5 ‘The medium is the message’1
Important information before you start – to ensure your market can find you
Different formats for marketing information
Posters, showcards and point-of-sale
Radio, television and cinema advertising
One of the difficulties of promoting published content is that there are just so many other products competing for the market’s attention. Other publishers’ wares are one form of competition, but there are also all the other, non-book products and services that compete for the same leisure or professional spend. The publishing industry has long stood accused of promoting to ‘readers’ rather than ‘customers’ but this has arguably been a method of managing the communication of products that could literally appeal to anyone.
Marketing communications flow from an organisation to its customers, potential customers and other groups who may influence its success. They involve many types of communications: some deliberate (e.g. advertising), others unplanned (e.g. personal recommendations). The communications may be supportive (e.g. personal selling) or critical (e.g. adverse press comments). In total, these communications form an overall impression, or image, which determines how people think about an organisation and how they may act in relation to its products.
(Stokes and Lomax 2008: 286)
This chapter is intended to help you to understand the various means of marketing communication that have evolved for publishers to inform those they rely on to talk up, review, recommend or buy their titles. Once their various functions are understood, a decision can be made on how best to use them. Effective communications aim to establish a common understanding between sender and receiver, but this becomes more complicated as information is transferred and passed on through different channels. Of late publishers have tried to make such communication vehicles as multipurpose as possible so they can be used in a variety of different marketing situations (as the basis for web copy, as author handouts when giving talks, as loose inserts in relevant publications, as materials that can be used by booksellers). There are also new mechanisms for communicating directly with markets, mostly via social media, which make it possible to make specific pitches to appropriate groups of consumers, and these too will be explored. While the names of meetings and forms change from house to house, all seem to have similar procedures.
Important information before you start – to ensure your market can find you
Whatever the format of the information you present on the product or service you are offering, it is important that the words you use to describe it relate to the market whose needs you seek to fulfil. Pay particular attention to the buzz words or key terms that matter to the market and avoid in-house jargon that is not understood outside your organisation. Early product descriptions can become hallowed through familiarity, and you need to consider, from your earliest involvement, whether the vocabulary used sum up the priorities of the likely consumer.
Using terms within your copy that the market is likely to look for through online searches affects the visibility of your website or web page in the results of search engines and, in general, the higher ranked the information is on the search results page, the more visits you will get from search engine users. This process is search engine optimisation (SEO). In order to optimise website content, HTML and coding will need to be edited, to ensure that keywords are really visible and that barriers to the indexing operations of search engines are removed. It will also be helpful to increase the number of inbound links to your website.
This is not a computer programming manual, and more detailed advice on how SEO and search engines work can be sought from specialists. The general point for the marketer to understand is that your descriptions should be grounded in terms that the interested user may deploy during their online search for information. As examples of this in practice, novels might gain a much higher search engine ranking by being described as:
A new romance set in Jane Austen’s Bath.
An epic romance in the tradition of Gone with the Wind.
than as
A new novel set in the West Country in the early nineteenth century.
A new romance set in Georgia in the nineteenth century.
The former descriptions would probably show up in searches for those looking for material related to things they had already enjoyed or locations they were connected to, within a genre and format that appealed to them. The latter examples are much less specific and therefore less likely to be found.
The writing of SEO-rich copy may feel both repetitive and externally focused; the latter point is particularly tricky as many writers are reluctant to see their work in a tradition established by others and prefer to appreciate their output as original. Both tendencies can be explained through their outcome, which is the promotion of access to, and hopefully interest in, their work. Author publicity forms (generally sent out for completion along with the contract to publish) now routinely ask for key terms relating to the work, which academic authors are already used to providing along with any journal submission.
Different formats for marketing information
Marketing information for the commissioning meeting
The decision on which titles to publish is taken at a formal meeting, attended by representatives of all departments (editorial, sales, marketing, production, rights, etc.) as well as senior managerial staff. For this meeting the commissioning editor will prepare an overview of all proposed titles, and this will include a market breakdown, an analysis of the competition and an estimate of sales. The marketing department will be asked to help with the preparation of this (although authors and agents are increasingly involved too).
