Author/library visits: An entire post on its own, and there are already many posts etc about it by authors, etc.

Individual mileage may differ. But it can be very hard to get a good sized group of teens out for the author, especially the author that is most likely to do this type of visit for free. Big name authors, of course, the kids want. The new author? Where maybe your budget allowed for one copy to be purchased? And, frankly, the author most likely to do such a visit for free or cheap? It takes a lot of work on the part of the librarian to drum up enthusiasm and readers to get a good sized group at the library and by "good" I mean ten. So simply doing "call library" puts a LOT on the teen librarian (if there is one). I know libraries who just flat out don't do author visits because the amount of work is so much. The author having their own online presence to call upon greatly helps this, but then we're back to what if the author doesn't want to do that type of online promotion? Or the other things that can help to make such a visit a success: the visit is actually a writing workshop, for example. Or talking about (insert topic that now attracts people beyond the 2 that read the book).

There are exceptions: local authors, etc. Towns where the kids buy/read their own books, including new authors, so the collection limitations of the library don't impact. Libraries that still have book discussion groups for teens & really work the book angle.

As a librarian, the author who not only says "visit" but also "free" (ha! which is something HUGE to ask an author because time is money) but also "here is the dog and pony show I've done to get teens in and will do to get teens in." And, of course, not expecting the library to purchase 20 copies of your book just because.

Some quick links: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA287118.html, http://www.michigan.gov/documents/hal_lm_author_talk_guide_106531_7.pdf, http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/initiatives/kidscampaign/authorvisits.cfm

I'm not a member of SCBWI, but I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't have some type of resource.

Colleen,
I am in complete agreement with the need to go "outside the box" to market books and any other services. I have launched multiple campaigns to get my teen book noticed and while some are working, some not, I am continually putting new plans into motion.
A marketing friend told me that you have to champion yourself, because nobody else is pick up the torch if you put it down. And because I now know how hard self-promotion is, I am more inclined to support other independent business people in their ventures. No matter how hard we're working to market our own products or services, we also need to remember that recognizing each other and working together creates a support network that benefits everyone.
Thanks for the post :)

I hope you will excuse me for going anonymous on this. I am not as brave as Jenny Davidson. But I am another author in the position where my books were not picked up by the big chains. So was that a factor in my first publisher's decision to not purchase my second book? I'm certain it didn't help. Did it impact the advance I got on my second book from a different publisher? I'm willing to bet big that it did. Those sales numbers are out there and it would have been stupid for that publisher not to look at them. Thing is, you can never know for sure unless your publisher says flat out, and they rarely do that.

Am I concerned that the non-performance of my second book will negatively impact my ability to sell my third book? Of course I am. I'd be stupid not to be worried. What can I do about it at this point? Write the best damned third book I can.

Now, I only know things about YA--and to some extent--children's publishing. The library market used to account for 50% of sales of children's and YA books. Now that number is down to about 20% and the larger market share has shifted to retail outlets, but primarily the big chain bookstores and discount stores like WalMart and Target. B&N is the major player here and has a huge impact not just on what books sell well but even on how and what is published. Independent book store sales combined can't equal the buying power of the big chains. And while ebook sales may be coming on, they're still a minuscule percentage of the market. And for the record, Amazon sales percentages are in the single digits. So yeah, it matters a lot if your books don't get into the big box stores.

This may have changed so if someone knows, please correct me. But up to at least a year ago, there was one YA buyer for all of B&N's stores. One guy was making all of the buying decisions. I know for a fact that publishers change covers, content, even decide whether or not to make an offer on a ms based on whether or not this guy will place an order. (You want to talk about covers? Yeah, I know of a number of instances where the publisher says "B&N wants a different cover." And two cases where publishers refused to change covers and B&N canceled their order. And the books tanked.)

Why do publishers send out ARCs of books that don't need any more marketing push? Because from the publishers point-of-view, those books do need the push because those are the books that are making money for them. The lesser known books were purchased with risk capital. The publisher can afford to lose that money. If the book takes off on its own, that's great. If not, the publisher hasn't lost that much. If they put marketing dollars behind those books, then they increase the risk that they were not prepared to venture in the first place. It's business.

