Getting your book published by a reputable
publisher is a one in a million shot.
As a writer, you are made aware of the
heavy odds almost as soon as you even begin to dream of being one. Despite
these odds, the struggle and the failures on the way, the worm of creativity
does not let you in peace. There is something that is struggling to find an
expression and you are the chosen medium for the metamorphosis of the words to
happen. Whether you like it or not.
So frustrated you may give up, an editor’s
rejection makes you swear you will never return to writing again. But then in
the middle of the night words flow in your mind and you simply have to get up
and note down their brilliance, afraid that by morning you might forget them.
And you are back again. To hell or heaven depends on your state – whether words
flow smoothly like a car on the highway or you face an impenetrable wall and
nothing, no sensible word comes on paper, no matter what your resolve may be.
Our
Journey
We struggled with our novel: The Quest of the Sparrows for seven years.
We knew we had a gem (like every author must feel) and kept polishing it afraid
that we might die polishing it. Sometimes we used to hate the stuff we had
written and question who would read a novel on spirituality in these times when
porn sells the most. We would write, keep away but then the characters of the
novel took flesh and blood of their own and had me in their powerful grip. We
did not write them out for sure, they made us write their stories.
To begin with we created the cardboard
characters and gave them false lines and false premises. But somewhere midway
they became alive and from then on they took over. All the initial start had to
be trashed because it looked so unreal. And it broke our hearts to trash
something like 50,000 words we had accumulated over 3 years. But then we began
to enjoy these live characters and after a while the pain seemed worthwhile.
We collaborated, me and my son who is a
co-author if the book, rewrote many pages and gave it a new direction whenever
we felt inspired. Which meant more work for both of us but again it was worth
it. From writing for fame, we started writing for the world and it had to be
very, very good. I mean the legacy we left behind. One by one the insights
within the novel began to find a light of their own and that is how The Quest
of the Sparrows took its final shape.
Tasting
Success
Sending out manuscripts without hope is
what every writer learns. Because they have learned their lessons well. They
have had sent hundreds of stories to editors, waited anxiously for the postmen
(twelve years ago they were more dominant than emails) only to get a thick
return envelope with a manuscript rejection.
But the mail that we got on January 2011
was amazing. Just two lines brought the biggest happiness in our lives. Our
novel had been accepted and had been given to the editorial team for a review.
We were given the email id of the editor and waited for two months patiently.
When no news came, we contacted her, only to be told that she had been busy and
would take up the book in another 20-25 days. Meanwhile, we read scores of
articles in the internet that it was very common for books to be accepted but
not published. This seemed to be a symptom of the same disease.
The editor work finally began but once
again for another month we heard nothing. Then one day the edited pdf arrived.
There were several changes and some of them we did not feel were right. So
there was a round of arguments and counter-arguments and we had to give in when
the editor insisted. But she seemed very intelligent and insightful and that
lessened the blows.
In June 2011, the book was cleared from the
editor’s table and we heaved a mighty sigh of relief. There were quite a few
changes and the whole exercise was draining. In between, after reading the
novel so many times, we panicked. The novel did not look like our best shot and
we felt like rewriting the whole stuff, all over again. When we shared this
with the editor she laughed. She said we were reacting to what was reading
fatigue. Having gone over the stuff so many times, the text had lost its
excitement and this was typical. The good news was that only when authors could
look at their work clinically, could they remove their flaws. Her remark that
she quite liked the book had me shaking my invisible tail!
Printing
Hibernation
From the editor the book went for printing.
For a month and a half nothing happened. The book hadn’t been sent to print.
Our friends whom we had told in January itself were pestering us about the book
and some of them thought we had been joking. It was almost nine months and
nothing had begun in printing.
The
baby arrives
Then one fine day, out of the blues, 4
copies arrived by post on that rainy August day. You can’t imagine the thrill
of holding those four copies. We had tears in our eyes. Tears of gratitude. We
hugged each other. And I thanked my wife and son who had believed. It was an
awesome moment!
Very
little Publicity from the publisher: Lesson One
Apart from a tiny thumbnail description of
new releases that appeared in a prominent newspaper, we got no publicity
coverage for our book. There was no formal book launch. Nothing whatsoever. In
the book fairs that the publisher participates, all the major star publicity
space was reserved for their top writers. We were thankful to be given a small
space on the shelf.
We took it in our stride. We were grateful
to the publishers for giving us the first break. And realized we would have to
travel the difficult and unfamiliar path of marketing our book.
Lesson One: Do not expect much from the publisher.
It is enough that he has given you a break.
They have limited funds and would naturally invest them on books that are
selling (read successful authors who have made their name). For them the break
even for your book is not much, they
will achieve it for sure. But for the sales figures to really matter, you have
to do the dirty work yourself.
