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

I don't know if it's considered a red flag--I'll leave that to more experienced AW members--but I tend to avoid publishers that want me to submit a full/detailed marketing plan. I'm happy to tell them who I envision my readers as being, what the comp titles are, etc. But I'm not a marketer; that's a reason (for me) to have a publisher. Some say it's a way for the publisher to weed out authors that are less committed or maybe less savvy about the industry? But if they want me to do that work for them, I feel like they're less committed to me and my work and/or less savvy themselves. I could be wrong, but that's just how I feel when I see that.

I know little about publishing, but the obvious question is are any of them listed on editors and preditors?

These publishers are likely experimenting. An agent at a big literary conference earlier this year said she would be asking for marketing plans in queries. I'm guessing publishers are trying the same.

The request throws up several red flags for me. I don't see how it could benefit authors in the long-run.

I'll look for a link about the agent and return to post my concerns.

The smaller the publishing company, the more the work the author has to do. All authors have to do something, there's no escaping that (book signings etc, although these are arranged by the publsiher of the publisher is widely known).

I guess my input would be: I do this, this, and this as standard, but what do they do when it comes to marketing? If all it is is making formats available on social media, then that's something almost anyone can do. But if they say they send reviews to X amount of reviewers, they offer paid advertising at X, and enter competution at X with no charge to the author etc... then I can see I'm not going to be doing all the legwork: they've have established contacts. Ideally the aim is to be the writer and write, with as little disruption to that as possible. That's in a perfect world, with a good publishing company behind you who wants you to write more too. It's how they get their money. But there are bad publishers out there who expect you be the author and their whole marketing department too. The usual red flag is: we beleive authors have the best relationship with reviewers, so we expect to see our authors to handle all contact with reviewers. You know you're stuck making any connections your self.

If they expect you to market the book, what exactly are they giving you? Why would one not self-publish instead?

aspirit said:

The request throws up several red flags for me. I don't see how it could benefit authors in the long-run.

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Beyond it seeming lazy for a publisher to ask me for a marketing plan, it also strikes me as pointless and not very bright. I’m not trained in marketing, so why ask me to do it? They might as well ask me to write the soundtrack for the movie adaptation of my novel; it’d be equally bad as any marketing plan I’d write.

This (from the former CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers) sums it up pretty well:

No one is likely to do it (marketing) if you don’t. I wish this weren’t the case, but for 95 percent of all authors it is. Sure, a traditional publisher will deploy a standard set of marketing activities. But these are generally not enough to get your book noticed—especially in a world where more than one million new book titles are published every year. Marketing directors and publicists generally don’t have the time and resources necessary to make your book a success.

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Unfortunately, I think this is going to become more common as marketing budgets become tighter and tighter. For them, it's a buyers market. Publishers have thousands of manuscripts to choose from at any given time. They may love your manuscript, but there are probably 100 more that they also love, and so if you cannot provide a marketing plan, they'll simply move over to the next person in line who can.

Introversion said:

Beyond it seeming lazy for a publisher to ask me for a marketing plan, it also strikes me as pointless and not very bright. I’m not trained in marketing, so why ask me to do it? They might as well ask me to write the soundtrack for the movie adaptation of my novel; it’d be equally bad as any marketing plan I’d write.

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Yes. A trade publisher wants to have an author's support for marketing, and wants an author willing to engage with readers.

But a trade publisher also has a marketing department.

A better question to ask, before asking about the requirement for a marketing plan (which in many cases is a publisher wanting to know if you'll support their efforts) is:

Can you find books from that publisher in your local libraries and brick-and-mortar book shops?

If you can't, you might want to keep looking.

BradCarsten said:

Unfortunately, I think this is going to become more common as marketing budgets become tighter and tighter. For them, it's a buyers market. Publishers have thousands of manuscripts to choose from at any given time. They may love your manuscript, but there are probably 100 more that they also love, and so if you cannot provide a marketing plan, they'll simply move over to the next person in line who can.