Visiting libraries and bookstores: I'm not saying it's not important or a great thing for an author to connect with readers via a library or bookstore, but in marketing terms, that's a very inefficient approach. Even if you have the time, the ability to travel, don't have a day job or family, a single author can cover very little ground on her own. That's provided she is welcomed at every stop. That has not been my experience. Afraid you won't be recognized? In most cases, you won't be. You'll be treated politely but blankly. And try to do this in your hometown and it adds a whole new layer of humiliation. Nobody gives a hoot about the local girl. They want the glamorous stranger, not the middle aged lady they see in the grocery store every week.

Every year since I've been published, I have volunteered my services in my local library and my local school district and every year, I've been ignored. My local library doesn't even have my books, even though I provided the youth services director with ARCs and my second book got a couple of starred reviews and "best of" lists. When a new young adult librarian came on board, I made a point of introducing myself to her. She had never heard of me. Was astounded to learn there was a YA author in town. But she still didn't buy my book. I have also been told flat out by a bookseller that it disgusted her when authors came into her store to "hawk their wares."

I think there is yet a bit of mystery about authors and people don't like to have that wiped away by the image of the author shilling for themselves. Old-fashioned as that may sound, I think it is definitely still out there, whether people admit it as openly as that bookseller or not.

I've spoken at conferences. I've participated in blog tours. I am a member of a group blog where we promote the works of others. But I wrote a book that did not have a high commercial profile and this is a very commercial market.

While I think you can point to a number of examples of authors who have successfully promoted themselves and their books, for each of those you could surely find hundreds of others who did the same or similar with no impact. And more than a few who did it badly and caused more harm than good.

I'm not saying don't try to market your own book. I'm just not sure if the return is worth the effort. If it is better to spend your time marketing rather than writing. I think that is what you need to carefully weigh. And perhaps you need to try it first to see if it is indeed something you can do or something you think is not for you.

In the end, I think the success of the book still comes down to two things, which--once the book is written and done--are out of the author's control:

1) Publisher promotion. It doesn't always work, but it works a lot of the time by positioning a book to be noticed. That's more than half the battle. And people aren't stupid. They recognize the difference between publisher promotion and author-generated promotion and it means something to them. If they see the publisher getting behind the book, they have more confidence that the book is worthwhile than if it's just the author.

2) Word of mouth. This is still the way bestsellers are made. And I suspect that it will be the driving force when ebooks take over the world. This is where I think social media comes into the equation. But this is organic reader-generated, reader-to-reader communication. The way for the author to influence this is to write an irresistible book.

I should add as far as weighing whether marketing is worthwhile for you, you would have to know how many copies you would need to sell through your own efforts in order to impress your publisher and know whether or not that is within your abilities. Can you impact the sales of your book in the thousands of copies?

Increasingly, we're seeing children's-YA authors contracting with independent publicists for some of the same support they might have received if they were a publisher priority title. And for that matter, already pushed authors interested in a little additional marketing TLC.

There are some terrific folks out there--I highly recommend both Blue Slip Media and Deborah Sloan (all former promotion folks at well respected publishers). But it's important to do your research and find out if whomever you're hiring really knows their stuff.

I expect this to continue, but it shifts the financial burden to the author, and the odds are already stacked heavily in favor of the more affluent, which in turn affects those voices that reach the body of literature and the kind of books published.

Also, the book itself must still have, say, a media hook, if you're hoping to attract print/online attention. Though it's considered more persuasive, PR isn't advertising. You can sprinkle seeds, but there are no guarantees as to whether anything will grow.

That said, I'd love to be part of such a panel, budget permitting.

My sympathies to Anonymous! Yes, the chains have a huge amount of power. Just to point out something more specific and probably fairly obvious re: sales: the print run the publisher commits to is very directly based on whether or not B&N and Borders are buying in - and if they don't, the publisher will only print maybe 3,000, and then it is pretty much impossible that it will sell unless word of mouth takes off to a huge degree.

