When I was first published, I remember how hard I marketed. I went to conventions, posted on blogs, wrote thank you notes, sent emails, wrote and sent newsletters, stayed “in touch” with my “fans” . . . worked on creating buzz by having friends post reviews on online sites (and I returned the favor whenever I could), contacted libraries, sent review copies (often at my own expense) to anyone who’d read my books, participated in the American Bookseller Association’s promotions and on and on.
All that marketing yielded a name in the mystery community -- albeit a smallish name in the pantheon of great and well-known writers -- but many folks did know me. I was nominated for two awards which gave me street cred in certain circles. What all that work didn’t yield was a major audience, a NY publishing contract, or enough money to pursue fiction as my main career.
It also put the emphasis squarely on Marketing/PR. And that, my friends, is bass ackwards. Writers need to write. That’s their job. It’s their expertise. The heavy lifting in marketing and PR belongs to Marketing and Public Relations pros.
I actually think that’s at the heart of much of the trouble in the publishing industry today. People forgot their jobs, tried to cut corners or take on what they oughtn’t’ve and now we have a mess.
In regards to Marketing and PR, I have a heightened sensitivity. I’ve worked in the field going on three decades. I can smell tricks and techniques from miles away. Now every writer I know is a marketer. Every single one is trying to hit me with the latest version of marketing know-how. And here’s what happens: the more I’m hit, the more tricks I perceive, the more diluted the message becomes and . . . the less I buy.
Maybe I’m in a subset of audiences that don’t like to feel accosted or badgered. Maybe I just know too many writers. But I’ve become a real curmudgeon.
Some people might claim I’m being a hypocrite. Murderati and my FB pages are Marketing/PR. It’s true they were when I started them, but that’s not what they do for me now. I post blogs because I like the conversations that ensue and that my world includes readers I may never meet but with whom I feel friendships blossoming. The same is true for FB.
This year I plan to self-publish some of my work. You’d think that’d put me back on the Marketing/PR treadmill, that I’d be looking for the latest analytics and techniques to reach the most potential readers.
Nope.
I’m determined to find a new paradigm. I think it’s going to have to do with having a butt-load of product so that if a reader likes one of my works, he or she will look for others -- and the works will be there to purchase. If one reader enjoys something, I hope he or she will tell someone else . . .
I have a confession: I long for a world where the content of a book speaks for itself -- where the reading experience is entirely subjective and organic, where a reader actually has to read Book C by Author Number 62925 before deciding what "kind" of book it is.
I know: I'm in la-la land. Readers want to know who wrote the book. But would I have a different audience if I published under, say, Ally Simpson instead of Alafair Burke? And readers want to know a genre. But am I mystery or thriller? Women's suspense (whatever the frack that means) or procedural? And readers want to know some basic information about the plot. But should the jacket description of 212 emphasize the stalking of a college student, the murder of a celebrity bodyguard, or the death of a real estate agent who was leading a double life? These choices we (or our publishers) make about what to put on the book jacket send signals to readers about the contents of the book before they've even broken the spine.
Arguably that signal begins with a book's title.
I've mentioned elsewhere that I struggle with character names, but when it comes to titles, the struggle reaches epic, paralyzing proportions. Why? Because I withdraw from every decision that purports to typecast the book I have written.
I'm in title hell right now with my next book, my first stand-alone. I ran a couple of contenders past my kitchen cabinet advisors (i.e., Facebook friends). The comments cemented my gut instincts: one sounded thrillerish, one sounded chick-ish, and both sounded vaguely familiar. "[Suggested title] sounds like a cheesy book I wouldn't read under threat of bodily harm," said one. Another reader said one title sounded like a Harlan Coben novel, the other like Nora Roberts. Same book, two pretty different impressions.
See? This is why I hate the pressure of a title. Pick a couple wrong words, and you just might lose the readers who would have loved that book.
But here's what I'm learning about titles: They don't exist in isolation. They are backed by an image on the jacket, and, as the cliche goes, a picture says a thousand words.