While you may not hear the presentation of this information, you may well get involved in its preparation. Even if you have a hand in neither, it is vital that the information collected is passed to the marketing department, for use in the future. The commissioning meeting is a time when enthusiasm and optimism are flowing, and they need to be distilled for future use. As time goes on, competitors emerge, deadlines slip and the author may be inaccessible, busy on their next title – and publishers can start to wonder why they commissioned the title in the first place. So a look back to the initial rationale can be very helpful.
First announcement
The very first information the marketing department receives will probably be the initial in-house alerting form, usually sent by email, to say the product is definitely going to be published. This may be accompanied by a copy of the author’s publicity form (requested from the author when their contract is signed but filled in to varying standards).
It is important to get this early information right, as the details submitted (metadata) at this stage will be stored on central industry and wider industry organisational or sector databases for retrieval and use in a variety of other guises, ranging from an advance notice to catalogue copy. In addition to paying attention to keywords, as noted above, pay particular attention to how the title is categorised, which could have a long-lasting impact on its visibility. The system of title classification within the international publishing industry as a whole is currently in a state of transition to Thema, an international system of classification that provides context for more specific information relating to an individual genre and permits the monitoring of subsequent title sales. For example, without context, titles on Java could find themselves listed under geography, travel or computing. Also be clear about the level at which content is aimed, for example a medical title for professionals that gets categorised as ‘healthcare’ (i.e., for the general population), risks not getting found by the designated market.
The short description or ‘blurb’ offered will probably have been written by the author or editor, perhaps a combination of the two. This initial mention of collaboration (and hint of compromise) should ring warning bells. Take note: the more you become familiar with copy you don’t understand, the more you will come to assume you know what it means. So if your initial reaction is one of bafflement or confusion (‘What is this about?’ ‘I thought it was about x, the current title is really misleading’), this will probably be the exact response of all other non-specialists – sales reps, general book retailers, information professionals and others who may consider ordering the title on someone else’s behalf. It’s similarly dangerous to assume that English will be every recipient’s first language.
So get involved early. If you don’t understand the blurb you are sent, or feel it is too wordy, lengthy or overly pretentious, attempt to unravel the meaning now rather than accepting that, at this stage, the information is still ‘for in-house use only’. (There is no such thing: once a description is written you cannot control how it gets used.) Ask yourself whether you really understand the key features of the title. Are they lost in the description? Even for a highly technical title, the key selling points or reasons for commissioning should be instantly obvious. For example:
The Business of Digital Publishing provides a good basic understanding of the business side of non-print publishing. It is divided into three sections; the first provides a technological context, the second part explores four key sectors of publishing and the sorts of products and business models that have developed in each and the third part looks at the key issues that digital publishing raises.
Useful for students and professionals wanting to learn more, this key text covers the core components and formats of digital publishing, pricing and sales, selling rights, legal issues, financial changes and business models and looks in depth at professional, academic, schools and trade publishing for books and journals.
Including case studies, questions and interactive exercises, this textbook will help anyone wanting to understand the history, current situation and issues for the future development of digital publishing.2
Advance notices (ANs), advance title information (ATIs) or advance information sheets (AIs)
An advance notice is usually the first opportunity to alert both the firm and the wider market to the forthcoming publication of a new title. It is sent to bookstores (on- and offline), wholesalers, the company’s reps and agents dealing with international markets, and any other parties interested in the firm’s publishing programme. Ideally despatched 6 to 9 months ahead of publication (less in the case of ‘perishable’ titles), it needs to be with wholesalers and bookshops to allow time for the subscription of orders (i.e., the seeking of commitment to buy from key stockists). It should be sent further ahead if the information contained is to be catalogued and included in the recipients’ own promotional material, or is the subject of a special publisher–retail promotion.
Because an advance notice is usually drafted by the editors it is often viewed as an editorial document, but its real task is to sell. A sample follows:
Travels in West Africa
Mary Kingsley
[COVER IMAGE]
Pub date: 29 January 2015
ISBN: 9780141439426
Price: £12.99
Series: Penguin Press Classic Non-Fiction
Subject: Travel
Format: 198mm x 129mm
Extent: 720 pages
A remarkable account by the pioneering woman explorer described by Rudyard Kipling as ‘the bravest woman of all my knowledge’
The Pitch
• Kingsley is one of the most important women explorers in history, and her book was a bestseller when first published in 1897
• Includes a fascinating introduction by Toby Green examining Victorian attitudes to Africa, plus explanatory notes by Lynnette Turner
• The book challenged Victorian attitudes to Africa and made important contributions to anthropology and botany. Today it's a key text for readers interested in empire, colonialism and women's history, as well as being a gripping and thrilling adventure story
The Book
Until 1893, Mary Kingsley lived the typical life of a single Victorian woman, tending to sick relatives and keeping house for her brother. However, on the death of her parents, she made an extraordinary decision: with no prior knowledge of the region, she set out on a solo trip to West Africa. Her subsequent book, published in 1897, describes dangerous treks and deadly animals with enormous humour and verve, and has stood the test of time as a classic travel narrative by a woman whose sense of adventure and fascination with Africa transformed her whole life.