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Which still doesn't make a lick of sense to me. Isn't this the same as saying their marketing people are ineffective, or no more effective than someone with absolutely no training? Why bother with a marketing department at all?

AFAIK the two most useful bits of marketing are getting it to the right reviewers, and getting it on bookstore shelves (and/or featured in the right places on sites like Amazon). I have zero ability to do either of those things.

(I'm also suspicious of the assertion that publishers are turning away 100 books they love for every one they publish, but that's just a feeling on my part, and I may very well be wrong.)

lizmonster said:

Which still doesn't make a lick of sense to me. Isn't this the same as saying their marketing people are ineffective, or no more effective than someone with absolutely no training? Why bother with a marketing department at all?

AFAIK the two most useful bits of marketing are getting it to the right reviewers, and getting it on bookstore shelves (and/or featured in the right places on sites like Amazon). I have zero ability to do either of those things.

(I'm also suspicious of the assertion that publishers are turning away 100 books they love for every one they publish, but that's just a feeling on my part, and I may very well be wrong.)

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yes, 100 was hyperbole. I have no idea how many books they are turning down.
I don't think that their marketing departments are ineffective, there are simply too many books to give each one the level of individual attention that they need to really make it.
7/10 books won't earn out their advances, so I imagine they would rather put their time and effort into the 3 that do. That also means that for 7/10 books, getting it in front of reviewers and into bookshops isn't enough.

lizmonster said:

(I'm also suspicious of the assertion that publishers are turning away 100 books they love for every one they publish, but that's just a feeling on my part, and I may very well be wrong.)

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Yeah, I don't believe that established trade publishers are doing that at all.

AW Admin said:

Yeah, I don't believe that established trade publishers are doing that at all.

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They aren't.

I am baffled as to why this tripe is spread in the first place.

BradCarsten said:

7/10 books won't earn out their advances, so I imagine they would rather put their time and effort into the 3 that do. That also means that for 7/10 books, getting it in front of reviewers and into bookshops isn't enough.

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That statistic doesn't mean that 7 out of 10 books don't make money for the publisher.

Say I get an advance of $100 (to make the numbers easy). My book sells for $10 a copy. I get $1 of that; the publisher gets $9.

After 11 copies, the publisher has made back what they've paid me, but I'm eons away from earning out that advance.

It's of course not quite that simple (they have to pay their people), but the fact that 7 out of 10 books don't earn out doesn't mean publishers are out there taking catastrophic losses. (Also, they haven't any idea which 3 books are going to earn out.)

What works past reviewers and retail visibility? I've seen very little evidence that social media produces more than a sales blip for most books (although there are of course always exceptions).

I'm always happy to be corrected.
that leads to another point though. I've always been told that publishers use a long tail model, where most books make a loss, but those that are profitable can make a lot of money. Is this also false then?

BradCarsten said:

I'm always happy to be corrected.
that leads to another point though. I've heard that publishers use a long tail model, where most books make a loss, but those that are profitable make a lot of money. Is this also false then?

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Yes. It's overstated. Before a trade publisher offers a contract, they create a Profit and Loss statement (P & L).

It includes every single cost associated with the book, right down to the paper and ink, and how many copies they need to sell.

When they offer a contract, they're offering it on the expectation that they will make money even if the book doesn't sell through.

That said, a big seller (say Robert Jordan, or Stephen King or . . . or . . . or) can make up for the fact that other books didn't make a lot of money.

But publishers don't plan to lose money; they plan to make money.

This is an old post about the P & L calculations (click the link to see a list of .pdfs), but the process hasn't changed.

Very interesting discussion here - kind of similar to the evolution of the photographer from days of yore (or was it yesteryear?) where they used to go out and shoot then dump off the rolls of film to the magazine, and then move on to the next assignment.

