Book promotion through flash video trailers?

[aruna]

There's a new marketing tool for book publishers: Trailers on the Web that promote their books. One thing I can say, I did watch both these trailers to the end, even though they are for books that would not normally interest me, or that I would buy or read. The first is crime, the other is SF. What do you think?
I can't see my own books promoted in this way but it seems to me the way things might go. I suppose it's more a thing for techies.
And does anyone know of this publishing company? It seems to operate differently to other companies. Should I have placed this in Bewares and Background checks?

And don't forget to swich on your speakers!

http://www.minefallspress.com/

http://www.minefallspress.com/wheelVid/willforce/play.asp

[Richard]

Wow, that's a dull trailer. Um. Obvious question is this: if someone's on the site, watching a trailer, presumably they're already interested, so the job's done? Unless you come up with something really clever and viral, Max Barry's NationStates (set up as part of the ad campaign for Jennifer Government) for instance, or can get it onto the big entertainment sites that draw real traffic on a daily basis, I don't see how you're going to get enough of a crowd watching it to make any real difference.

[loquax]

I thought the sci-fi one was pretty good.

[MadScientistMatt]

The biggest problem is coming up with a flash video that's so compelling everyone forwards it all around the Internet. If you can do that, it may be successful. But that's a real challenge. Who would have thought that "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" would be so popular when they just made it?

[brinkett]

You're talking about VidLits. I think it's a fad. Everyone's rushing to see them now because they're new, but eventually the excitement around them will die down. Matt's right--the few that are really good will be forwarded around, but the rest won't do much. That's my prediction.

If anyone wants to see a bunch, go to www.vidlit.com (http://www.vidlit.com/)

[aruna]

You're talking about VidLits. I think it's a fad. Everyone's rushing to see them now because they're new, but eventually the excitement around them will die down. Matt's right--the few that are really good will be forwarded around, but the rest won't do much. That's my prediction.

If anyone wants to see a bunch, go to www.vidlit.com (http://www.vidlit.com)

looks like I'm really behind the times on this! Never heard of them before.

[brinkett]

They're like movie or game trailers. Usually, I only take the trouble to watch a move or game trailer for movies and games I'm already interested in. I don't seek them out. I see the same thing happening with VidLits, if they stick. If I know an author I like has one for their next book, I might watch it. Can't see myself watching them otherwise.

[Richard]

(watches a couple of out interest)

Er...they're not very good, are they?

[scribbler1382]

I think the real question isn't whether you'll look for or watch the trailers, the question is whether the trailers will make you buy the books.

I've watched some of them (never gone looking for them) and even thought some of them were cool. Did I buy a book because of them? Nope. Would I? Doubtful. Only scenario I can think of where I'd buy the book would be if I stumbled upon a trailer for a new book by an author I already liked. But in that case, a simple text message telling me about the book would accomplish the same thing.

There was a fad a few years ago where commercials on television and in movie theater ad packages included what looked like a trailer for a new movie. They were for upcoming books. Usually, it was only the "big dogs" who got the commercials for their books (I seem to remember one for Clancy), and while neat to watch, I never bought a book because of them.

[brinkett]

I think the real question isn't whether you'll look for or watch the trailers, the question is whether the trailers will make you buy the books.
That's right. I watched a few several weeks ago when I first heard about them. Thought one was cool, but I have no intention of buying the book. Commercials don't make me buy books, and that's what they are.

[victoriastrauss]

You can make trailers till you're blue in the face, but if the advertised books aren't in actual bookstores, it won't do you a lick of good. One of the myths of Internet book marketing is that you can just market on the Internet. Uh-uh. You have to market in the real world as well. The Internet should be one part of a marketing strategy, not the strategy itself.

There's some rather questionable stuff about this publisher, Mine Falls Press. Check the Our Mission (http://www.minefallspress.com/why.asp?mode=why) page for their description of their Query Pool, whereby their "publishing committee" selects manuscripts based on reader reviews. They claim to have "specifically targeted the Independent Bookstore as [their] primary distribution partner" but their notion of reaching bookstores is to make review copies available and allow stores to order online (though I don't see any place on the site where wholesale orders can be made). There's no sign that they work with a distributor, or field their own sales staff (which is the real way to reach bookstores).

Three of the four published and forthcoming books are by a single author, Michael Allen. Hmmmm.

- Victoria

[Jamesaritchie]

I liked both trailers. These are not my kind of books, and I don't think I'd but from this pubisher anyway, but I like this idea very, very much. It strikes me as a lot better that simply reading a jacket blurb or a brief review.

