The Hunger Games and Marketing Your Novel

by Stephanie Morrill

I haven't talked a ton about marketing on Go Teen Writers for a few reasons:

• Writing is much more fun to talk about.
• It's not applicable to many of you
• I'm hardly an expert.

But apparently I've mentioned marketing enough to prompt an email from a writer saying, "What exactly is marketing and what is expected of novelists?" Which is a great question to be asking if you want to be a professional writer because marketing is part of the package.

Marketing is a hot button issue among novelists. In my few years in the industry, I've noticed none of us want to do it. We all feel guilty for not doing more, but we can't tell if our efforts are making much of a different, and we basically all agree that a well-written book is the best marketing tool we have to offer.

I've also heard a few professional writers say they're not doing any marketing other than media-related stuff that their publishing house has set up for them (book tours, magazine interviews, blog tours, etc.) They think it's ridiculous for a writer to be expected to market, and they're not going to put any effort into it.

Those writers, I've noticed, tend to be established authors with strong sales. Writers who actually collect royalty checks. Writers who - I'm venturing a guess here - haven't had conversations with their publishing houses about disappointing sales numbers or getting cut. Writers whose books have done well in the market; sometimes because the book is excellent and sometimes because of the timing, more often because of a combination of the two.

In The Hunger Games, one of my favorite scenes is when Katniss and Peeta are on the rooftop the night before the games begin. Peeta says he doesn't want them to change him, that if he's gonna die - which he assumes he is - he wants to be himself. Katniss says, "I just can't afford to think that way." And she can't. She has her mother and Prim to take care of, whereas Peeta doesn't. He has only himself to consider.

And when it comes to marketing, I encourage you to take a Katniss approach. Maybe your book will sell thousands of copies with no effort from you, and maybe you won't struggle to find your place among the crowded shelves and crowded lives of readers ... but if you want to keep writing and publishing novels, you can't afford to think that way.

Because I know wonderful writers who have written amazing books that for whatever reason didn't sell. Maybe it's the timing of the release or shelf placement or a sales team that simply couldn't figure out how to get bookstores to stock them. Maybe it's a cover that didn't appeal to the target audience or backcover copy that didn't do justice to the story. And as a writer you can choose to get bitter about that kind of stuff, or you can recognize that no one cares more about your book selling than you and you can learn to market it.

Here I am at my first book signing. Totally terrified and trying to smile my way through it!

This includes but is not limited to:

• Going into bookstores and asking about doing a signing. Then doing everything in your power - sending out postcards, offerning bribes - to get people into the store.
• Buying ads on Facebook or Google
• Blogging ... but in a way that makes people want to buy your books. (The Pioneer Woman is an amazing example of this. She's posted more recipes on her site than I could cook in a year ... but I still own both her cookbooks.)
• Blog tours.
• Giving away books to people who will influence others to buy them.
• Coming up with curriculum you can teach in schools or libraries or writers conferences. Also, letting your area schools know that you're available for Career Days.
• Something shareable on-line. There's surely an industry term for this, but again - I'm not a marketing expert. When Jill Williamson's Replication was coming out, they released a "What's your expiration date?" widget thingamajig where you typed in your birthday and it told you when you would "expire." This creates curiosity and buzz about the books.
• Book trailers. Which are like movie trailers, only for books.
• Activity on Facebook or Twitter.

While expensive marketing efforts can't do much for a bad book, they can boost sales for a good book. Because what you really want to generate is word-of-mouth stuff, but that can only happen if your book is out there circulating.

I sat on a panel with Jeff Gerke, the publisher of Marcher Lord Press, at a conference, and he was asked if he thought marketing mattered. He shared that Jill Williamson (that's our Jill) is his author who promotes and markets the most, and that she's also his top selling author. He said his next bestselling author is also the author who promotes/markets the second most.

While your first priority absolutely should be writing the best book you can, investing the time in marketing when the book releases means getting to write and publish more books in the future.

When I was first published, my instinct was to bury my head in the sand and pray that the ugly marketing requirements would just go away. Eventually I learned to find marketing things that I enjoy, like blogging and school visits. And I learned to accept that being a professional writer required seasons of marketing.

I hope this is helpful to those of you who are looking down the road at what's required of today's novelist. If you have questions, I'll do my best to answer.