Big, big news

As announced on the Orbit Books website yesterday, I am utterly thrilled to have been hired as Orbit's new (online) marketing exec!

I officially start on April 7th, although as you can imagine there are plenty of emails flying back and forth already. And I'm not exactly a stranger to the Orbit offices, having worked on a few projects for George and the team already, including websites for Brian Ruckley, Philip Palmer and, of course, Iain [M] Banks.

It's an incredibly exciting opportunity and one that I know I'll enjoy getting stuck in to immensely: Orbit are one of the UK's largest and most forward-looking sf / f imprints and I'll be given the chance to work on a very wide range of online projects and promotions, with a bewildering array of global genre fiction talent, including some of the very best UK authors; established names and rising stars alike. Calling it the opportunity of a lifetime really wouldn't be a case of hyperbole on my part...

Of course, this does mean that I'm going to have to give up my freelance status and the work I've been doing with my non-Orbit clients. Letting everyone know has been a bit of a wrench, but every single one of the folks I spent a total of about five hours on the phone to yesterday were nothing short of delighted for me, and everyone has wished me nothing less than huge success in the future.

I've also been talking to someone who I think would make an ideal replacement webguy and all the clients I've mentioned the possibility to so far have been very keen on the idea. So, all being well, a successful handover will hopefully happen smoothly and quite soon.

Blogging-wise... let's just say that I'm reviewing the situation on an ongoing basis. I think The Genre Files may end up going into some sort of hibernation. Personally, I think it would be very difficult for me to post regular book reviews across a wide range of publishers' and authors' work. I suspect the implied bias of my position at Orbit will impinge on the perceived neutrality of my opinion to the point of rendering the exercise largely meaningless.

UK SF Book News will continue for the foreseeable future. Sandy and I were already working on plans to re-vamp the site again, putting an even stronger emphasis on news aggregation, link posting and original interview material. Our aim is to spread as much of the word as we can get our hands on as far and wide as we possibly can whilst providing as much original interview content as we have time for. The site will also become ad-free and affiliate-free, but then that's no bad thing as the time saved by not having to add affiliate info to items will mean more content posted in the long run.

Beyond that, who knows? I'm always coming up with ideas for new blog-based projects. I'll just have to see how much time is available once I've settled into my new role.

Wish me luck! :D

March 26, 2008 | Filed Under Books, Marketing, Work | 19 Comments

Genre fiction marketing follow-up - Lou Anders and Mark Chadbourn

Sorry folks, another long, train-of-thought essay of exactly the sort I promised myself I wasn't going to get overly involved in any more. But then, there have been a couple of very interesting follow-up posts to my last post on George Mann's original thoughts about the apparently essential dilemma of marketing genre fiction to either the masses or the hardcore fans, which I felt I had to add to.

Firstly, 'The Big Book Cover Post: Wizards and Spaceships' from Lou Anders of Pyr Books; another specialist genre imprint that I have a huge amount of respect for.

Lou makes a number of good points, a couple of which I'd particularly like to comment on:

"Personally, I do not like the move away from illustration to design that I see coming out from a lot of houses (though it has its place for individual books - I'm talking about a general trend). I think to forgo illustration is to sacrifice one of the core strengths of SF&F and one of its unique selling points."

Generally, I prefer well-illustrated genre fiction book covers to ones that are produced with a strictly 'graphic design' aesthetic in mind. But that's just a personal preference, and doesn't hold true 100% of the time; I've seen some striking and well-designed 'graphic' covers as well. And as fantasy author Joe Abercrombie points out in the comments section of Lou's post: "I don't know that the wider audience ... are necessarily put off by genre covers, but they certainly are put off by REALLY BAD covers."

Absolutely right. It applies to hardcore genre fans and probably tenfold to the general reader. Genre fiction book covers ought to be a demonstration of self-confidence and celebration, yes. They should unashamedly wear their genre hearts on their sleeves, absolutely. If you're selling a book about dragons and want to attract the attention dragon-fans, then a dragon on the cover is a good idea? Just make sure it's a stylish, well-illustrated dragon that has a measure of genuine artistic merit in its own right, not some cartoonish, lumpen sketch, or even the dragon-fans might say no.

And what if the book has some genre elements, but has the potential to appeal to a wider audience - through the exceptional quality of the prose, or the range of themes, concepts and sub-texts the author explores, or the incredible catharsis inherent in the principle character's life story or situation, etc. - what if it's a whole lot more than a simple scion quest / space war adventure story? How do you strike the balance; ensure you don't cross that oh, so tricky invisible line? Lou Anders has an answer:

"...you do so neither by hiding / omitting your genre elements nor presenting them in an off-putting, garish manor, but by presenting them in a mature, intriguing, attractive, inclusive, compelling 21st century light."

Which, by the way, I think applies equally to everything from the cover blurb to the author photo on the inside sleeve to the content of the accompanying press release that's sent out with review copies, as much as it does to the cover art itself.

Returning to cover art, specifically, Lou also quotes from an off-thread conversation with illustrator / artist / designer John Picacio who sums up the reason why the genre really does need to give itself a shot in the arm when it comes to self-confidence and belief:

"The field must visually celebrate itself, rather than run away from itself ... When sf/fantasy publishing shows an insecurity about its visual strengths, that insecurity rubs off negatively not only on our audiences, but in the broader media, and we push ourselves backwards every time we do that."

If we, as genre readers and genre fans, stopped worrying so much about what the wider mainstream media thought about our books - taking it to the extreme: ignoring the mainstream media completely and focusing almost entirely on the specialist genre presses, blogs, webzines, print 'zines - then the mainstream media will soon get bored and leave us the hell alone to enjoy ourselves in peace, right?

Well, fantasy / horror author Mark Chadbourn thinks this could be a dangerous road to go down, and says so in 'Selling Fantasy by the Pound' on his JackofRavens.com blog.

