15 Ways Science Fiction Publishers Can Increase Sales, Save Money, and Promote Publicity

In these troubled times publishers can use every advantage to make them one step ahead of their competition. However, with a stressful ever-increasing workload sometimes it’s easy to become jaded into what your readers think about your imprint when you work from the inside of the publishing industry. Fortunately, I’m in the unique position of being outside the book publishing industry, but educated enough in publishing to offer a valid opinion. So here are 15 ways science fiction publishers can increase sales, save money, and promote publicity. With any luck spark some new ideas among science fiction and fantasy publishers.

1) Prepare Publicity Kits for First-Time Authors

Publishing can be daunting, not just as an aspiring author hoping to get published but also the publishing industry itself. If you’re a first-time author whose literary work is about to be published and you have little to no knowledge of how the industry operates or the process a book goes through from start to finish to get published, you will likely be marred by feelings of confusion, anxiety, and maybe even dread.

Authors are not public relations experts. Many times they are shy, introverted, solitary creatures (myself included) who have to have their hands held while on book tours. As you no doubt already know, the publicity budgets for first-time authors is relatively low in the place of authors who already have a media platform to work with. As a result, the first time author is largely his or her own publicity agent. Bottom line, if your clients/authors don’t know what the hell they’re doing in terms of publicity, you (the publisher) are going to lose sales. It’s that simple.

The solution, create a publicity guide or manual to give to your authors as a kind of stepping stone to promote their works. “What is in this guide?” you might ask. Anything you want: websites, resources, how to design a media kit, brochures, newsgroups, how to book an interview, the process of book publishing, trade publishing magazines, basically a one-stop shop for any new authors joining your ranks.

2) Forget Review Copies, Use Kindle

I read an interesting post a few weeks ago from someone in the book publishing industry who claimed that it was in fact cheaper for publishers to purchase a Kindle for their cornerstone reviewers (i.e. associate trade press, influential bloggers/websites, etc.) and simply offer them an electronic version of the book to review instead of its printed counterpart. Now these numbers would have to be viewed by someone with more authority in the publishing industry than myself to make sure the numbers are sound, but here are a few things that are true.

While a Kindle may costs US$400-500 as an initial purchase, it is a fixed cost that doesn’t have to be reinstated until the device has to be replaced. And how much do review copies (ARCs, bound galleys, costs of shipping, etc.) actually cost in terms of real dollars. While I will most likely prefer a tangible copy to an electronic one, wouldn’t it make sense to give the reviewer who has a stack of books on his/her desk the option to go electronic? While they may in the end choose to go for the book, most people won’t refuse a free gift, much less a Kindle. They’re also probably likely to review your books as a sign of gratitude.

3) Move Away From a Brand and Towards a Community

If you were to go to Tor.com for the first time, you’d never suspect it was a book publisher. At best you might think it’s a publisher’s blog but it would definitely take some digging before you realized that this was in fact the largest book publisher of science fiction and fantasy in North America. Let me make something clear, when I say move towards a community I don’t mean to simply add Facebook, Twitter, and Delicious icons to your website or to have a newsletter—these should be givens already.

If you were to go to the major science fiction imprints (i.e. Roc, Ace, Bantam Spectra, Dell, etc.) they would appear very similar—if not identical—to the website of the publishing house that represents it. Now once again I’m singling out Tor.com because of it’s boldness to take a chance on something different. It’s a website for the well-informed (and well-read) science fiction aficionados, with blog posts as well as original stories from its community of authors that are informative, enjoyable, and regularly updated.

Tor.com gives more than it takes and has become a vehicle to discuss issues of science fiction, literature, and the publishing industry in general. In addition to creating a loyal fanbase where people repeatedly visit on a daily basis, it has also become a unique platform for Tor to market its own works without coming off as preachy or desperate. Many book publisher websites give off the impression that publishing is this closed off industry in big Ivory Towers, but Tor’s website fosters an atmosphere of transparency, acceptance, and most importantly, inclusion, and hopefully some science-fiction publishers will soon follow suit.

4) Don’t Just Offer All of your Authors under One Publisher Username (Twitter)

While I applaud science fiction and fantasy houses for creating accounts on Twitter many are forgetting one simple fact, “We don’t read every author across your imprint!” Say, for example, that I’m a fan of Robert J. Sawyer (which I am) and only read Robert J. Sawyer under the Tor/Forge imprint line, then why would I join a group of thirty or more authors and receive tweets from authors I hadn’t even heard of, let alone like. Take note: if you’re going to cluster all of your authors into one Twitter username, make sure you highlight authors with individual accounts as well close by. By doing this, not only does it save your readers the hassle but each author’s individual account also acts as a yardstick to gauge which authors are more popular across your imprint.

