Book marketing Archives

20160127_202819-1 The books above are books on my shelves that I bought at some point in the distant past (each probably more than five years ago) thinking at the time they would be interesting books to read. And I never have. The question I ask myself as I get older is whether I will, and should I purge these from the shelves? So far they have escaped.

Turns out I am not alone. A study by Kobo (and this is in reference to e-books), cited by Andrew Rhomberg, found that only 60 percent of books purchased are ever opened! I do think e-books are a special case. When I first got my e-reader, I downloaded all sorts of books, especially those available for free. Then I found some sale sites that usually sold books $2.99 and under. I kind of wonder if the decline in e-book sales this past year (down 10 percent by some reports) reflects e-reader owners with e-readers full of books they haven’t read.

You wouldn’t think this a problem–a sale is a sale whether the book is read or not. What Rhomberg would say is that a sale is only a sale if the book is not read. If it is read and liked and talked about, it may lead to other sales. What is interesting is that through Advanced Reader Copy programs and digital tracking, publishers are learning about how far readers are getting into books, or whether they are reading them at all. And they are tailoring their marketing to what they learn.

One thing they found is that the more one paid for a book, the more likely they were to start it. Kind of makes sense, really. They also found that plot-driven books were completed far more than more “literary” works. Generally, if a reader made it half way through, they were pretty likely to finish.

One of the most interesting things to look at are the books that sell really well, and yet are finished by few. Often, a celebrity figure has endorsed it, perhaps without finishing the book. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century appears to be one of these (this is one I can say I actually finished and reviewed here). Bill Gates talked about this book, Piketty was featured on Charlie Rose, and many of us marched out and bought the book!

What about those books in the picture? I’ve always been interested in military history, especially British and American military history. I always thought Wellington would be an interesting figure to read about. Still do. Just might pull this one out. Sometime.

The book, Jesus and the Kingdom of God is still available in print on demand. As I recall, reading and teaching the Gospel of Mark intrigued me with this whole idea of the kingdom of God, kind of a foreign concept in our democracy where we don’t talk about kings and kingdoms. I think I found this at Eerdmans bookshop in Grand Rapids in their seconds shelves for a bargain. Since then, I’ve read other books on the topic and suspect I probably won’t read this one.

The True and Only Heaven was referenced in a talk that caught my attention. I picked it up for a bargain at Half Price Books back in 1992 for $2 according to the price sticker that is still on the book. The book is about the idea of progress and the opposition of anti-materialists to this idea. Sounded interesting at the time, probably not so much now, despite the very erudite tone of the book. Another for the purge pile.

I picked up the Time Reading Program version of Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler’s fictional account of Stalinist Russia in the 1930’s. I have collected the Time Reading Program editions when I come across them and have come across many references to Koestler’s work. May try to read this sometime if I can do so without destroying the stiff binding that characterizes these books.

So that I don’t feel alone, name one book that you bought that you thought you’d really like to read that you’ve never opened.

Endorsements. Blurbs.

One often sees these on the back cover or the front pages of a book. One tends to see this more on books by new authors, usually in the form of praise from more well known sources, or sometimes from reviews in newspapers or journals. All of these effuse praise for the book or author, maybe summarizing a key aspect of the book that might be attractive to the reader.

I sat down this morning with a book this morning that I had requested for review because the idea of the book looked interesting to me. I hadn’t seen these comments before obtaining the book. I discovered that there were six pages of these endorsements, half of which were from people I didn’t know, nineteen in all! This was followed by a four page foreward that really was a more extensive endorsement.

I found myself thinking, “is all this really necessary?” I actually found myself becoming more suspicious that this really wasn’t such a good book after all if the publisher felt it necessary to find so many people to tell me that it was. I also wondered, did all these people really read the book? And it occurred to me that this wasted ten pages of paper (maybe recycled).

I get that all of this is the publisher’s attempt to give me sufficient reason to buy this book, particularly if it means trusting an unknown author. And I would say that a few of the endorsements were by people who had “street cred” with me. But I found myself wondering (and I would genuinely love to know what others, including those involved with publishing think), do people really use these “blurbs” as the primary criteria in deciding to buy a book?

That made me reflect, what influences my decisions to buy a book? Here are some thoughts:

I’ve read a review that brought it to my attention as having something distinctive to say about the subject or that it offered a narrative that promised to be a good read.
The back cover description, the table of contents, and a scan of the early chapters suggest that the book will be interesting and/or helpful.
A friend’s recommendation, usually from a friend whose past recommendations were helpful. Often I follow up by looking at what is written online at Amazon and Goodreads as well as other reviews to see if this gets at something I care about and does it well.
Sometimes, I will buy a book if it keeps coming up in conversation, or is referenced by other things I’m reading. That tells me that it has some influence.

What I realize as I reflect in this, and maybe I’m peculiar, is that all those “blurbs” have nearly zero influence on my book-buying. Most of the time, I only notice them after acquiring the book, and then usually in a negative way–all these pages before I get to the actual book!

Some things I wonder:

If publishers do this, would one page with three to four endorsements by people likely known by the book’s target audience make sense and squander less paper? More than that feels like overkill to me. It also seems that putting these on the back cover is critical for those instances where people are browsing a book in a physical bookstore, or online where they can look at the cover.
I do think authors and publishers have to think about the online strategy of marketing the book. I suspect this involves more than publicizing your book on Facebook or some other social media source. I see a lot of this and just ignore it. Instead, I wonder if some of this starts with establishing a platform of people who really like one’s writing, and then moves from there to getting the book read by those who give it visibility beyond your own network. (I discussed this in a recent post on “the bookternet”).
I wonder if it could be a great resource to writers breaking in to develop better indexes of communities of interest around different kinds of writing, both physical and virtual. These seem both invaluable, and also seem to take a great deal of effort to find.

How influential are these “blurbs” or “endorsements” in your book buying decisions?