The Fallible Book Excerpt

The New York Times had yet another article on book marketing, this one on whether book excerpts help sell the titles. It's another facet of what I covered in my Book Blockbusters article. It comes down to the subtle and treacherous world of publicity. Contrary to popular opinion, not all press is good. As the article points out, if there is one major revelation to be found in a book and that finds its way into the excerpt, then you've just killed sales. Here are two paragraphs of the article that give a good summary:

Because the excerpt is just one weapon in the publicity arsenal, publishers are hard-put to assess its role in the campaign. Still, they can point to recent successes like "It Ain’t All About the Cookin’" by the restaurateur and Food Network host Paula Deen, which was serialized in Ladies’ Home Journal and hit the New York Times best-seller list immediately after publication.

On the other hand, Time magazine’s excerpt of "I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story," by Rick Bragg, put a dent in book sales, according to Mr. Bogaards of Knopf. "The excerpt gave away too much — I think people felt they’d had their fill," he said. "We sold 175,000 in hardcover but had expected to do twice that."

Publishers in the past were motivated to place excerpts because the money for them could hit $100,000 - and that's the equivalent of a lot of copies at one shot without the actual cost of producing them. Yes, writers get a big chunk - sometimes 90% of such serial sales - but that's still a lot of cash for a single book. When the magazine paid big money, they wanted big and juicy parts, sometimes even taking a bit here, some there, and putting them all together, even if they've given away important parts of the book.

Now the fees are less and the benefit less obvious. As the publisher of Hyperion was quoted, "For $1,500, why risk exposure of all the juicy bits if it’s going to hurt sales?" That's pretty short money, which means someone will have to explain why this is all a good idea and just how many copies moved as a result. For authors the point is clear: You have to take significant interest in the marketing of your book, because there are so many ways it can go wrong. So much habit, so little desire to do something new, which only shakes up the status quo and leaves everyone at the publisher feeling less comfortable. Oh, and then the entire marketing department is so overwhelmed with work and titles and lack of resources that all they can do is plod along like automatons. If you're not keeping watch, there's little chance that anyone else will.

Breaking the Book Blockbuster Bane

I have a new article up on getting smarter about book publicity that came from a post I had at ASJA that a number of people found useful. Hope it's useful to you as well. Look under Resources to the left, or click here.