5) Consider Freelancing Your Artwork

They say you should never judge a book by its cover. This is true. However, if you don’t have a firm grounding in literature and what’s out there on the market, chances are all you’re going to care about is the artwork. Case in point is the cover to the first edition hardcover for Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin released by Tor a few years ago. Personally I think this is one of the worst covers to be released by a science fiction publishing house.

It’s far too dark, ugly and quite frankly looks like it was put together by a junior high school student for an art school project. It’s hard to believe I was so close to not reading this book, because not only did it win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2007, it was also one of the best science fiction novels I’ve ever read period.

Now compare this to another classic like Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash which in my opinion is one of the best crafted covers in science fiction literature, no doubt helping push sales over the last fifteen years, despite some of the literary shortcomings of Stephenson’s novel.

6) Offer More Contest / Giveaways!

It’s true, people like free stuff, especially books, and readers tend to take note of a publishing house or book being promoted that would otherwise go unnoticed. I myself enter 100 contests a day, and while I keep up-to-date with a lot of things related to books, authors, events, and the publishing industry at large, much of the general public does not.

It’s very easy to stand out even among other contests. How? Offer a Kindle, or if you’re dealing with Canada, a Sony Reader (still don’t know why we can’t get them here) in lieu of books. What’s the advantage here? Let’s say you hold a contest and your prize is a fantasy novel, it’s very likely that the only people that will enter the contest are devouted fantasy readers. This pigeonholing will ultimately lead to a loss of publicity, however, appeal to every reader and you’re in like Flint. It’s also a good idea to offer free ebooks on sites like Suvudu as well.

7) Start a Newsletter

Without sounding as if I’m favoring one particular author, one of the reasons why I’m such a huge fan of Robert J. Sawyer is the way he markets himself. He’s a perfect balance between fantastic storytelling and author branding (but his books are fantastic nonetheless). One of the ways he does this is with a quarterly newsletter and I got to tell you, getting a newsletter every couple of months automatically sent to my inbox outlining some of the author’s accomplishment, events, and musings saves me the time of having to go online to search for it myself.

Now obviously a lot of publishers have done this already, and some might be rolling their eyes at this post saying stuff like, “Well, we have an RSS feed” or “We have Twitter account”. But those of us too lazy to subscribe or prefer our information given to us clumped together at successive intervals starting a newsletter only makes sense. If you’re a publisher sending out a newsletter to agents, publicists, and media outlets already, why not make some of that information available to the public as well. Email is not dead. It’s a solid medium to get the word out and provides another metric for analyzing your consumer base.

8 ) Offer Books for Free Under a Creative Commons License

Okay, I can already tell that a lot of you are cringing at this suggestion. You probably think I’m one of those Gen-Yers with a “Let’s Give Everything Away for Free” mentality. And maybe I am, but there are some sound reasons for doing so. Cory Doctorow and Peter Watts (both Canadian!) are just two authors that have claimed that offering their books online for free has only increased their sales counts.

Now as a publisher whose ultimate goal is to make money, I completely sympathize with your position. I understand most will probably not want to put a link towards a free downloadable PDF. But at the very least (for the love of God!) place a creative commons symbol notifying if your author’s works are already under a creative commons license and let the readers judge whether or not they want to download their works. The fact is if people like what they see online many will in fact go out and purchase the hard copy at the bookstore. It’s easy word-of-mouth advertising and will likely do more good than harm.

9) Branch into Other Subgenres

As near as I can tell there are approximately 10-12 different subgenres within science fiction. Cyberpunk, hard science fiction, alternate history, apocalyptic – these are some of the categories that make up the genre. Fantasy does this as well — epic fantasy, high fantasy, erotic fantasy, urban fantasy. Yet sometimes I find that some big name imprint publishers are very rigid and uncompromising when it comes to the subject matter across their entire line of books.

The last thing a publisher wants is to be pigeonholed into one subgenre by its audience or readers. Science fiction has always been a genre of inclusivity, not the other way around. If you feel that your imprint branding is seen as rigid it might be time to consider taking on one or two new authors whose works tend to drift along the edges as to what you consider ‘normal’. Baen Books recently did this by publising a few fantasy titles for a book publisher that has traditionally only published military science fiction with some space opera elements. A good move in my opinion.

10) Use Twitter (if you’re not doing so already)

By now this strategy is sort of self-explanatory and being utilized across many markets but there will always be some publishers that want to clinch to the traditional avenues for publicity and media rather than to get on board with the latest in social media. However, in this instance if you want to not only spread your network, increase your audience, and reach anyone  then having an account on Twitter is absolutely crucial in today’s publishing market. More people are reading ebooks, less people are reading period. It takes literally five minutes to set it up and best of all it’s free. For more information as to why social media is important click here to read, “What the Fuck is Social Media?”