I'd love to see this done by more mainstream publishers and for books on the bestseller lists, and any new books reviewers and publisher sthink are hot.

[Jamesaritchie]

(watches a couple of out interest)

Er...they're not very good, are they?

I thought both were very good, very well done. This still leaves the publsher, and the fact that these are not my kind of novels, but with a better publisher, and with books of the kind I like to read, I believe either trailer would have sold me.

[scribbler1382]

Erg. This smacks of the old DIMENOVELS scam from back in the 80's. I've still got several "critiques" on a book I was working on for them which all seemed similar enough to have been written by the same person.

There's some rather questionable stuff about this publisher, Mine Falls Press. Check the Our Mission (http://www.minefallspress.com/why.asp?mode=why) page for their description of their Query Pool, whereby their "publishing committee" selects manuscripts based on reader reviews. They claim to have "specifically targeted the Independent Bookstore as [their] primary distribution partner" but their notion of reaching bookstores is to make review copies available and allow stores to order online (though I don't see any place on the site where wholesale orders can be made). There's no sign that they work with a distributor, or field their own sales staff (which is the real way to reach bookstores).

Three of the four published and forthcoming books are by a single author, Michael Allen. Hmmmm.

[Nangleator]

Eh. A Flash trailer is cheap as dirt. It won't reach as many people as say, phoning in to the Howard Stern show and shouting the novel's name over and over, but it will be about as effective.

:Shrug:

There are success stories with viral marketing. South Park started like that. Another couple dudes made a cool short movie and got nice jobs out of it. The movie was 405. (It's worth a download, if you have the time.)

Are there any more success stories? I don't know.

But, as I said, it's cheap as dirt and someone once made money at it. That's the recipe for a get-rich-quick scheme.

[James D. Macdonald]

The questions with any web page are:

Who is going to go there?

Why?

[HorsesMouth]

I am the nefarious Michael Alan that Victoria Strauss points out is suspiciously the author of three of four forthcoming Mine Falls Press books. Sorry to take so long to join the conversation here, but Google didn’t find the postings on this board until yesterday and we didn’t know whom to thank for the attention.

It interests me that there was so much speculation about Mine Falls Press – but no one seems to have thought of simply sending us a note to ask what we are about. Marty thinks we are running an old DIMENOVELS scam, Victoria suggests we are questionable, and oh so witty Brit Richard bothers to declare in two separate postings that he was oh so bored – yet we’ve had a surge in full length viewings of the trailers that has been fun to watch (yes, we can actually track that kind of thing).

So who is Mine Falls Press? A couple of years ago publisher Janice Schad and I started a group called CurrentDraft to offer a support and critiquing forum for a dozen local writers in the Tewksbury Massachusetts area. I developed and funded the CurrentDraft.com web server technology that let editors and critiquing partners offer line-by-line comments on manuscripts of works in progress (I’ve spent a lifetime homesteading on the digital frontier creating interactive technology).

Our group had some talented writers, several published. Collectively we had sent out over a thousand “query letters” to prospective literary agents to no avail. Every month or so a query letter from one of us would result in an invitation to spend $50 in postage and copying costs to send a 400 page manuscript to some agent or other who would sit on it for six months and more often than not fail to acknowledge that he or she had even received the package.

About a year ago several of us lost patience with the process. Was it possible that none of us were talented enough to even merit a reading of our work by an agent?

A little research showed the problem: publisher conglomeration. Random House acquired over 70 publishing houses in recent years – Bantam, Dell, Ballantine, Doubleday, Dial, Crown.... Random House itself is one of over 70 corporations owned by Bertelsmann AG which in turn is owned by Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, Bertelsmann Stiftung, and the Mohn family. I don’t know who owns the Mohn family, but you get the idea. It’s corporations owned by corporations owned by corporations all the way up – and every convoluted corporate layer has executives hanging on to a bottom line with white-knuckles. It looked to us as if the publishing industry had turned into a cabal of accountants bent on minimizing marketing risk and focused on celebrity and multi-million dollar projects.

We launched little Mine Falls Press about a year ago with the intent of financing the works of emerging authors using a creative formula that has taken longer to get started than we hoped. If we are running a scam it’s a pretty slow moving one since we have never taken a penny from any of our authors (or anyone other than the readers who have purchased a copy of The Wheelwright’s Son) in all this time. We do have a distributor (Baker & Taylor), but there is no denying that sales have been modest. Promoting books is a tough town.

