One way to attract and cultivate a loyal audience is by sharing compelling content. The goal is to build a relationship that not only leads to book sales but creates fans that stay with you for the long-term. Content marketing should ideally begin before the launch of your book and continue for as long as you want to grow your author business. This is how influencers are born-by marketing content that serves their audiences.
Links of the week January 22 2024 (04)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
29 January 2024
You've probably heard the advice to leverage social media, blogging, podcasting, and other content marketing strategies as a tool for growing your author business. However, when you do this without getting clear about the needs, challenges, and interests of your target audience, these efforts usually fall flat.
Let's take for example Joe Schmoe (not a real person) who authored a book and blogs about backyard farming. Joe is passionate about his topic. He converted his modest backyard into a thriving source of food for his family, and he aims to help others do the same. Despite his passion and enthusiasm, his audience isn't growing.
The saying goes ‘everyone has a book in them', and these days it really is possible to get published as there are multiple routes to seeing your book in the shops.
The traditional way to get your book published is via a literary agent like myself, who'll endeavour to find you a publisher. Then there's the self-publishing route, which is becoming increasingly popular and gives you ultimate control of your publishing journey. If you self-publish on Amazon, eBook sales can also be far greater than sales of a physical book and financially very lucrative.
Reading is such a subjective business and the digital marketplace means that the traditional gatekeepers are no longer blocking the way to publication. There's a wealth of information online and in publications such as The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, an excellent source of literary agents you can approach and what genres they represent, updated each year.
If you're reading this, you may be in the process of writing a book or you have written a book and are trying to get published. Agents prefer writers to have completed a manuscript before they consider representation, but initially we're only assessing the first three chapters and a pitch, so these need to give us a good sense of your story. If you've written a first draft and have read it out loud without wanting to skim any passages(!) then this is the time to start sending it out to agents, but research them carefully.
Whether you're running for a political office, growing a nonprofit, sharing your experience or book with others, educating others on how to successfully do something, or being the light at the end of someone's tunnel, you're going to succeed by doing podcast interviews. Your reach is no longer relegated to just those who follow you on social media or find you on LinkedIn. You will now have the ability to reach people all around the world, and not only that, but your interview will be available for the eternity of time ... at least while the internet is still around!
But before you pitch podcasts, I strongly encourage you to create a media kit. I use the term "media kit," but others might refer to it as a "press kit," a "one-page promotional kit," your "pitch sheet," or a "one sheet." Regardless of the name, it's a one-page document that ideally matches the look and feel of your brand. Its purpose is to offer everything a host needs to know about you that will ultimately make the host eager to interview you. It includes not only your bio and website but links to your social media platforms, your speaking topics, your headshot, your logo, and where you've already been featured. Your media kit is a one-stop shop.
Spotify has paid audiobook publishers "tens of millions" since launching audiobooks in premium in the UK, Australia and the US last year, with Britney Spears' memoir The Woman in Me (Gallery UK) the most listened to on the platform.
A spokesperson for the Swedish tech giant said users have listened to more than 90,000 individual titles from the platform's catalogue of more than 200,000 audiobooks, and that the catalogue continues to grow month after month.
Spotify said: "It's early days, but we're incredibly excited about what we're seeing since launching Audiobooks in Premium in the UK, Australia and the US three months ago. The results show that the introduction of audiobooks is driving a meaningful incremental revenue stream for the publishing community. We feel good about future growth and will keep working closely with authors, agents and publishers to share learnings as we get further along in this journey together."
It stressed the data it has shared "underscores our commitment to incrementally growing the pie for authors and the publishing industry".
All of the major publishers entered into new limited streaming deals with Spotify last October, including Penguin Random House, which had previously been the biggest and most vociferously anti-subscription. Although publishers broadly welcomed the move, some agents and authors expressed concern about the lack of detail released about the deals and how they may affect author income.
In Britain, Japanese novels in English translation are experiencing a boom in popularity among a new generation, with word-of-mouth on social media driving book sales.
Trends on social media platforms such as TikTok - where members of the "BookTok" community recommend and theorize about their favorite books, genres and authors - have inspired young Britons to seek out more works translated from other languages.
Yet among these, novels reflecting elements of Japanese society and culture in particular have become hits with this younger demographic.
In 1973, a paperback thriller was published by Pyramid Press, written by an aspiring writer from Southern California. The book opened with an antiquated World War I German Albatross biplane strafing Brady Air Force Base on the Greek island of Thásos, destroying its fleet of F-105 jet fighters. The attack is disrupted by the arrival of a lumbering PBY Catalina flying boat, whose pilot engages in an unlikely dogfight with the Albatross and somehow prevails. The Mediterranean Caper was the debut novel by my father Clive Cussler, and introduced the indomitable character of Dirk Pitt at the controls of the Catalina, along with his fictional employer, the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA).
Coveted by collectors today, Pyramid published just 5,000 copies of The Mediterranean Caper. Despite its limited release, the book was nominated as the Best Original Paperback by the Mystery Writers of America. Although Clive didn't win the award, the recognition helped launch his storied career as an action-adventure writer.