Mark was a journalist for many years before he became a full-time fiction writer and also writes for TV here in the UK, so he's seen the impact of the aforementioned Long Tail economics on three media channels: music, print and television.

Mark's main argument against a policy of appealing to the core genre fiction fans centres on his experience of the music industry:

"...if it [the fan-focused approach] was applied to the whole industry I would have real problems. In the music industry, where I worked for a while, the marketeers have struggled. By focusing on the tribalist music fan that has emerged over the last twenty years, they have had trouble gaining breakout hits from genres. Attention shifted to marketing bland fare that would appeal to all tastes to gain those mainstream hits, and sales have fallen dramatically (yes, I know there are many other factors, but this is a core concern)."

Which brings in an earlier discussion on 'quality fantasy', which was actually sparked by another Chadbourn post, 'Are RPGs killing fantasy?', in which he called for fantasy writers to embrace their weird side and distance themselves from the clichés and standardised fantasy tropes made overly familiar by a plethora of fantasy-themed computer games.

Can you achieve all those aims at once? Can you write high-quality, literary genre fiction that's successfully marketed to a core audience of fans, yet still has enough break-out potential to escape the genre-ghetto and achieve mass-market sales?

Mark thinks you can:

"I love fantasy, science fiction and horror. I believe these three genres are appealing to mainstream tastes, if some way can be found to communicate their values to the casual browser. I'm afraid that an across-the-board retreat to the 'core fan model' will ghettoize them even further and lead to a long-term decline. The best way for the industry, I think is - to use music industry analogy - hardcore labels for the purist, and general labels to attract new users."

Well, surely this model already exists within the publishing industry, and has for years? If you'll excuse the lengthy aside and apologies to anyone not specifically mentioned by name:

At one extreme you have the very definite 'hardcore' independent presses - such as the UK's Tartarus Press, who cater for very specialist niches. Moving up the scale you find successful niche-indies like Pendragon (horror fiction in all its guises), Telos (TV guides and genre novellas) and Elastic (genre short fiction collections and anthologies). Then there are larger indies - PS Publishing in the UK, Subterranean Press, Cemetery Dance et. al. in the US - who produce a wider range of authors and formats across the whole spectrum of genres, and also larger specialists such as Titan (UK graphic novels).

Crossing to the 'corporate' ladder we start with smaller imprints, whose publication range may actually be narrower than the larger indies, but whose financial backing means they can usually spend more on advertising, marketing and online promotion and so reach a wider audience. Solaris are one such: self-declared as a midlist imprint, still relatively small but growing strongly and with the financial muscle of Games Workshop and the Black Library publishing operation behind them, backing up their online know-how.

Around about the same level are the genre titles that are published by major corporates who don't have a specific genre imprint - Penguin, Transworld, Hodder, Headline and co. all put out titles with varying degrees of blatant genre-ness as part of their overall fiction lists.

Finally, we get to the larger, longer-established, specific genre imprints of major corporate publishing houses, including HarperCollins' Voyager, Orion's Gollancz Books and Little Brown's Orbit. The latter, with the recent launch of Orbit US and Orbit Australia, now serves the three major English-speaking markets (four, including Canada via the US), giving it immense reach and influence. And they all bring a highly effective mix of established bestsellers and innovative new talent to the market.

Thanks to Gollancz and Orbit in particular, a number of new genre authors have been published for the first time in the past couple of years, and others who have established themselves in their local markets (Australian author Margo Lanagan) or via the independent presses (Joe Hill with his debut collection 20th Century Ghosts from PS, now a Gollancz author) have subsequently been introduced to a much wider audience; some of those authors even making national bestseller lists in the process (Trudi Canavan, for instance).

So surely, with that sort of established mix of 'hardcore' and 'general' labels, it's just a question of the writer deciding which audience their work is most likely to appeal to and then approaching a publisher who is geared towards publishing for that audience?

Well, of course it's nowhere near as simple as that, and Mark Chadbourn has a few further words of warning for the genre writer:

"But that is a fiendish and crippling trap for the writer. Once you establish yourself in one pool or the other it will be very hard to crossover and gain, on the one hand, the new readers and wider sales that sustain your career, and, on the other, credibility that is just as valuable a commodity in the internet-empowered world."

So it sounds like you can either - as a genre author - choose to write specialised, credibility-rich, literary fiction, knowing full well that you'll probably end up appealing to a much smaller pool of potential readers (writing for the Long Tail audience), or narrow your horizons; dumbing-down in the process, in order to appeal to the RPG-influenced, bland-fare consuming mass market and (hopefully) laugh all the way to the bank (moving your work away from the 'long tail' and into the 'short head', where the bestsellers feed).

Of course, you could try do both at the same time. Many authors do, either openly or - I'm sure - pseudonymously.

Or you could try to find another way: by helping the readership to raise its standards; to expect, to want, to demand much more from their genre fiction, and thereby move the mainstream audience closer to the credible, literary end of the spectrum. In other words, expanding the middle ground between 'long tail' and 'short head' (it would help if I had time to draw the graph, I'll try to add one at a later date) and creating greater potential for higher quality fiction to thrive.

If the readership demands richer, better quality genre fiction, and the readership then votes with its credit cards and buys more of it, then the publishers of the world will respond by publishing more of it. And I know for a fact that this would make a lot of genre fiction publishers immensely happy.

Anyhow, I'm going to go away and ruminate some more, see if I can pull a few thoughts together into something resembling a reasonably coherent framework. Or a polemic. Or another rambling essay (most likely). Won't happen for a while yet though... far too much interesting work happening right now, and an imminent and much-needed holiday to enjoy as well.

Feel free to comment away if the urge takes you. I'll try to keep track, but can't promise anything like a coherent response for a couple of weeks or so...

October 24, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Marketing, Publishing, Work, Writing | 4 Comments

Essential reading: George Mann on packaging the SF & Fantasy genres

George Mann of Solaris Books has posted an insightful piece on the Solaris approach towards the design, packaging and presentation of their genre fiction book covers, in a feature called 'Marrying Authors to their Market: a Genre Perspective', over on the Solaris Books main website.