11) Highlight Editors Blogs

If there’s something I love more than reading the blogs of my favorite science fiction authors, it’s reading the blogs of their editors. Editors are largely the face of a publishing house, working hard behind the scenes to bring you the literature on the market today. They’re also very knowledgeable and at times candid about what goes on in their daily lives.

But they’re also interesting to read. Reading an editor’s blog humanizes editors rather than giving them the image of a gatekeeper whose sole responsibility it is to reject manuscripts. That’s not the idea! For me, reading editors blogs helps me to better understand not only what a particular editor is looking for but also how to gain an intimate first-hand knowledge of the publishing industry that you can’t get from reading books on publishing. If you don’t already highlight an editor’s blog on your publishing website, DO SO IMMEDIATELY! It will easily increase traffic to your publishing house, and with any luck increase sales as well.

12) Discover New Authors through the Blogosphere

Now this suggestion is not directed to one publishing house, and will likely not increase sales in the traditional sense but it always makes me hopeful. John Scalzi is a science fiction writer that for the past ten years has owned and operated his Whatever blog, which to date gets an estimated 50,000 viewers a day. While back in 2001 Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden found some of Scalzi’s work and offered him a book contract that would become his first novel Old Man’s War. Now Scalzi’s example is very rare in the publishing industry and Scalzi deserves much credit for sticking with his blog for a decade as well as being an early adopter of blogging platforms.

Nevertheless, it makes you think of how the traditional routes for getting published have changed and just how hard it is for aspiring writers to get published today. But if you’re an editor consider some of the advantages to finding an author through their blog rather than through a literary agent. They’re obviously dedicated if they have a completed novel available (with possibly years of writing experience on their blogs). It’s also likely they have some kind of audience alrady and media platform to work from.

This is why I blog? While writing has always remained a passion of mine I feel that it is important to find other avenues of trying to get published other than simply sending out query letters. And for all of those literary agents and editors out there click here to view my novel “Second Death”.

13) Avoid Trends

Now at first this might sound counter-productive, and it probably is. A lot of publishers think they can piggyback on the success of other books when in fact this might be doing more harm than good in the long run. Two obvious trends today: vampires and zombies. Now unless you’ve got a completely original manuscript with a fresh take with these tropes, such as Mario Acevedo’s The Nymphos of Rocky Flats or Max Brook’s The Zombie Survival Guide it would probably be best to avoid trends.

Why? Well, for starters it usually takes a year or two to get a book from an editor’s desk to the bookshelves anyway, right? Is your trend going to be as popular a year or two from now as it is today? Similarly, if other publishers are already following these trends, the best thing you can probably due is back off and pool your resources for a different promising project. Readers are very savvy. If they see your publishing house is trying push more copies of a cookie-cutter vampire book (largely on the heels the Twilight series) they’re going to view your company’s image as clichéd, unoriginal, and will likely avoid your books across your entire imprint.

14) Put All of Your Authors on a Level Playing Field

Now I have really no empirical evidence to back this one up, if anything this rule relies solely on instinct rather than fact. In my opinion no two authors are created equal, a publisher’s website is proof of this. Granted some authors have been around for decades, have a strong devoted fan base, and sell in the thousands but should they be offered any more opportunity than any other writer on your current client list? Absolutely not.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying to pull down your most popular authors or books off the front homepage. What I’m saying is that if you offer an author profile, a photo, a bio, a bibliography, and sample chapters for one author, it would be a good idea to extend the same package to all of your authors across your list. If an author chooses not to have a photo up, say “no photo at the author’s request”. If some authors get upset over this, tell them to create their own website (if they haven’t done one already) and give them complete control to do whatever they wish with it.

Doing this gives your website a more consistent feel. If your readers see one author is given ten pages of content with all the bells and whistles to go along with it while another author just starting out is given the bare minimum, what does that say about your publishing line?

15) Make Your Social Media More Visible

I think it’s great at the number of book publishing websites that have embraced the various forms of social media out there that exist (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, etc.). What I hate is having to go to great lengths to locate the appropriate icons on the homepage in order to join or subscribe to these social mediums. This is the result of two things, either (1) the icons are too small or (2) the icons are not located in plain sight. This is the easiest thing a publisher’s website can change to increase their subscriber base. SF Signal is probably one of the best examples of this (Click Here to View). In recent months, the website’s owner enlarged their icons and placed them on the upper-left corner of the site, making it the first thing you see when you access the site, and over the last few weeks I’ve noticed the number of subscribers increase substantially as a result.