PR
Agencies: Lesson Two
We had made a website as we had been
instructed by friends and our editor. And now, once again the internet told us
that to be able to see any good figures in sales, we would have to push the
marketing initiatives. So we hired a PR agency, Mavecom in India. Two months
down the line, all their promises before getting us to sign the contract with
them turned out to be mere promises on paper. There was no action on ground.
Nothing worthwhile. They had promised news coverage and in its place, delivered
PR pieces on B grade online forums that made no sense. The write ups too were
extremely bad and had grammatical errors. It was a nightmare.
We showed our displeasure and concern and
were immediately pacified by more promises and a dedicated team that would
work. For two months we believed the promises and then realized these people
had conned us. They were rotten, incompetent and most important of all, unethical.
They did nothing. In fact had we not hired, we would have taken initiatives,
that we took later early on.
Lesson Two: No one can market your book as well as you
can. Don’t expect a miracle from PR agencies.
It is all about passion and passion is
something mercenaries lack completely. All they want is the moolah. A writer
writes his stories out of passion and so he should promote his work with
stories he writes out of passion.
We terminated our relationship with them.
Facebook
Page: Lesson Three and Four
We created our facebook page on our own.
When the PR efforts failed we started promoting our Facebook page. Initially we
spent a lot of money to get a few likes but with tweaks in the promotion and
targeting, we achieved big success.
Lesson Three: Banner ads on associate websites of
Google are expensive for authors and they should not be used. Targetted text
ads are more effective and a lot cheaper.
At the end of another seven to eight
months, with a spending of Rs. 3000 per month (50 USD @60 Rs to a dollar) we
got around 32,000 likes. But the books we sold were just 1000 copies.
Lesson Four: A very, very small number of facebook
likes turn into sales. They only create awareness. It requires no exercise on
the part of readers to ‘like’ a facebook page. But to buy a book is an entirely
different matter!
Earning:
Lesson Five
Our initial thoughts were that we were
investing money in PR exercise and facebook. That book sales would pay us out
in the long run. But when we realized that the gap between our earning through
a 10 per cent royalty and spends that were pouring out was increasing by wide
margins we panicked and stopped. The result was immediate. Book sales plummeted
drastically. We assumed the book to be a failure and felt heartbroken.
Belying this thought was the regular
streams of mails, facebook messages, reviews of the book, talk of friends who
had bought the book, their friends and bosses who said they found the book
amazing. Not a single person felt the book was bad. Even the ones who said it
could be better, said it was unusual. So we were faced with our financial
disappointment at one end and glowing tributes at the other.
We realized we had a message to give to the
world. And we would give it out, irrespective of the fact that the book made
money or not.
Lesson five: Your first book almost never makes money.
You still have to promote it if you love it
enough. So divert your earnings to make it sustainable. You might want to
promote it because you want your story to be read by as many people as you can
reach. Or you might want to spend to build yourself into a brand. So that if
and when you manage to publish the second book, the market knows you well
enough, or has heard about you.
Google Adwords: Lesson Six
We struck it lucky with Google Adwords.
They gave us a free trial of Rs. 3000. We applied our success of facebook to
Google Adwords but were disappointed with their system of ‘Keyword’ relevance.
It rejected all the relevant words to our book as ‘irrelevant’. Irrelevent
keywords stop showing in the searches. The result is that ads you target at
your audiences simply appear at a ridiculously low frequency. We were unable to
spend the Rs 3000 vouchers in even three months.
Lesson Six: Google Adwords might work well for
products but in our case they were useless. Their system is not geared up to
help authors,
They simply did not have a system that was
author friendly. They pitted selling books with selling mops and the two are
way different when it comes to a selling approach. Customers search for ‘Mop,’
‘Broom’ or ‘Cleaner’. But how do they search for books? In our case key words
like: ‘Spiritual Fiction’, ‘Joy’ ‘Happiness’ Peace’ ‘Motivational novel’
Inspiring Fiction’ were considered too general and therefore irrelevant. When
we sought their help, the polite and helpful staff had nothing concrete to
offer. The words they suggested were also made irrelevant by their system. So
we discarded the Google Adword strategy.
Goodreads
Adverts: Lesson Seven
We joined Goodreads as members to promote
our work and then stumbled on their targeted ads. It seemed a promising place
because this was where readers were. So despite the failure with Google Adwords
we opted for the campaign. The result is that our book shows a steady sale at
Amazon.
With Goodreads we were able to reach an
international audience! Steadily at that. We opted for a 60$ campaign and it is
still running after 4 months. We can bid higher and spend faster but we are
happy at the current rate. We have to sustain our campaign over long periods.
Lesson Seven: Goodreads is a great place to place your
ads and a very effective one!