He opens with a couple of paragraphs that neatly explain the two principle strategies that are open to genre publishers when it comes to choosing a cover design, along with the primary risks associated with each:

1) Attempt to reach as wide an audience as theoretically possible - primarily by 'neutralising' the cover in order to avoid scaring away potential mainstream book-buyers - which runs the risk that the book might get lost in a no-mans'-land somewhere between the two.

2) Target the 'core' genre fiction audience - by making it blatantly obvious through the design of the book cover that this is a genre title with little or no pretensions to mainstream appeal whatsoever - which runs the risk of limiting the sales potential to a relatively small segment of the overall market.

Solaris Books, since their inception and launch earlier this year, have stuck determinedly to option 2) and it's an approach which has paid handsome dividends, as George tells us:

"For Solaris, this approach has so far served us proud. The list is defiantly midlist, aimed at a core readership, and as both individuals and publishers we revel in the genre, in all its aspects and forms – novels, movies, manga, comics. We celebrate our inner geeks. Although we recognise there are other successful ways to package books and appeal to readers, we've chosen to go in this direction. Our books look like science fiction and fantasy novels, with all the stereotypical trappings, and we've received a great deal of praise from both critics and readers for our celebration and support of the genre. Our lists – both Solaris and The Black Library – go from strength-to-strength, and for now, our strategy remains steadfast: we publish books for SF/F fans, for the SF/F section of the bookshop."

Of course, just sticking any old space ship or dragon on a book cover won't guarantee success. You still have to come up with a design that's striking, appeals to the right audience, and yet isn't so crushingly, embarrassingly awful that even the most die-hard genre fiction fan will be too embarrassed to be seen reading the book on public transport. Which is something else that Solaris have managed quite brilliantly to-date, with a selection of (imho) extremely good covers, like these:

Solaris book of New Science Fiction ed. by George Mann

Solaris book of New Fantasy ed. by George Mann

I think this is absolutely the right approach to take, and the roaring success of Solaris is something that every genre publisher should be paying attention to. But the 'packaging and cover design' riff only tells half the story.

We live in an age of increasingly influential Long Tail economics (see Wikipedia for a useful summary: "products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough"), and genre fiction is a product area that's massively impacted by the principles of the theory.

As students of the Long Tail know and as Chris Anderson makes clear in his book of the same title (which, incidentally, every publisher and author working in genre fiction needs to read): in this Internet-enabled information age, data on the variety and wide availability of a range of products in a given product area is - for practical purposes - both limitless and free.

From the point of view of the Long Tail audience for a particular product, the most pressing task is therefore to filter that vast flood of data in order to select the products that offer the best fit for the customer's needs. In short: they need to boost the signal-to-noise ratio to the point where they can reach an informed purchasing decision. Similarly, from the point of view of the producer, the trick is to somehow rise above the vast sea of info-noise; to make their product stand out and be noticed, yet to do so in a manner that emphasises its authentic appeal to the potential customer.

One of the best ways to accomplish both these tasks is via the medium of key, relevant information aggregators; those processes and processors who cut through the noise, pick out the best products on offer and then tell other people about them. Customers need to find trusted aggregators whose taste coincides with their own and who can be relied upon to tell it to them straight. Producers need to develop strong relationships with those same aggregators, in order to keep their products in focus and secure as much quality, targeted coverage as possible.

In the case of genre fiction, the aggregators take the shape of genre news websites, regular bloggers, knowledgeable booksellers, reputable critics and reviewers. Publishers and authors who understand the theories and forces involved are already tapping the ability of these aggregators to filter, disseminate and broadcast their knowledge-backed recommendations to a targeted, relevant, interested audience, and as a result they are driving forward sales of their titles.

George and the Solaris crew understand the Long Tail principle (along with a whole bunch of others to do with permission-based marketing, inherent remarkability and concepts like the ideavirus) which is why you'll always see them at genre conventions and gatherings of fans, why they maintain a regularly-updated and interesting blog (When Gravity Fails) and why if you're a reviewer, or a blogger, or a web 'zine editor, and you drop them a line, there's a good chance - if your site is professionally presented, or well enough regarded in terms of its Technorati authority, or if your enthusiasm is just incredibly obvious and obviously genuine - that they'll get right back to you with whatever information you need, perhaps a review copy of the book you're interested in, maybe even a promise to pass on your questions to one of their authors for an email interview.

All this is because at Solaris they know that by reaching out to those key aggregators they're potentially talking to many more (two, or three, or a dozen, or a few thousand) interested, enthusiastic, switched-on potential book-buyers. As a result, you'll find reviews and general coverage of Solaris titles all over the blogosphere and wider genre-flavoured corners of the Internet: 40,600+ hits on Google for "Solaris Books", and counting...

The Solaris crew aren't alone out there, either: there are publishers and business managers and publicists at many other independent presses - and even some of the larger genre imprints - who have an equal eye for and appreciation of the possibilities on offer. But alas, some of those guys are hamstrung by the corporate rule-book; locked into dictated, old-school ways of doing business which haven't changed much since Amazon appeared on the scene; which is why they might not seem quite so active (although dammit, they're doing their best).

And then there are those guys who, for whatever reason - sheer disinterest, the corporate grind, a genuine lack of time to read and re-train, higher-ups who don't give a shit about genre fiction and don't care who knows it, whatever - just don't seem to get it. If you're a genre author who's stuck with one of those guys as your publisher / editor / publicist, then all is not lost; but you probably are going to have to roll your sleeves up and get stuck in yourself. But then, that's no bad thing either, providing you do it well and do it with enthusiasm and genuine interest.

