Listening to sales podcasts

Today I got up early to listen to a podcast. The eternal curse of living in the southern hemisphere.

I worked out pretty quickly that it wasn’t really for me, it was more for non-fiction books, but I left the tab open as the guy talked on - and sniffed too often - ugh.

One of the things he talked about was that writers think they can’t sell things because they aren’t sales people, they’re creatives. He gave some hints about how you can sell things, even if you think you aren’t good at it. One strategy was to show the buyer what failure looked like and then they will be more likely to buy your product.

About fifteen minutes later, he flashed up this scary looking list of all the things people had to do (and the lists below each listing of the smaller tasks required in each individual step) before they could publish a book. He was selling a product that will automatically list all the tasks, and the completion dates for you.

He basically showed us (the buyer) what failure looked like.

He did what he had just talked about to the same audience he had just told that strategy to.

I was checking my emails as he was talking and in the continuing story of the universe throwing stuff at me, there was a blog post from Stephen Barnes talking about how you can educate yourself on sales and marketing by watching these kinds of things and learning from them. There are a lot of people out there making money by selling courses to you on how you can make money.

At that point, I shut it down.

And no, I didn’t buy his product.

Links:

https://stevenbarneslife.wordpress.com/2017/02/08/thousands-of-dollars-of-free-education/

Servants and sex

Okay… I think I have worked out what the book buying market wants. They want servants and sex. I give you the unbelievable success of shows like Downton Abbey; the remake of Upstairs downstairs, the Paradise and other TV shows like that.

And clearly sex is the new big seller. I’ll use ‘50 shades of meh’ as an example there. Or better still, Sylvia Day who has sold Five Million Books in Seven Months - yes you read that right. I gave it capitals so that you would notice it… seriously? Five million… sigh.

And this year is the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice so if you could mash all of those together you’d have it made… cue evil laugh  - mwahaha…

Wait…

WHAT?

Someone has already done it?? article here

Goddammit…

Jo Baker, a British novelist, recently completed a book titled “Longbourn,” named after the Bennets’ home, which tells a parallel story of “Pride and Prejudice” — the story downstairs.

I am not sure how much sex it has… but it is already a success. Her agent was quoted in the article as saying:

“I sent it out last week,” she said. “Knopf bought it Monday. On Wednesday, it was bought by Doubleday in the U.K. By Thursday the film rights had gone. By Friday we had signed up two foreign translations.”

It is now listed for eight translations and the film rights have been sold as well. You read that right; she sold the domestic, international, translation and film rights in a week.

I will also add this to list of fanfiction that makes it to the big time; because basically, that is what it is. The servants may be the jumping point to lead into a new story and new characters, but the framework of the story is the one set by Jane Austen. She has written a P&P AU.

Good luck to Jo Baker. If anything, it shows that there is still a demand for a good story; no matter where it comes from.

So, now I should get to work on the story of Nelly Dean, the housekeeper at Wuthering Heights and her torrid (and obviously secret) affair with Joseph the religious zealot and manservant… hmmm?

Neil Gaiman advice

I don't have a tumblr account (be thankful for that - lol) but if I did I would totally reblog this answer that Neil Gaiman gave to a fan on his account. 

http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/25463384251/making-it-rebloggable-because-people-keep-asking-on

My faith in humanity and in writers (who take the time to answer fans) is restored.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi, Neil. In a recent VlogBros. video Hank Green said that 50 Shades of Grey has sold more copies than the number of books Ray Bradbury sold in his lifetime. That worries me, and I’m afraid that it will become increasingly difficult to find brilliant literature in the future. Do you think the commercialization of literature (if that’s an appropriate phrasing) has put good, thoughtful and valuable literature at risk? The aforementioned statistic seems rather ominous. Thanks for reading.

 misterwil-son

If ever you’re curious, go and look at the annual bestseller lists for years gone by. You’ll find a lot of books that sold an unbelievable number of copies when they were fashionable. I’m sure The Revolt of Mamie Stover also sold more books than Ray Bradbury will ever have sold in his whole life in its year*. Have you read it? Heard of it?  Off the top of my head, Peyton Place in its year, or The Gospel According to Peanuts, or The Ginger Man, or even Jonathan Livingstone Seagull in their years undoubtedly outsold all of Ray Bradbury. But when their day is done, mostly those kind of books drift back into the void, and go, if not out of print, then back into a world where, even if a select few people like them, nobody quite knows why they sold that many copies any more. (Do you know who Gilbert Patten was? He sold about 500 million books in his lifetime…)

Meanwhile, Ray Bradbury sold quite a lot of books in 1956, and quite a lot of books in 2006 (Fahrenheit 451 alone has sold over 5 million copies by now), and he found his readers for his books and his stories in every year. And I’ll wager a hundred years from now he’ll still be read…

So, honestly, I wouldn’t fret, if I were you.

Nothing’s changed.Some books are, often inexplicably, even with hindsight, bestsellers. That’s been the way of it for a hundred and fifty years or more.

Read the books you love, tell people about authors you like, and don’t worry about it.

*1951. It sold over 30 million copies.