Email
Marketing: Lesson Eight and Lesson Nine
Being a copywriter by profession, I thought
why not push our book through an email campaign. Now this has a lot of pros and
cons as emails are viewed by many as spam campaigns. But I realized that those
who would think of our attempts to reach spam would do so only if they did not
relate with the book. There was no harm in losing them. But those who needed
the ‘message’ of our book’ would only be delighted and maybe opt to order a
copy.
So we created three mails and tested them.
The result was very good and we are continuing with the email marketing effort.
Lesson Eight: Email marketing is a good option. But do
write the content of the emails yourself. Only you can do justice to the sales
pitch because you are passionate.
But with time the efficacy of the emails
declined. We thought the fault lies in our book, our content of email etc.
until we came across an expert in the field. What he told was an eye opener.
The emails are blasted through servers. The new servers are able to bypass spam
filters easily and have a high delivery rate. But as the server grows old, and
with use, it receives many ‘Spam’ flags, and therefore it is blacklisted and is
unable to deliver mails with the same efficacy. The result is a poor delivery
and open rate. And this results in poor sales for the same spends. In the
market you get new servers at a premium ie a higher per email rate. The cheaper
email rates apply for older servers or servers who have been compromised.
We saw the difference in new server’s
delivery rate and an old server’s delivery rate as substantial. The rate of
open in the first was as high as 10% and in the latter was seldom more than 1%.
Price wise too the premium servers were 3-5 times costlier and even these
premium servers decline in their efficacy over time. So decide what works best
for you before you emply.
Lesson Nine: A costlier email marketing campaign might
turn out to be cheaper because it is more efficient, results in a much higher
response rate.
Warning: You will never know whether your emails were sent through the
premium or the ordinary servers and no organization guarantees the results.
Books
on marketing: Lesson Ten.
Running short of ideas, and always looking
for new ideas, we searched for ways to marketing our book. And invariably saw
the cleverly placed books and even blogs referring to books on the subject.
Some of them had glowing tributes. And we fell for one: 1001 ways of promoting
your Novel. We spent quite a lot on this and when it arrived it was anything
but about promoting a novel. Most of the book was dedicated to pitches,
self-published books etc. But very little or nothing of concrete value was
suggested about promoting books that were published by a premium house that
neglected promoting your book because you were a wanna be in their list.
Lesson
Ten: Most of the sane advice on marketing book is available for free in the
internet. Don’t buy any book as these books cleverly rehash everything available
for free at a huge cost and false promises.
If you really feel compelled to spend money
on these books, it is because you are being sucked by their brilliant marketing
efforts. The content is almost zero.
Blogging:
Lesson Eleven
One of the sanest, bestest and surest way
of promoting your book is honest blogging. If you write from the heart about
things other than selling your books, then people want to know who you are.
They look into your profile, wish to know more about you. And then when your
profile shows you have written a book, then that might impel them to buy your
books. And I sold many to people through blogs that were honest in their
approach and tackled their problem. This is the slowest way of marketing but
the surest way of marketing yourself as an author and your work.
Lesson Eleven: The best way of novel marketing is through
Blogging!
The advantage of blogs is they become
searchable to people who are looking for the topic you are writing. And this
topic being indirectly related to your book, invariably sucks them into the
book. If it appeals to them, good luck, if not, then you still have reached
someone with your writing, which is the real aim of a writer.
Marketing
is more difficult than Writing: Lesson Twelve
As we tread on the journey of marketing our
book we realize that marketing it is immensely more difficult than writing a
book. It is because both require completely different skill sets. Writing is intuition
based but selling is more about practicality, expertise and knowledge gleamed
over the internet.
Lesson Twelve: The hardest part just begins after your
book is published!
The
Threshold before Exponential Results: Lesson Thirteen
Despite all these hardships, we firmly
believe that for everything there is a threshold involved. Before getting into
the grove of writing lucidly and fluidly, we as authors had to struggle with
the craft and getting into our unique style. The same is true about learning a
foreign language, driving a car, bringing up children and mastering our jobs.
In the beginning, a huge push is required. But then things ease out and lesser
and lesser effort is required for better and better success.
Lesson Thirteen: Never give up. You might just be
reaching the threshold of amazing success.
Three years after your book is published,
should be the minimum period you must invest in promoting your book. Your
creative work that you gave birth to with so much of hardship and struggle,
deserves at least this respect.
Lesson
Fourteen, Fifteen and more…
We have yet to reach there. And when we do,
we will share our experiences!
So far we have sold nearly 1850 copies of
our book. It is not a spectacular success, nor an abysmal failure. It is
moderate success. And we have only lost money in selling it, not made any.
Yet are we happy?
We are delighted and continue with our
efforts because we feel we owe it to our book! Besides success has a way of
happening on its own terms and timing. We wait for that moment.
What was your journey like? Please do share
it here. And any tips for successful marketing of novels are welcome.
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