Anyhow, to return (at last) to the original topic of cover-design and offer a quick summary:

As a matter of policy, Solaris Books have declared that they're very firmly targeted at the 'core' genre market, and the 'core' genre market has responsed well, by buying Solaris titles. But I think the essential 'genre-ness' - and high quality - of their cover design is just one key ingredient of their overall recipe for success; their aesthetic excellence is backed up by the whole gestalt attitude of everyone at Solaris Books, one that says: "We're genre fiction fans, and we're publishing for genre fiction fans, which is why we want to talk to them and find out about the sort of books they want to read; so we can make sure that those are the books we publish..."

I think it's a great policy, indeed quite possibly the only one that really makes any sort of Long Tail sense. After all, why waste money, effort and a book's increasingly limited and precious exposure-time (one senior genre fiction editor revealed at a panel at this year's Fantasycon that most UK bookstores now only give titles a six week lead-time before they insist on returning them to the publisher for full credit) on a scatter-shot approach that you hope will result in increased sales and market-share, when instead you could focus all your energy on a key segment of the overall audience; one that's that's already receptive and ready to hear what you have to say?

In short: until you know you've talked to as many fans and regular readers of a given book's relevant genre(s) as you can possibly reach - as many interested, excited, purchase-pre-disposed, potential book-buyers as you can find - then why on Earth would you want to take the gamble of trying to talk to just anyone? Especially when it ought to be painfully obvious by now that most non genre-fiction readers and fans just aren't listening...

So, yes, I look forward to seeing many more fine and very definite genre fiction titles with well-designed, eye-catching genre-fiction artwork on their covers, from Solaris and all the other publishers with a similarly switched-on outlook. I hope those same books will continue to fly off the bookstore shelves and online catalogues. And, speaking as one of those aforementioned information aggregators, I hope to continue to play my own small part in that process...

October 18, 2007 | Filed Under Marketing, Publishing, Work, Writing | 2 Comments

Booktour.com now open to UK registrations

BookTour.com is a new website - that's been launched by The Long Tail author Chris Anderson and co. - that lists details of authors' promotional tours.

It's simple and effective, easy to grasp, easy to use. Admittedly their homepage is a bit sparse and minimalist and they could do with a few usability enhancements here and there, but they have been adding-on plenty of new features recently (is their blog is anything to go by) and apparently a whole raft of further improvements are on the way.

And they've just opened the site to UK authors, readers and publishers: readers can now search for author events taking place in their immediate locality (or anywhere else, for that matter), whilst authors can upload information about their books to their profile page, and authors or publicists can post details of forthcoming book tour information.

There's not much UK info on there at the moment, which means it's a great time for any authors out there who are on tour in the near future to get on there and post their info. It's very easy to stand out in a small crowd and I think the sheer usefulness of a site like this will mean that its popularity will inevitably grow as word spreads, so it'll get busier and noisier as time goes on.

By which point they'll hopefully have launched customised search options (cross-referencing particular genres with UK-specific locations, for instance, so users can search for all sf / fantasy / horror events taking place in their hometown, or across the UK), customisable RSS feeds (it would be great if the feeds were based on the results of the aforementioned searches, but I don't know how technically feasible that might be) and some of the other useful-sounding enhancements that they're working on at the moment.

Anyway, if you're an author or a publicist, check the site out and get your data listed. And if you're a reader or a fan, start running those searches now, just in case you do find something. I'll bet the site's development team will be watching the traffic logs pretty closely to see where the activity is, and the more UK users they spot the faster they'll push through the UK-specific content sections of the site...

August 6, 2007 | Filed Under Marketing | Leave a Comment

New client, new(-ish) website: RichardKMorgan.com

I've recently taken on the management of Richard (K) Morgan's website, which I'm very pleased indeed to be involved with, seeing as I'm a bit of a fan and all...

I was going to start by just transferring the old site onto a new server, but... well, I couldn't resist having a bit of a tinker (as you do), so we've actually ended up with an interim revamp. It's still fairly close to the look of the original site, but I've broken the pages out of the frameset to improve Google spider access, added a bit more info about Richard's books to the homepage and so forth.

There will be a fully re-designed site going live later in the year, with a design that reflects the re-design work that publisher Gollancz have unveiled for the full range of paperback editions of Richard's books, and plenty more bibliographical information etc. Watch this space. And in the meantime, here's a quick shot of the interim site:

Interim version of www.richardkmorgan.com

July 17, 2007 | Filed Under Marketing, Work | 4 Comments

Genre Cover of the Month - Hmmm…

Sorry folks, but I haven't quite managed to get my act together and post the second GCOTM poll just yet. As a result, I think I might need to have a bit of a re-think about the general concept...

Trophy image by 'fishing' via sxc.hu The first poll went well, with 97 votes registered before I closed it (which, I believe, means it was actually statistically relevant) and I got some very good email feedback in terms of how useful this sort of thing could be for publishers and booksellers alike. The trouble is, it obviously requires a timely commitment from me, in terms of performing the necessary post-writing and image-manipulation admin, in order to get the new item out for the beginning of a given month. And I obviously missed the boat for March (apologies to everyone who sent in suggestions, but please see yesterday's post on work scheduling for possible reasons why...)

So, what do you folks think? I could make it a quarterly thing rather than monthly to begin with, and then if interest really does take off I could increase the frequency. Or I could just post individual examples of what I - or anyone else who cares to nominate a cover - thinks is a great bit of effective cover design, and we could then discuss individual cases on their relative merits. Or should I focus on comparing and contrasting - editions prepared for different markets, similarly themed / targeted titles, that sort of thing - instead? Or do a bit of all of the above?

Lots of possibilities, and it is a subject area I'm definitely interested in exploring further. I'm just wondering what the most effective way forward might be and what you folks might be interested in reading about. Answers on a comment-shaped postcard would be most welcome...

April 18, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Books, Marketing, Publishing | 5 Comments

New client website goes live: JoeAbercrombie.com

Another initial page of content went live as of yesterday; it's been a good couple of weeks on the work-front. This one is for a brand new client, and someone I'm particularly thrilled to be building a website for, given that I really, really enjoyed his first book or two.

