MONDAY MUSING: CATCHING THE EYE OF THE READER

How do you get new readers to not only discover you, but also plunk down their hard-earned money to read your stories?

You want to give them something provocative to keep them interested for longer than three seconds (according to marketing research) so they’ll consider buying the book.

I'm a very visual person. One of my pet peeves, as any who have known me the past five years will attest, is shoddy cover art. I feel strongly about it and have written articles about the importance of professional and competitive looking cover art—especially self published authors. You want your cover to catch the eye and induce the reader to pick up your book.  If one goes through all the time it takes to write a good story, have it properly edited both for story content and grammar/typos, WHY would they slap a crappy(and obvious) photoshop picture on the front and call it a cover? 

Earlier this month, Kat Sheridan shared an interview with L.B. Beckett, author of Guild of Spies. The cover art was imaginative and eye catching. It's beautiful. It doesn't scream *amateur* or self-published. Judi Fennell, Formatting 4 U, designed the cover and I asked her to share the process of such a project and the importance of cover art from a marketing standpoint. 

One of the biggest start-to-finish projects I've worked on recently was L.B. Beckett’s Guild of Spies. This story is an epic steampunk-speculative fiction-action/adventure-thriller with some romance. As you can see, it doesn't fall into any specific genre, so when it came to doing the cover, we were dealing with a wide-open frontier.

But this also allowed us to combine the genres. L.B. Beckett wanted to have an Asian influence, as that is prevalent in the story. Looking at the back cover copy, reading through some of the chapters, and my own knowledge of online marketing (finalist spots in 3 American Idol-like competitions based on vote-getting) and branding, I started looking around for a steampunk feel.

A lot of cover generation is hours of sifting through images. Now, I can do that for a client, but my time is money, or a client can do that for themselves (with direction from me toward a few websites I like to use) and save themselves some cash outlay, though giving up that much time isn't always what people want to do when they could be writing. Up to the client.

To add to the scope of this project, because the book is so long (184,000 words), the author wanted to offer the book as either a full-length novel at one price, or two shorter novels at a lower price. Oh, and we were doing a print book as well. That’s four different cover steps.

We had to look at it from both a branding viewpoint and a marketing one because we didn't want reader to feel that there were three different stories in this series. It’s one story, just delivered in different reading options. Therefore, we wanted continuity across the books, but with a noticeable difference.

I found three different backgrounds all in the same color scheme and feel, so that was one hurdle overcome. I utilized the title and author name graphics across all of the books, and took that Asian element—the phoenix—and kept it, but moved it around. We could also add the Book 1 and 2 titles in a consistent place so readers would be able to identify which book they’d already read.

We had a tag line, too, something that summed up the story:

In a country of secrets, even a spy has her limits…

I tried putting that on the cover, but with all the gears and gadgets and words, it was too much. This was a tough decision from a marketing standpoint because you want to give readers that hook. You want to give them something provocative to keep them interested for longer than three seconds so they’ll consider buying the book. At least, that’s the though process for traditional publishing. But we’re in a new business model and what’s worked in the past doesn't necessarily work now.

Branding was a bigger focus for this story. Keeping those books identifiable for the readers. So we put the tagline on the back. Now, on the digital versions you won’t see it. That is, you won’t see it on the cover. You will, however, see it in the interior. So we've got our hook and it’s included in the online description.

When it came to marketing, we made sure to include “Book 1 of 2” for the half books. We looked at price point—what would encourage a reader to buy a bigger book at a bigger price when they could “sample” the first part of the story for a lesser one? We also included excerpts to the other half of the story at the end and a link to find out where to buy that other half. So now, if a reader finishes Book 1, The Open Hand of Tem, he/she can read what happens in Book 2, The Hand of Tem Closes, and then have a link to buy the book. One stop shopping made simple.

As you can see, there’s a lot involved in getting a book to the readership. But you know what? It’s the same thing for a print book traditionally published. Discoverability has always been a hot button—how do you get new readers to not only discover you, but also plunk down their hard-earned money to read your stories? And how do you keep them coming back?

$2.99 is the price point at which authors will earn 70% royalties. A lot of authors are using that price point to start out to see what happens with sales; I’m going to ask you to consider price point carefully. If everyone is putting something up for $2.99, where’s the differentiation in the marketplace?

More and more I’m finding my clients raising their prices as a symbol of quality. I've experimented with pricing and I can honestly say that my sales have increased with the price point. 

Perception is nine/tenths of reality.

PROMOTION AND BOOKTRAILERS

My guest is a favorite of mine, Kate Laity. She's written some wonderfully entertaining stories under various names, including tales of magic, myths, and legends, as K. A. Laity. 

Branding and promotion is something of interest to authors. We talk about both quite a bit and you see resulting conversations on many blogs. Another aspect of promotion is what I call gadgets. Really, they are various promotion tools used to capture the interest of potential readers and can include everything from bookmarks to booktrailers.