Our formula was to raise funds to publish new works by exposing new authors and their manuscripts to potential underwriters who would fund the printing and promotion costs in exchange for a share of future royalties. The elaborate www.MineFallsPress.com (http://www.minefallspress.com/) web server has the technical mechanics to support such an arrangement (again, my programming effort). The server allows writers to make submissions without postage, copying, or other costs. Editors search the Query Pool for projects they might want to support in exchange for a 2% royalty (paid by Mine Falls – our formula allocates a full 12% royalty to our potential authors and since we don’t require agent representation the writer gets to keep the full amount). Editors partner with Authors (at no cost to the Author) to prepare the manuscript for publication and then recommend projects to a small publishing committee which in turn recommends projects to potential Underwriters.

A quick glance at the online Query Pool shows that we’ve solved that part of the problem. No more endless query letters to lists of overwhelmed agents who return “Too busy to look at your work” scraps of paper in SASEs. We’ve interested some talented part-time editors who can take on projects without giving up their day jobs. Despite several encouraging meetings with potential underwriters, we have not yet attracted sufficient backing for the available projects – a disappointment to be sure.

With regard to the book trailers, they were simply part of our ongoing search for ways to efficiently promote small works from new authors. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The trailers have taken on a life of their own. Writing the scripts, gathering the images and sound effects, stitching it all together into a small story turns out to be an exciting creative effort in itself. Just as not everyone enjoys eggs benedict, not everyone loves the trailers – but hundreds of people have watched our little trailers to the very end in the last couple of weeks and we’ve had some very positive feedback.

We’ve organized a little production venture (www.TrailerMill.com (http://www.trailermill.com/)) to produce very low cost trailers (a few hundred dollars a trailer versus $5,000 - $10,000 a trailer by other suppliers) by having authors write their own scripts and find their own images. We do the programming work and produce a Flash file that can be effortlessly added to authors’ websites.

Are we small? Yes.

Are we naïve? Probably.

Are we the place to go if an established publisher is willing to actually promote your book? Probably not.

Are we a vanity press, POD, subsidized press,...? No.

Are we crazy to be spending our own money to pursue this dream? Pretty likely.

Are we scamming anyone? You decide.



Michael Alan

[Jamesaritchie]

I am the nefarious Michael Alan that Victoria Strauss points out is suspiciously the author of three of four forthcoming Mine Falls Press books. Sorry to take so long to join the conversation here, but Google didn’t find the postings on this board until yesterday and we didn’t know whom to thank for the attention.

It interests me that there was so much speculation about Mine Falls Press – but no one seems to have thought of simply sending us a note to ask what we are about. Marty thinks we are running an old DIMENOVELS scam, Victoria suggests we are questionable, and oh so witty Brit Richard bothers to declare in two separate postings that he was oh so bored – yet we’ve had a surge in full length viewings of the trailers that has been fun to watch (yes, we can actually track that kind of thing).

So who is Mine Falls Press? A couple of years ago publisher Janice Schad and I started a group called CurrentDraft to offer a support and critiquing forum for a dozen local writers in the Tewksbury Massachusetts area. I developed and funded the CurrentDraft.com web server technology that let editors and critiquing partners offer line-by-line comments on manuscripts of works in progress (I’ve spent a lifetime homesteading on the digital frontier creating interactive technology).

Our group had some talented writers, several published. Collectively we had sent out over a thousand “query letters” to prospective literary agents to no avail. Every month or so a query letter from one of us would result in an invitation to spend $50 in postage and copying costs to send a 400 page manuscript to some agent or other who would sit on it for six months and more often than not fail to acknowledge that he or she had even received the package.

About a year ago several of us lost patience with the process. Was it possible that none of us were talented enough to even merit a reading of our work by an agent?

A little research showed the problem: publisher conglomeration. Random House acquired over 70 publishing houses in recent years – Bantam, Dell, Ballantine, Doubleday, Dial, Crown.... Random House itself is one of over 70 corporations owned by Bertelsmann AG which in turn is owned by Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, Bertelsmann Stiftung, and the Mohn family. I don’t know who owns the Mohn family, but you get the idea. It’s corporations owned by corporations owned by corporations all the way up – and every convoluted corporate layer has executives hanging on to a bottom line with white-knuckles. It looked to us as if the publishing industry had turned into a cabal of accountants bent on minimizing marketing risk and focused on celebrity and multi-million dollar projects.