The Author
Mary Kingsley was born in London in 1862. She lived the typical life of a single Victorian woman until 1893, when she embarked on a voyage to West Africa, followed by a second trip the following year. On returning home, she wrote Travels in West Africa, which was published in 1897. Kingsley made one final trip to Africa, enlisting as a volunteer nurse in South Africa during the Boer War. She died there in 1900 and was buried at sea.
Lynnette Turner is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Edge Hill University.
Toby Green is Lecturer in Lusophone African History and Culture at Kings College London. His book The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa appeared in 2011.
How to write an advance notice that people will read
The proposed text is usually sent to the marketing department before it is printed. If this is the first chance you have to take a detailed look at the proposed title copy, it is vital that you do so. Make sense of what you read, edit and amend, and submit your efforts for approval. Try to improve readability by shortening sentences or adding bullet points to highlight key features. If your efforts at simplifying are rejected on the grounds that the author is a specialist on the subject and they wrote the blurb you are attempting to unravel, gently remind critics that bookshops and reps receiving the information will not be specialists. Like you they should understand what they receive.
Relevant brevity is best. An advance notice serves to tell busy retail buyers why they should stock the title, and to provide the rep or agent with sales ammunition. Don’t feel every inch of space has to be covered: densely packed copy is very off-putting.
Information that should be included in an advance notice:
• Author(s) or editor(s).
• Foreword? (Say by whom if this is already arranged).
• Title and subtitle (actual, not a working approximation).
• Format (actual dimensions, not in-house jargon) and binding or protective packaging (if special); word count and number of illustrations for e-options.
• ISBN (complete: include your publisher prefix, however well known you think your firm is).
• Extent (i.e., number of pages, number of words for an ebook and number of illustrations, colour or black and white).
• Imprint (i.e., which part of your company’s organisation, e.g., Puffin is an imprint of Penguin).
• Whether part of a series (and if so, the ISSN).
• Publication date and price. Be realistic, not optimistic: publishers get a name for the accuracy of their predictions.
• Short blurb.
• Brief author information. Concentrate on why the author is qualified to write this title, and include a brief sales history of previous titles and editions if relevant. Where is the author based? (The rep for that area will want to persuade the local retail outlets to take stock.)
• Who is it for? Briefly outline the market.
• Key selling points. What is new about it? What needs does it meet? Why did your house decide to publish? Why should the retailer stock the title? Why is it better than the competition? (These are probably best set out as a series of bullet points.)
• Scope – i.e., broad description of what the book covers.
• Contents. If they are long and complicated, stress ‘main features/papers’ first.
• Key promotional highlights arranged so far. If you have already arranged for the title to be serialised in a major newspaper at the time of publication, say so. If it is a book with a strong regional flavour, say you will be targeting the local radio station. If the book is one of your lead titles for the season and so has a significant promotion budget, pass on the information. The recipient needs to get a sense of the expectations the publisher has for the title and the scale of associated marketing activities will help convey this.
• The availability of any point-of-sale material, e.g., if you are offering a dump-bin, state quantity, mix included, price and ISBN.
• The publisher’s contact details: website, office address, telephone number and email address (of the sales department).
Some publishers put the title in bold or underline it, and then repeat as often as possible on the grounds that they are reinforcing the words in the reader’s mind (the same technique used in radio advertising). The reader, on the other hand, will respond by recognising a familiar block of copy and moving quickly past. It may never get read. It’s far better to use the space to explain why the material is being published.
All publishing houses now have a website, but they often tend to be managed by different people from those in charge of printed marketing materials. In general, this is helpful: websites get read in a different way from printed materials. Care is needed, however, in managing the information that is loaded. Readers tend to have a much shorter span of attention when reading onscreen than on the page, so a lengthy advance notice or catalogue copy may be too much when presented online – some judicious editing will be needed before loading. Journalists often use websites for background information on titles they are thinking of featuring, so ensure what you offer on the website adds value to the other messages you put out – perhaps with an interview on the author or details of how you came to publish the title.
