Book Marketing, Part 1 of a 3-Part Series: Positioning

I’ve found that lots of aspiring authors are confused by what it means to market themselves. I often see proposals that are lackluster at best in the marketing components; or worse, proposals that claim there are no Competitive Titles (a big no-no). If you want to sell your book in today’s publishing climate, there are three aspects to your proposal that have everything to do with marketing:

1. Your Competitive Titles section, which is about positioning your book
2. Your About the Author section, which is about marketing you
3. Your Marketing/Publicity section, which is about marketing your book

For the sake of brevity, we’re only going to tackle one of these today---#1---and I’ll come back to the other two in future newsletters. I tend to choose topics based on where I’m seeing my clients struggle, and this month, in the small window I’m coaching on my maternity leave (see below for the baby photo), positioning is begging to be better understood.

What is positioning?

According to Wikipedia, “positioning has come to mean the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization.”

In book publishing, hours-long marketing meetings can be spent talking about positioning. The reason it’s tied to Competitive Titles is because those titles that are similar (note: similar does not mean the same) to your book help publishers figure out: a) whether your book belongs on their list in the first place; b) where your book belongs in the bookstore (ie, category); and c) how their publicists can pitch your book to media.

Understanding and knowing how you want to position your book before you shop it can increase your chances of getting a book deal. So, let’s look at a couple examples---one prescriptive and one memoir.

Example 1: Prescriptive Self-Help
One of my authors at Seal Press, Joan Price, came to me a couple years ago with an idea for a second book (Naked at Our Age is being published this spring). Her first book, Better Than I Ever Expected, was about senior sex, and though the book had performed well, our marketing department was reluctant to do another book solely focused on the same topic by the same author. Joan’s book, however, was equal parts sex and health, and the marketing team was very interested in a sex book that focused on health. This is where positioning came into play. It’s not that Joan had to write a different book. She, and by extension me as the editor, simply had to keep in mind that health was a key component to what she was doing. This meant more expert opinions. We floated the idea (though it ultimately didn’t happen) of getting an MD to write the book’s foreword to give it more health credentials. This small adjustment to the way we thought about and later pitched (read: positioned) Joan’s book was what allowed Seal to be able to publish it. It’s important to note that publishers don’t want replicas of books they've published in the past. They need and want fresh content. So if you’re approaching a press because they’ve done something similar to what you’re doing, help them out by being creative about your positioning. Make sure to tell them what’s unique about your book, and how it might be differently positioned from other similar titles on their backlists.

Example 2: Memoir
Memoirs are tricky because their positioning isn’t always as easy to manipulate. Although positioning has to do with how you talk about your book, the book itself does have to deliver. This example comes from one of my clients who wrote a spiritual memoir, and yet she and her agent positioned the book as both spiritual and as a Girl, Interrupted or Prozac Nation---meaning edgy, truth-telling, and raw. It was, in fact, a blend of all of these things, but in this writer's case, the positioning ended up being problematic for publishers. Many of the editors who saw it wanted the grittier, edgier book promised in the proposal, and some even suggested she lose the spiritual undertones. It’s probable that she could have reworked her book per editors’ suggestions and repositioned (and in her case cut) the book to make it work for a particular press. Or she could do what she did: decide that the spiritual aspect was integral to the work and to her story. This particular book still hasn’t sold (and the author moved on to writing another book), but I don’t think she regrets not having changed her book for other people’s vision.

When you’re in the seemingly enviable circumstance of having editors weighing in on your proposal and telling you they might be able to buy/publish it if you’d just . . . (fill in the blank), it’s important to be careful. This can be a great thing, and it can lead to being published. But it can also lead to you sacrificing the book you were meant to write. I’ve seen authors have their book hijacked by editors who were trying to make a book work. I’ve also seen authors get more closely aligned with their original visions for a book by editors who were trying to make it work. So it goes both ways.

So think about where you are with positioning, and do your homework on your Competitive Titles. Help your agent, and by extension your publisher, understand how you think about your book, and be open if they have other suggestions for you---but not to the extent that you sacrifice your original intentions or story.

