking about Jack Bauer and the TV show, 24. So I contacted one of my favorite authors and said, “Hey, what can you do that stays within copyright restrictions but also takes advantage of the popularity of 24?” He came back to me with an idea for a book of short Bible studies inspired by season 1 of the TV show. No one had thought of studying the Bible by the light of the TV screen, or in the suspenseful shadow of Jack Bauer. The result? We published, and that book hit the Top 50 bestseller list for the Christian publishing industry.

3. Be more than a copycat artist.

Here’s one important caveat about trying to brandwagon your way to success: No copycats.

There’s a difference between identifying a trend, spotting a gap in the market associated with that trend, and filling it with a related, but a truly original book product. If you don’t know that difference, then don’t try to brandwagon. At no time should anyone be able to say that yours is simply a “copycat” of someone else’s work. That’s both unappealing and possibly illegal as a violation of copyright protections.

For instance, at the beginning of the 21^st century, the world already had Harry Potter. We didn’t need (or want) “Henry Powers, Wizard Boy.” But Percy Jackson, son of the Olympian god Poseidon? Well, him we couldn’t wait to meet—and the rest was history (or mythstory…or, you get the idea!). So even though you are riding the coattails of some other trend, make sure you avoid the temptation to copycat that trend. Again, it’s a fine line…but one that could mean the difference between a publishing contract and just another rejection letter to add to your growing collection.

Looking for more? Check out these links: