What tempts you?

[Rob B]

Well then you are being a silly fellow, (she says affectionately,) because the cover art is lovely. It's very retro with that pre-comics look they often used to have, and an unusual image. Why would you have objection to a giant flying fish, especially if it's in the book? And "Tinker" by Wen Spenser sounds quite cool. He's already on my book list. Besides, haven't you ever heard of using book covers if you're going to be so picky?

I know I'm silly. And it is unfair to judge the book by the cover. I just think it is an ugly cover made ugly by an ugly fish. If I'm not mistaken, Bob Eggleton did the cover and I usually like his work. For all I know, it may even be an integral moment of the story or encapsulate the book very well, I still think it is a garish image.

BTW Wen is she and won the 2003 John Campbell Award for best new writer, as well as the Compton Crook Award so I further regale in my silliness.

Technically sell, no. But we have this:

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I was just being daft.

But I've decided that you lot are hopeless. There is not a magic promotional bullet between you all. Many would say that we are not the ideal group to be coerced anyway, since we are all knowledgable and care about books. It's the people who don't buy fiction normally who are suddenly paying attention to ads for books in newspapers they don't usually read, and walking into a bookstore even though they never usually go into one.

For the most part, you are correct. We are a useless lot when it comes to mainstream advertisements. Many of us here now about the books before they are advertised. But what about the ads that appear in genre magazines/publications like Locus, F&SF, Asimovs and the banner ads here

 

[KatG]

I know I'm silly. And it is unfair to judge the book by the cover. I just think it is an ugly cover made ugly by an ugly fish. If I'm not mistaken, Bob Eggleton did the cover and I usually like his work. For all I know, it may even be an integral moment of the story or encapsulate the book very well, I still think it is a garish image.

How can you not love a giant, gape-mouthed fish flying in the sky with a gondola attached to it? If I saw that cover in the store, I'd be drawn to it instantly.

But seriously, if a cover offends one or embarasses one, there is some company -- I forget the name, but maybe someone will know -- that makes these lovely, sturdy book covers for both hardcover/large paper and mm paperbacks, and I was sorely tempted to get them, not to hide the cover art, but because it looked like good protection for books.

For the most part, you are correct. We are a useless lot when it comes to mainstream advertisements. Many of us here now about the books before they are advertised. But what about the ads that appear in genre magazines/publications like Locus, F&SF, Asimovs and the banner ads here

Well, that brings up another interesting angle. Locus and the sff mags used to of course get most of the print ads for category sff. There wasn't really anywhere else that was going to want ads for such titles. But the circulation of these publications was relatively low, compared to the greater reading public or even the fan public. Now these publications are on-line and getting wider readership, but it's still the more die-hard fans who use them -- the ones most willing to try new titles but most resistent to pretty colors in marketing efforts. We also have the banner ads everywhere.

But is the Internet advertising working, or is it the Internet discussion that's working, or are neither working quite as well as hoped? Kevin Radthorne got me on to a blog by someone called Bookseller Chick, who is, as you might guess, a bookseller. And she had an interesting entry a few days ago:

"The book also got me thinking about the lag time between when a book gets buzzing on the Internet and when brick and mortar stores actually start showing a higher rate of sales. Often I’ll hear titles getting bandied about as the next new thing in the blogsophere, only to see no corresponding result in my store. Of course, I can’t survey every customer who walks near the book and ask them why they didn’t pick it up (I’m told customer harassment is frowned upon by the company), but the lack of dollars speaks for itself. One could argue that the online sales make up for this (and say that the book has found its niche there), but that means that this title is only reaching a certain percentage of the population (which is better than nothing, sure, but still). That it went viral on the Internet is fantastic, but if it goes virtually ignored by the rest of the world (people who either don’t have the Internet or don’t spend hours upon hours on it searching for the next hot, new thing) then there is a failure in the marketing system.

So how do you bridge that disconnect? How to do you run a successful campaign that targets your specified group while reaching farther afield?"

These last questions are the ones that publishers are grappling with in planning promotion on the Web, and one of the main reasons perhaps they are so cautious about how they go about it. They have to give Amazon and other online stores very big price discounts and the return isn't as great. I would expect most publishers prefer bookstore sales than they do on-line sales, as they make more profit. And despite its prevalence in our lives, on-line book sales are still a small, if hopping, part of the market pie.

