Publishing Success Isn’t Just for Nonfiction

July 12, 2010 by Atilla Vekony, Publishing Information Manager

publishing success Last month I suggested that authors shift their thinking from trying to market their book to letting the book instead market them (see “Ask not what you can do for your book”). An author and good friend, Bill Corbett, commented that most of our marketing advice seemed to be geared towards nonfiction.

In the article I used nonfiction as an example, as nonfiction is a better fit for advancing a cause or marketing yourself or your business. One might argue that fiction is purely for entertainment purposes, therefore the goal of marketing fiction is marketing the book itself, rather than marketing what the book is about.

Except it doesn’t have to be that way!

The same principles can work for fiction, too. Let me paint a picture of how it might work.

Bill’s book, Buddy… His Trials and Treasures, written under the pseudonym Will Edwinson, is a collection of sentimental short stories that involve kids growing up in 1940s, small-town America. What would it look like if the author followed the “Ask not what you can do for your book—ask what your book can do for you” principle in my previous article?

Let’s say your goal as an author is to become an authority when it comes to 1940s, small-town Americana. In order to reach that goal, you need to position yourself as an expert and use your book to achieve that. Let’s say you also maintain a blog about the topic, you have a website that aggregates other sites of similar interest, and you put together a short newsletter every month. You might even sell or resell vintage 1940s items, depending on how financial your goal may be … or just simply provide information about the era, because you enjoy doing so. You actively solicit media appearances that have something to do with 1940s Americana. Because you have a blog, a website, and a book on the topic, you’re on your way to becoming the “go-to guy” for the media and landing interviews. Remember, the goal here is not selling the book, but using the book to get the interview or appointment. The interview then will take care of selling the book.

In the above example it doesn’t matter that much whether your book is fiction or nonfiction.

What about your novel? What is it about that you could be an expert in?

This would be a great place to announce a breakthrough moment for one of our fiction authors, James D. Best. On June 15 he was a guest of the Glenn Beck Show on the Fox News Channel. Mr. Beck repeatedly mentioned the book and held it up to the camera (check out some screenshots here).

And this is an important point: the interview wasn’t about James D. Best or his book, Tempest at Dawn, at all. It was about a particular theme in the book (the Founding Fathers), which happened to coincide with the show’s interests. Mr. Best therefore had already been positioned expert enough to be interviewed about his expertise—the Continental Congress—and so he was brought on the show.

What made him an expert? The book. What did the book get him? An interview. What did the interview get him? Further credibility and authority as an expert and, not to forget, thousands of copies of his novel sold within two weeks (and counting).

Your goal shouldn’t simply be to sell your novel. That would be a gargantuan task for any author who isn’t a celebrity. Instead, your goal should be to be viewed as an expert on a topic, enough to land important interviews with influencers in the media. Naturally, an increase in book sales follows suit.

The bottom line is this: Selling your fiction book, just like a nonfiction book, will be hard unless you think of ways to make the book work for you first, and not the other way round.

Tags: marketing, interview, fiction, media
Filed Under: Marketing