Currently www.joeabercrombie.com is a holding page containing some information about the first two books in his The First Law series: The Blade Itself and Before They Are Hanged, as well as a mailing list sign-up form and an email contact address. Joe and I will be working on a much more comprehensive site later in the year; the target is June / July (ish), work-load (Joe's) permitting.

Again, it's a simple design, using the parchment background to reflect the cover-theme of The Blade Itself. The only thing I might do differently, thinking about it, is improve the header, try to put it into a gothic-serif font to try to match the book's lettering. That would look better, but give Google less relevancy-matching to get its teeth into, but then the primary domain should grab Google's attention quite nicely. I'll think I'll see how it goes for now.

And as always, any comments or feedback - or thoughts as to what sort of content you'd like to see on the finished site - would be gratefully received!

April 14, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Marketing, Work | Leave a Comment

Court of the Air promo movie

I do like a book promo when it's well-designed, well-executed and, above all, intriguing. In a comment on my recent post about my reading list backlog, Brian Edwards of SciFind.co.uk points me in the direction of the Flash promo for Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air - hosted by SciFind - which meets all three criteria quite nicely.

It's stylish: smoothly animated and sound-tracked with mood music and sound effect rather than any sort of cheesy author's voice-over. It also introduces the main characters and their situation - chock full of deadly peril and drama-inducing conflict - without giving away any more information than you'd expect from the publishers' blurb, so no major spoilers.

So overall I'd say it had a generally beneficial effect; on balance I for one would be more likely to pick up the book having seen the trailer. Job done.

Okay, some folks might be put off by the stylised, comics-esque animation, but I don't think that would be too much of a problem among the book's likely core, genre reading audience. So it's targeted as well, which is all to the good.

Check it out: www.scifind.co.uk/courtoftheair/.

April 6, 2007 | Filed Under Animation, Books, Marketing | Leave a Comment

Genre Cover of the Month for February '07

We have a winner! With a very respectable 42% of the 98 votes cast in last month's poll, the GCotM accolade for Feb '07 goes to éditions Bragelonne's cover for their French-language translation of The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch: Les Mensonges de Locke Lamora.

Bragelonne cover for 'Les Mensonges de Locke Lamora'

I really liked this cover myself, for two reasons: firstly because I thought it might have been a Les Edwards / Edward Miller creation (although after a quick email to Les I discovered that this wasn't the case), and secondly because I'm a sucker for the architecture of imaginary places. I tend not to be all that good at visualising locations when I'm reading a book, so it's always fascinating to see how someone with some genuine artistic talent can interpret a scene or setting for a book I've enjoyed.

So yes, this cover would definitely have made me - personally - pick the book out from a table display. But then judging by the pattern of voting - an early lead for Ink, followed by a determined surge for both Les Menonges and Already Dead - perhaps the classic fantasy look doesn't have quite the same pull for everyone.

I'll see if I can get in touch with the editor, artist and author to get their individual take on the cover sometime this week. And I'll be posting the nominated covers for March later in the week as well; I want to look into a way of linking the poll to the original post with the cover images a bit better this month. I rather suspect that some folks might have been put off clicking on the poll because they didn't know what, exactly, they were voting for. And I likewise suspect that some folks ended up voting for the book, rather than what they considered, objectively and personally, to be the strongest cover.

Early days though, plenty of time to fine-tune as we go along, eh?

April 1, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Books, Marketing, Publishing | Leave a Comment

Quick reminder: March GCOTM noms still open

Nominations for the March '07 Genre Cover of the Month accolade are still open, folks.

It's the end of the month now, so we've probably seen most of this month's covers (and I'm gradually putting together the next Books Received post over on UKSFBN, so there might be a few there you haven't seen). But if you've seen anything new that you particularly like this month, then please do feel free to nominate it. Details of how to do so over on the main GCOTM page. If you could get your noms in by the weekend, that would be great.

And voting is still open for the February '07 inaugural GCOTM accolade, for the next couple of days at least. I'm actually going to close the poll on Friday 30th to allow me to prep a post declaring the winner over the weekend.

A quick glance at the current position suggests that Les Mensonges de Locke Lamora may well walk off with it, but that could still change...

March 27, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Books, Marketing, Publishing | Leave a Comment

Smart Thinking: Grab another Thresher's Wine Bargain

The Thresher's 40% discount wine offer is back on again - for one week only.

For those of you who missed it first time around, the original incarnation was a scheme dreamt up by Hugh MacLeod and his business partners at Stormhoek Wines. Simple idea: download a pdf voucher, take it into your local branch of Thresher's, get 40% off their entire wine range. Which really adds up if you're stocking up on £15 bottles of Chateau Neuf du Pape as a yuletide treat, I can tell you.

The rest is recent history: the voucher went viral, the media went into a frenzy - although a lot of papers and news progs for some reason insisted on reporting it as an 'error'; presumably they couldn't quite believe that anything doing so much good for all concerned could be planned and deliberate - and Thresher's reported that they'd notched up £15m in additional sales as well as clearing a lot of stock from their warehouse in the process.

And now it's back. As posted by Hugh last night on his gapingvoid blog, for a limited time only in the run up to Easter you can download the new voucher from the Stormhoek website, then march into your local Thresher's and get your 40% off all wines (champagne, sparkling and fortified wines excepted).

Jo and I will be going tonight on the way home from the gym, before they run out of Stormhoek Pinotage 2005, which is bloody marvellous stuff - goes with everything from a chicken shashlik to half a bar of Green & Black's dark & mint (and believe me, we've experimented with a fair few combinations...)

Edit 23.03.07: Did indeed call in to Thresher's on the way home last night. Sidled up to the counter and showed the chap behind the till the new voucher: "Are you taking... these?" I enquired. To which he replied:

"Oh, God, not again..."

Turns out this poor sod still bears the scars of the Xmas frenzy when, so he told me, he ended up holding the fort all-but single handed. "I'm not bloody going through that again..." he muttered as he picked up the phone to ring someone higher-up and check that the horrible rumours were true and that yes, indeed, that bastard MacLeod was about to ruin his life all over again...