While there will be room for more information, hidden behind click-through buttons, you will have to manage carefully the order in which it is presented, through headlines, boxes with key features, lots of space and relevant access points to encourage browsers find out more. Try to organise your material in a logical manner. Putting the product specifications under ‘how to order’ may seem logical to you (because they both relate to the information that used to go at the end of catalogue entries), but the customer in a hurry might not think to look there. For more information, see Chapter 9 on online marketing.
The information on a cover is usually drafted by the editor in consultation with the author. What appears is very important: it often forms the basis of a decision to buy. If you watch how customers in a bookshop assess a new title, you will see that the typical sequence is to look at the front cover, turn to the back for basic information on the title, and if this looks sufficiently interesting, flick through the contents or read the first couple of pages. Pay particular attention to their stance while they are doing this. Holding a book in your hand, and then turning it over to read the back cover copy is not a comfortable position for the wrist to hold for a long period of time, particularly if at the same time they are trying to hold on to their other purchases and personal items. Resolve therefore to keep your copy short and enticing.
For a paperback book, cover copy generally falls into four areas: book title; cover ‘shout/strap line’, back cover blurb and author information. For a hardback title the information will generally be laid out on the wrap-around jacket – blurb on the inside front cover jacket-flap, author information on the back inside jacket-flap and there may be an endorsement on the back cover. Titles that are hardback-sized but without the jacket may be handled like a paperback.
Book title
You may have very little say in what a title is called, but if early acquaintance with the manuscript leads you to think that the title chosen does not represent the material to best advantage, may be misinterpreted (words change their meaning and can quickly become loaded terms) or will simply be missed by the market, then say so, perhaps targeting your message through someone able to make the point to those who control what appears.
Shout/strap line
Positioned on the front of the title, this will draw further attention. This is best handled as a summary of the feeling you get from reading the book, rather than as a quick outline of the content. Your best guide for writing effective shout lines is to begin a study of film posters. Thus rather than describing the details of a plot that featured an unknown creature attacking the staff of a spaceship, the poster for Alien read: ‘In space no one can hear you scream’. Short shout lines work best (eight words is plenty) – try to be atmospheric and pithy. Alternatively you might decide to use a quotation from the review coverage, an endorsement (if you don’t yet have any reviews) or a key statistic to show why this is important (‘50,000 copies already sold’; ‘A New York Times bestseller’).
Back cover blurb
This should cover the essential sales points, while giving a sense of the type of title (but without giving away the plot, in the case of fiction):
• Why is it interesting?
• What is new/unique about the title?
• What it is about (briefly)?
• Who it is for?
• The scope.
• Any quotable extracts from reviews/experts
• Biographical details for the author.
The words you use should also give a flavour of the writing. So don’t make a highly complicated title sound like an easy read for everyone, or a ‘beach read’ sound like a contender for a major literary prize. If someone has been misled by one of your cover blurbs before and felt let down by the contents, they may be wary of buying from your organisation again. As examples of this in practice, can you guess what kind of novels the following blurb extracts are taken from?3
1 Lantern slides, each one a vivid vignette, a bright glimpse of some significant moment.
2 It was going to be one of those days.
3 High-powered sexy, irreverent, hedonistic and perfectly content, Hildamay knows that if you don’t love, you can’t lose.
4 Successful young art critic SJ sets out to relate, in elegant periods, the history of his martyrdom.
5 He had nothing to recommend him but his smile, and she was surely too old, had too much common sense, to be beguiled by a smile.
1 Literary short stories. ‘Each one’ hints at short stories and the vocabulary at their literary nature.
2 Hard-boiled crime. A straightforward vocabulary indicating an action-based plot with little superfluous description.
3 Women’s commercial fiction. The build-up of adjectives shows the humour and sets up the premise of a romance (she’s so determined to avoid love, she is bound to find it).
4 Sophisticated humour. It is impossible to relate your own martyrdom and this initial confusion hints at complications to follow.
