Publishers who ask for marketing plan - is this a red flag?

SarahJaneLehoux said:

Some of them just say to include a marketing plan with submission, but one in particular says "Market analysis, including research on competitive titles," which, honestly, sounds terrifying.

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"Market analysis" just means where do you think your book fits -- what category/categories, who are the most likely readers, and how much you might expect it to earn assuming everything else went smoothly.

"Competitive titles" are books with similar titles and themes to yours. Basically, which books is your book competing against.

Old Hack said:

There is a difference between sales, marketing, promotion, and publicity, but lots of people--publishers included--often confuse them or use the terms interchangeably.

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I really wish people wouldn't use these terms interchangeably; they're quite different to each other. Sigh.

Marketing is all the paid-for stuff: advertising, bookshop placement (yes, you pay to get your books onto those three-for-two tables, and often you pay to get into things like Christmas best-seller lists, etc), and so on.

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Marketing also includes the analysis and research of the market(s), the branding of the title, budget, ROI, and many other things.

Marketing plans are useful for non-fiction editors to have. It helps them understand where a book exists in the market, and if their authors can provide something along these lines it can be very useful. But if an author can't provide this information it's not the end of the world: writers should write, first and foremost, not plan their books' marketing.

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I would call this the promotion plan.

PMcKnight said:

I know there is an agent running around (the one with two youtube videos with 'secret' numbers to include in the query subject) who not only wants a complete marketing plan but wants you to have a massive platform of twitter followers and blog subscribers. His reasoning is that even the big name publishers look at your twitter feed and turn you down if they have more followers than you. And you have to be posting daily to your 50k plus subscriber blog with well rounded articles and posts. Hell, Penguin Random House has 1.25M twitter followers.

I don't know about anyone else but I have three kids, a full time job and a powerful need to eat and sleep on occasion. All of my spare time is dedicated to writing my novels. I don't actually have the time to post well thought out blog posts at the moment, I'm lucky if I get one well thought out, clever tweet a day

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Welp, that's it for me. So long, writing career!

*packs it in for the third time this week*
*luckily, has a memory like a goldfish*


Someone please tell me this agent is delusional and this is not a common position in the industry. Please.

Albedo said:

Someone please tell me this agent is delusional and this is not a common position in the industry. Please.

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Based on my one single data point and my one single publishing contract: yes, this agent is delusional and this is not a common position in the industry.

Thanks. I feel slightly less HULK SMASH now.

I’m hopeful that it’s like the job ads I sometimes see for programmers (my day job) which go something like:

Seeking to hire a rock star individual, capable of working independently or in teams. Experience leading and mentoring teams very desirable. Experience in marketing and sales a plus. Must haves includes:

* Expertise writing highly scalable backend servers.
* Expert knowledge of SQL databases, as well as non-SQL databases. Bonus points for knowing how to transfer products from one to the other with no downtime.
* Familiarity with CQRS patterns (demonstrated ability to wrap mainframe COBOL applications with a modern scalable framework a definite plus)
* Experience using agile methodologies (scrum, Xtreme Programming, MurderBotz, eXtrovert Deck, etc)
* At least five years of experience writing machine-learning applications, or a PhD with machine-learning emphasis
* Well-versed in scalable public cloud infrastructure (Amazon AWS, Tubular Tubewarez, etc)
* Comfortable writing browser-based frontends (particular emphasis on AngularJS, ReactJS, Floof and PlunderJS)
* Able to lead and advise graphic designers
* At least ten years of industry experience (eight with an advanced degree)

Starting salary: $25,000 / year

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Albedo said:

Someone please tell me this agent is delusional and this is not a common position in the industry. Please.

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It’s not common, but a lot of newbie writers still seem to be buying into it, given how often I see writers asking for tips on how to “promote” books they haven’t published (or in some cases haven’t even written) yet on social media. Somewhere along the line the (totally legitimate) notion of having a “platform” got twisted all out of shape, and now even fiction writers think they won’t even be considered for publication with less than 10k followers. It’s crazy.

One problem is that these nutbag “agents” and other gurus are all over the Internet pushing these myths in order to sell their own books and courses and other useless junk, while legitimate agents who just want writers to send them a good book (as they always have) are drowned out.

Clairels said:

It’s not common, but a lot of newbie writers still seem to be buying into it, given how often I see writers asking for tips on how to “promote” books they haven’t published (or in some cases haven’t even written) yet on social media. Somewhere along the line the (totally legitimate) notion of having a “platform” got twisted all out of shape, and now even fiction writers think they won’t even be considered for publication with less than 10k followers. It’s crazy.

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I think there's a flip side to this, which is the hope that if you use social media in Just The Right Way[tm], you're far more likely to rack up huge sales. And I'm sympathetic; it's nice to think that kind of control is possible. I've just never seen any evidence of it.

Here is a good article (sorry i'ts 2 pages too late) about how publishers make money even though many authors don't earn out their advance: https://stevelaube.com/the-myth-of-the-unearned-advance/

I strongly suspect that the myth of the publishers who do nothing and force their authors to market/have vast platforms, comes from a select group of people within the indie author community (NB: I'm not grouping all indies into this category, just a handful of evangelists.)

In practically every writer group I'm in, anytime someone asks about trade publishing they get immediately jumped by a couple of big gun indies who promptly inform them that trade publishing isn't worth pursuing because you can't attract an agent or a publisher unless you are already an award winning short story writer or unless you have a huge Twitter following, that agents in particular never take on debut authors. Agents and publishers are out to take away your creative control, there's always a risk that they'll simply nick your work and publish it themselves.

And then, even if you do get trade published, you'll be forced to do all your own marketing whilst having no creative control, no support, and less income because they will stifle your earnings and take too big a cut.

It's a shame because that kind of a statement makes the indie vs trade discussions absolutely impossible to have. I would love it if newbies could get a balanced perspective on what is right *for them* (and for some, it IS self publishing) but this never happens; and attempting to counter any of the points sounds argumentative/defensive by default.

The main advantage of trade publishing (at least, the main one for me) is dismissed as a mirage of lies, and becomes very difficult to counter because people *want* to believe the system is rigged against them. And so it spreads.

Harlequin said:

It's a shame because that kind of a statement makes the indie vs trade discussions absolutely impossible to have.

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I've stopped having those conversations - it's just not worth the effort. If people want to believe they're right, they will.

That's probably sensible, and something I should emulate.

I think I'm somewhat spoilt - my critique group is about 50/50 trade vs self pub atm and we're all friendly + open, no judgment over different paths taken. But it's maybe asking too much to expect that from the internet at large!