I was twelve years old when the book was published, and, like the rest of my family, I was thrilled to see a book with his name on the cover. Even more exciting was the fact that Clive had named the main protagonist in the story after ME! (I was less enamored with the inclusion of Pitt's romantic interest, a woman named Teri, named for my older sister).
As it does for many, my obsession with Agatha Christie started young. I was ten or so when I picked up my first Christie, fresh off a self-prescribed course of Greek mythology. Had someone asked me then to explain why reading a murder mystery from the heart of the twentieth century felt like a natural transition from the world of gods and monsters, I'd have been at a loss. Now, I can recognize that Christie has the rare ability to write "large," making use of stock characters who interact in grownup ways amid life-or-death stakes-and rarer still, to do so by way of accessible prose. I can't be sure, but I think it's this "adult fairytale"-like quality that first drew me to Christie's work.
But what kept me going? And going? And going? I never stopped reading Christie, and seven years ago, I formalized my obsession by way of a podcast I co-hosted with my good friend, Catherine Brobeck. (Tragically, Catherine passed away five years into our project, which I've continued on my own.) At the heart of the All About Agatha podcast is a mystery independent of the fictional intrigue Christie masterminded in 66 full-length novels, over 150 short stories, and more than two dozen plays. It doesn't even have to do with her infamous eleven-day disappearance in 1926. I contend that Agatha Christie's most enduring mystery is concerned with endurance itself-specifically, the unique endurance of her work among her contemporaries, those who wrote during the so-called "Golden Age of Detective Fiction."
A murder mystery needs a detective, of course, and for Guinevere 'Gwinny' Tuffel I drew inspiration from the many amazing women, particularly older women, I've known in my life. I also drew on my own knowledge and experience of acting and showbiz, to give Gwinny an interesting and unusual 'day job' as a semi-retired actress.
Finally, I included dogs because I'm a lifelong dog lover, and had sadly lost two hounds in the space of a year just before lockdown. They were both Saluki-cross lurchers, so the first book features a pair of Salukis as a kind of tribute.
But it's one thing to write a book, and quite another to turn it into a series. For The Dog Sitter Detective Takes the Lead I thought hard about which elements and characters would return. This book takes Gwinny into a new environment; in contrast to the country house setting of the first book, here she's solving the murder of an ageing rock star in the houseboat community of Little Venice - two things she knows almost nothing about - while also looking after the victim's Border Collie. But some familiar elements also return, such as Gwinny's friend Birch, a former Met detective, as well as her ongoing troubles fixing up the old Chelsea house she inherited.
Much of the inspiration for this second book came from Little Venice itself, which is a lovely area in London that often flies under the radar. It's an oasis of peace and quiet, despite being just five minutes' walk from Paddington, so naturally I thought it would be an ideal place to stage a ghastly murder.
For many parents and educators, reading aloud doesn't feel natural at all.
It is heartening to witness the collective efforts of current and past children's laureates urging the government to prioritise early years reading. The impassioned plea from these literary leaders underscores the critical role of reading in a child's development. However, it is equally heart-breaking that such a call is necessary at all.
Growing up, I was fortunate enough to have a parent who cherished reading and made it a nightly ritual to read to me. This early exposure instilled in me a love for books that has endured throughout my life.
As a parent myself, I extended the tradition of reading to my own children during their formative years. While one of my children embraced the world of books with enthusiasm, the other displayed a reluctance to engage in conventional reading activities. This divergence in response underscores a vital point - the act of merely having a library in schools or allocating funds for books, though undoubtedly crucial, may not be sufficient to address the multifaceted challenges hindering the promotion of early childhood reading.
Last week I attended a celebration for the late US publisher Steve Rubin, organised by his friend the agent Clare Alexander, and attended by other luminaries from publishing's recent past, including Gail Rebuck, Victoria Barnsley, Ursula Mackenzie, David Young and Patrick Janson-Smith. Speeches came from current Simon & Schuster UK c.e.o. Ian Chapman, the author Sebastian Faulks, Alexander, music journalist Norman Lebrecht and Rabbi Julia Neuberger.
What I enjoyed most about the event - apart from its general warmth - was its unabashed celebration of the bestseller. John Grisham, Dan Brown and latterly Michael Wolff were his standouts. But beyond that, Rubin loved the deal and the sale, and the mechanics behind both. As Ian Chapman reminded the gathering, Rubin had once said that when he read something wonderful he saw dollar signs. "He loved books especially those on the bestseller lists, and he knew how to get them there," added Chapman with affection. This is publishing as I know it, and far away from the image portrayed in the media and on social media of editors indifferent to the money. The best publishers love the sale and the story, finding readers for the books they have fallen for.
Michael Rosen and the Borough Press' Suzie Dooré are among those who have revealed the impact of Long Covid and how they have reshaped work around their symptoms.
Rosen spent 48 days in intensive care after contracting Covid-19 and wrote a book about the experience: Getting Better (Ebury).
He told The Bookseller that he is now "on a plateau" but described several long-lasting symptoms. "Covid-19 knocked out most of the vision in my left eye and most of the hearing in my left ear," he said. "It also damaged the nerves in my toes, so they're mostly numb. Same goes for the feeling in my leg muscles that they're stretched or overly taut. So I think I'm in as good a nick as I'll ever be." He has also lost a lot of memory from the previous years.
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