Like websites, booktrailers visually solidify your brand as an author. There are professionals out there that will produce both. Many writers choose to make their own. So how does one go about creating a good, eye-catching booktrailer? How much is too much? Not enough?

Kate shares some of what she's learned in the making of booktrailers.  

Like most writers, I worry about spending too much time promoting what I write rather than simply writing it. It's the central issue of 21st century publishing: now that the whole wide world can be in publishing, how can readers find the stories they actually want to read?


So we do blogs and webpages and guest slots and give things away and run contests and now: we make book trailers. Well, some people pay to have them done which is good if 1) you have that kind of money and 2) they are actually good (ooh, have I seen some stinkers!). Most of us end up making our own with variable results (NB: I use iMovie to make mine).


I'll admit it: my first couple of trailers were not so good. Far too wordy, awkwardly connected, they are kind of painful to look at now (so, no – no links for you). Looking at movie trailers, I became more thoughtful about what a trailer needs to contain. Never mind that there seem to only be two companies that cut Hollywood trailers now: one that gives away the entire story and one that makes every movie look the same (I'm sorry that Don LaFontaine died, but the homogenization of trailer that began around his voice has continued.


But it turns out that what makes a trailer good is the same thing that makes a pitch good, especially that elusive "elevator pitch" that editors love. How to sum your story up in a short, pithy sound bite? Get the hook, find the tone, and give the essentials. First example: my trailer for Pelzmantel.


The work I had already done for the back jacket copy provided the narrative hook for the trailer. The gorgeous cover by Ruby provided the eye candy. Between the two there was enough information to let someone know what kind of book it was, yet still remained intriguing. The music gives an ambience of yearning and romance: I was lucky that my pal Paul gave me permission to use his band Reticents' song Bee-Sting Lips for the trailer. Next I threw in a couple of impressive pull quotes ("don't take my word for it!") and then ended with links to my page, my publisher and my musician.


On a slightly different tack, here's the general trailer for my works. The challenge here was a bit different and touches on the idea of "branding" which I know has been a hot topic here at Sia's too. I'd been quizzing folks at my blog on what they thought my brand was. Jokingly, I came up with "hard to spell, easy to read" which provided a kind of handhold for this trailer, which was really a showreel.


The basic task was the same: weave that message between pretty book covers with convincing pull quotes to suggest that readers really will like these books, despite the strange titles and widely varying genres. My pal Gerry Henkel supplied the Finnish kantele music, which highlights the theme of my collection Unikirja, inspired by Finnish myths and legends. My photos from Finland provided a palette of unusual images that I hoped would intrigue viewers.


I've also made a general book trailer for my pal C. Margery Kempe and one for her novel, Chastity Flame. I used royalty-free music for these trailers: many musicians are eager to have their music heard by new audiences and only ask that you link back to their sites (everybody needs promotion!). It's worth looking around for royalty-free images as well if you want to mix up the visuals and don't have art of your own.


Software makes the task a lot easier. You don't really have to be a filmmaker (although I used to make films: my blog is named after my first student film, Un Amor Peligroso or The Wombat's World), just look at some good movie trailers for models. Make trailers when you need to rest the writer part of your brain and do something else creative.


Do they help? Beats me. It’s one more tool for the PR effort, and who knows who might stumble across it on YouTube or BookBuzzr? They can be fun to do—but never forget that writing is job #1.

• Have you created a booktrailer? Feel free to share tips and experiences.
• What impact, if any, do booktrailers have on your book buying?

Pelzmantel--And Other Tales of Medieval Magic

A woman who's a fox—a kitchen maid who's a princess—and a walnut with a wardrobe!

Princess Hallgerd hides where no one will be likely to find her: working as a cook's dogsbody, lighting fires, peeling potatoes, and toting kettles. Her only friend is Nanna, her family's longtime caregiver. On the plus side, she's found out that 'Nanna' is really Carae Mná, a centuries-old Irish witch. On the minus side, they're both in hiding from the witch's oldest enemy, a mage who has taken over Hallgerd's father and her land. How can Hallgerd win back her home and Nanna her human skin?


And what about that wardrobe in the walnut?


Pelzmantel spins a tale of medieval magic where people and things are seldom what they seem to be on the surface. Infused with genuine magical lore and history, this inspired retelling of the Grimm Brothers' "Allerleirau" uncovers the seldom-glimpsed world behind the glitz: the hard work that keeps a castle running and the secrets lives of women in the Middle Ages. This edition includes three additional magical stories (one never before published) and an essay on medieval magic.  Pelzmantel Excerpt 

Buy: Amazon and Immanion Press

K. A. Laity is the author of Pelzmantel and Unikirja and a whole lot of other stories, essays and a comic called Jane Quiet with cartoonist Elena Steier. Her serial novel, The Mangrove Legacy, will come out later this fall from Tease Publishing under the "nom de plume" Kit Marlowe.