Arts marketing has always been challenging, and it’s even harder now. In this e-zine, we’ll look first at what kinds of marketing gets story-tellers’ works noticed in a noisy world. Some are classics, but many rely on new technologies. As restrictions on face-to-face activities like book launches and film premiers escalate, bids for our attention have migrated online. Marketers need fresh, creative ideas and models to avoid social media becoming a turn-off for audiences. We will look in this introduction at some basic tactics, and then hopefully profile some interesting new ones later, in invited posts.
We’ll start with reviews; awards and contests; freebies/samples; and creating clubs/communities of interest. There are plenty of other arts marketing tactics in play, but these are interesting because they share two intractable problems: credibility and the splintering of interest groups/audiences.
Reviews: Reviews are perhaps the single most important form of marketing stories in today’s crowded entertainment market. As indicated above, the critical issue is credibility. If you want to know something is worthwhile, you ask, right? But who do you ask? Reviews draw from the historical respect assigned to publishing via scholarly peer review processes. Scientific books and journals traditionally used double-blind peer review processes to decide whether an article is worth publishing. Anonymous panels of two or more qualified experts from the author’s field of expertise would read and assess an article or other work from which the author’s name was usually removed. Those reviewers should be unknown to the author to avoid bias or undue influence.
Even for scholarly publications, however, where a lot of work goes into getting a reliable review, attempts to limit bias don’t always work. I won’t go into the philosophy behind the scientific method, but suffice it to say, its pitfall is whether objectivity is achievable and, indeed, whether it even exists in human cognition.
So with problems like that in scholarly reviews, how do reviews work in the area of literature? Even less well. Whatever you may think of the scientific method as a process, it is a lot less slippery than standards of excellence applied to story telling. So attempts to attach credibility onto literary or film reviews sometimes rely on borrowing from the credibility of famous, highly regarded people, often other authors. And there goes your attempt to eliminate bias.
With publishers’ websites and book blurbs increasingly viewed as advertisements rather than reviews, and hence questionable as indicators of product quality, the power to get a literary book or other artwork noticed is increasingly in the hands of private reviewers, often through self-managed blogs.
How do we find and get the attention of reviewers who are knowledgeable and have a following among our target readers? These are such important questions that answering them are businesses for enterprises like BookSirens. Reviews are increasingly bought and sold or traded–and once this happens, bias in inevitable. No one buys a bad review. For more on this subject, read the post, ‘Book Reviews as Products”.
Awards and contests: Most writers secretly cherish the dream of winning a Pulitzer, Nobel, Man Booker, or other major literary prize; but I would hazard the guess all ALL writers want one of those gold or silver stickers on the front of their book that seem to make them irresistible to readers. You would think the latter wouldn’t be hard, wouldn’t you? Wikipedia lists thousands of literary prizes, organized by country of origin, language, genre, format, whether published in an original language or as a translation.
There are so many literary contests that dozens of lists are available online. They describe what literary awards are available, what the contest organizers are looking for, how you can submit your work, and whether you have to pay to enter. Contest organizers address credibility problems by recruiting prestigious judges and promoting the success of past winners. Many contests offer prizes for genres and subgenres. I expect that if you drill down far enough (for example, children’s books about endangered animals who rob departments stores and escape from zoos), you will probably find a category where your book stands out as unique. We’ll feature some posts about prizes and contests, whether they are worth pursuing, and if so, how to do it sensibly.
Freebies/samples: A new take on the old retail business practice of handing out samples to introduce new products you want to sell has been taken up by many other industries, including entertainment. Films make trailers that are shown for free in cinemas, on Youtube, and via ads that seem to popup on screens of all types at all times. Giving away advice about how to succeed at an activity of interest via downloadable books, blogs or e-zines–like this one, for example–is another common tactic.
Samples share a problem with communities of interest. As the range of products offered to consumers proliferates, people develop increasingly differentiated tastes and interests. Identifying a market that is large enough to be worth pursuing and interested in a quirky story has always been a challenge, both artistically and economically. Every individual is a potential reviewer. Many people may review your work whether you like it or not. If you give a sample to someone who doesn’t like it, even if they are the only person on the planet with an aversion to your work or sample, they may write a convincingly stinging review.
Communities of interest: You might believe humans have trouble getting along with each other, but early in our evolution, we discovered that cooperating with other people could have benefits (hunting and sharing food, protection from foes, access to a larger pool of potential mates, among others). As a species, we discovered that hanging around with people who are highly regarded helped us borrow from their status and be perceived as members of an in-group. We may get approval if we imitate the behavior of high-status people. We can even get it by reading the same books they read!
Book Clubs and Film Clubs are an example of communities of huge interest to story-tellers. A good book or film enthusiasts’ club is a gift to artists and audiences alike. Clubs conveniently collect desirable audiences and filter out books that members don’t want to read or that won’t get them approval. Members don’t even have to be limited by geography to join some of the most successful book clubs.
Goodreads is a a good example of online books club where you can post reviews to an enormous membership eager to list the books they have read and to give their opinions. Goodreads is attractive not only to readers but to many authors who pay to advertise their books and offer them to reviewers. It is also a book club that attracts many enthusiastic readers whose primary motive is to share their love of books, and their support is the best, most credible kind.
Having laid the ground with some marketing classics, The Artful Gluffster is keen to showcase examples of novel arts marketing tactics. By all means, hop in and feel free to Gluff!
The Artful Gluffster 