Lovers, Haters, and Swingers

by Robison Wells
(This is one of those posts directed almost entirely toward published authors, so, uh, if you're not one of those... sorry.)

In General Conference this month, Elder Oaks said "We should begin by recognizing the reality that just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in our lives."

I have absolutely no intention to have a churchy blog today. Instead, I'm going to take that quote out of context and use it for something else entirely: to talk about selling books.

Authors, in general, are marketing buffoons. We try--we really try--but generally, we have no idea what we're doing. This isn't surprising, of course. We rarely have any training in marketing. And so we guess at what we should be doing, and we read little books about marketing on a shoestring, and we try hard. This is the Good Method. It gets our name out there, and it's better than sitting around doing nothing.

While I don't claim to know the best way, I'd like to propose a better way to market than we have done in the past. More than anything, we ought to refocus our efforts--I think we've been targeting the wrong people.

(By the way, when I say "we" I'm referring to myself and whoever else wants to be included in my group. I personally think that most new authors fit in here, but I certainly am not speaking for anyone other than myself. I'll also probably use me and my books as examples.)

Okay, enough rambling. Here's the thesis: imagine all novel readers falling somewhere along a spectrum. In fact, don't bother imagining it because I just made a diagram:

On one side, you have the Love Group. These are the people who go crazy for our books--they're the people who visit our websites and buy our new novels within weeks of release. They're the people who recommend our books to others and who buy them as gifts for their family.

Way over on the other side is the Hate Group. This could be people who don't like our writing style, or who only like non-fiction, or who think our jokes aren't funny. These are people who think that LDS fiction is tripe--or, at the very least, that the kind of LDS fiction Covenant sells is tripe.

In the middle is the Swing group. These people like to read, but maybe they haven't read much LDS fiction, or they've always tended to read romances or mysteries or historicals, or they just haven't had the time to read for enjoyment lately. Essentially, the Swing Group is Everyone Else.

Now here's the key: I think that most of us--myself in particular--spend an inordinate amount of time marketing to (1) the Love Group, or (2) the Hate Group. Let me mention a few things about each of these groups:

While the Love Group shouldn't be ignored--they are, after all, your bread and butter--they also will probably read your books even if you don't target them with promotions. As I've talked to other authors--even right here on this very blog--we've noted that our online marketing campaigns tend to reach the same people every time. That's okay. Our loyal readers need to know that they're valued. But we also shouldn't expect marketing efforts aimed at them to significantly increase our sales. We're preaching to the choir here: yes, they need to be preached to, but preaching to them will only maintain the size of the choir, not increase it.

As for the Hate Group. My brother hates LDS fiction (and LDS art generally). He can't stand it. A few years ago I posted on my website (with his permission) an email debate he and I had. After using all of my best arguments on him, he finally declared "My experience is limited compared to yours, I’ll admit, but it is experience nonetheless. The point is, I’m not saying that 100% of Mormon art is crap, I’m saying that almost 100% of what I’ve experienced is crap, and that’s really not something you can argue with... Surely, eventually, you must grant me some measure of peace: at what point am I allowed to say “enough, I’ve tried your [books] and they’re all terrible, just leave me alone?”

Dan is, as you can guess, a fine example Hate Group. No disrespect to him, but I think it can very easily be seen that he doesn't like LDS fiction, he's not interested in trying LDS fiction, and why don't I just knock it off?

And yet, how often do we authors beat our heads against a wall trying to force our books into these people's hands? If someone dislikes what we offer, then we focus all of our efforts into showing that they're wrong, that our book is awesome, and that they're the idiot for not liking it. How many marketing dollars (and hours of our lives) are spent trying to convince the Hate Group? I can't begin to count the number of discussions that we've had on this very website trying to persuade people that LDS fiction is "legitimate". We're marketing to the Hate Group right there. It's tempting--I've engaged in it myself countless times. But I hereby declare a truce (except with my brother).

What's the solution? It's amazingly simple. We should sell to the Swing Group through the eyes of the Love Group. Essentially, we should find out why the Love Group loves our books. We should talk to them, and pry information out of them, and write it down and compare notes with other authors. And then we should take those results and use them to market to the Swing Group.

As an example, I'll use my most recent book, The Counterfeit. As I've talked to the Love Group, these are some of the things that they've told me they like: the unexpected humor, the romance which is strong but not sappy, the facts/historical base, the everyman nature of the protagonist, the well-crafted settings, etc. Some people have told me that they like it because it's clean but not preachy. Other said they like the themes of courage and doing what's right regardless of the consequences.

Now that I know these are some of the reasons the Love Group loves the book, I can now use them when I talk to the Swing Group. These things are my brand. They're what differentiate my book, and they're the things that I need to emphasize. One review of my first book said it was "a rollickingly funny, bitterly satiric Mormon novel." I've used that line dozens of times on the Swing Group--and it quite often results in a sale. Perhaps they think "Bitterly satiric? And it's Mormon? Maybe I will give it a try, even though it's LDS fiction."

The point of this all is that we spend way too much time, effort and money marketing in unneccessary ways. There's a vast audience out there, and we can use better techniques to reach them.