Consider some recent examples:
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell. I'm not sure what the title on its own would say to me, but the quirkiness of the jacket "matches" the tone of the book.
Then there's One Day by David Nicholls. Kind of bland. Kind of makes me want to sing "One day, one where, we'll find a new way of living," but I do have an annoying tendency to break out in song, regardless of lyrics. But check out the jacket:
Gets your attention, right? Flip it over and learn that the novel depicts two people on one single day across twenty years? Suddenly it's a perfect title.
Or how about "Caught" by Harlan Coben? Pretty good title. I always like those one-word things. But take that single word, and drop it against this background:
Then read this first sentence: "I knew opening that red door would destroy my life." Awesome!
I recently finished a little book called The Glass Rainbow by some guy called James Lee Burke. I confess to talking some serious smack about that title when I first heard it. The Glass Rainbow? The only book I could imagine was a memoir of Kurt Hummel's early years:
But add the jacket art, and The Glass Rainbow suddenly looks like a JLB novel. Read the book, and the title truly works. (Blatantly nepotistic plug here: The book's fabulous and just came out last week!)
So folks, I'd love to hear your thoughts about some of your favorite book jackets and titles. Send links to images if it's not too much work. And, oh, if you happen to have a good standalone title for someone who writes sort of like me, let me know!
(I'll be on a plane today on my way home from a wedding in Santa Fe, so I may be slow to post replies, but I can't wait to read your comments!)
I promise this next sentence is an honest intro to today's post, not just BSP: This weekend I officially joined the board of directors of Mystery Writers of America and became President of the New York chapter. (Pause for applause.)
In preparation for the annual MWA board funfest (aka orientation day), the unparalleled Margery Flax requested a biography to distribute to fellow board members. I sent her the usual jacket copy:
A formal deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, Alafair Burke now teaches criminal law at Hofstra Law School and lives in New York City. A graduate of Stanford Law School, she is the author of the Samantha Kincaid series, which includes the novels Judgment Calls, Missing Justice, and Close Case. Most recently, she published Angel's Tip, her second thriller featuring Ellie Hatcher.
Her response was polite, quick, and resoundingly clear, something like, "Are you sure that's all you want to include? This is usually a longer fun one, only for internal board distribution."
In other words, Yawn, Snore, Zzzz....
I can take a hint, so I gave it another try. Borrowing in part from my website, I allowed myself thirty minutes to hammer out something that would give those who hadn't met me yet some sense of who I am and where I've been. Margery's assurance that this was purely internal was freeing.
After I submitted my specially-designated "MWA board bio," I couldn't stop thinking about the sterileness of those book jacket author bios, scrubbed clean of all personality. As writers, we're committed to exploring the human stories that lurk beneath the superficial, but when asked to describe ourselves: Yawn, snore, zzzz.....
I've spoken a few times during author appearances about a hypothetical world in which books (like the law school exams I grade as a professor) would be published anonymously, their authors known only by a randomly assigned number that readers could use to "identify" the authors they consistently enjoyed. After all, what separates reading from television and film is the active role of our mind's eye. To read books without knowing an author's age, gender, race, religion, region, education, attractiveness, or work experience might truly unleash our imaginations.
Despite my musings about a utopia of anonymous publishing, I've come to realize why publishers emphasize (and readers desire) personal information about authors. The most delightful unexpected benefit of writing has been meeting some of my favorite authors. I already read these folks religiously before I met them, but I'll admit that I read them differently -- and more richly -- now. I recognize the wry winks in Laura Lippman's most leisurely paragraphs. I hear Michael Connelly's quiet voice in Bosch. I think I really know what Lisa Unger means when she writes on Ridley Jones's behalf that she's a "dork." And those short, little, maddeningly frustrating sentences from Lee Child are now sexy as hell.
But I didn't get any of that from the book jackets.
