What is book marketing?

Book Marketing is the subtle art of luring potential readers into buying a book, possibly your well crafted horror epic about a heroic fly.

Knowing all about it will help you envision where your book will be marketed once you’ve written it. The publishing industry, which includes big and small presses, employs  a plethora of ingenious devices such as planting it on social media, a really good front cover, excellent blurb, the perfect spot in the book shop, preferably a place where the eye can see it, correct genre placement (You don’t want your version of The Necronomicon right next to Delia Smith’s How to Cook an Egg) or on a fancy table stand placed strategically with other new and exciting authors by the welcoming entrance.

What is a bookstore?

The book store is not just a place to buy books. These days they are a social hub, a haven where you can meet up for a coffee with other bookworms and discuss all things booky. The psychological practice of dumping a cafe on the top floor guarantees that you have to pass thru most of the store, to get your caffeine fix, and by doing so it causes your eye to wander through the labyrinth of tomes. You’ve had your coffee and a quick chat and now the real challenge comes: can you leave without purchasing the latest Rivers of London or a classic Poe? If you had stayed at home, you’d not be tempted.

Does the cover matter?

Your eyes are led by the colourful spectrum of genres, scanning every book and every spine, all created with the intention of trapping your curiosity. And then you see it the perfect book, surrounded by a golden halo.

Is this how you want your book to be found by others, the one you’ve written lovingly? You pick it up and hold it with reverence, you read the blurb, glance over the inside jacket at the synopsis and read the brief author’s bio. You perhaps even dared to read the first page. You then decide to purchase the volume.

What makes you pick up a book?

Was it the fancy font or the beautifully crafted picture of a fly and a tentacle co-joined (the cover to my unfinished novel, of course)? Was it the high praise from the literary geniuses that is Stephen King or the glittering quote from oojamaflip from The Guardian? Or is it that you are one of a devoted army of feverish fans? Is this how you imagine how yours gets picked up?

Where did they find your book?

Was it next to Lovecraft or Lovelace? Was the cover unique, eye-catching and unlike anything else on the shelf? Was it displayed alongside other new authors by the front entrance or hidden at the back of the shop next to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s The Victorians (or anything else by him, for that matter!)? Placement is everything, you don’t want to get overlooked in favour of another author or next to Mogg’s, or dare it be said, left on the shelf.

So, when I’ve finished writing my epic about a fly called Geena, I’ll remember to get Banksy to do my cover, and get David Cronenberg to review it and leave a snazzy quote, and I’ll damn well make sure it is placed far, far away from anything written by Jacob Rees-Mogg, preferably at the front of the shop where it will be seen first, assuming my publisher has paid for a decent spot.