PBI 2: Publishing Marketing (The Noun Not The Verb)

When it comes to getting your work published, it turns out there's a lot more that happens between that and actually selling your book on shelves or online. From a guest speaker from Granta Books, we learned about AI (Advance Information) sheets - which looked a lot like press kits, to me, but for books and novels. Containing any notable accolades, comments by reviewers and other authors, alongside the important factual information like its length, these AI sheets look to be the true beginning of the process.

There's a lot of research that goes into marketing a book effectively and finding who'll sell it - this isn't tremendously surprising, but it was still worth touching upon within the lecture what can influence a potential reader. Whether they're hearing praise from an author they recognise or they spot an interesting looking cover in a bookshop, it appears the key to success for a good release is covering as many avenues as possible. Part of this research involves querying internal reviewers before the release of the book - as a games developer, this process feels remarkably similar to closed alpha testing, where a mostly finished run-through of a game is tested internally and players' thoughts on what attracted them in the game is kept note of. Companies then later on make use of this feedback to create the buzz words and quotable slogans used throughout a marketing campaign.

It was interesting to see how much emphasis the guest speaker placed on the book's covers - how busy, meticulously crafted artwork isn't good at attracting the eye. The busier a front cover is, the less people will notice it, ironically - with simpler, minimalistic covers attaining more aesthetic praise. Even if a book secures enough attention for a glance at the front, the back is where it has to really sell itself - needing not only a solid design, but thought-out quotations of recommendation. Named reviewers from papers like The Sunday Times lead to a better image of a book with a more personified audience, and going the extra mile with added detail in the back or front cover shows a publisher really cares about selling that particular book - and must mean they think it's great.

It seems daunting at first to see that getting your book accepted is just the opening gambit, but the closer inspection justifies these degrees of marketing and careful planning. A publisher isn't just leaving 1000 books on park benches for you, after all.