5 Historical romance. The historical setting is given away by the word ‘beguiled’ and the archaic phrasing.
Author information
The space available here will be limited so keep it relevant to the title in question rather than offering a potted authorial CV. You could mention the author’s aim in writing it or their credentials for doing so (e.g., their previous well-known titles). A light touch is often effective. For example:
Catherine O’Flynn was born and raised in Birmingham, the youngest of six children. Her parents ran a sweet-shop. She worked briefly in journalism, then at a series of shopping centres. She has also been a web editor, a post-woman and a mystery shopper.
Her first novel, What Was Lost, won the Costa First Novel Award and the Jelf Group First Novel Award, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the South Bank Literature Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ First Novel Prize, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize and Man Booker Prize.4
The empathetic first paragraph engages the reader’s attention, the second shows why her writing is of note. In a second example, from an autobiography, the publisher makes deft use of a quotation from the book to give a flavour of what is inside:
While at Picture Post she met Gavin Lyall – who went on to become the successful crime novelist. They had two sons and were married for forty-five years, until his death in 2003. She writes of becoming a widow: ‘Marriage is the water in which you swim, the land you live in. You have to learn to live in another country in which you’re an unwilling refugee.’5
Layout of text on the cover
Finally, do ensure that the cover copy is attractive and engaging to look at (bearing in mind that the reader is looking at this quickly). Ensure the text is easy to read – don’t centre the text or fit it around ‘cut-out’ pictures so that the reader has to work hard to understand. Keep both sentences and paragraphs short and punchy. Similarly, use paragraphs of different lengths, quotations highlighted by the use of large inverted commas, a section of indented text to draw the eye in. Anything to avoid three justified paragraphs of identical size. Reversing the copy out of a solid colour makes it hard to read, reversing out of a picture is even harder (see also Chapter 14 on design).
How much of your jacket blurb will actually be read is debatable. Most readers will home in on the beginning and perhaps the end of the text, as Wendy Cope brilliantly captured in a blurb that appeared on the back cover of a promotional piece to advertise Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis:6
Brilliant, original, irreverent, lyrical, feminist, nostalgic, pastoral, anarchic, classical, plangent, candid, witty – these are all adjectives and some of them can truthfully be used to describe Wendy Cope’s poems. Very few people bother to read the second sentence of a blurb. Or the third. Most of them skip to the end where it says something like this: a truly spectacular debut, an unmissable literary event.
The production of catalogues is one of the main regular activities of those marketing books. Successful management of their preparation and production is vitally important. Not only do they stimulate orders by presenting the firm’s wares in an attractive light, they are part of the regular selling cycle that the trade is used to responding to and hence expects. Most firms still produce printed versions but the similar information can be offered as an ongoing and up to date resource on their website, an open shop window for a firm’s wares, 24 hours a day.
Catalogues are important because they reflect (or arguably direct) the regular selling cycle of the type of list being promoted. How often they are produced depends on the type of list being promoted. Many general houses produce 6-monthly printed catalogues (usually autumn/winter and spring/summer) to fit in with their marketing cycles. The catalogue forms the basic document for presentation at the sales conference that precedes each new selling season. Mass market paperback houses may produce catalogues or stock lists every month, usually 3 months ahead of the month of publication. Educational, academic and reference publishers often produce a separate annual catalogue for each subject area in which they publish. In addition, most houses produce a yearly complete catalogue that lists title, author and bibliographical information for their entire list with a rolling and constantly updated version available on their website.
Catalogues are also a lasting form of promotion. An online catalogue is an authoritative and constant point of reference for those who want to know about an organisation’s products and services. For printed catalogues, once the initial ordering has been done, there is a tendency not to throw away the physical object. For example, in bookshops catalogues continue to function as reference material for enquiries and specific requests, and in schools they act as the reference point for topping up stock levels.
The information needed for on- and offline formats is not however interchangeable without amendment, so resist assuming that text prepared for a printed catalogue can be loaded to form website copy. In general eyes get tired more quickly when viewing content online, or is it that attention span is shorter here? More visual variety is needed. The challenge is to keep the information ‘sticky’ and links need to reinforce the main site not redirect the reader’s attention away. Ensure strong functionality of search mechanisms so that readers can punch in the details they have and find what they need. Metrics on site usability will tell you more about how it gets used, and this can be fed into its further development.
Whatever the final format, amassing title information and ensuring it is complete, checking publication and bibliographical details, rounding up illustrations, dealing with design and production – all involve a tremendous amount of detailed ongoing work.