A good publicist is clearly immensely worthwhile - I have a friend who used one to amazing effect on a book that wasn't getting sufficient support from her pub - but it is a huge investment. For me it comes down to what sort of a career I am building - I have realized that I'm not willing to sink those dollars in publicity for a book that's not so clearly part of my "whole package," i.e. related to my day-job work as literary critic and professor - the world of YA fiction is too separate. But I am thinking pretty seriously about devoting whatever post-tax dollars I get for the current porject, a little book about style and how to read Proust, James, Austen, etc., to a publicist - I think it can make a huge difference to how much and what kind of attention a book gets. Can most of us afford to fork over perhaps our whole advance or even more than that for a publicist? Well, it depends whether you're thinking of it as a long-term investment, and I believe that the rational decision will be quite different depending on circumstances.

So after writing about this for about a week and garnering comments & tweets on the subject what I am left with is:

"There is nothing you can do. B&N can screw you easily. Libraries don't really care to see you. Bookstores probably won't care about your. Unless the gods smile upon you and awards are won (which will occur only if your publisher decides you are worthy enough to send the book out for them), your book is going to die a quick death and disappear forever."

This is the part where people then say:

"But keep writing because writers always write and the work is what matters! Take the long view and after ten or twenty books (that for some reason will keep getting published even though none of your books will sell well for all the reasons above) you will probably get some recognition and then it will all be worth it!!"

This all reminds me of everyone who told us we needed to wait another ten or twenty years to buy our first plane - until we had hundreds of thousands saved up and could be sure that losing the plane would not hurt us financially.

I have to tell you, right now at this moment I am beyond disgusted at what business as usual is for this industry.

I appreciate Anon's frankness & also Jenny & print runs. It reminds me of what I think John Green (?) posted about a while back, about better to have smaller advances & print runs instead of bigger ones. Because (theoretically) A and B sell 5k books; but if A's print run was 10k and B's first print run was 3k and a second printing, B is in the better position for the next book.

Cyn, word on the street in NJ is that you'll be here on a visit? I'm hoping I can attend one of your events, if they are open to the public. I also hope (hint hint to rest of kidlitosphere) that the kidlitcon after NYC is in Texas, preferably Austin-area!

Colleen, they are not there to screw authors, not more than any business is there to screw customers. They are trying to make money, cannot carry every single book out there, and make decisions based on what they think will sell. Frankly, I agree with them that "bitches" as the title of a YA book won't sell in a lot of places and "rhymes with witches" is better.

It's a business. Period. And it's a business around art, but still a business, and just like some movies and tv shows bomb, even though we love them (My So Called Life, I'm looking at you...), some books just don't make it. It happens. It's tough. But not every book can make it. It was true in 1970, 1990, today.

I'm thankful we do not get disgusted at the same time about things because I think it would break the Internets.

But seriously, step back -- why is it "beyond disgusted" that not every book is a seller? It's impossible. The argument out there (I believe made by Roger Sutton) is that the problem right now is too many books are being accepted & published, and that (too much supply, not enough demand) is the true issue, not what is being done to market those books.

If publishers knew the answer that ensured that every book they published was a "hit," they would do it. If authors knew it -- and in a way that didn't eat up their entire lives, because as Jenny points out, hello, day jobs! -- they would do it. (If anything, the notion of selfpublishing & thus selfpromoting, etc., makes it even worse for the author like Jenny who doesn't have the time to do that.)

You cannot make teens like a book. You cannot make anyone like a book.

You can review, and buzz, and booktalk. And the internet has allowed us to do that on a much different scope than was done 5, 10, 15 years ago. But still it comes down to the reader, and you can lead a reader to the book but you cannot make him/her read it and love it and want all their friends to read it, too.

Colleen, your business background is going to stand you in good stead!...

