Category book marketing

Mar 16 2013

What’s the Deal with Mannequin Covers?

A growing number of indie covers are featuring mannequins. Is this good or bad?

It’s a challenge to design a great cover. Indie authors don’t have the luxury of a cover design team or much money to invest in professional help, yet covers can be very important for the success of a book. Thus, many authors who are inexperienced artists are suddenly faced with the task of putting a great image together for the thumbnail and front cover.

This is no easy task, and the cover art critics are fierce:

  • Anything hand-drawn is deemed fit for a refrigerator, but not for a book.
  • Any photo in the foreground of a nice background is deemed a photobomber.
  • Highly detailed artwork is said to make the cover too busy.
  • Deformities in fingers, hands, limbs, or faces are ridiculed.
  • When the aspect ratio is tweaked slightly to fit the cover, it’s cursed for distortion.
  • If a person happens to strike an odd pose, even this is pointed out.
  • The photos must be cleaned up and professional, else the technique will be criticized.
  • Indie authors are supposed to know to use just three colors in a ratio of 60-30-10.
  • Colors must work well together, with the title large and easy to read.
  • You also need to watch out for the font police, who can be very picky.
  • But if the images don’t relate to the content, that’s a serious violation.

Drawings pose an instant problem. Taking your own photos requires professional skill. There are many stock photos available, but not always in the pose or colors that you want. To top this off, you must find images that signify the genre and relate to the content.

So what’s the solution? Maybe this is why more indies are featuring mannequins on their covers. It’s much easier to manipulate a mannequin with a graphic arts program. They are easy to adjust, clothe, maneuver, touch up, and preserve proper shape and size. Some of these mannequin covers are very well done, so much so that I didn’t realize that they were mannequins at first.

But now I see the cover art critics blasting indie covers that feature mannequins. For example, are there mannequins on the cover because it’s a romance between mannequins?

I actually hired an illustrator to design a cover for an upcoming fictional book, for which I was completely stumped on the cover. The result looks great, but the main image does look a little like a mannequin. I’m going to keep it, for better or for worse.

What’s your opinion? I’d love to hear your take on these mannequin covers. Is it good, is it bad? If you made it to the end of this post, please feel free to take a minute to express your opinion. Your opinion is welcome (encouraged even), and won’t likely offend me or the mannequins. 🙂

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Mar 15 2013

Marketing: The 4 R’s of Branding

Repetition, Recognition, Referral, Reliance

These four R’s affect most of us every week when we buy products and services. As authors, we can apply the same branding philosophy in the marketing of our books.

(1) Repetition. Every brand of soda, detergent, television, car, and so on is constantly trying to get us to notice their name, logo, slogan, and image. We see it on television, on billboards, in magazines, and even on hats and t-shirts. The more we see it, the more we’re likely to remember it. This way, we remember brand names for products that we’ve never even tried.

You want people to remember your book and the name of the author – even if they haven’t read it yet. The more often people see your cover, read the title, hear your strapline, and see your author photo, the more likely they are to remember it. You can’t afford to invest millions of dollars in advertisements and commercials, but you can afford free. Your blog, your website, social media, articles that you write, local newspapers and television, every place your book is available for sale, every edition of your book (paperback, eBook, etc.), every book review, every person you interact with and mention your book or writing hobby – anything you do online that includes your cover, title, strapline, and/or author photo (including every little Like and Follow), improves your visibility. The more often people see and read these things, they more likely they will remember them.

Strapline – a single, short sentence used to create interest in your book (kind of like a slogan).

Your title and strapline should be short and easy to remember. Bestselling books often have three words or less for this very reason. Coke. Pepsi. Sony. Levis. The Shining. Wool. The Scarlet Letter. Short, easy to remember, easy to spell. Ideally, the author name should also be short and easy to remember and spell. Your cover and author imagery should also be easy to remember. A very busy cover, or one that doesn’t have one central image, or one that doesn’t use three main colors, or one where the title doesn’t stand out, or one that doesn’t present a unifying theme and signify the genre – such a cover isn’t as easy to remember. The title, author name, and cover are actually important marketing tools.

(2) Recognition. When we shop for a printer, golf club, or laundry detergent, we often prefer a brand that we recognize to one that we’ve never heard of – even if we’ve never used any of the products before. We may recognize the brand name, the logo, or even a catchy slogan.

The same principle applies to books. People often buy a book that they remember seeing, hearing about, or reading about, or has an author they recognize. This is why visibility of the brand of both the book and author is so important – people recognize what they remember.

