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Triple Filtrée – No Smooth Outcome.

April 9, 2011 in Marketing | 5 comments

I’ve got to hand it to Marketing. They’re smart. Even if they screw up sometimes.

A few weeks back, they suggested a new campaign for the novel, all based on price. People will buy anything if you price it cheap enough, they told me, passing across the latest best-selling fiction figures. I scanned the list -- John Locke, Amanda Hocking, Heather Killough Walden -- each of them notching up thousands of $0.99 Kindle sales a week.

That could be you, Alain. Look, readers don’t even like the books much.

They had a point:

‘messy and predictable’
‘I would recommend this book for some mindless poolside reading’
‘a book that contains less than two dozen truly dirty words’
‘Too bad you can’t pick zero stars for the rating.’

If they’re selling thousands, you could be selling millions. All you need to do is come up with the right pitch.

And that’s how my Potato Campaign was born. “Buy my book because it costs less than a large potato.”

But my advisers were wrong. I didn’t sell millions. Or thousands. Or hundreds. Not even tens. It was time for a re-think. So last night, I called a team meeting. Marketing, Editing, the Publisher -- they were all there. It wasn’t going to be easy. Marketing was already looking defensive.

- Guys, the Potato Campaign isn’t working.

- Says who?

- Says me. Here, look at the figures.

The Publisher took off his glasses, polished them carefully, put them back on, and read again. Editing sat low on their chairs, wishing they weren’t there. But Marketing came right back at me, bristling. They weren’t going to take this sort of thing from an author.

- It wasn’t exactly a campaign, was it?

- What do you mean? I did a blog post, didn’t I? “Why I won’t be selling my novel for $495“.

- I don’t hear you saying potato.

- Not in the title, no. But I certainly mentioned potato in the post.

- How many times do we have to tell you? It’s all about keywords. People don’t read posts. They read headlines. You gotta have your keywords in the headline.

- But people don’t care about potatoes.

- They might not care about them, but they eat them, right? Millions of potatoes a day. A potato doesn’t need love. It just needs to be affordable. It needs to be nutritious. And it needs to be there, right there in front of you, every time you step into the food-mart. So where was the potato in your food-mart, Alain?

- I’m sorry?

- How many times did you even mention potato in your blog?

- What, after the first time?

- After the first time.

- I didn’t.

- Well there you are. How do you expect us to help you?

He snapped a pencil in two between his fingers and slammed the pieces onto the desk. No-one breathed. But he wasn’t finished with me yet.

- The problem with you, Alain, is that you give us nothing to work with. We need something that people care about, something they think is important.

- What, like a potato, you mean?

- Forget the friggin’ potato. Like I said, that was just a pitch. No, what we need is less of that Look-at me-I’m-an-author-This-is-literary-fiction bullshit. We need believable characters -- American preferably -- a detective, a hero, a love interest. And maybe you should think about a rewrite for the YA market.

Someone in Editing was trying to catch my eye. There was an almost imperceptible shake of the head. So at least I had their support. I rallied.

- There is a love interest.

- And how does that turn out?

- Bad.

He didn’t even bother to reply. But then a thought came to me.

- Listen, I’ve been reading …

- Oh you’ve been reading again, have you? Sweet.

- Yes. Seth Godin.

With those two magical words, the initiative swung back to me. Show me a marketer in the world who can resist Seth Godin. They snapped to attention, leaned forward across the table, waiting.

- Seth said …

- Yes?

- Seth said: ‘It’s probably true that a low price increases the negative feedback. That’s because a low price exposes the work to individuals that might not be raving fans.’

- And?

- ‘Price is often a signalling mechanism, and perhaps nowhere more than in the area of content.’

We paused to absorb the impact of the words.

- So that means ..?

- That means that if we sell the book at the price of a large potato, readers may come to associate it with a large potato. That’s how we’re signalling it. Useful, convenient, but not an object of desire.

Still Marketing wasn’t convinced.

- But I thought the aim was to maximize the sales of your book. Who said anything about desire? You’re not trying to tell me you want people to read the thing as well, are you?

