This is the third part of my four part series entitled “Five Ways Publishers Can Increase Sales, Save Money, and Promote Publicity”. For those interested in viewing Part I (Click Here) and Part II (Click Here).

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 devout 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.

Start a Newsletter

With sounding as if I’m favouring 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 only makes sense. If you’re sending 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.

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 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 authors works are 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.

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 what 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’.

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

By now this strategy is sort of self-expanatory 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 get on board with the latest social media. However, in this instance if you want to not only spread your network, increase your audience, and reach anyone between the ages of 10-35 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 up and best of all it’s free.

Paul Melko’s Singularity’s Ring won the 2009 Compton Crook Award for the best SF/fantasy first novel from the previous year, which includes a plaque and a $1,000 cash prize. The award will be presented May 22, 2009 at Balticon, and is sponsored by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.

According to the inside jacket of “Singularity’s Ring”: “Apollo Papadopulos is in training to become the captain of the starship Consensus. Apollo is unique in that he/she/it is not an individual at all, but five separate teenagers that form a whole new entity. Strom, Meda, Quant, Manuel, Moira are a pod, as these kinds of personalities are called, genetically engineered to work and think as one and to be able to communicate non-verbally. As a rare quintet, much relies on the successful training of Apollo. But, as the pod’s training progresses and more and more potentially lethal accidents occur, the pod members become fugitives on Earth, struggling just to survive.”

The Compton Crook Award is presented to the best first novel of the year in the field of Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror by the members of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, Inc, at their annual Baltimore-area science fiction convention, Balticon, held on Memorial Day weekend in the Baltimore, Maryland area each year. Awards have been presented since 1983. The award is also known as the Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award.

Click Here to View the Works of Cory Doctorow on Ebay
Click Here to View the Works of Cory Doctorow at Amazon

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD!

I’ve read everything Cory Doctorow has written since his debut novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom back in 2003. I’ve always felt that he was a man of ideas rather than a author focused on character, plot, or setting. His novels are light, sparse, and are laden with techo-jargon and pop-culture references, whether its talking dishwashers and mountains is Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town or communities of people living by time zones in Eastern Standard Tribe. I’ve also resounded the fact his short stories are much stronger than his novels, Overclocked, for example, is just a fantastic collection to read. However, having just finished his newest novel Little Brother, I can honestly say that not only is this Doctorow’s best novel to date, but also places character at the forefront without sacrificing Doctorow’s trademark style, wit, or voice.

Little Brother takes place in San Francisco one day when terrorists decide to blow up the Bay Bridge. Unfortunately this is the exact time Marcus Yallow, a seventeen-year-old high school student, decides to play hooky where is quickly detained as a terrorist and shipped to Alcatraz by Department of Homeland Security. After spending five days under lock and key Marcus is released to a very different San Francisco, one where surveillance cameras are everywhere, the Internet is monitored by DHS, and a city is populated by a public willing to exchange their civil liberties for a ‘safer’ America.

Marcus’s goal becomes clear, hacking, culture jamming, anything to get the DHS out of San Francisco once and for all. And the journey to do so isn’t glossed-over or sugar-coated at all in this novel. For those who shied away from this novel by the young-adult label don’t get fooled. This is text that is heavy-handed but realistic, and envisions an all-too plausible scenario that could happen in today’s American political climate.

Now since I’m not a hacker or a programmer, and not so techno-savvy to boot, I tend to take the technology Marcus uses in this novel more or less at face value. One thing that becomes clear in this book is the voice of the protagonist. It is sincere, genuine, unique, and made me realize how many science fiction novels are lacking a certain voice or style these days. While it would be so easy to write a teenage character based solely on angst and sarcasm, Doctorow flips the switch by crafting a voice that is more based on isolation, loneliness, and ever-encroaching paranoia. However, he does this from the outside in, as the DHS’s presence becomes more invasive into the private lives of its characters.

This book is a must-read for anyone young or old. This is easily Cory’s strongest novel to date. He puts character at the forefront and the reader becomes a part of Marcus’s journey against a more-or-less faceless government bureaucracy and one where ‘Little Brother’, a pastiche of sorts to Orwell’s ‘1984’, isn’t used lightly.

Here is part two of my four part series entitled “Five Ways Publishers Can Increase Sales, Save Money, and Promote Publicity”. For those that haven’t read part one (Click Here) otherwise check out the list below.

1) 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 them rather than giving them the image of a gatekeeper whose sole responsibility is to reject manuscripts. That’s not the idea! For me, reading them helps me better understand not only what a particular editor is looking for but also 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.

2) 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 45,000 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 technology.

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 and meida 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”.

3) 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 “Zombie Survival Guide” it would probably be best to avoid these books altogether.

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.

4) 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. This can’t be seen more poignantly than on a publisher’s website. 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 offer the same package to all of your authors across your author list. If an author chooses not to have a photo up, for example, 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 so 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 contents 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?

5) 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 enlarge dtheir 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.