Nowadays, photographers need to sort, prioritize, develop, correct, and publish all their content and give the final deliverables to the magazine before they can get paid. I wonder if that's going to be the evolution of the writer:

Write
Proof
Edit
Publish
Market/Promote
Sell

Seems a lot of us are going the route of independent publications or self-publishing - that way we realize all the profit (but also take all the losses). I guess my only other thought here (being a non-published half-assed writer myself) is:

To what degree would a publisher expect a writer to engage in or participate in the marketing/promotion/sales of their books? As a photographer, I saw that about 90% of my time was spent on the business side of things and 10% was actually spent shooting. Would this same proportion exist for authors?

God, I would hope not ...

I have one small publisher that is constantly nagging me to market and promote the one title I have with them more. They've done nearly nothing on my behalf. They send their authors a list of places to submit their books for reviews, and they also offer to cover 50% of the costs of paid promotion (up to a certain amount per year, though, so there's a cap on that--I just can't recall the amount, but it's small, like $50). But if I'm going to take the time to market and promote, I'm going to focus on my self-published work where I get the most ROI when people buy. Also, I can control the price of my self-published titles, while this publisher refuses to discount except for certain very big--and costly--promo sites.

I guess where I'm going with this is, if publishers are moving toward authors having to do the brunt of the marketing and promoting, many authors aren't going to bother with them (unless those publishers are offering something else we can't do for ourselves, like bookstore distribution). We'll just self-publish.

And maybe that makes things easier for these publishers. It'll cut down on submissions and they won't be as overwhelmed.

zmethos said:

I guess where I'm going with this is, if publishers are moving toward authors having to do the brunt of the marketing and promoting, many authors aren't going to bother with them (unless those publishers are offering something else we can't do for ourselves, like bookstore distribution). We'll just self-publish.

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To me, self-publishing and all the marketing and promotion that come with it is still a very scary, high barrier to entry. I couldn't sell a bucket of water in the desert. Publishers who put the marketing on the author present this as the new normal, and has echoes of the vanity press rally cry of "Trade publishers only want established writers! Your only chance is with us." Normalize that message long enough, enough people will believe it and it will become fact. Cashing in on that idea drives their business. As a writer, if I know marketing and promotion are not my strongest skills, then I know self-publishing isn't going to work for me, and the only publishers willing to give me a chance expect me to market. So I'm screwed (unless I know better--which many people new to the industry don't)

I guess I might take this as a red flag. If I really liked the publisher for other reasons, and if they had good bookstore distribution (the most important question for my category), I might struggle and come up with a list of some basic stuff I could do to promote the book: organize bookstore readings, social media stuff, create a mailing list, apply to book festivals, pitch reviewers, etc.

But all of that pales in comparison to what a real sales/ marketing department can do for a book. I went to a convention where salespeople from my publisher were going around and pitching my book and other titles to individual booksellers. They put the book on Netgalley, they sent out ARCs, they sold copies to schools and libraries, and probably many more things I don’t know about. There are very few of these things I can do myself.

So, I guess I can see why publishers (and now apparently agents) would want to know writers are ready and willing to promote. If it’s a kind of test, a hoop to jump through, I don’t love that, but okay. But if they really think a writer alone (who doesn’t already have a big social media platform) can turn a book into a good seller ... well, I’d rather self-publish than go with a publisher who has expectations I personally can’t fulfill. (I don’t feel the promotion I’ve done has been very effective, though I put a fair bit of time and some money into it. And, let me add, I wasn’t asked to do any of it. It was my choice.) At least if I’m self-publishing, I can control the price and all the risk is on my head.

Do they actually mean marketing, or do they mean publicity? Some people seem to use these terms interchangeably when they actually mean completely different things.

All authors have to do publicity, whoever they're published by. Marketing is a publisher's job.

I suspect they just mean they want details to show you have thought about it (it is a business after all), and most will work with an author on it since it's in their own interest to do so.

"I intend to promote my book using Facebook, Twitter, a book launch at my local bookshop/event space, query a few bloggers I know online" or something similar. It all adds into the mix when they are considering something. If you have a friend in media (or a big youtube following) able to give you a TV spot for example, that would be great - if you come back and say "I refuse to do any marketing/publicity at all," well...that also will be factored in. How much it all matters I don't know, but if they are on the fence then it could tip their decision one way or the other.