I tried to win him over. "Hey, it's only for a week. And didn't Thresher's make an extra £15m in sales last time?"

"Oh, Aye!" this laced with an unspoken, yet quite distinct dose of 'yeah, but guess how much of it ended up in my pocket as a result, and after all the grief that I had to go through...'

His colleague who wandered in from the stock room at that point, seemed more sanguine about the whole thing when challenged about the return of voucher hell "Yeah, there was something about that on the memos for today." But then he tried to persuade me that their usual 'buy two, get one free' was actually a better deal. Immune to my counter-proposal that 33% off wasn't actually better than 40% off, he was on the verge of running through the calculations when I fled with my half dozen bottles of Stormhoek Shiraz (they didn't have the Pinotage, but the Shiraz is gorgeous so I was very happy indeed...)

"You'll need some more of these, I've cleaned the shelf out..." was my parting shot.

"Oh, Aye..."

I wonder. Is it a case of one staff member with a less-than-sunny disposition and bad memories of last time (the vouchers, the horrible vouchers!), or will Hugh's new deal not be quite as well-received by the front-line bottle-slingers as it will by the profit-counters at Head Office? A case of the joy not being spread far enough, goodwill bonus-wise, or just the usual "retail sucks, my job is crap, I wish I was dead" issues that you get almost everywhere..? Should Thresher's spend more time educating their staff on the joys of viral marketing, or should the guys and gals behind the counter just suck it up and get the heck on with it for the Good of the Company and, dammit, because it's their job to sell more wine?

Whatever. I'm six bottles of rather excellent wine at a very reasonable price to the good. My weekend's definitely looking up... :)

March 22, 2007 | Filed Under Drink, Marketing | 8 Comments

Genre Cover of the Month - Vote Feb '07, Noms open Mar '07

Okay then, here we go with the first selection of nominated covers for the inaugural Genre Files Genre Cover of the Month accolade...

A quick note before we start: Nominations are now open for the March '07 Genre Cover of the Month, so please do head on over to the GCoTM page of the site for details of how to nominate your favourite covers during the coming month.

The Nominees

This month I've selected six book covers for the shortlist, based on the nominations sent in by various people (many thanks to everyone who participated) plus one that I've included myself.

[Clicking on a cover will take you to the relevant Amazon info page, where you'll be able to see a slightly larger cover image...]

The Voting

Please remember, I'm asking you to vote for the strongest book cover, not the best book itself.

It doesn't matter whether you've read the book or not, or whether you liked it or not if you have. What I'm interested in is, in your opinion, which of the six covers is the most effective. Not necessarily the most eye-catching or the most aesthetically pleasing, although both of these factors are important.

In essence though, I'd like to know which of the six covers above would be most likely to persuade you to pick up the book in a bookstore, or to click on a link online, and either buy the book there and then, or at least want to find out more.

In short: which book cover does the job of selling that book the best?

Please use the Feb '07 Poll to register your vote, or send me an email instead and I'll register the vote on your behalf.

If you'd like to discuss the covers, or add a comment as to why you registered your vote for a particular title, then please do feel free to use the comments for this post.

The Winner...

Will be announced when voting closes on March 31st. I'll email the author, publisher, artist / designer to let them know, and ask for any comment they might have on the design of the cover, then post whatever responses I'm able to elicit.

Unnecessary Footnote

Please, don't bother voting dozens of times for your favourite cover. Ballot-stuffing isn't big, or clever, and it's not like we're deciding the fate of the world here or anything, y'know..?

March 1, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Books, Marketing, Publishing | 12 Comments

Poll Results: Feb '07 Genre Cover of the Month

March 1, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Books, Marketing, Publishing | Leave a Comment

Quick reminder: Cover of the Month, Feb '07

Today's the last day for nominating the best book covers you've seen this month for the Genre Files Feb '07 Cover of the Month accolade. Full blurb, guidelines etc. here.

And many thanks to everyone who's sent in their suggestions already. I'll look those over and try to get the first voting form sorted out tomorrow, but it might have to happen after the weekend, schedule allowing etc.

February 28, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Books, Marketing, Publishing | Leave a Comment

New client website goes live: www.JayAmory.com

Another new client website went live yesterday: a simple (but hopefully effective) initial page for young adult fantasy writer Jay Amory, at www.jayamory.com.

In effect it's a holding page for now - Jay is hard at work on his next book and so doesn't have the time just at the moment for generating additional content for a full site. So this initial page presents a section of information on his first two books, links to Amazon.co.uk for anyone who would like more information on availability and ordering, an email address for fans that would like to get in touch, and an email list sign-up form for folks to register for further updates as they occur.

Do let me know what you think... bearing in mind that minimalism and simplicity were the client's watch-words, is there anything else that ought to be on the page that isn't there? Or does it do the job it sets out to do?

February 20, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Marketing, Work | Leave a Comment

Cover of the Month - Feb '07 open for nominations

Right then, I've posted a general page of rules & regs etc. over at the appropriately-named Genre Cover of the Month page.

Please feel free to nominate-away, as you see fit; the more participants the merrier, etc. Nominations will close at the end of the month and I'll set up a poll so you can vote for a winner.

February 7, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Books, Marketing, Publishing | Leave a Comment

'Genre Cover of the Month'… what do you think?

I'm thinking of experimenting with a 'Genre Cover of the Month' feature / accolade, to run alongside the series of pieces I'm going to be writing soon on the art, craft and science of genre book covers. It'll be for a number of reasons: to generate research material for the articles, out of interest to see what sort of response this sort of thing might be able to generate, and as a bit of fun as well.

Decisions - Yes, by 'Woodsy' via www.sxc.hu Here's the general idea:

1) Any reader of The Genre Files will be welcome to submit up to three covers for a given month's accolade. Ideally, they should be covers of new books first published in that particular month, but we'll see how that goes.

