Meet the HAWKER AUTHOR
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Writing The Novel Is The
Easy Part, Say Writers Who Are Forced To Turn Salespeople To Sell In A
Saturated Market
It's been a long and
disillusion ing trip down from literature's ivory tower to
the transactional bowels of the marketplace, but authors
today have girded their loins, picked up a megaphone and started calling
out their wares. In times when a writer is born every hour, authors can
ill afford affectations of aloofness; they must be wily marketers,
hawking their books with the holy zeal of Jehovah's Witnesses.
“Writing the book is the easiest part,“ declares Itisha Peerbhoy, whose
comedic romance, `Half Love Half Arranged' was out last September,
published by Penguin. “Writers are thought of as reclusive, but once the
book is out, you've got to go out, put on the makeup, network and charm
the audience. It's a real effort.“
One of the things the novice did was hire theatre actors to impersonate three characters from the book, and had them perform stand-up sketches at her book launch.
Being a book about the hardships of a 30-something unmarried woman trying to find a match, Peerbhoy partnered with singles clubs, where she created content for them via blogs and even participated in `meetthe-author' sessions. “ A lot of brands like to tie up with authors for alternate content,“ Peerbhoy, a career marketing consultant, points out.Visibility is key , which is why Peerbhoy puts out a certain number of tweets and FB posts everyday , not necessarily about the book itself but funny observations or anecdotes.“My belief about social media is if you really want to build a community of readers, you can't always flog your book. I link to jokes and articles I like, write about writers I meet and books I enjoy .“ She says she has 740 social media followers, and all her Likes are organic, not purchased.She even snuck into an author's lounge at a litfest (though not on the official roster) and “talked to whoever made eye contact“ with her. In casting her net wide and locating the book in relevant streams of public conversation, Peerbhoy hopes to bet ter her sales and enter her second print run, having already sold 3,500 copies by December.
The irony is first-time authors without clout or what publishers consider a supernova of a novel, have to single-handedly build their own markets, and only when their efforts pay off in sales and repeat print runs, do publishers raise the marketing stakes. When crime writer Ravi Subramanian's Bitcoin thriller and seventh book, `God Is a Gamer' debuted, Penguin developed a Facebook app which credited people with `lit-coins' when they promoted the book by sharing or Liking posts about it, or pre-ordering the book. People who got the most `litcoins' prior to publication won special merchandise.
Penguin also organized for its other bestselling author, Ravinder Singh, a flashmob around campuses and the metro in Delhi to promote his latest romance, `Your Dreams Are Mine Now'. “Every campaign must be tailored to the individual book and make sure that we reach its readers in the most effective way possible,“ says Caroline Newbury , VP Marketing and Corporate Communications, Random House India. “For some books that may be an online-centric campaign, for others it may be more of a traditional marketing approach.But in almost all cases it is a blend which enables us to make the largest possible outreach. Until very recently book buyers in India used to buy their books in physical bookstores, or as physical copies. That often produced a certain type of campaign with a focus on retailer promotion and traditional media. Now with online retailers and ebooks playing a growing part, our marketing also has to adapt to take on more digital.“
Having said that she maintains every single book by Penguin Random House is allocated its own publicist and is given a campaign that seeks to take that book most effectively to its readers, even if some books don't get the same campaigns as others because they're incompatible with the title.
Even without a publisher's staged promotion, writers are learning from e-tutorials (`101 book marketing ideas'), or they outsource the marketing to agencies like Wordit Content Design & Editing Services, whose website BecomeShakespeare.com catalogues different marketing packages to choose from: a social media package at `10,000 a month; video trailers at `20,000; or a comprehensive marketing suite at `60,000, which covers media reviews, consumer reviews, author website, and so on.
But hiring a marketing specialist at one's own expense could put the writer out of pocket especially when a writer barely gets 10% to 15 % of MRP or cover price, protests Sabita Radhakrishna, an author who's written across genres. “What the use of writing if you can't market the book?“ she asks exasperatedly . Radhakrishna, whose social media presence is as good as absent, acknowledges the need to make a noise around the book today . “When my cookbook ` Aharam', on Tamil cuisine, launched in 1999, it went into several reprints on the strength of its reviews. Today , I'll have to host a cooking demo, or something on those lines to garner sales,“ says Radhakrishna, whose fourth cookbook ` Annapurna' (on Tamil cultural cuisines) is due to be published by Roli Books next month. “I have, however, considered hiring a marketing expert for a month to help.“
It's not only authors, but even Tamil publishers are keen on ramping up their marketing efforts. Kannan Sundaram, publisher at Kalachuvadu Publications, says publishers like himself have limited resources to flog a book. “We don't print more than 500 books of a new author, and have a thin budget for marketing beyond the routine book launch, reviews, book fairs, and Facebook,“ says Sundaram, “But in a couple of years, I hope to assign two to three people to develop new marketing ideas.“ The problem that plagues Tamil Nadu, he believes, is not want of imaginative marketing, but the fact that Tamil media reserves little space for publishing, drawing scant attention to any offline effort. “It's why many writers today are learning to promote themselves on social media and via blogs,“ the publisher claims, “While some cleverly create a controversy around their books.“
One of the things the novice did was hire theatre actors to impersonate three characters from the book, and had them perform stand-up sketches at her book launch.