Good luck, and until next month.

Brooke

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Postscript. There was no January newsletter in the midst of my new motherhood haze. James Lyons came into the world on December 22. Thank you for all of your well wishes. I’m back to work, as I mentioned, in a limited capacity, but I’m happy to have squeezed a February newsletter out just under the wire.

James Lyons

Plan Your 2011 Sabbatical

This Christmas season it seems that everywhere I turn, people are telling me about laying low, reassessing, taking time off, hibernating.

It’s true that winter lends itself to this already, and perhaps my own attunement to this message has to do with the imposed sabbatical that’s just around the corner as my partner and I wait for Baby James to arrive. Seasoned parents, I’m sure, will tell me that having a new baby is not a sabbatical, but I say, why not?

A sabbatical is, according to Wikipedia, a "ceasing," a rest from work, or a hiatus. For most of us, going nonstop at breakneck speed is just part of what we’ve trained ourselves to do. We’re working, starting and growing businesses, writing books, trying to stay on top of social media. This is only the beginning, and it’s literally exhausting.

One of my writers is taking the month of December off. My mom has devised a series of weeklong workshops for 2011 in which she’s inviting writers, artists, and entrepreneurs to come to her retreat center, Pine Manor, to gift themselves the space to just be with their creative process. Another of my writers, like me, is expecting a baby, and the invitation to approach her away from work as a sabbatical was a welcome relief from the self-imposed pressure she felt around taking time off.

We live in a culture that doesn’t value time off, and so we must carve it out for ourselves. We all know that stepping away from something gives us perspective, and yet too seldom do we actually heed our own instincts for fear that we’ll fall behind, or worse, fall completely off track.

This month I have an offering and an invitation. My offering is a poem by Mark Nepo, the brilliant teacher and poet I have the honor of representing at Three Intentions.

Kiss Everything on Fire

Everyone keeps stopping me with their urgency.
As if the secret of life was written in a corner
of their mind and before they could
read it, it burst aflame.
The first hundred times, I rushed to do their
bidding. Then one day, exhausted by my own
secrets burning, I stopped running and
kissed everything on fire.
And yes, it scarred my lip and now
I have trouble saying anything complicated,
but wind no longer gets trapped in my head.
I know you understand. I’ve seen you suffer
the secrets no one asked us to keep secret. I’ve
seen them burning up your mind. But today,
we can part the veils and let in whatever
it is we thought we had to keep out.
Today, urgency dies because the heart
has burned its excuses.

My invitation is to plan a sabbatical. Perhaps it’s just a week, but find a time to get away in 2011. Get it on your calendar and make no exceptions! It’s not so much a time to put your projects on hold as it is to approach them from a slower, more intentional place and see what’s there for you. Go on retreat, take a “staycation,” rent a beach house for a few days, find silence. And see what opens up when the urgency dies.

Until next month!

Brooke

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Subheads, em-dashes, plural possessive, and other things I’m grateful for

Like many American families, ours honors the Thanksgiving tradition of going around the table and saying what we’re thankful for each year. This year I have a lot to be grateful for, most especially my amazing partner and stepsons, and my first baby, James, who’s due on Christmas Day.

This year, after the Thanksgiving meal was over (and probably because I spent a lot of the weekend working), I started thinking of some of the less-often-recognized things for which I am thankful. This Thanksgiving season, therefore, I want to give a shout out to a few of my favorite editorial whatnots.

The Subhead

Because my professional career has been mostly devoted to nonfiction, I must profess my love of the subhead. Memoirists and novelists, you can bypass this section, but my feeling is that all writers should understand the value of the sub.

Subheads give us structure and hierarchy. They help readers by containing information and giving a sense of what’s to come. A good writer understands that the content that falls beneath a given subhead is meant to be contained to the subject matter the subhead professes to cover. The space under a subhead is like a bucket. Throw in everything you want to say about that topic, but don’t let it overflow or spill out. There’s skill to keeping relevant content within the constraints of the subheads you’ve delineated, and oftentimes I feel that one of my biggest job as an editor is helping people shove certain lines or paragraphs of text back under its appropriate sub after an author has accidentally let it leak.