So are Internet ads doing the job? Or Internet buzz? Or are neither panning out? I do think that the Internet has certainly led to the increase of internationalization of editions because the buzz crosses the oceans. Twenty years ago, your average sff author didn't have much chance of foreign sales. Now, while it doesn't always happen, it's way more common.

 

[Radthorne]

Did I hear my name mentioned?

I think the point raised by Bookseller Chick is something that is easy for us "Internet" people to lose sight of. The Internet is not "everything," nor is it a complete picture of reality. I have heard often (although not researched it myself from any source, mind you) that online book sales are a small fraction of total book sales, most of which come from good old brick and mortar establishments. People get all excited about Amazon, but in the total book market they are, as I understand it, just another bookstore chain. (One might argue that they serve a function besides just sales, such as first-point-of-reference for people searching for books whether they buy from Amazon or not, but that's another interesting topic...) So when we talk about online advertising, we need to remember that this exciting cyberworld we live in, while more pervasive all the time, is still not the total available market.

If we're talking buzz (as opposed to strictly marketing), the same limitation applies - not everyone is writing or reading blogs or visiting SFFWorld everyday for info (we are, but then we're all a bit odd...) What the Internet has done is accelerate rapidly the dissemination of information among those who partake in it. One does not have to wait for a magazine or a newsletter to find out what everybody (again, a 'qualified' everybody) is talking about. You can browse sites like this one and find out very quickly. So if 'buzz' is going to happen, it might (I stress 'might') happen more rapidly than in the past, particularly if a particular book, author, or series * cough* Potter *cough* catches the mainstream eye. Word of mouth spread before the Internet, of course; but now it has a mechanism that lets it spread like a virus (hmm, sounds like something you should wash your hands for, doesn't it?)

 

[KatG]

The difficulty being always to get the author's name out there amid a sea of writers, I do think the Internet has helped a great deal with that, yes. I also think it changed the landscape for authors internationally. That there is now much more cross-import of authors from other countries is maybe in large part due to fans hearing about the authors on the Net and then wanting them in their hometown. (Although the consolidation of the publishers into multinational corporations probably had something to do with it too.)

But the Internet does not seem to be a reliable magic bullet either. So I'm out of ideas. Anybody talked to their friends who aren't big readers about why they buy certain novels?

 

[TwinA]

Okay, this is not exactly what you were looking for, KatG, but it's somewhat related. My sister was always a big reader, but not always into sff. She used to pick her books ONLY if they had what she thought was an attractive cover. If she thought the cover was ugly, she didn't even pick it up.

When she began to read sff, she tried to keep doing the same thing. For myself, I never let a cover influence what I read. It could be totally black with no title, and I would still check out the back to see what it was about. I began to force my sister to read the "ugly" books.

It's sad to say, but my sister still looks at the attractiveness of the cover, but now she also reads what I recommend because I have a good idea, most times, of what she would like.

So, in her case, it's a combination of looks and word of mouth from sources that she trusts. But, at the same time, my sister NEVER pays attention to what the latest greatest book is. The fact that everyone is buying the book does not make her buy it. She doesn't even know what everyone is buying, because she simply doesn't pay attention.

 

[KatG]

That's kind of fascinating, because most other types of fiction have no or very little cover art. They're just colors, with the author name and title, the author name being larger print if the author is well known, and the title being larger or same size print if the author is not so well known. So, if a book is purple, for instance, and she doesn't like purple, she won't buy it?

And she doesn't read reviews, she doesn't pay attention to bestseller lists or special store displays quite as much -- unless they feature a cover she likes presumably. She goes by finding something she likes the looks of (browsing,) or recommendations (word of mouth.) Hence, the difficulties fiction publishers face.

But we need a larger data sample. Anybody else?

 

[Physics Knight]

About coverart, I actually prefer the fantasy-esque stuff with lots of colours and adventurous-looking people. The only problem is that good fantasy covers attract me the most, but bad fantasy covers deter me the most. Fantasy covers very easy to mess up whereas it is quite an acomplishment to come up with a horrible plain cover.

For example, my eye would be caught book with a strong woman in full plate (because I don't like books with women who sit around), but I would be detered by one featuring a scantly clad lass in a bikini. A simple cover may not make me pick it up, but then I won't be off-put by it either. It could intrigue me if the title is interesting enough.

