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It's fantastic to hear from people in other industries with parallels to the upheavals in publishing.
In this video interview, I talk to Simon Scott from Push Entertainment about his experiences marketing in the music business, and how it applies to authors who want to cultivate fans of their work. I love Simon's no-nonsense attitude towards creative business, and if you pay close attention, you'll be able to turn his lessons into marketing ideas for your books.
You can watch the video below, or here on YouTube.
Simon Scott is the founder of Push Entertainment, working with large entertainment brands on marketing and customer loyalty through a suite of online tools aimed at attracting, retaining and generating revenue from fans.
In the interview, Simon and I discuss:
- It's important to realize that no one really cares – about your book before they read it, and even once they have, only a small percentage of fans will really care going forward.
- Break the marketplace [your audience] into 3 segments – 5% are the fanatical fans. 50% will never care even after reading the book. So the key target market are the 45% who have the propensity to be fans. Concentrate on converting those people.
- People don't respond to one big event – so a series of smaller events is necessary. An ‘event' means a ‘prod' or an impression. So that might be an email, an advert, a video, a blog post etc. Small things repeated makes sense, don't focus on one big marketing thing. Some of those little things may go big, or viral – and you have more chances for that to happen if you do lots of little things. Don't bet everything on one marketing attempt (or one book).
- Reward people for being customers and do special things for them e.g. free books if you sign up for the email list. When you do newsletters ‘A/B' it [which means split testing, try different wording, see what works and keep testing to optimize your copy]
- Sales aren't isn't spiked anymore – you can sell your backlist years in the future. In the old model, you had to have a huge spike at launch because it was your only chance to sell, whereas now, people can discover your books at any point.
- Always take the punter perspective (punter being the average consumer who doesn't really care.) Consider what that person is thinking and how they will act. [e.g. when faced with your book cover or your sales description]
- It's less about the product and more about the message inherent in the image shared. In the example that Simon uses, the things that work are the images that link to the t-shirt message, so they click to look and the customer then finds the t-shirt. [Think about the THEMES of your book and consider sharing images around that, not just the book cover.]
- On pricing offers and perceived value in comparison pricing.
- On changing your mailing list call to action (example from Now Music). Because you've purchased this, validate your purchase here and get a free XXX. This changed the signup rate considerably from just ‘Sign up here for our mailing list.'
- Learn from other industries that are NOT publishing. For example, look at how supermarkets sell as they are ultra-competitive.
- To boost revenue, create ultra-pack products for uber-fans, as the 5% will pay more for extra brilliant stuff that has value for them. Simon gives some examples of what you could offer, and I share the example of Hugh Howey's special Wool thumb-drives made from Silo radiation passes.
- On the parallels between the music business and the publishing industry since the rise of digital (music and books). Simon talks about the rise of indie musicians and how their stigma switched to ‘cool' over time, how the music industry started offering services (just like Penguin buying Author Solutions and other publishing houses setting up self-publishing arms) and how eventually the music industry started signing those indies. There are a lot of parallels.
- Indie musicians are good at everything – the music side, the distribution online and the marketing – both online through YouTube and at events. Use all the free services out there e.g. SoundCloud and YouTube. Look at where your audience congregates and hang out there.
- One mistake by the music industry is ‘abdicating their fanbase' – MTV, mySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify. DON'T build your platform on other sites which may disappear over time. Drive people back to your website to generate Direct to Consumer revenue. Have your own mailing list (and here's how)
I LOVED my chat with Simon, as he really has a hardcore business approach to marketing creative brands. What do you think? Do you have any thoughts or reflections on our conversation? Please leave a comment below.
View Comments (10)
Hi Joanna,
Excellent interview and information. I work with a lot of creative individuals and the toughest thing for them is to realize they are in business and that marketing done well is about getting to know the people who might like, love and/or need your work and making it rewarding, fun, & interesting for them to connect with you and with each other. Loved Simon's tips and his thinking, and I think your idea for mining the great brains from the people in the music industry who are doing it well was brilliant.
Thanks Cheryl - what was also interesting was how much of the language is the same across the industries - and the parallels between what big music did and what big publishing is doing was staggering!
It's a comfort that musicians and other artists are experiencing similar struggles. I loved his idea for the "Special Edition" package as another source of income. "Make something out of nothing" is a phrase I'll keep in front of my face to inspire some creative marketing ideas.
I've found Facebook and Twitter are not the best avenues to connect with readers but the website is ideal because, if you can keep them there longer than a minute and you have a site that offers more than just a book update or a random blog post, you can offer them a lot of ways to get your book and cool related stuff, become part of a group of fans and have an "in" with the author, in other words they can feel as though the author is like them and accessible.
Changing the mailing list call to action is another great idea. Thank goodness for people like you and Simon who are willing to give others creative inspiration and some how-tos for marketing. It would be so hard to get noticed without this valuable and tested information. Thanks Joanna and thank you, Simon!
Thanks Marcia, and I agree on the social media side - Twitter for me is more about connecting with peers and fostering relationships that allow me to leverage other marketing opportunities.
Great stuff. I work in the music business myself and there are definite parallels. If nothing else, the music industry is good to learn from when it comes to digital distribution, because we've been at it longer than books and have the arrows in our backs to prove it! ;)
Very informative. I especially liked reading that a series of smaller events has more impact. That's important for the budget, but I would think it would carry forward over time as well. Thank you!
Hi Joanna,
Andrea in Singapore here :). I'm referring to our conversation about not giving away foreign rights. I've followed a Swedish self-published crime author who's done very well - sold 35 000 copies the first six months on her own. She has now been picked up by an agent + sold foreign rights to large Swedish publisher, the rights for some countries in Europe. Was thinking about our conversation wondering whether there is any good reason to do that (you think there must be) or whether not even self-published authors in Europe are aware yet that they could do the foreign markets themselves too ??
Cheers
Not sure how this awesome post only has 7 comments. Fantastic info. Every point you listed is real world truth and points me toward real action steps (in my perception, anyway). Jam-packed. I love this as a checklist of things to consider this year as I'm moving forward.
Thanks, Joanna, for facilitating a top-notch interview with a savvy guy.
Great interview, Agree with Teddi. Also brilliant to see Simon really gets into the interview and shares absolutly killer info on increasing responses to simple promotions like getting people on you list after they've purchased!!! Thanks Joanna, Awesome as Always! :)
Hi Joanna,
I am an indie musician from Hungary, and I am planning to release my first book this year, so I made some research about "marketing your own book". I'm really happy that I found your website, it's good to read about like-minded people from a different industry. I am learning music marketing for a long time now, and to be honest, I'm not surprised that self-publishing and promoting a book is EXACTLY the same like promoting a music record. The concept is the same: contacting potential fans directly, collecting email addresses (number one most important!) I give away a free music track for people so they can download it if they subscribe to my email list. (Check out: http://music.barriolatino.hu ) Thanks for the useful articles and tips. Tamas