We launched little Mine Falls Press about a year ago with the intent of financing the works of emerging authors using a creative formula that has taken longer to get started than we hoped. If we are running a scam it’s a pretty slow moving one since we have never taken a penny from any of our authors (or anyone other than the readers who have purchased a copy of The Wheelwright’s Son) in all this time. We do have a distributor (Baker & Taylor), but there is no denying that sales have been modest. Promoting books is a tough town.

Our formula was to raise funds to publish new works by exposing new authors and their manuscripts to potential underwriters who would fund the printing and promotion costs in exchange for a share of future royalties. The elaborate www.MineFallsPress.com (http://www.minefallspress.com/) web server has the technical mechanics to support such an arrangement (again, my programming effort). The server allows writers to make submissions without postage, copying, or other costs. Editors search the Query Pool for projects they might want to support in exchange for a 2% royalty (paid by Mine Falls – our formula allocates a full 12% royalty to our potential authors and since we don’t require agent representation the writer gets to keep the full amount). Editors partner with Authors (at no cost to the Author) to prepare the manuscript for publication and then recommend projects to a small publishing committee which in turn recommends projects to potential Underwriters.

A quick glance at the online Query Pool shows that we’ve solved that part of the problem. No more endless query letters to lists of overwhelmed agents who return “Too busy to look at your work” scraps of paper in SASEs. We’ve interested some talented part-time editors who can take on projects without giving up their day jobs. Despite several encouraging meetings with potential underwriters, we have not yet attracted sufficient backing for the available projects – a disappointment to be sure.

With regard to the book trailers, they were simply part of our ongoing search for ways to efficiently promote small works from new authors. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The trailers have taken on a life of their own. Writing the scripts, gathering the images and sound effects, stitching it all together into a small story turns out to be an exciting creative effort in itself. Just as not everyone enjoys eggs benedict, not everyone loves the trailers – but hundreds of people have watched our little trailers to the very end in the last couple of weeks and we’ve had some very positive feedback.

We’ve organized a little production venture (www.TrailerMill.com (http://www.trailermill.com/)) to produce very low cost trailers (a few hundred dollars a trailer versus $5,000 - $10,000 a trailer by other suppliers) by having authors write their own scripts and find their own images. We do the programming work and produce a Flash file that can be effortlessly added to authors’ websites.

Are we small? Yes.

Are we naïve? Probably.

Are we the place to go if an established publisher is willing to actually promote your book? Probably not.

Are we a vanity press, POD, subsidized press,...? No.

Are we crazy to be spending our own money to pursue this dream? Pretty likely.

Are we scamming anyone? You decide.



Michael Alan





I can only say your perception of the publishing industry is radically different than mine in every way. More first time novelists are getting published than ever before, and I simply do not see talented writers having a problem.

I especially do not see talented writers having a problem getting their manuscripts read by agents, or finding an agent to represent them. But maybe that's just my experience.

And I really don't understand your structure. It is not a process I'd go through, and I see no benefits to it over the way more mainstream publishers handle manuscripts/writers. To be blunt, I really think the query pool part of the process stinks. But whatever works for you works for you.

For me, the way to pay for anything is to sell it to the public and use the profits to pay the bills. And when you go into a business, you should have the working capital to pay startup costs, and to pay writers, in the bank before you start.

I do like the flash trailers quite a bit. But I do worry they're better than the novels, and might well be better no matter who the publisher. Or they might be worse than the novel, no matter who the publisher. In other words, they come across an awful lot like the commercials I zip through on TV. I'd have to learn to trust them.

What I really like about the trailers could be done far easier and far cheaper. I like hearing the first part of the novel read aloud. I like that a bunch. I feel like I'm getting the real deal there.

None of this strikes me as a scam, it just strikes me as a way I would never do business as a writer. But that is just me, and I wish you the best of luck.

[victoriastrauss]

Michael,

Thanks for replying here at such length. I don't think that anyone was suggesting your operation is a scam...just a bit questionable on the details.

Frankly, I don't think your business model is viable--not, at least, if you're interested in sales and exposure for your authors. Small publishers are always coming up with what they believe are new paradigms for publishing, which they hope will allow them to replace or bypass the established channels of bookselling and marketing; but they tend to come up cold against a reality that even the big publishers have to struggle with: for sales, books need to be in stores.

I do have some questions for you:

- Do you have plans to work with a distributor (as opposed to a wholesaler like Ingram or Baker and Taylor), or to field your own sales force?

- If not, how to you plan to achieve your goal of targeting bookstores?