Don’t change the title, cover, author name, or author image. If you use a much different cover for the paperback and eBook edition, or use a different photo for your FaceBook author page and AuthorCentral, for example, this inhibits recognition. Let all of your online activities reinforce one another with a unified approach.

Create “buzz” for your book prior to and during its release. Get people talking about your book – in person and online – and this will help them recognize it when it becomes available. In the months prior to publication, ask people for input on your cover, title, and blurb – in person and online. Spread the word about your upcoming book. Highlight positive things that will create interest in your book – like spending a year doing research or working on your third revision with an editor. Don’t be a salesman, just naturally get this into conversations. “So, what have you been up to recently?”

Interact with people personally. People recognize authors they’ve actually met. They just need to naturally discover that you’re an author, then remember your face and name plus the title and strapline for your book. Short and easy to remember and spell.

(3) Referral. If a friend or acquaintance recommends a product or service, we’re much more likely to try it. The product or service must be pretty good for it to be recommended by someone who doesn’t have a financial interest in the sales.

This applies to books, too. Word-of-mouth referrals can have a major impact on sales. For this, the book has to be very good. An amazing plot, a memorable character. Great storyline and characterization helps. It also needs to meet standards for editing and formatting; people won’t recommend a product that has obvious problems.

They’re much more apt to refer your book correctly if the title is short, easy to remember, and easy to spell; or the author if the name is easy to remember and spell; or to describe a book that has a simple, memorable cover.

(4) Reliance. People believe that Sony makes great televisions. Sony has established credibility and trust, and because of this, many people prefer to buy Sony electronics.

Readers are similarly more likely to buy products from authors who establish credibility and trust. Part of this comes from creating a highly professional cover, blurb, Look Inside, and author page. Behave professionally online; misbehaving certainly loses credibility. Your author photo, biography, and behavior should give the appearance of a knowledgeable, competent, trustworthy, and credible author. Do you look and sound like someone who would write a book in this genre?

Write content for your blog, website, newspapers, or magazines (in print or online) that demonstrates your expertise. Useful information may even attract newcomers, in addition to helping build your credibility.

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At the bottom of your blog (and many other online activities), you can include your name and the title of one to three books. If your titles are very short, you can squeeze three into this space. As you can see below, sadly, I broke my own rule with a very long title. If you have expertise, just imagine how it would look to have your name and title show up at the bottom of an article in a high-traffic area in a magazine, newspaper, or online. Prepare an article relevant for your book and strive to get it published. You may be able to publish it locally or at a lesser traffic site, at least. It won’t go to waste because in the worst-case scenario, you can always add it to your blog.

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Feb 22 2013

The Short Link to Amazon Books (Why Doesn’t Everyone Know This?)

First, here is the wrong way to link to an Amazon book. Search for the book on Amazon, click to open the book’s detail page on Amazon, copy the webpage url, and paste it.

What’s wrong with this? It makes the url much longer than it needs to be.

See this with an example. I’ll go to Amazon’s homepage and type “self publishing chris mcmullen” in the search field, and click on my own book. (I would happily have used your book as an example instead, but you didn’t ask. :-)) Now I’ll copy the webpage url:

http://www.amazon.com/Detailed-Self-Publishing-Amazon-Booksellers–Demand/dp/1480250201/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361505178&sr=8-1&keywords=self+publishing+chris+mcmullen

(Yes, of course I could have given the link a short title. When you insert a link, you can make the text for the link different from the url itself. But that’s not the point. The point is that the url itself can be much, much shorter.)

So what’s the short way to do this? First, find your book’s ISBN (the 10-digit number will work) or ASIN (if you have an ebook that doesn’t have an ISBN, use this). You can find this number on your book’s detail page at Amazon.

The short link has the form http://amazon.com/dp/ISBN (or use ASIN in place of ISBN). Obviously, you have to put the ISBN number in place of the letters I-S-B-N at the end. 🙂

For example, the short variation of the above link is:

http://amazon.com/dp/1480250201

That’s much shorter (and I didn’t even have to use text in place of the url to make it short).

Actually, you can make it even shorter than this. Use amzn instead of amazon and remove the /dp:

http://amzn.com/1480250201

But it’s not much shorter, is it? When you use amazon, people can see they’re being directed to a site that they (hopefully) trust, but when you use amzn instead, it might arouse suspicion (well, it shouldn’t, but it probably will).