Being a book about the hardships of a 30-something unmarried woman trying to find a match, Peerbhoy partnered with singles clubs, where she created content for them via blogs and even participated in `meetthe-author' sessions. “ A lot of brands like to tie up with authors for alternate content,“ Peerbhoy, a career marketing consultant, points out.Visibility is key , which is why Peerbhoy puts out a certain number of tweets and FB posts everyday , not necessarily about the book itself but funny observations or anecdotes.“My belief about social media is if you really want to build a community of readers, you can't always flog your book. I link to jokes and articles I like, write about writers I meet and books I enjoy .“ She says she has 740 social media followers, and all her Likes are organic, not purchased.She even snuck into an author's lounge at a litfest (though not on the official roster) and “talked to whoever made eye contact“ with her. In casting her net wide and locating the book in relevant streams of public conversation, Peerbhoy hopes to bet ter her sales and enter her second print run, having already sold 3,500 copies by December.
The irony is first-time authors without clout or what publishers consider a supernova of a novel, have to single-handedly build their own markets, and only when their efforts pay off in sales and repeat print runs, do publishers raise the marketing stakes. When crime writer Ravi Subramanian's Bitcoin thriller and seventh book, `God Is a Gamer' debuted, Penguin developed a Facebook app which credited people with `lit-coins' when they promoted the book by sharing or Liking posts about it, or pre-ordering the book. People who got the most `litcoins' prior to publication won special merchandise.
Penguin also organized for its other bestselling author, Ravinder Singh, a flashmob around campuses and the metro in Delhi to promote his latest romance, `Your Dreams Are Mine Now'. “Every campaign must be tailored to the individual book and make sure that we reach its readers in the most effective way possible,“ says Caroline Newbury , VP Marketing and Corporate Communications, Random House India. “For some books that may be an online-centric campaign, for others it may be more of a traditional marketing approach.But in almost all cases it is a blend which enables us to make the largest possible outreach. Until very recently book buyers in India used to buy their books in physical bookstores, or as physical copies. That often produced a certain type of campaign with a focus on retailer promotion and traditional media. Now with online retailers and ebooks playing a growing part, our marketing also has to adapt to take on more digital.“
Having said that she maintains every single book by Penguin Random House is allocated its own publicist and is given a campaign that seeks to take that book most effectively to its readers, even if some books don't get the same campaigns as others because they're incompatible with the title.
Even without a publisher's staged promotion, writers are learning from e-tutorials (`101 book marketing ideas'), or they outsource the marketing to agencies like Wordit Content Design & Editing Services, whose website BecomeShakespeare.com catalogues different marketing packages to choose from: a social media package at `10,000 a month; video trailers at `20,000; or a comprehensive marketing suite at `60,000, which covers media reviews, consumer reviews, author website, and so on.
But hiring a marketing specialist at one's own expense could put the writer out of pocket especially when a writer barely gets 10% to 15 % of MRP or cover price, protests Sabita Radhakrishna, an author who's written across genres. “What the use of writing if you can't market the book?“ she asks exasperatedly . Radhakrishna, whose social media presence is as good as absent, acknowledges the need to make a noise around the book today . “When my cookbook ` Aharam', on Tamil cuisine, launched in 1999, it went into several reprints on the strength of its reviews. Today , I'll have to host a cooking demo, or something on those lines to garner sales,“ says Radhakrishna, whose fourth cookbook ` Annapurna' (on Tamil cultural cuisines) is due to be published by Roli Books next month. “I have, however, considered hiring a marketing expert for a month to help.“
It's not only authors, but even Tamil publishers are keen on ramping up their marketing efforts. Kannan Sundaram, publisher at Kalachuvadu Publications, says publishers like himself have limited resources to flog a book. “We don't print more than 500 books of a new author, and have a thin budget for marketing beyond the routine book launch, reviews, book fairs, and Facebook,“ says Sundaram, “But in a couple of years, I hope to assign two to three people to develop new marketing ideas.“ The problem that plagues Tamil Nadu, he believes, is not want of imaginative marketing, but the fact that Tamil media reserves little space for publishing, drawing scant attention to any offline effort. “It's why many writers today are learning to promote themselves on social media and via blogs,“ the publisher claims, “While some cleverly create a controversy around their books.“
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