2) At the end of that month I'll select a shortlist (length dependent on number of entries) of either the most-nominated, or just the best-looking (in my humble opinion) of all the covers that have been submitted that month.

3) I'll set up a poll so folks can vote for the cover that they feel should win the accolade. Voting will stay open for the following month (or two) to allow as many TGF readers as possible to participate.

4) I'll then declare a winner (bearing in mind that February's winner might not be unveiled until April or May), and attempt to get in touch with the author, publisher, publicist and cover artist (if applicable) in question, for any comment they might like to make as to why they chose that particular cover design, what techniques they used to achieve the effect etc.

5) There might also be a 'wooden spoon' category, depending on how mean I'm feeling, to give folks a chance to name and shame the worst covers they see (although we might have to find a way of omitting self-published authors, it'd be like shooting fish in the proverbial hogshead).

6) I might (depending on how generous and/or flush I'm feeling) send some sort of Amazon voucher themed prize to the person who nominated the winning cover in the first place, as a thank you.

7) We'll see how it goes. Like I said, it's an experiment at this stage and if it doesn't take off, then no harm, no foul.

Do let me know what you think, folks. Would you be interested in joining in? Or is it a dumb waste of time? Or is it already being done on hundreds of other blogs, and I've just been too damn lazy to check? Comment away, and in the meantime, I'll get some rules & regs drawn up and posted to a permanent page.

February 2, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Books, Marketing, Publishing | 6 Comments

New Poll: Genre Book Covers

I've posted a new poll, on the subject of genre book covers. This is by way of a spot of general head-count research for a piece (or more likely a series of pieces) I've been planning on writing for a long time now, on the general topic of genre book covers: the good, the bad and the ugly.

What I'm after is a feel as to whether your gut reaction to a 'bad' cover would be enough to put you off actually buying a book. I've tried to give a varied spread of responses, although obviously I might not have covered all possible bases, but it should be enough to give me a rough idea of whether a poorly-designed - or just too-obviously sci-fi, or too-horror, or too-fantasy, etc. - cover might have an immediate, negative impact on sales.

So if you've got a minute, please do visit the appropriate poll page and register your opinion, if you feel so inclined. Or scroll the screen until the poll-widget-thingy in the right-hand column appears, and the use that. Thank you in advance, very much appreciated.

February 1, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Marketing, Work | 5 Comments

Smart thinking: Hugh MacLeod on Blogging

Hugh MacLeod is another smart cookie, and a bookmark for his gapingvoid blog, which I've been reading for about two years now, is one of only a very few that I keep in a folder marked 'READ EVERY DAY'.

© Hugh MacLeod He started out putting his cartoons online, then started talking about marketing, selling and so forth (he used to be in advertising) and he's been a pro-blogger and marketing-thinker for the past few years now.

In that relatively short space of time he's notched up a number of blog-related successes, such as turning Stormhoek Wines into an internationally-recognised brand (well, certainly among the geek-classes anyhow) and doing astounding things to the turnover of a Saville Row tailor via English Cut.

But perhaps most impressively - unless I've gotten hold of entirely the wrong end of the stick, which I admit is entrely possible - he played a deeply significant part in creating the pre-Xmas Thresher's wine voucher frenzy that enabled them to almost completely sell out of wine and champagne across their chain (thereby massively reducing their over-stock levels) on the back of an offer that was actually only 7% more than their standard '3 for 2' discount, and gaining massive national media coverage into the bargain. And all at practically zero cost, bandwidth charges notwithstanding.

And he still draws his cartoons as well... they're often extremely funny, very dry, very well observed.

So again, when someone like Hugh posts a collection of his distilled random thoughts on blogging then it's worth tuning in and paying attention.

I reckon anyone out there who is more than slightly serious about using their blog to do more than just think out loud online should pay particular attention to points #1, #3, #6, #18, #19 and #33. But read the rest as well, of course. Food for thought.

January 16, 2007 | Filed Under Marketing, Work | Leave a Comment

Smart thinking: Cory Doctorow on author websites

Cory Doctorow: One smart cookie Cory Doctorow is one general, all-round smart cookie.

Years ago, long before the whole blogging-thing had achieved anything like the reach or mainstream acceptance it has today, he set up boingboing, which for a long, long time was reckoned to be the most popular blog on the planet (according to Technorati's Top 100) and is still going strong at number #3.

In 2003, he released the entire text of his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom [Amazon] as a free pdf download, under a Creative Commons license. Many thousands of copies were downloaded (and presumably read) completely for free, and yet the dead-tree edition of the book still sold (in Cory's own words) "fantastically well", as Charlie Stross also found when he repeated the experiment with one of his own titles a year or so later.

These days, as well as writing for boingboing and blogging at his own Craphound.com site, Doctorow writes novels, short fiction, columns, articles, you name it. So when he pens something on D.I.Y. author websites, then it rather behoves a freelance author-website-builder like me to sit up and pay attention.

At first glance, it doesn't appear to bode too well for yours truly. The gist of the article rather seems to be that authors should take their online presence into their own hands, dispense with the services of their webmaster / webmistress / webAriel - particularly in terms of updating the site by means of laborious HTML and CSS editing with manual FTP upload - and go it alone by means of one of many freely available, open source CMS systems out there, such as Wordpress, Drupal et. al.

But even though that rather sounds like it might be doing me out of a hard-earned crust, I (almost) completely agree with him. In fact it's methodology that I'm actively encouraging as many of my own author clients as possible to adopt. I've already helped set up blog-based 'news and views' pages for Tim Lebbon, Brian Ruckley, Mark Morris, Michael Marshall Smith and James Barclay, as well as full-blown, theme-blogs for Mark Chadbourn and James Barclay (again) at Jack of Ravens and Barclay Talks Sport, respectively.

Why? Because it's a damn good idea. Because if my clients have something to say to their fans and readers then of course they should be able to say it immediately. The shouldn't have to wait around for a few hours, or a day or two (hopefully not much longer these days) for a window to appear in my update-schedule.

