I
never gave the sport of tennis much thought until my wife and I started to go
every year to the US Open from the time we had met back in 2000. At first, I tagged along because it seemed
important to her. Then I fell in love with
it. I almost never watch tennis – except
for an occassional Grand Slam championship – on television, but I now like to play it and I
certainly enjoy our annual trek to Flushing, Queens and seeing the world’s
elite sweat a green ball that they call yellow.
This year was no different. In
watching a number of matches, it occurred to me there’s a book publishing
lesson in all of this.
The
players that performed well did a number of things. They:
·
Reacted
to an opponent’s weakness
·
Played
up to their own strengths
·
Changed
tactics based on the score and court conditions
·
Prepared
for the match with hard training
·
Informed
themselves of their opposing player’s style, habits, and traits
·
Played
to the crowd’s support or learned to shut it out if not so supportive
·
Made
adjustments to what their opponents were doing
Writers
can do this too, when it comes to what they look to write, publish, and
promote. You should:
·
React
to the weaknesses in your genre’s marketplace – write what’s missing
·
Play
up to your own strengths – milk your writing abilities and perfect what you’re
already good at
·
Change
tactics based on the changing tastes or demands of readers
·
Keep
honing and practicing your craft – never stop learning
·
Be
knowledgeable of the different writing and marketing styles of your competition
·
Have
a thick skin when it comes to bad reviews but celebrate your writing success
with fans and build up your social media interactions
·
Adjust
your writing so it sticks out compared to your competition
Okay,
so tennis is not exactly like writing, but there are many similar battles that
athletes and authors fight. Certainly
they both have to find a will to triumph, an ability to overcome naysayers, the
motivation to best their competition, and the raw talent and conviction to play
on the big stage.
As
I watched match after match – men’s, women’s, doubles, and mixed doubles, I
kept concluding that not much separates a winner or a loser of a single match,
and that over time, one can amass a lot more wins than others simply by winning
a lot of close competitions. Few are
dominant for long.
Just
a few things that go the other way could alter a match’s result. But somehow, the better player consistently
makes fewer mistakes and finds a way to come up big in key moments.
It
befuddles me that the court dictates so much of the action. The physical dimensions of the playing
surface is what signals what comes next, based on a player’s position on the
court and his or her ability to cover the open gaps. Book publishing doesn’t have that,
exactly. There is no court, but there is
a marketplace, from Amazon and B&N, to Indies and bulk stores. Writers have more fields to compete on and these choices allow them to find their readership through any
number of channels. So where the tennis
players have to hit a ball within a prescribed area in order to win, authors
have no boundaries.
One
thing that I don’t appreciate is the sport’s attempt to segregate fans based on
the nationality of a player, in a marketing ploy that goes back to the Olympics
and that is played out by other sports such as soccer. Tennis hopes you’ll
sustain interest in a match by rooting or one nation over another. On the other
hand, authors could take a page from this and play up some geographic marker or
some other demographic identifier. Many
do. Women tend to play up their gender,
such as with genres like “women’s studies” and “chick lit.” Others highlight their hometowns and some
will play the race card when they purposely identify their ethnicity, even when
it’s not relevant to their writing.
Whether
tennis resembles book publishing is up for debate, but one thing is clear, one
must take the courage to get up every day and play to win, whether an athlete
or a writer.
Do your best and keep changing your approach and you may find you have what it takes to score better than others.
Do your best and keep changing your approach and you may find you have what it takes to score better than others.
DON'T MISS THESE POSTS
Want you blog posts to go viral – or at
least get opened?
Book sales are rising – led by audio books
How to connect your book to the news
Here’s an interview with Thrillerfest Exec. Dir. Kim Howe
Explore a guided tour through the English language
Get The Writer’s Legal Guide – Very Helpful
Don’t say this to the media when promoting your book
Free newswires can help promote books and author brands
What Should Be Book Publishing’s Slogan?
19 Digital Tools To Assist Authors
Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and
ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You
can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him
at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the
third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.