The copy contained in a catalogue should vary according to the anticipated readership and use, with the marketing department adapting the basic title information as appropriate. To get ideas on how to present information clearly and attractively, study both the catalogues of your competitors and those of firms that have nothing to do with publishing (e.g., consumer goods sold by direct mail). The following tips may also help.
Space for major titles
Ensure that the allocation of space in your catalogues reflects the relative importance of your various publishing projects. It’s reassuring for customers to know they are buying a successful product. A major scheme or series should stand out as such to the reader: reviews, illustrations and sample pages can all be added to impress. The same goes for backlist titles that are still widely used by the market. If the publisher gives them a poor allocation of space then the market may conclude they are scheduled for extinction. Catalogues selling consumer goods often repeat key items within the same edition, so however quickly the potential customer flicks through, the chances are they still note the products the firm really wishes to push.
As a guide to how much space to allow for different titles, try comparing sales figures (real or anticipated) with the available space. At the same time, do try to avoid a rigid space allocation, which is boring to the reader. For example, in printed catalogues the common practice of giving all the big titles a double page at the front of the catalogue, a page each in the middle to the midlist and then putting the ‘also rans’ as a series of small entries at the back carries a clear message about what is and what is not important.
What most interests the recipient will probably be what is new or revised, so make clear use of flags and headlines to attract attention. Similarly ‘pull quotes’ from reviews or satisfied customers can be engaging and interesting.
Ordering mechanisms
Include an ordering mechanism with each catalogue (reference to your website, order form, telephone number, postcard for obtaining an inspection copy), and monitor the response. Not all orders will come back directly to you, but if you take a note of the recorded sales before a catalogue goes out and a second reading a certain time after most orders have been received, you will have a reasonably accurate picture of how effective the material was. Some publishers compare space allocations with trackable orders (asking customers to quote a reference – ‘the long number next to your address’ – before taking the order), to produce an analysis of revenue per page. Such information over a number of seasons will enable you to assess the merits of different layouts and the effect they have on sales.
Offering a variety of different ordering mechanisms also gives useful feedback. Don’t assume that the easiest method of ordering for you also meets the needs of your customers. How easy to use are the ordering mechanisms on your website? A quick question at the end of the ordering process – perhaps incentivised with free entry into a prize draw – can help you find out. You can test the benefits of order forms that are bound in as opposed to loose inserts or stiff order forms that fold out from the cover; those that require the customer to list titles selected against those that provide the information, requiring only a tick to purchase. Different methods of payment too can be tested against each other. For example, most institutions ordering in bulk will need to set up an account with you, but would asking them to send an order on their headed paper enable them to do so more quickly than requiring them to fill in a form, which needs countersigning and official approval? One final tip: have you noticed how consumer mailings often enclose two order forms with any catalogue? In so testable a medium it must be working. What other tricks can you learn from them?
Layout
The presentation of information within a catalogue should be clear. On each page or screen it should be instantly obvious which section is being referred to, perhaps by the use of ‘running heads’ showing section titles along the top (e.g., imprint and fiction/non-fiction). Educational publishers often use ‘running heads’ to indicate the age for which material is designed or the curricular subject area.
For printed materials, ensure there is both a table of contents (highlighting key new products with page references) and an index. For digital catalogues, ensure that the searches the customer wants to make are facilitated by the online management of information. These are vital for accessing information in a hurry.
Cover
Put photos of your product(s) on the front of your catalogue. It is far more interesting to the recipient than ‘new autumn books from Dodd and Co’. Consumer mailers want you to start reading product information as soon as possible. If you don’t use a product, try a really attractive and appropriate illustration. Educational publishers have been known to produce (in response to demand) posters for schools of popular catalogue covers.
For catalogues that will be used in one-to-one selling, for example by the rep visiting schools or bookshops, a light-coloured background on the front cover allows notes to be written, and noticed later on by the recipient.
For lists aimed at a particular vocational market (e.g., school books, ELT materials) a letter, perhaps from the editor, on the inside front cover of the catalogue can attract wide readership. It should always have a signature and look like a letter. Such a start to the catalogue can serve to introduce the list, attract attention to particular highlights and express an interest in the readers’ ideas for publications.