Every day, I come across many links that authors have posted to their books, which use the long form instead of the short form. You may have noticed this, too. The easiest way to spread the word is to use the short link yourself whenever you post a link to your books. Somebody may notice and try this out with their own book.

Just think about how much we’re inconveniencing those poor little electrons when we make the link longer that it needs to be. J/K. 🙂

Publishing Resources

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Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

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Feb 18 2013

Book Fashion – Judging a Book’s Clothing

Would you show up to an interview wearing sandals, a Hawaiian button-down shirt, and sunglasses? Would you go to the beach in a tuxedo?

The answers to these questions might seem pretty obvious, yet several books are actually dressed for the wrong occasion. The cover and title are the book’s packaging.

If you’re shopping for cereal, you’re far more likely to pick up a box that catches your eye if it has a picture of cereal in a bowl and includes the word CEREAL somewhere on the box. If you see a box in the cereal aisle that has a picture of a breakfast bar on it, or if it has the word BAR in large letters, you’re probably not going to pick this up if you really want cereal.

When an action thriller has a cover that looks like a romance or the title sounds like a whodunit, it’s like trying to sell cereal inside a box of oatmeal.

It probably still seems pretty obvious, yet it’s also pretty common for the title or cover not to reflect the true nature of the book. Many indie authors, especially, tend to make this mistake. It’s an easy mistake to make. It’s not as obvious as putting cereal in an oatmeal box, but the effect is roughly the same.

How do you know what the package is supposed to look like? Check out the bestsellers in a given genre. Those are the types of covers that readers are accustomed to seeing. Putting the right outfit on the book doesn’t mean copying the cover concept from another book. It does, however, mean taking the time to do some research to explore what features are indicative of the genre.

A couple on a cover often signifies romance, for example. Yet even here it gets a little tricky. A romance author who wants to use sex appeal on the cover has to be careful not to make the cover look like erotica. On the other side, a young adult romance cover will look somewhat different from an adult romance cover.

The title should also be appropriate for the genre. If the cover says, “I’m a mystery, come solve my puzzle,” while the title says, “I’m a romance, let me add some spice to your life,” this mixed message can greatly deter sales.

Once the packaging makes you pick up a product, you start to explore the details. You might check out the ingredients or read the product description, for example. The table of contents specifies the book’s ingredients, the blurb is the product description, and the Look Inside offers a sample.

The blurb and Look Inside must reinforce what the cover and title suggest the book is about. Otherwise, it’s like wearing flip flops and a suit together.

Don’t confuse your potential readers. Don’t settle for a cover just because it looks nice, or a title just because it sounds good.

Print out your cover, hide the title, and show it to different people who have no idea that you wrote a book. Ask them what type of book they think it is.

Show people your title (nothing else – so these can’t be the same people who saw your cover) and ask them what they expect the book to be about.

Now get new people to read your description all by itself, and see what they say.

If you’re getting mixed messages, this may have a very significant impact on sales.

It’s not the fashion police you should be worried about if your book is caught wearing the wrong outfit, if the colors clash, or if your book doesn’t accessorize properly. It’s the potential sales that you may lose that should get your attention.

I could have titled this blog post, “All about Bikinis.” This blog may have had many more views if I had done that, but then nobody would have ever reached the end of this blog (except those few who may have been so desperate to find the product that had been advertised).

Chris McMullen

— A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

— Formatting Pages for Publishing on Amazon with CreateSpace

Jan 13 2013

Attention All Book Zombies: Time to Snap out of It!

You could be a book zombie without realizing it.  Maybe you didn’t know there was such a thing.  How do you know if you are one?  Is it bad?  If so, is there a cure for it?

If you find yourself wondering about these questions, then you’ve come to the right place.  This article will help you determine if you’re a book zombie, and, if you are, how to return to the world of the book living.

It’s time to take the book zombie quiz.  (What?  Nobody told me there would be a quiz!)  Relax:  You don’t have to study for it.

(1) When you see a list of search results, do you prefer a book with a title that is short and catchy or long and detailed?

(2) Which color combination do you think would look nicer on a book cover:  navy blue, baby blue, and plain white or dark purple, dark red, and bright orange?

(3) Would you rather have the book description be short and sound very interesting or be long and highly informative?

(4) Do you want the beginning of a story to invoke emotions within you or to let you read passively?

(5) After you finish reading a book that you like, would you like to see recommendations of other books from others who enjoyed that book?

Time’s up.  Make sure that your name is at the top of the page and pass it forward.