Subheads come in different levels. Don’t be afraid to use A-level, B-level, and C-level heads. However, any time you make use of subheads, remember the cardinal rule: Do not open your chapter with a subhead. It conflicts with the chapter title and deprives the reader of some introductory and general text about the chapter they’re about to read.

A simplistic example of a chapter that uses multiple levels of subheads might look something like this:

Chapter 2. Best Desserts

There are so many good desserts in the world that narrowing them down to just a few in this chapter is going to be hard. I must also note that it’s a subjective exercise and you will only be reading about desserts I love to eat.

[A]Ice Cream

I love ice cream and I eat it every day. There are so many reasons I love it. I love the texture, the different flavors, and the fact that it’s a healthy dessert.

[B]Texture

The texture of ice cream varies, and I like it creamy or icy. I like it in milkshakes, too. I’m a fan of added elements as well, like cookie dough and Oreo and Heath bar. Crunchy or smooth, I’ll eat it.

[B]Flavors

Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, of course, but also Chunky Monkey and spumoni and orange sherbet.

[B]Health Value

Ice cream is high in protein. Many people may argue that the fat content cancels out the health benefits the protein offers. But I’ll just defer to a video posted at http://fasteasyfit.blogspot.com on how to make high-protein, low fat ice cream. I think these people are geniuses.

[C]Fat Content

According to CBS News, “A chocolate-dipped waffle cone at Ben & Jerry's has about 320 calories and 16 grams of fat. Add one scoop of Chunky Monkey ice cream and the total surges to 820 calories and 26 grams of saturated fat---roughly as much as a one-pound rack of ribs.” Hmmm … maybe I should consider cutting back on Chunky Monkey.

[A]Tiramisu

And then we start all over again…

Not all books require you to think about multiple levels of subheads. Many self-help books, for instance, tend toward using only A-level headers, and this is another fine choice. 

I recommend that any author preparing to write a book think about their chapter outline---and subheads---when they sit down to write their summaries. Having a good outline is just like getting the foundation of your house done before you start putting up the walls. It shows you where to build, and in the end, it also makes for a better reading experience for the public out there who will be clamoring for your book.

I’m thankful for subheads because I’m a structure freak, I admit it. But if you have a book that would benefit from structure and hierarchy, you should become one too. And give thanks to the subhead's capacity to organize your information and keep you on track!

The Em-dash

The em-dash is my favorite punctuation mark, hands down. However, too many people misuse it and/or don’t know the key command to get an em-dash into their writing.

Mac key command: option+shift+hyphen

PC key command: Alt+0151

Good alternative: pressing the hyphen three times in a row, like this ---

The em-dash should never have spaces around it. Do not --- as shown here --- have spaces on either side of your em-dash. Em-dashes need to run up right against the text---like this---and always get closed up on the other side. It’s fine, too, to end a sentence on other punctuation following an em-dash---because that’s allowed, too! 

The em-dash exists to show a break in thought or a shift in tone. It’s also used to convey an aside---because our minds tend to wander---when we’re otherwise very much on track with an idea. A sentence that’s broken by an em-dash should make perfect sense and read as a complete sentence when you read it without the em-dash. Taking the above sentence as an example: 

“It’s also used to convey an aside ---because our minds tend to wander---when we’re otherwise very much on track with an idea.”

I’m thankful for the em-dash because it’s pretty and I've always loved it, but it's way too often shoved aside by people mistakenly using en-dashes ( – ) or hyphens ( - ).  Learn to love em-dashes like I do, but once you do, resist overusing them. You shouldn’t, for instance, use them when you should be using commas. But if you don’t use them at all, start today!