As the traditional print media and personal appearance opportunities for authors to introduce themselves to readers continue to dry up, many of us have taken to the Web. We do that not only to get our names out there, but also because we recognize that readers are more likely to experience our written work as intended if they come to it with a sense of who we are. (For example, an online reviewer once dissed a line of Ellie Hatcher's, something like "kicking it old school." The fact that it's corny to talk that way is of course precisely why she'd say such a thing. And if the reader "got" Ellie or anything about my work, he'd know that's -- ahem -- just how we roll.)
So as we're knocking ourselves out to convey our souls to readers, maybe we should take another look at book jacket bios. The publishers are going to type something beneath that favorite photo: It may as well be interesting. And so, even though Margery promised to keep this unsanitized bio a secret, I've decided to blast it out to the world:
Alafair Burke is the author of six novels in two series, one featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, the other with Portland prosecutor Samantha Kincaid. Although reviewers have described both characters as “feisty,” Alafair might accidentally spill a drink on anyone who invokes that word to describe her or anyone she cares about.
Alafair grew up in Wichita, Kansas, whose greatest contribution to her childhood was a serial killer called BTK. Nothing warps a young mind quite like daily reports involving the word, bind, torture, and kill.
From Kansas, Alafair dreamed of fleeing west. Fearing their daughter might fall prey to a 1980’s version of the Manson Family (um, Nelson?), her parents prohibited her from attending school in California. Ironically, she ended up at Reed College, where the bookstore sold shirts that read "Atheism, Communism, Free Love," and Alafair found herself (lovingly) nicknamed Nancy Reagan and The Cheerleader.
From Reed, Alafair went to the decidedly less hippy-ish Stanford Law School. Although she went with dreams of becoming an entertainment lawyer so she could make deals at the Palm and score seats at the Oscars, she eventually realized she had watched "The Player" one too many times, and instead decided to pursue criminal law because she was obsessed with the Unabomber.
Most of Alafair’s legal practice was as a prosecutor in Portland, Oregon, where she infamously managed to tally up a net loss on prison time imposed during her prosecutorial career. (Help spring two exonerated people from prison to put a guy called the Happy Face Killer behind bars, and it really ruins your numbers.) As hard as it is for her to believe, she is now a professor at Hofstra Law School.
When Alafair is not teaching classes or writing, she enjoys rotting her brain. She runs to an iPod playlist with three continuous hours of spaz music (think "It Takes Two" by DJ Rob Bass, "Smooth Criminal" by Alien Art Farm, and "Planet Claire" by the B-52's). She insists that Duran Duran, the Psychedelic Furs, and the Cure hold up just as well as the so-called classics. She watches way too much television, usually on cable. She wants Tina Fey to be her BFF. She likes to drink wine and cook.
She discloses TMI on the Interwebs, blogging regularly at Murderati and logging teenage-territory hours on Facebook. She will golf at the drop of a hat even though she’s bad at it.
Most importantly, Alafair loves her husband, Sean, and their French bulldog, The Duffer. She also loves her parents, but if you ask her about them, she’ll ask you about yours.
What do you think? Should all authors let loose on their jacket flaps? Would it affect that crucial decision of whether to purchase? Would it change how we read? If you're a writer, what should your author bio REALLY say? And if you're a reader, what would you like to know about some of your favorite writers?
P.S. As a follow up to my last post about my sometimes odd marketing attempts, I brought a video today for Show and Tell. Not the usual literal movie trailer, the clip is intended to evoke the themes, setting, and tone of my new book, 212, out in March. It also allowed me to bop around to Lady GaGa for countless hours and tally it mentally as work-related. What do you think?
...You take them both, and there you have ... the facts of life. (Sorry, I suffer from a condition scientists have labeled theme-song-monkish-itis, the only symptom of which is an insistence upon finishing a song lyric, especially when it comes from a 1980's sitcom featuring Tootie, Cloris Leachman,* and, at one time, George Clooney.)