And quite frankly, from my point of view, the less time I have spend on those laborious HTML / FTP uploads then the more time I can spend working with my clients on far more interesting online activity: blogging for a start, but also podcasting, social-networking, search engine keyword-advertising, word-of-mouth campaigns, general marketing stuff... everything I'm familiar with, or have read about, and am just itching to put into practice. So yeah, more power to the author-bloggers, says I!

Although I do have one small caveat: there is a flip-side to the D.I.Y. approach. What if the author in question isn't particularly keen, or confident enough, or simply hasn't enough time to learn the necessary basics of HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, RSS, SEO, content tagging and so forth? Not to mention graphic design and the rudiments of professional-standard layout. And then there's the accessibility issue, and the European directive on e-communication... I mean, there's a fair bit more to it than updating your news page, if you want to do it properly.

After all, the principle activity of a writer is surely to write, no? So any time spent away from that activity really ought to be justifiable. You ought to be able to prove (to yourself at least) that it's of greater added value to your career than if you'd actually got on with writing something new instead.

In which case, it seems to me that the smart / busy / technologically shy author will still want to employ their friendly, neighbourhood webguy / webgal to sort out all the aforementioned fiddly stuff - as well as things like domain name registration, website hosting, email accounts, Amazon affiliate links, mailing lists etc. - while they get on with the actual business of creating new content, whether it's for their forthcoming blog entries, their novels, their magazine columns... whatever it might be.

So yes, I wholeheartedly agree that there are definite advantages to taking control of key elements of your own online presence. But there are also advantages in getting a professional to help you through the tricky bits and get everything running smoothly before you dive on in.

Now, Cory does drop heavy hints in that sort of direction in his article. At one point he says: "It's the kind of thing you can pay someone a couple hundred dollars to do, and it's a near-sure thing that your current webmaster is already maintaining one or more blogs and is familiar with the basics," so fair's fair. And I think that what he also means by that is that you certainly shouldn't have to pay top-whack multimedia agency rates for the job. Not when a competent freelancer will be able to sort everything out for you for a fraction of the price.

And I'd like to point out one more distinct advantage to the employ-a-freelancer route that Cory doesn't really touch on: namely the ongoing benefits that you should be able to derive from being client-affiliated with a professional; particularly in terms of the propagation and implementation of new ideas.

So for instance, let's say a member of my (currently 16-strong but hopefully soon-to-be-expanding) client group comes up with an idea for a new website feature that they'd like to implement. If it's a good idea, a generic technique or tool that my other clients would also benefit from, then it's very easy for me to pass that idea on to the rest of the group. I can then perform the necessary installation on everyone's site, or set up the relevant third-party software across the board, and everyone wins.

And I do try to make a point of keeping my ear as close to the technology news ground as I reasonably can. So again, if I hear that there's a new Google tool about to become available, or a new social networking phenomena about to break, or just a new way of doing things online that I think my clients can benefit from, then I'm in a good position to let them all know what's what. Everyone wins again.

Whereas if the individual author in question doesn't have the time to read the same marketing and tech blogs, or isn't subscribed to the same mailing lists that I am (or doesn't happen to write for one of the world's most popular technology / tech-lifestyle blogs and so get to hear about everything anyhow) then they might never get to hear of a particularly useful concept or technique.

So, this afternoon I've sent an email to all my author clients to point them in the direction of Cory's article and tell them that, yes, he's quite right: they can - and should - update their own websites as frequently as they like using a blog-based platform, and that -furthermore, I'd be delighted to help them set that up, as I've already done for the aforementioned author-bloggers on my books.

And hey [utterly blatant self-plug warning: look away now if this sort of thing offends you, if it's not too late already...], if there are any authors, writers, artists or independent publishers reading this post who think they might be interested in doing something similar, then please do feel free to drop me a line. Tell me what sort of thing you have in mind, and I'll be happy to let you know if I can help out, and how much I usually charge...

January 12, 2007 | Filed Under Marketing, Work | Leave a Comment

Vandermeer on Writing

Author, blogger, raconteur and international playboy buccaneer Jeff Vandermeer has blogged the introduction to what I assume will be his forthcoming bestseller on the art of turning the mere written word into good, publishable, hard-cash earning prose: The Evil Monkey Guide to Creative Writing.

The Vandermeer. Would you buy a used galleon from this man? I wonder though... in amongst the pearls of wisdom on the craft of writing, will The Vandermeer also reveal the true secret of his success? For as well as being a superbly skilled writer, and one blessed with a truly warped and endlessly fascinating imagination to boot, Mr V-- is also a world-class self-publicist. And in an entirely good way, too.

Some folks, who shall remain nameless, seem to think that "Hey, look at me! No, me! Over here! I'm great, you must read my stuff, I demand that you do!" is the way to go. They inevitably fail. Jeff's approach is more along the lines of: "Well, here's what I write, I hope you like it. Oh, and here's a whole bunch of really entertaining and interesting stuff to go along with it. Come along for the ride. But hey, only if you want to. You do? Great! Come on in..."

I'm paraphrasing, yes, but you see the difference?

It's something that any writer who's truly interested in developing more than just a minor presence on the bookshelf (it's amazing how many debut authors seem to think that as soon as they've got that first title in the bookstores that's it, they've made it; it's amazing how many of them are wrong) would be well-advised to observer closely and learn from.

It's really not just about the writing these days, you know. Whether you like it or not, you have to have the marketing (and by that I don't just mean a bit of advertising, a few proofs / ARCs and a couple of press releases; that is such a twentieth-century attitude) to back it up. And who better to spend their valuable, scare time being genuinely enthusiastic and endlessly eager to talk about the good stuff that you do than... you?

But more on that later. In the meantime, go read that intro. Then go read some Jeff Vandermeer. You know you want to.

[Heads-up via the always informative FP Blog]

January 5, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Marketing, Work | Leave a Comment