Plural Possessives

I’m not going to get into the rules of plural possessive here. If you want a good little write-up, click here. The only reason I bring it up is to highlight that names ending in “s” get the possessive apostrophe-s tacked onto the end just like any other proper noun. This is a self-serving addition because we’re naming our new baby James, and I figure he's in for a lifetime of seeing this like "James' room is cool." Also, there's a new edition (16th) of  Chicago Manual of Style, the Bible of all editorial style choices. The 15th edition exempted Jesus and Moses from the plural possessive. So while we would still write about James’s choices, we would only speak of Jesus’ followers. This has now changed and there’s one single rule for everyone, dead or alive. They all get the apostrophe-s. Thank you, Chicago 16! Yes, very small things make editors happy.

I’m thankful for the plural possessive (and specifically the s-apostrophe-s rule, because it’s hard to have a first or last name that ends in “s.”And it's hard to remember exceptions to the rule. So life just got that much easier for everyone.

And Other Things I’m Grateful For

I’m thankful for my readers, my clients, and my authors and for all of you who put time and energy into good writing. For those of you who value good writing. For those of you who read books---and who buy books! Thank you. I’m thankful to people who have the ambition and passion to write, and I’m thankful for all the many many types of writers and projects that come my way. People’s creative depths inspire me week in and week out. 

Until next month,

Brooke

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She Writes Live webinar, December 8th (10am PST/1pm EST)

"EVERYTHING YOU WANT AND NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GETTING YOUR NONFICTION BOOK PUBLISHED IN TODAY'S PUBLISHING CLIMATE"

Weds Dec 8 10am-11am PT | 1pm-2pm ET, via web and call-in
Hosted by Deborah Siegel

Writing as Meditation, with a Twist

There are many deterrents to writing. Every writer knows that. Top Five (off the top of my head) are:

(1) Procrastination (ie, everything in my life, including the dishes, comes before my writing);
(2) High expectations, leading to paralysis (ie, I don’t want to write a shitty first draft and have some unfounded expectation that my first draft be perfect);
(3) I’m going to hurt someone’s feelings or mischaracterize what really happened (curse of the memoirist who’s trying to protect everyone else);
(4) I’m too busy with work, school, social life, kids, etc. (very similar to #1 as it also leads to paralysis, but these types of excuses often help us feel more validated because they feel very legitimate);
(5) It feels like an obligation (ie, you’re not having fun).

Do any of these barriers sound familiar? (And by all means, if you have others please leave them in the COMMENTS below! Who loves to commiserate more than writers, after all?)

So how do you pull yourself out of the funk? I talk with my writers extensively about scheduling, but that can only take you so far. Getting when you’re going to write on your calendar is critical, but it doesn’t solve the fact that all writing deterrents are psychological barriers, not actual time barriers.

Last month, one of my writers had a breakthrough, and she’s given me permission to share it here. She was struggling with a few of the above sentiments, and we talked about writing as meditation. I suggested to her, as I do to many of my writers, to create a sacred space. You can light candles, say a mantra before you start, do meditative breathing—whatever it takes to help you set an intention around your writing. And as you do all of these things, you commit yourself to your hour, two hours, three hours, what have you.

This process worked for my client, but she added a spunky twist, inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk, which I posted about in February 2009. She scooped up an uglydoll and named it Genius and placed it in her writing space. Not only does Genius delight her every day, he reminds her to have fun, that it doesn’t have to be perfect, and that Genius doesn’t have to look a particular way. After all, this guy is UGLY!

I love this extra little structure my client created because for two reasons: (1) It’s working for her. She’s more productive and inspired than she’s been in months; and (2) It’s a reminder to shake it up a little bit. I do believe in setting intentions and creating space—both physical and emotional—to write. But it’s actually quite difficult for some people to make this a priority, to really make it happen. Everyone likes the idea of cultivating space, of setting an intention, of writing their six or nine or twelve hours a week, but only the most disciplined writers I know succeed at this week in and week out—and that's because they live their practice.

For those of you struggling to live your practice, consider something special to add to your writing space. Invite in Genius, or Inspiration, or Creativity. Assign it to an object that’s going to make you smile or catch your attention. Have fun with it! If you’re anything like the writer who dubbed her uglydoll Genius, you’ll discover that motivation sometimes comes from the most unlikely of places.

Until next month!

Brooke

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