- That’s exactly what I’m saying. Seth says: ‘Mass shouldn’t always be the goal. Impact may matter more.’

That was the turning-point. Mistakes were forgotten, hostilities put on ice, and we were back working as a team.

- So we need to use price to trigger a different expectation. Not a potato, but …

- Two potatoes?

By this time, we’d clearly left the Publisher lagging some way behind, but our minds were racing.

- An object of desire with a price proposition to match, something our reader wants, longs for at the end of a busy day. Who is this reader, Alain?

- An adult. Gotta be an adult, male or female, probably mid-twenties upward.

- And this adult gets from your book? Remind me, Alain. What do they get? Gimme the words.

- Well … mystery, adventure … a hint of the exotic … humor … excitement … sex … danger … retro …

- I see it! I see it! I think I’ve got it. You know that ad they’re running on TV for the beer … you know the one -- Triple Filtrée … a Smooth Outcome.

- Yeah, I see where you’re coming from. Sixties setting -- the beautiful bored wife -- the suave debonair hero sweeping her away from her husband -- the sexy French overdub. That’s brilliant.

- But guys. My hero’s not suave and debonair.

- No matter. This is advertising. Nothing has to be true. D’you think when you drink the stuff you’re gonna turn into the guy in the ad? Or the girl? It’s not about truth. It’s about aspiration.

- Where are we going with this?

- It’s the price-point, don’t you see? Not a large potato. We sell it for the price of a large beer. And -- God, this is amazing -- that’s our campaign too.

- Go on.

- Triple filtrée. You ever seen a book promoted like that before?

- No, never. Er … maybe, I’m slow but I’m not getting it.

- Triple filtrée. So you say the book’s been edited three times. Not once, not twice, but three times … and now it has less than 3 really dirty words. We might even make it into the YA market, who knows?

This was getting exciting. Next we had to work out how to handle the Smooth Outcome, and we were all busy swapping ideas -- when my wife suddenly popped her head round the door.

- Have you any idea what time it is?

- I’m sorry … were we too loud?

- Oh, is there someone with you?

- Yes. Have you met …

But as I swung back round to the table, they were gone. Every last one of them. Only the broken pencil remained on the table.

- Er, no. It’s just me.

- I worry about you. Don’t you think you should be coming to bed? It’s 2:30.

By daybreak, the new pricing was set, the campaign was in place, and we were ready to go.

That’s the thing about being an indie writer. You can make decisions quickly, change your mind if you’re getting the strategy wrong, implement immediately, call meetings any time of the day or night.

But if you’re doing it at night, just try to keep the noise down.

# # #

The Lebanese Troubles is now available for the price of a large beer. ‘Triple Filtrée … No Smooth Outcome.’

If you’re thinking about buying the book, DON’T. Marketing came up with a few other ideas, which we’ll be announcing here tomorrow. If you can’t wait to get started though, you can now download the first 50% of the novel free at Smashwords. Works on any e-reader or your laptop/PC.

If you can’t wait to get started with Seth Godin, the article is Compared to perfect: the price/value mismatch in content.

And if the story’s just made you thirsty … here’s the next best thing -- for just the price of an e-novel:



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e-Novel: explorations in writing and reading

March 27, 2011 in Rapscallion | No comments

Last time, we discussed how different the novel might become – for writers and readers – if we start thinking in terms of writing for digital media instead of the printed page.

I’d be astonished in this didn’t result in a whole new way of entertaining people with stories eventually. Which way will it go? Some writers will surely work with creators of other digital content – artists, musicians, programmers – combining their creative skills. Another route will be writers who exploit technology to create a new kind of interactive experience with the reader. And then there will be the wordsmiths, people who still rely on old-fashioned tale-telling, but find ways to do it differently in digital form.

There’s also likely to be a much closer bond between writer and reader. As I wrote The Lebanese Troubles, I was privileged to work with a group of writers – some very experienced, some just beginning – at the author workshop site, The Next Big Writer. When we completed a chapter, we posted it for others to read and comment. Some reviewers acted as editors: they trapped errors and inconsistencies. Others read and left just a brief comment. But what I loved best of all was the group of fellow-writers who became emotionally involved in the story.