Illustrations
Include as much illustration as possible. Covers are the first choice, particularly for a series. However prominently you write ‘series’ in the copy, the sight of a group of covers is more eye-catching and hence effective. If it’s a series but not yet all the titles are available, offer a diagram that shows what is coming when.
Avoid featuring covers that are too subtle and ‘designer’ in appearance. What you see at full size will disappear when reproduced at postage-stamp size. Similarly, check that the titles on reduced covers are still legible. You can also use illustrations (always with a selling caption), sample pages, photographs (perhaps of the materials in action) and line drawings.
Academic catalogues
Full author affiliations and contents are vital. For which qualifications or academic level do the various titles prepare students? A mixture of different types of institution and author location always helps sell a title more widely. Can the authors also recruit endorsers for you?
Last-minute entries
One of the advantages of online materials is that they can always be updated. But for a printed catalogue, however well-posted your associated deadlines, last-minute copy on titles that simply must be included will always appear. Bear in mind that if you wait for every last correction you will never get to the market, and getting to the market when the market is expecting your information (and when your competitors’ details will be there) is what really matters.
If your deadline has passed and the costs of remaking pages to include a particular important extra title are unjustified, try including the copy on a ‘stop press postcard’. This can also function as an order form/inspection copy request card – and the author may welcome stock for handing out at speaking engagements.
Leaflets (often several pages or incorporating a fold) and flyers (often single sheets, printed on two sides) are simple printed marketing materials.
The information you provide, and the extent of detail offered, will depend on the intended purpose, but it’s often a good idea to make these meet as many possible anticipated needs as you can. You can then add a letter to turn it into a mailshot, enclose in journals as a loose insert, send out with a press release to provide further title information, insert in parcels and give stock to the author for them to hand out at speaking events. Give details of how to order. If they are likely to be used in bookshops (say at author events) they should not include a discount for direct ordering. An alternative is to leave the order form space blank for bookshops to overprint or stamp with their name and address.
If you are producing a range of flyers for titles in a series, do make them look different – so it is clear to those only taking a cursory look that each one represents a different title. I once produced a range of slim leaflets advertising science titles. Each one was printed in black ink on yellow paper, one-third A4 size (about the cheapest printed format possible). The results were very eye-catching, but when attending a conference I noticed that delegates examining our stand, where they were laid out in separate piles, clearly assumed that they all advertised the same title. Thereafter I used a different colour stock for each leaflet.
Direct mailshots
See Chapter 8 on direct marketing.
Copy for emails, social media and other online marketing
See Chapter 9 on online marketing.
Press releases
See Chapter 10 on publicity and PR.
Presenters and brochures
Many trade publishing houses produce these for reps to use when presenting new titles to bookstore buyers, and in particular to impress their key accounts. Presenters often form substantial (four to six sides of card) glossy summaries of media and promotional plans, and anticipated spend for individual titles and their supporting backlist. Usually produced in full colour, they are often laminated or at least varnished.
When bookstore buyers are busy and reps have little time in which to attract their overstretched attention, such promotion pieces can play a key part in getting across quickly the importance of the title and its associated image. With luck, a corresponding commitment to take stock will follow.
Copy for these needs to be short and market-focused: you are trying to persuade the bookstore to stock rather than to tell them details of the plot. Thus information relevant to the bookstore should have priority (what promotional highlights have been arranged, how the author’s previous title sold and so on).
Posters, showcards and point of sale
Posters are produced by publishers and distributed to bookstores to attract customers’ attention to major titles, series or imprints at the place where they are available for purchase. The same themes may also be developed for use in street advertising (‘adshells’) and at transport locations (e.g., ‘cross track’ opposite railway platforms). The market’s understanding should be instant, so such material should not be too copy-heavy or clever (eight words on a poster site is usually plenty). Sometimes posters are not even put up in stores that accept them, but they still serve to demonstrate to a retailer that a publisher is highlighting a major product, and so form an effective method of ensuring advance orders. The most attractive items may be put up in the staff room, or taken home, so it’s a good idea to send stores a few copies rather than just one.
Dump-bins, which carry multiple copies of a key title, are often produced to encourage booksellers to take a large quantity of stock. These usually have a header that slots into the top of the box to attract attention. Use this space creatively. Avoid repeating the book title here, as it will feature on every cover beneath. The days of one-size-fits-all for dump-bins have gone. Several bookshop chains now refuse to take them altogether, on the grounds that they interrupt the shop’s designed environment and they have their own material. You may be required to produce dump-bins to the exact space requirements of other outlets such as supermarkets – usually worth it if a large stock order results.