Ahem, onto my post:
My girlfriends and I were on our fourth round of contract rummy on Thursday afternoon when one of them fiddled with her phone and declared, “Hey! RJ Julia is tweeting about you!” Once I recovered from a momentary hallucination that I was famous, I asked for details. Imagine my delight when I learned that RJ Julia, a fabulous independent bookseller in Madison, Connecticut, had tweeted: “Best freebie in an ARC mailing: a cute package of Nutella w/Alafair Burke's newest.”
As I’ve previously mentioned, I am not one of those authors with marketing savvy. Case in point: For Bouchercon a few years ago, I had bookmarks made for the giveaway table that featured these three fabulous photographs of my beautiful dude, The Duffer. The text read, “The Duffer says Read Alafair Burke.” I was very proud of myself.
Lee Child, unmatched for kindness, yet unflinchingly honest, took one look at my handiwork and declared me unfit for self-promotion. For the life of me, I couldn't see the problem. Who, after all, could resist the Duffer? “No one," he explained, "and that’s the problem. These sweet people who like mysteries about puppies and kittens will think you’re right up their alley. Then they’ll read your violent, profanity-laden books and hate you for putting them through it.”
So much for my creative printing efforts. Now my cards and bookmarks bear the typical book jacket images.
Contrast my high-effort bookmarks with the more recent, low-effort Nutella giveaway. A few weeks ago I was in the Continental club at Newark airport, toasting a stale bagel, when I spotted a bowl full of these:
Not quite as adorable as a french bulldog who resembles Stacy Keach, but still pretty cute, right? As it turns out, my character Ellie Hatcher keeps a jar of Nutella and a spoon in her top desk drawer. The galleys of 212 were due to be sent out to independent booksellers at the end of the year. Lightbulb over the head, etc.
Truth be told, I didn't think of these tasty little treats as marketing - just a shared chuckle with the independent booksellers who have helped me over the years. But I’ll take the shout out from RJ Julia as proof that, as marketing goes, this at least wasn’t an “epic fail,” as my nephew says.
The experience got me thinking about the little and big things we do to try to promote our work. My high-cost, high-effort bookmarks apparently weren't right; a snack-size trinket I first spotted in the Newark airport earned me some Twitter action.
As publishers cut back on advertising dollars and tour budgets, we’re all looking for personalized ways to thank our most supportive readers and booksellers while searching for a new audience as well. Are you willing to share stories of your efforts, either successful or failed, high-cost or low? Readers and booksellers: What efforts have you seen from authors, both good and bad?
(And, uh, speaking of marketing, if you enjoyed this post, please follow me on Facebook, MySpace, and/or Twitter.)
* Lest you ever doubted Cloris Leachman's comic talents, watch this (but only if you don't mind "blue").
It’s that time of year – about six months out from the next publication date - when the conversations around Team Burke become dominated by marketing talk. Some authors thrive on marketing, speaking openly about the “brand” they are trying to create, the value they place in their “product,” the placement of their product in the “market.”
I’m not one of those writers.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no precious, anti-commerce, purist hippie. I like four-star dining and fancy shoes way too much to try to pull off any kind of starving artist persona. I’m all for the selling of the books.
My only complaint is that the rest of Team Burke – editor, publicist, marketing people, special online marketing people, the whole lot of them – look across the table at me as if I might be of some use. As if I might actually know how to get my books into the hands of the people who might enjoy them. As if I might know how to get those same people to then carry the book to a cash register. As if I have the remotest clue about why anyone likes what she likes, or buys what she buys.
If I knew any of that, I’d be the genius who came up with this:
Or perhaps this:
Plenty of sales there to support a woman’s restaurant and shoe preferences, without having to type out all those pesky words.
I do try, though. I make suggestions. Some of them actually go into the plan. Luckily, I enjoy some of the biggest parts of the plan – the touring, the facebooking, the blogging. In my academic life, I’m lucky if ten other academics read my writing, so talking with people who read my books is heaven as far as I’m concerned.
But, this time around, Team Burke has added a new layer to the usual plan: “We want to get 212 to people who don’t usually read crime fiction.”