 

[EMMAXIS]

Well, I suppose one way to promote yourself is to get on one of these boards and meet people who like fantasy ... and then maybe if you're really lucky, somebody will give you a chance!

I agree that word of mouth is the best and most important type of promotion. But that's where we writers run into the catch-22 problem. If you're not known, nobody will talk about your book, but if nobody talks about your book, you'll never get known!

I have had success so far with getting good reviews by people who gave my book a chance {{shameless plug}}. But getting people to read it in the first place . . . aye, there's the rub.

I'll tell you what typically hooks me:

1) Cover art. A good cover will attract me, if it's a picture that really tells a story. The kind of artwork produced by Boris Vallejo or Frank Frazetta usually gets me asking, "what's going on there?"

2) The main plot idea often hooks me. Like "Ilium". All I needed to see is, "Greek Gods on Mars..." and I just had to read that book!

3) The Middle. I flip through to the middle of the book and pick a random sentence. This might sound odd, but middle chapters are usually the worst written, so I go there to see whether the writer can write, because a good concept can be ruined by poor writing.

 

[Akkarin]

KatG, can I ask why you seem to like the older style of cover art? I've always found the style using bright colours and lots going on on the cover to put me off reading a book(Though it wont completely put me off one, I'm likely to still read it), whereas the simplistic modern style I often see now seems more attractive to me.

Do you feel put off by the simple ones, or is it a case of you like a bit of everything?

 

[algernoninc]

maps are cool - somebody already mentioned he looks for maps when he browses for new books , and I realize I do the same - I like the classic ones : with "here be dragons" illustrations on the oceans corners, and little cameos with characters from the book in them. Also if the country and city names are original, it will keep me interested to find out more. Not all the authors have good maps included - some are just squiggly scribbles, hardly descifrable. They may be valuable for being done in an author's own hand, but I prefer a more polished map.

 

[KatG]

So again, covers, maps, sample readings from the text -- nothing promotional, except to the degree that the cover is an attractant. But again, those pals of yours who don't buy fiction regularly -- is there anything promotional that attracts them? Something that might get them into the bookstore?

KatG, can I ask why you seem to like the older style of cover art? I've always found the style using bright colours and lots going on on the cover to put me off reading a book(Though it wont completely put me off one, I'm likely to still read it), whereas the simplistic modern style I often see now seems more attractive to me.

Do you feel put off by the simple ones, or is it a case of you like a bit of everything?

I like art, so just having bright colors and text is not as interesting to me as some form of graphics, just from an artistic standpoint. But I don't buy a novel based on its cover art. I may go check it out because of it's cover art, but it doesn't sway me on purchase. The story description or recommendations will do that. And a plain cover doesn't keep me from buying a work either.

It's not a question of old versus new; it's mainstream treatment versus category. Category fiction, all kinds, tends to have more graphic art on the covers -- it's a way of identifying easily a type of fiction. SFF publishers used mainstream treatments back in the old days, like the eighties, just not as often as they do now, because there weren't a lot of category sff authors becoming mainstream major bestsellers (where upon you usually get your mainstream cover treatment.) A community of artists developed in association with sff, doing magazine illustrations and cover art, and these artists became appreciated in their own right and also for their illuminations of sff stories. (They sometimes get the details wrong, but that doesn't make their images any less interesting.) It is related to comics and the graphic novels made of comics -- the illustrating of a story with interesting art.

As a kid and teen, I got into sff. That meant hauling around books and magazines with pretty wild cover art (a lot of the seventies books had sort of album cover art style, and may well have been done by famous artists of that time.) I liked the art and I enjoyed that other people were fascinated by it; I was never embarassed by the art, and I'm not now.

I don't require a book to have a full-fledged painting. I like Scott Bakker's U.S./Canada rune background cover art, for instance, or photo realistic shots. I like the little cartoon graphics sort of art that's been used for some sff and for contemporary and mystery fiction, and such. I think there's a lot still that can be tried in cover art, and sff -- which has the best tradition of cover art -- is perhaps best poised to try it and be creative.

It's really no different from a graphic novel, or a movie poster, or an album cover. It's a celebration, and, truly, a declaration of pride.

 

[PeterWilliam]

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I swear I'm not practicing threadromancy, but have a question re: the support links. Is it possible to set one up so that our purchases through The Book Depository also benefit the site?