Other point-of-sale items may include give-away items such as balloons, bookmarks, badges, shelf wobblers and mobiles. Sometimes these prove so popular as branded items that they can become a product range in their own right, and of course this has the hugely valuable function of further promoting the list, while producing income.
Rich media advertising
Internet advertising can draw consumer attention through a dynamic mix of interactivity, animation and sound, for example allowing customers to watch a demonstration or feed in their data in order to receive a specific quotation. Now that broadband is more widely available, wider access to these opportunities is available. Such advertising is relatively cheap to establish and trackable, although technical possibilities need to be matched with their careful management. See Chapter 9 on online marketing and Jon Reed’s Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing.7
Classified advertising
Classified advertising is one of the cheapest methods of promotion. Copy is usually typeset by the publication in which it is to appear. With little space, no illustration and lots of similar advertisements to compete with, try to use the variables that are at your disposal to attract attention. Experiment with different type densities, capital and lower-case letters and highlight professional qualifications and official endorsements. Provide an incentive to do something now, such as look up the website or ring for a free catalogue.
For ideas on how to handle the medium well, consult the classified section of a magazine that is well known for its amusing and effective entries.
Semi-display ads
A step up from classified advertising, semi-display allows borders and illustrations. Don’t take the permission to use reversed-out text too seriously, it is hard to read. Do allow plenty of white space around the advertisement – it serves to draw the eye in. Have a look through your local trade directories to see how effective – or otherwise – the use of a small advertising space can be.
Advertorials
Advertorials are advertisements that masquerade as editorial copy. In an editorially biased magazine or paper, advertising guru David Ogilvy reckoned six times as many people read the average editorial feature as the average advertisement.8
Use the same typeface, caption illustrations in the same way, and the same ‘editorial’ style as the rest of the publication. You may find that ‘Advertisement’ or ‘Advertisement Feature’ is printed by the magazine at the top of your space, but your message will gain in authority and readership and more people will remember it. For precisely these reasons some magazines do not allow advertorials. One word of caution: be careful that you don’t end up paying for what the magazine would have printed free as a feature.
Along similar lines is ‘sponsored editorial’, whereby the customer takes advertising space in return for a commitment from the magazine to provide editorial coverage. Guest blogging on someone else’s site has a similar effect. See Chapter 9.
For advice on promoting to specific interest markets, see Chapter 15.
See Chapter 8 on direct marketing.
Radio, television and cinema advertising
Radio advertising
Listening to the radio creates a cosy empathy between audience and station, and this can work particularly well in the promotion of books. Tying the commercials up with promotional offers such as competitions can secure a lot of coverage at a very competitive price – the competition has to be trailed, run and then the winners announced – and all the while listeners are repeatedly tuning in. This may serve the interests of station managers; they are keen to keep their audience loyal, and they may be interested in a competition that serves to encourage the audience to return. The launch of new commercial radio stations has offered cheap opportunities to reach highly targeted groups of people.
Television and cinema advertising
The chance to work on these will occur rarely in the lives of most publishing marketers. When publishing houses can afford to mount television campaigns they usually assign them to specialised agencies. But small budgets can pay for regional television and radio advertising, and new channels may offer further opportunities.
If you are choosing between press and television as the best medium for a campaign, in general the less there is to explain about a product, the better suited it is to television. Cheaper, mass market products too work better on television; if customers are being asked to spend a lot of money they need a fuller explanation of benefits than is possible during an average-length advertisement. An alternative is to give a website or telephone number for further information at the end of the commercial.
Notes
1 McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extentions of Man. Toronto: McGraw Hill Book Company Inc.
2 Hall, F. (2013) The Business of Digital Pulishing.
3 All written by writer and copywriter Cathy Douglas, reproduced by kind permission.
4 Cover blurb for The News Where You Are, Catherine O’Flynn (2010), London: Penguin.
5 Katharine Whitehorn (2007) Selective memory, London: Virago.
6 W. Cope (1986) Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, London: Faber & Faber.
7 Reed, J. (2013, 2nd edn) Get up to Speed with Online Marketing. London: Prentice Hall.
8 Ogilvy, D. (1983) Ogilvy on Advertising. London: Pan Books Ltd.