Say what?
"So many people here love your books even though they don’t usually like mysteries or thrillers."
Read that previous sentence again. There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I don’t know where to start.
Okay, I’ll start here.
1. Who the heck doesn’t like mysteries and thrillers?
Given that you’re reading this particular website, my guess is you’re not one of these people. Well, whoever they are, I don’t know whether to loathe or pity them. I guess it depends on whether they think they’re too good for the genre or just don’t know what they’re missing.
There’s no question, though, that these people exist. My pilates trainer just told me that she loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, even though she didn’t “usually like mysteries.”
"You don't usually like what?"
I’m sorry. I don’t understand.
Which brings me to…
2. WHY would anyone not like mysteries and thrillers?
To get some insight into this phenomenon, I did what anyone seeking to conduct serious empirical research would do: I Googled.
An initial observation: The quantitative data support the claim that there are actually people who claim they don’t like crime fiction, as evidenced by the number of results for the following searches:
23,100 "don't like thrillers" 667 "don't like mysteries" 22,400 "don't read mysteries" 6,190 "don't read thrillers"
On the qualitative side, I did find some explanations for these dislikes in my casual perusal of the search results (okay, not very scientific – whatevs):
Too much violence and death Too suspenseful Too improbable Too predictable Not enough character development Bad writing
Now, that first reason is defensible, I suppose. If someone doesn’t like to think about the bad things that happen to people, well – first of all, they should never spend time with me. And they might justifiably stay away from the mystery shelves.
The second one? I won’t even pretend to understand.
"The suspense is making my eyes wide!"
And the rest? They strike me as complaints that there’s too many bad books in the genre. But there are bad books in all genres. There are bad books pawned off as so-called “literary” fiction. There are bad books. Don’t read them. Read good ones instead.
3. Now here’s where it gets interesting: Why does a person who doesn’t usually read mysteries or thrillers suddenly decide to like a mystery or thriller?
Back to the Google data: 12,300 “don’t usually like mysteries” 38,500 “don’t usually read mysteries” 22,700 "don't usually read thrillers” 2,040 "don't usually like thrillers"
And almost always, these phrases are followed by the word “but:”
“but this one kept me on the edge of my seat.” I’m sorry, but if you want your books to put you on the edge of your seat, we're your people.
“but this book was so warped, convoluted, I just couldn't help but be entranced.” Um…warped and convoluted? We are totally your people. (P.S. Kudos, Christopher Rice. That’s a review to be proud of!)
Here are some more typical buts (shame on you if you just snickered): but this one was very entertaining, but this book is awesome, but this one is killer, but I absolutely love this one.
Do you see a trend? Basically, people don’t usually like crime fiction, but then sometimes they suddenly like crime fiction. And if you think all these “buts” are for Michael Chabon and Stieg Larsson, you’ve got another thing coming. People who think they don’t like crime fiction like Jonathon Kellerman, Michael Connelly, Alexander McCall Smith, and James Patterson. That’s some pretty genre-y genre fiction (and I mean that in the very best way as a person who loves the genre).
4. And, on the more personal side, why does a person who doesn’t usually like mysteries or thrillers like my books?
As I understand it, my new fans at the publishing house are young people living their lives in Manhattan, just like the characters in my Ellie Hatcher series. The books reflect their reality. The characters sound like them, watch the same TV shows, and share the same worries.
That’s all well and good, but these new readers of mine got the book for free from their employer. If they saw it on the mystery table at Barnes & Noble, would they even pick it up, let alone buy it?
5. Now, my fellow ‘Ratis, here’s the question for group discussion:
How do you get a person who thinks he or she “doesn’t like” mysteries and thrillers to give a book a try? Must it be a personal recommendation from a friend: “Trust me, it’s good”? Does it have to be the water-cooler book of the season? Must it appeal to some other interest?
Why does the non-genre reader read a book in the genre?
Tuesday, January 3, 2012 at 5:03PM in 