- Do you take steps to get your books reviewed in professional venues such as Publishers Weekly?

- I'm curious about the Underwriters. Who are they (or who do you want them to be)? How do you approach them? Have you found any?

- How do you screen the editors who use your site to make sure they're qualified?

Thanks.

- Victoria

[HorsesMouth]

Victoria -- Thanks for the note.

[Frankly, I don't think your business model is viable--not, at least, if you're interested in sales and exposure for your authors. Small publishers are always coming up with what they believe are new paradigms for publishing, which they hope will allow them to replace or bypass the established channels of bookselling and marketing; but they tend to come up cold against a reality that even the big publishers have to struggle with: for sales, books need to be in stores.]

There is certainly truth in your observation.

[I do have some questions for you:

- Do you have plans to work with a distributor (as opposed to a wholesaler like Ingram or Baker and Taylor), or to field your own sales force?]

The Mine Falls business model, admittedly unproven, isn't attempting to compete with traditional book marketing and distribution channels. By introducing Underwriters into the mix (more on them below), we believe we can create a self-sustaining financial model with as few as 10,000 copies of a book sold. In such a model there are limited opportunities for traditional layers of distribution.

[- If not, how to you plan to achieve your goal of targeting bookstores?]

We were certainly naive when we first approached independent bookstores as a channel. We discovered the hard way that the majority of the stores we contacted via various trade organizations in fact relied on large distributors to select their inventory and the effort to seed stores with review copies, even though over 50 stores requested the copies, was very expensive and unrewarding. Face to face contact seemed to make a difference, but we aren't in a position to personally visit stores all over the country.

In the end, massive Amazon has presented a better opportunity for inexpensive distribution than what we hoped would be a ground-swell of self-directed independent store owners.

[- Do you take steps to get your books reviewed in professional venues such as Publishers Weekly?]

We have provided about 200 review copies of The Wheelwright's Son since its pub date in February. Our experience is that the reviewing channels are as noisy as the agent community. We did a phone followup on about 50 stores who requested review copies of Wheelwright and discovered that the majority of the stores which requested such copies didn't even know that we had sent the book. Local bookstores where we hand delivered the book were far more cooperative, several owners having actually read it and recommended it to their customers.

[- I'm curious about the Underwriters. Who are they (or who do you want them to be)? How do you approach them? Have you found any?]

Great questions. Our notion of an underwriter is a person of means who takes pleasure in supporting creative endeavors (such as local theater groups, ...). We present them with an opportunity to become part of a creative effort, meet an author, be acknowledged in a book -- all for the cost of a nice evening out. We have created Royalty Units which entitle an Underwriter to a fraction of future royalties from the sale of a book (typically a 1% interest in sales is offered at $500).

It's a chance for underwriters to become part of the adventure while giving voice to a new author who has been unable to attract attention from the larger scale publishing machine. The role of the publishing committee is to select better quality projects to offer to the underwriters as candidates. Underwriters are free to support or not support individual works based on their own personal tastes and instincts.

We have held Meet The Author evenings where a handful of aspiring writers present their projects to a group of a dozen or so potential underwriters. A great deal depends on the passion of the writer, the chemistry between writer and underwriter, the subject, and finally, the quality of the manuscript (which the underwriters may read).

Although we have had good interest in the concept, in the few months we've been doing this we haven't achieved critical mass yet. The fact that U.S. readers are consuming 5 times as many books today as they did 10 years ago (Rob and Terry Adams, Entrepreneur magazine) and yet the number of new authors published each year is 50% lower than 10 years ago (M.J. Rose) seems to create a sympathetic response in book-loving underwriters who want to lend a hand.

[- How do you screen the editors who use your site to make sure they're qualified?]

Since we are a very tiny operation right now, our editors are all people known to one of us. For example, we have an editor with a Harvard background who has been a voracious reader for some fifty years and enjoys finding clumsy constructions and excessive exposition for the writers she partners with (and she would object to me using partner as a verb!). We are looking for people with energy, taste, and a sense of grammar who enjoy working with our writers and don't need immediate cash compensation for their time. Of course writers are free to decline a particular editor's invitation.

-- Michael Alan

[Jamesaritchie]

we believe we can create a self-sustaining financial model with as few as 10,000 copies of a book sold. In such a model there are limited opportunities for traditional layers of distribution.



That is a LOT of selling! 10,000 is not an easy number to hit, even for some pretty large publishers. Even the conglomerates, with national distribution and all sorts of advantages, don't reach this number for quite a few novels. Or anything like it.