Frustrated authors who have a whole file of rejection letters may well cite the literary agents and publishers who turn down work on a regular basis as the blockage.
In fact, the blockage in book publishing may well be those who stock the books, and their conservative approach. If the outlets won’t take the book what is the publisher to do? Selling online is of course an option, but it’s not for everyone – many readers still like to pick up a book, look at the cover, read the blurb, the first paragraph – get a real feel for the book before making the decision to purchase. So booksellers are still very much relevant.
A growing concern is that a book must be ‘easy to sell’ so through its cover or the sales blurb it fits neatly into a well-trodden niche. If you liked xxx, then you’ll love yyy, for example – or alternatively deliberately designing the book to look like a ‘Fifty shades of Grey’ or a ‘Twilight’ copy. Sadly, it’s all extremely reductionist and doesn’t move literature forward.
Start local
If your book doesn’t fit neatly into a sales niche and therefore hasn’t attracted an agent or publisher, one option is to start local. Approach your local bookseller, send your book, or take it along and you can demonstrate the quality of your book – show them it’s not another self-published pile of rubbish (assuming you have invested time and money in getting it designed and printed to a high quality). Who knows? Another bookseller may well take notice and if they are part of a national chain, the book could then receive much wider exposure.
Create a buzz
One of our recently published authors took this approach. It helped that his book was set locally, so this provided a ‘way in’, to get noticed with the bookseller, and he also used the local media to create some interest. We had him photographed at one of the book’s central locations – an iconic landmark which also featured on the book cover we’d designed for him – and a press release was distributed. Finding a local angle for the story to appeal to the media was quite straightforward as he included some autobiographical details in the book, including drawing on his long career in demolition.
The newspaper coverage provided the author with another weapon to take to the bookshop – given that customers may well be coming into the shop having seen the local profiles and enquiring about the book, it made sense for the bookshop to stock it. Creating a buzz around the book and getting people talking about it is halfway to encouraging the shops to stock it.
How to make your book read like a professional author’s
Trying to make your book look like a professional author's will give you a great kick-start on the path to publishing success.
Technology breathes new life into book publishing
The death of the book – and the novel in particular – has been widely predicted for some time, but in fact as new technology is embraced the opportunities for publishing are growing and breathing new life into this centuries-old form.
How’s your elevator pitch?
Can you sum up the book you've written in ten words or fewer? If not, it’s really worth having a go. Because, these days, you need to approach the promotion of your book with the same attitude as those who work hard on their ‘elevator pitch’ that is common in the film industry. They know they’ll only get one shot at it, so they need to get it right first time.