Emotional response became my litmus test. I wanted my readers to forget editing because they were having so much fun with the story. I wanted to know which characters they loved, liked or hated. I wanted to see if I could make them switch allegiances. When they guessed what might happen next, I wanted them to be wrong – but never to hear that the story was unbelievable. When I experimented with style, I wanted them not to notice. And I wanted the word to get around – that here was a story worth reading – to keep the readership steadily growing.

This incredible experience was like performing at a live event with the crowd’s support ringing in your ears. What you’re hearing is gut reaction. Applause for a great pass, a gasp as a character takes a (metaphorical) crunching tackle. Catcalls when you screw up. And pandemonium when there’s a touchdown.

Print writers never have any of that. They just get to read the match report the next day. Usually dispassionate, measured, analytical. I’m not saying that reviews aren’t important too, but when you’re a performer, you never forget the passion of the live audience.

But let’s remember this was a special circumstance. It wasn’t such a large crowd: we were playing behind closed doors at TNBW. Is it possible to maintain this rapport between readers and writer in the real world? Honestly? I don’t know – and won’t till I have a few more thousand readers. We certainly wouldn’t be able to use the TNBW way, where I responded to each individual reviewer.

But what we’re going to do – if you’re OK with this – is to try a live exercise now. In a moment I’m going to direct you to an extract from The Lebanese Troubles. It’s a scene where I’m deliberately experimenting with style, trying to take advantage of digital presentation and formatting. I’m not going to tell you any more than that now, but I will ask a few questions at the end of the extract, designed to get you thinking.

In the course of the next few days, I’d love you to post at the end of the extract any reactions or questions or complaints or criticisms you have. Anything that spurs you to write a few words. Let’s see how this develops into a conversation between readers and writer. And in about a week’s time, let’s take stock and consider what we’ve learnt – me included.

Are you ready for the jump. Here we go! (Or you can click on Writing Samples => The English Language Teacher.)

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Whisperings: birth of the e-novel

March 27, 2011 in Reflections | 9 comments

Just emerging

2010

A year ago, I wrote that April 3rd 2010 would be remembered as “the most important day in 570 years”.

Do you remember that day? The excitement and expectation as the iPad finally hit the stores after months of rumor? Of course by April 3rd 2011 no self-respecting technista would be seen dead with an iPad. Now it’s all about the iPad2 – ‘thinner, lighter, faster’, all manner of temptation to succumb to the Apple again.

But I wasn’t writing about the product. What happened that day was a turning-point in history – a watershed. The ebook had been rapidly emerging for a couple of years, but the iPad somehow legitimized digital publishing. It was the new cool. Bless my soul and whiskers, even Twitter millionaire Steven Fry was promoting the virtues of e-reading on this ‘game-changing’ new product. It was cooler than anything since …

1440

The last game-changer in the history of text – Gutenberg’s invention of the printing-press. No longer would the monk labor in his drafty cell, painstakingly hand-crafting the illuminated manuscript (“How I love the smell of vellum.”). Now a book (“Call THAT a book?”) could be produced in a matter of hours – thinner, lighter and faster than ever before. For the first time, books passed out of the hands of the Church into the homes of ordinary people (“How will standards be maintained if there are no gatekeepers?”). A social and cultural revolution was underway.

What changed? As literacy spread, learning was increasingly secularized. Books started to appear in the vernacular instead of the language of Christendom, Latin. There’s a strong case to be made that print was directly responsible for the Reformation, the Renaissance. The reliance on oral tradition died. Arguably, print brought about the growth of organizations and centralized businesses, created modern urban society. But of one thing there’s no doubt. Print created a market of private readers. And to satisfy this market, a new art-form emerged: the novel.

Fast forward

To today, a year after a new text revolution. What’s changed? Perhaps it’s not so much change as acceleration. Writing has been democratized: we write almost as much as we talk – some of us more so. A year ago, we sent 50 million tweets a day; today it’s 140 million. In the same time the number of WordPress blogs has increased from 10.5 million to 18 million. The number of books published on Smashwords has passed 40,000, with 5000 new titles added per month.