But seriously, I too can't say that I feel things are as bad as all that. It is much better for me that The Explosionist should be published in any fashion than that it should not be! I don't even know what the print run was, maybe 1500 or 3000, but let's say it found 1000 readers who really loved it - it seems to me a respectable number, it is not every book that is going to reach tens or hundreds of thousands of readers. I don't know that I'm going to try to write and sell another YA book, but I suspect that if I wrote a great one, my agent would be able to sell it without too much trouble, though probably for low to mid-five figures rather than six figures, but fair enough! My advance for my first novel (published very well by Soft Skull Press in 2003) was $300 - that's not a typo, it was an advance in the low three figures! That's the sort of thing academic presses pay too, on assumption income stream comes from faculty appointment - I think I got 450 pounds from Cambridge for my first academic book, and perhaps $1000 from Columbia for my second. In literary fiction, most writers are teaching full-time to make ends meet; there's no reason that shouldn't be the case for YA writers at the more 'literary' end of the market...

And yet again, I don't think I was clear here. It's not that I expect every book to be a huge seller - we've all read books we don't think should be published let alone be best sellers. (And I'm not only thinking of "Theodore Boone" but the endless array of vamp books that came out trying to catch Twilight fever.) My point is how little the author is part of the equation. In business, if you are the owner you are in it every single step of the way - forever. In publishing you create the product and then hand it over to others to market and sell with little input from you. This industry seems to be constructed around the notion that while writers write, they don't know how to sell. And maybe that is true (or was true).

But again - look at Rebecca Skloot and John Green and others who have stepped outside the box and are selling their words just fine, thank you very much.

My frustration is in the construct of this industry in general and how condescending it is towards the people who are the only absolutely essential parts of this industry. Without the writer, there are no books. Everyone else relies upon the writer in order to have something sell (or lend in the case of libraries). (Of course this is all chicken & eggish because without readers writers would not exist.)

I think small advances are fine and so are small presses (as evident by my own recent deal). It is more what happens next - the power of others and luck of the draw that craft your career from the moment you do sign. That is the source of my frustration.

Maybe I shall finish out the week posting my thoughts on this?

Yes. I'd love to read that post. (And perhaps by tomorrow my thoughts will be organized enough for a coherent comment!)

Ha ha ha! My wordy comment disappeared.

Readers Digest Version: not very many people, period, are good at business. Not just writers.

And if you want a business that doesn't respect talent, talk to screenwriters.

Well now you're just being mean! Screenwriters! Who wants to talk about screenwriters??!!

LizB: Yep, I'm NJ bound in the winter and looking forward to it. Hope to see you then. And we Austinites have kicked around the idea of doing a kidlitcon. I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen.

Colleen: a few of us who have vamps in our books were writing them pre-Twilight. That's something that can happen, too--you stumble into a trend. It has its cons, pros, but is mostly a huge shock. When I started Tantalize in 2001, my biggest concern was convincing publishers that teenage girls would read a book with monsters in it. Nuances of the landscape can change very, very quickly. And sometimes a big mountain shoots up, seemingly out of nowhere.

Cynthia:

I shouldn't paint all vamp writers with the same ugly frustration - I'm sorry! Heck I was reading Laurell K Hamilton a zillion years ago (before she became a bad erotica writer :( ) so I remember the vamp days of old. That would be my reviewer frustration rearing its ugly head. So many of those books are such blatant ripoffs of Meyers' work (or attempted ripoffs) that it gets very old very fast.

Please accept my apologies on this one - I was being flip and it wasn't fair.

But wow - too funny that you were worried about teen girls loving monster books! In retrospect who could have guessed how that would turn out, eh?!

I'm from the UK, which may make for a slightly different scenario, but yes, definitely the amount of copies sold of a first book is a huge factor in whether a second gets published or not. It's a relatively small book world, far easier to keep track of than other businesses, and most people know one another in it.

I agree that readers aren't always that keen on authors being pushy to sell themselves. After all, the sense is: they're biased! I think there are marketing and publicity opportunities to be had by cunning authors promoting issues linked to their books. Particularly in YA fiction - if a character is anorexic or dyslexic, join up with the nationwide charity, get articles in the local (or national) papers going into the problems presented by these disabilities. People rarely like being told what to do, and 'read my book' never gets you far. But if they are interested in the topic you are promoting, they are more likely to pick up a copy of the book, I think.