I
recently enjoyed combing through the New
York Times Bestseller, What If?
Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd
Hypothetical Questions, by Randall Munroe.
It made me think about so many scenarios and possibilities – even
improbabilities, and allowed my imagination to run wild. There could be an application here to book
marketing.
This
book poses wild questions – and then attempts to answer them. Need some examples? It asks:
·
If
everyone on the planet stayed away from each other for a couple of weeks,
wouldn’t the common cold be wiped out?
·
How
many Legos bricks would be needed to build a bridge from London to New York
City?
·
Would
a nuclear bomb, launched into the eye of a super hurricane, break the storm up?
·
What
is the maximum number of different English-language Tweets that could be
created?
You
get the picture. Now, let’s take that
approach to book marketing and publicity and ask some fantastic questions:
·
What
if we added up all of the words used to type up press releases to promote books
for a year – how many 60,000–word books would they add up to?
·
What
if we recruited and trained an army of 1,000 people to write a book on one
specific topic?
·
What
if you didn’t allow for any new books to be published for a month?
·
Could
something happen that causes mass blindness or mass illiteracy? How would it impart the book industry?
·
What
if all of the books published this past year were recycled – every single copy
of every title? How many trees would it
save?
·
What
if you marketed your book every waking minute of a 16-hour day for a week –
what would happen?
·
How
many books could get media coverage from a newspaper, television show, radio
show, or major blog or podcast if these media outlets were not allowed to cover
the same books?
·
How
many books does the New York Times Book
Review receive each day for review consideration – and how many actually
get reviewed?
·
How
many books has the average librarian read?
·
How
many books can the average person read or hear about in a year?
·
What
if we all read the same book?
The
list of questions can go on. But what if we can take a different approach to
how books are marketed or sold? What if
we can create a more efficient system of how books are reviewed – and how those
reviews are disseminated? What if we all
took a week-long vacation and spent that time only reading books?
We
need to question what, how, and why we do what we do when it comes to writing,
editing, selling, and promoting books.
There needs to be a better way than our current system.
The
flaws are obvious:
·
The
market is flooded by new books but it lacks a fair and accurate method of
determining which books are worthy of our attention.
·
Though
self-publishing no longer requires writers to seek permission from gatekeepers to have
access to readers, there’s also no obligation or fail-safe to ensure a book is
accurate, edited well, or even well-written.
·
There
are more books circulating than the reading public can handle, leaving most
books with very few readers.
·
How
do we ensure books that need to be written and published on topics that have
been ignored or under examined get created?
·
How
do we make sure truly great books receive the attention they deserve,
regardless of who the author or publisher is, and regardless of the marketing
budget available?
The
publishing world tackles simple questions right now:
·
How
do I advertise a book?
·
How
do we get authors to tweet about their books?
·
Which
media outlets should we approach for media coverage?
·
When
shall we create a website to promote a book?
What
if…
·
Authors
and publishers followed good advice and the best-practices standards of
successful authors?
·
Writers
stopped fearing the media and marketed their books better?
·
Publishers
actually put some support behind their books rather than leaving authors to
fend for themselves?
·
The
nation could improve literacy levels, allowing for many more books to be sold
and read?
·
Writers
honestly assessed their books in the face of popular or award-winning,
critically acclaimed books, and make a decision to not release a book until it
truly matches the high standards set by others?
·
Authors
edited down their books to make them 10% shorter – but just as effective as
they originally planned – so that we can read more books?
So
many questions, so few answers. It is
fun to explore some of this stuff while other questions simply can’t be
answered – nor should they be. But we
need to raise issues and ask questions – even wild ones – if we are to
collectively move forward and make the book industry stronger and the book marketplace more efficient.
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