Those are the figures, but what’s the impact? We’re beginning to recognize the vernacular: this week OMG and LOL were added to the OED. (If OED is a new one to you, don’t worry – you really don’t need it for most texts.) We’re decentralizing: who needs to be in an office when you can message anyone on your mobile? The prophet of our electronic age, Marshall McLuhan foresaw this 50 years ago when he wrote of our return to the village – but now ‘the global village’.

But most tellingly, the events of the last few weeks in the Middle East are directly the product of the text revolution. I remember sitting on a beach in one of the Arab Gulf states 35 years ago, and asking how long their comfortably feudal systems could survive in a modern world. The answer was 35 years. After all those years of quiescence, the ruled have erupted against the rulers. And what’s driven their revolution – not the cause but the mechanism? Text messages, Facebook, Twitter.

Weren’t you supposed to be talking about the novel?

I’m coming to that.

So authors are publishing 5000 new books a month on Smashwords. On Amazon it’s probably more … plus of course all the previously published books re-released there. In the digital world, publishers realize, books never need go out of print. (Watch for proposals to change the copyright law.)

But almost without exception, books are still written first for print, then converted to a digital format. The iPad in particular perpetuates the illusion that we’re still reading a printed book, with a display that simulates a page turn. How long will it be before we start seeing books written to take advantage of the new medium? How long before an e-novel emerges, as radically different from the current literary form as the novel was from its predecessors?

Probably a long time. After all, it was 200 years or more after the printing press that novels in English began to take off with the work of Bunyan, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding.

Our friend Stephen Fry, it’s true, has already had a stab at it. In September last year The Fry Chronicles, a memoir, was published simultaneously in hardback, as an eBook and as an iPhone app. And it’s genuinely innovative: the app allows readers to skip through the book using color-coded categories to focus on different people and subjects.

But most writers have carried on as before, conceiving the novel as a print object, thinking in terms of the number of print pages, maintaining a print layout, telling the story as they would a print story.

Then this week, for the first time, I heard the faintest whispers that change is in the air.

First on an Amazon thread – that old chestnut, ‘What is literary fiction?’ In a fascinating series of posts, Stefano Boscutti claims to be working on stories that can change in reaction to a reader’s physiological responses – but admits that it’s ‘a stupid, crazy, ridiculously daunting project’. Maybe. But it will happen one day, to be sure. Then Stefano touches on something of particular interest to me, because it’s exactly what I’ve tried to do in my novel, The Lebanese Troubles:

I’m pushing for a hybrid of screenplay and prose to make my stories “read” better on screens. Increasingly the screen is how we consume text.

Then just this morning, I was followed on Twitter by 40kBooks.com – and their site was a real find. ‘Smart content for smart people’ was the message I got from their home page. And I have to say that these folks have a smart marketing strategy. They’re thinking about where their smart readers read, and how. It may be hard to get time to curl up with a novel, but there are times in the day when you’re waiting, maybe commuting, maybe taking a lunch break, and your mobile phone is already with you. So what kind of material are they publishing? Novellas, from both top and up-and-coming European and American writers. Essays, from leading thinkers. The sort of content that will keep the reader fully absorbed for around an hour. Because ‘short is more’ they say. That’s thinking outside the book.

And then, right there on the home page, two sentences that expressed my thoughts perfectly, from an essay by Thierry Crouzet:

We know today how to translate books from paper to the e-world. It is now time to learn how to write books which could not have been written on paper.

Whisperings perhaps, but the game really is changing. The e-novel is being conceived.

* * *

If you’re a novelist who thinks screen rather than paper, please check in here, with a comment. We could have fun exploring ideas together.

The discussion continues in ‘e-Novel: explorations in writing and reading‘, with discussion on the changing relationship between writer and readers, and a live e-Novel exercise.


References

The most important day in 570 years – my original post
MediaDigest – Twitter figures
ReadWriteWeb – WordPress figures
Smashword figures – see post for March 25.
Wired.co.uk – new entries in the OED
Stephen Fry‘s blog
Stefano Boscutti‘s website
The 40kBooks website
Thierry Crouzet on 40kBooks.com

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