You’re probably ready to go over the answers now.  But the book zombie quiz isn’t about the answers; it’s about the questions.  (Aren’t you glad that you didn’t study for it?)

Most people don’t like it when a telemarketer calls during dinner, when a salesman interrupts a walk through the park, or when a commercial comes on just before the good part of a movie.  As such, most people would say that they don’t like advertisements.  On the other hand, many people wear t-shirts or hats with their favorite brand names written across them, and when deciding which detergent to buy in the grocery store often select the brand that they have heard before.  There are many subtle forms of marketing employed in the sale of commercial products.  A customer who chooses one product over another ─ or impulsively purchases something that he or she really doesn’t need ─ without realizing that the choice was due to subtle marketing schemes is a shopping zombie.

Similar subtle schemes are applied in book marketing.  A book zombie chooses one book over another ─ or impulsively buys a book that he or she really doesn’t need ─ without being conscious of the marketing that affected the decision.

Have you ever purchased a book that looked nice or seemed interesting, but where you still haven’t gotten around to reading it?  Have you ever bought a book that you were convinced would be very good ─ because you trusted the brand of the publisher, believed the testimonials on the first page, or the blurb sounded great ─ only to be disappointed later?  If you consider your past book-buying decisions carefully, you might find that you have occasionally exhibited some book zombie symptoms.

The big publishing houses take advantage of much marketing and psychological research that has gone into cover design, word selection, and blurb preparation.  Many adept small publishers and indie authors also take time to learn about and apply these marketing secrets.

Traditional publishers often pour a significant amount of money into cover design because it is so important in catching your attention.  Their covers often use just two or three main colors, just one font style, and one to three striking images that relate to the theme of the book.  Color theory tells them which colors work best together.  Color psychology dictates which colors to use to evoke which types of emotions or to suit which audience.  Even the style of font is very important.  Not only must the key words from the title be legible in a thumbnail, research actually shows that people are more likely to feel agreeable when reading some fonts and disagreeable when reading others.  Careful word selection also plays a critical role.

Many marketing strategies are geared around a five-second rule.  First, the cover has to catch your eye.  You probably notice a particular image or contrasting colors initially.  Five seconds later, if you like the cover, you read the title and inspect the cover more closely.  A short, catchy title helps to get you to click on the book to learn more about it.  Five more seconds pass as you begin to read the blurb.  The description has to grab your attention immediately to keep from losing a potential sale.  Every five seconds through the blurb, your attention must be held.  The blurb’s job is to touch you emotionally because emotional buyers are more impulsive.  The description closes by trying to pique your curiosity so that you will want to read the book.  When you look inside the book, you may find testimonials telling you just how awesome the book is.  Like the blurb, the beginning of the book must catch your interest and stir emotions within you.

Research shows that many people are book zombies to some extent.  Publishers’ tactics are geared toward our natural tendencies.

Snapping out of it doesn’t mean to look for ugly covers and horrible blurbs.  Rather, a lousy cover may be an indication that the content of the book didn’t merit much effort.  Similarly, if one or two paragraphs of a book’s description include mistakes, are not clear, or don’t hold your interest, that doesn’t bode well for a few hundred pages of writing.

You can wake up from being a book zombie and return to the world of the book living with less drastic measures.  You can be mindful of the various marketing tactics that may be used to try to influence you to make emotional or impulsive decisions.  When you discover a new book, you can make a conscious effort to wait until you’ve had a good night’s sleep before you buy it.  This provides an opportunity for your emotions to settle down and for logic to kick in.  You can invest a little more time toward learning more about a book in order to help you judge whether or not it will be a good fit for you.  A few more minutes now might prevent you from regretting your decision many hours later.  When available, you can read a longer sample of the book before you commit to purchasing it.  Very often, you might still wind up reading the same book, but you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you did so consciously with careful consideration.

Keep in mind that just drawing you into the book isn’t satisfactory from the publisher’s or author’s standpoint.  The book also has to be good enough for you to read it all the way through, and must be very good in order to get you to spread word of it to your friends and acquaintances.  Wise publishers and authors aren’t trying to sucker you into buying lousy books; but they are using marketing techniques to entice you into buying more of their books (which they believe not to be lousy).

Now take the book zombie quiz a second time.  See if you can understand each question and how it relates to the theme of this article.

Why did you read this blog?  Did the title catch your interest?  Did the beginning sound interesting?  I would also ask if the blog was good enough for you to reach the end, but it seems like kind of a moot point now.  But I do hope that you enjoyed it.  🙂

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers