Publishers find creative ways to promote titles and authors
-- on the Internet
A good mystery, as everybody knows, is one that keeps the reader involved from start to finish. These days, many mystery publishers and authors are redefining the entire concept of reader involvement -- and they're doing it on the Internet.
Consider the case of author Lisa Scottoline. Months before her April HarperCollins release, Mistaken Identity, hit the shelves, Scottoline posted the legal thriller's first chapter on her Web site -- and invited the entire world to take a crack at editing it. The established author's unprecedented request for input received hundreds of responses and caught the press's attention, earning Mistaken Identity valuable early exposure. More important, many of Scottoline's online editors no doubt felt a sense of involvement with her book -- and it d sn't take Hercule Poirot to see the sales potential of that.
Scottoline's "edit this" gambit is simply one way in which mysteries and thrillers are being promoted on the Internet today. Theoretically, the Net could be used to spread the word about any category. But aside from science-fiction and romance, mysteries are the genre most likely to find an eager, receptive audience on the Internet, according to publishers who have experimented with the fledgling medium.
"Mystery readers are generally very 'wired' and Internet savvy," says Kat Berman, director of online business for Penguin Putnam. "They're also voracious readers and extremely author -- loyal." As a result, mystery readers are increasingly looking to the Web to find more information about their favorite books and authors and to participate in interactive mysteries, such as the original stories at Mysterynet.com. If nothing else, the very essence of mysteries, with stories that continually unfold in surprising directions, neatly parallels the experience of browsing the hyperlinked universe of the Web, Berman adds, where everything seems to be connected and you never know where you'll end up.
"Mystery readers love to talk to each other and recommend their favorite authors," adds Scribner v-p and senior editor Susanne Kirk, "and the Internet is a great way for them to do that. I've seen discussions of authors and books on the Net that actually led to awards. Readers get to know an author that way then read his or her book, and then they're more likely to vote for the book for an award at one of the mystery conventions."
"Mystery fans," explains Holt sales and marketing director Maggie Richards, "tend to be big readers and are influenced by endorsements of other mystery writers, and we've used the Internet to capitalize on that." Holt's Internet publicity plans, she continues, include Internet marketing, getting on the right site, pitching authors for chats on mystery sites and linking up with mystery bookstores. "We've set up very successful Web sites for Sue Grafton and Sharon Kay Penman, which have helped us promote these authors' current and future works, allowed us to create mailing lists and-most important-the comments from readers give us important feedback. In a sense, it's the closest thing we have to direct marketing."
Dell's assistant publicity director, Vicki Flick, tells PW, "We're increasingly using the Internet as a tool to promote our mystery writers." She notes that "extensive, personalized Web pages are a great way-particularly for popular series authors -- to alert their fans to upcoming releases and also highlight previous titles. She cites as an example the publisher's October release of Hard Time, Sara Paretsky's first V.I. Warshawski novel since 1995: "We're working to enhance and add new features to Sara's Web site (www.saraparetsky.com), and we're also investigating new ways to drive traffic to the site."
Aside from Mistaken Identity and Hard Time, what are others in the mystery-crime-thriller category doing to take advantage of all this seemingly unlimited marketing potential on the Internet? What results are they getting for their efforts? And what impact has the rise of online booksellers such as Amazon.com had on the category? We talked to a number of mystery players about their online strategies, and our sleuthing uncovered 10 important clues to successfully promoting and selling mystery books in cyberspace.
CLUE #1: Little-Known Territory
The Web is a wild and woolly place. Given that the Web didn't really begin to take off commercially until 1994-1995, it's still a young medium without many clear boundaries or rules, comments Penguin Putnam's online sales and marketing manager, John Lawton. "That's both the beauty and the curse of online promotion," he adds. In other words, anything is possible, and it's up to publishers, booksellers et al. to figure out what that "anything" might be.CLUE #2: Imagination Is Key
The possibilities on the Net are limited only by your imagination. As evidenced by Scottoline's online project, mystery publishers and writers are increasingly finding imaginative new ways to connect with current -- and potential -- readers. Another case in point: Knopf hired a marketing firm, Ten Angry Pitbulls, based in Vancouver, Wash., to promote Andrew Vachss's latest crime thriller, Choice of Evil (May). In addition to employing such traditional tactics as author appearances, Ten Angry Pitbulls is spending 10% of the book's promotional budget to develop and continually refresh a Choice of Evil Web site. While a site devoted entirely to one book is unusual enough, the Choice of Evil site features excerpts from the book, giveaway promotions, online discussions and original stories -- by other authors.
"It's all about driving traffic to the site," explains Lou Bank, a cofounder of Ten Angry Pitbulls. "These other authors have their own followings, and having stories by them will bring their readers to the Choice of Evil site." This in turn should stir interest in Vachss's latest. Bank wouldn't say which authors would be featured on the site, as discussions were ongoing, but he added that their writing "will be in the same milieu" as Vachss's.
Dedicating an entire Web site to one book might not always make sense, but it did in Vachss's case, according to Bank. The author, whose novels deal with abandoned and abused youth, has had his own heavily trafficked Web site, The Zero, since 1995. "That site is too big to add anything else to," Bank remarks, "so we had to do something separate for Choice of Evil." In addition, Bank and Vachss are using print and other Web sites to drive traffic to the Choice of Evil site. For instance, author bios accompanying recent Vachss short stories and essays in Esquire, Parade and online magazines, such as Blue Murder and FrightNet Online, include the Web site addresses for either or both of the Vachss sites.
CLUE #3: Simple Is OK
Getting creative is great, but don't ignore the basics. While there are many inspired ways to exploit the Net, there are plenty that are simple, easy and inexpensive, too. Nearly every publisher PW contacted uses the Internet to raise awareness of their mysteries. At a minimum, publicists schedule author discussions on Talk City, America Online, Mysterynet.com or the "Mystery Monday" series of interactive chats on iVillage.com, a networking site for women. Many publishers, such as Simon &Schuster and Avon, have areas on their Web sites dedicated to mystery books, while others, such as Penguin Putnam, are planning to add them in the near future.
Within the mystery sections of their Web sites, publishers typically include an author Q&A, book excerpts and plot descriptions, original author essays, a spotlight on selected backlist titles and links to online booksellers and mystery sites. Mystery newsletters e-mailed to genre fans are another popular way to target potential book buyers.
CLUE #4: Flexible Budgeting
You can spend a lot of money -- or next to nothing -- promoting on the Web. There are negligible costs involved, for example, in having an author participate in an online chat. Maintaining a modest Web site costs a few hundred dollars a year, while an intricate, sophisticated, e-commerce site with multimedia content and a searchable database can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop and maintain.
Understandably, many mystery publishers are making the most of the Net's low-cost promotional potential. As part of its Mistaken Identity promotion, HarperCollins e-mailed a press release about the legal thriller to a list of Web site editors. The list included likely suspects -- online bookstores -- as well as such unlikely ones as bar associations and legal journals.
"This kind of targeting effort would have been a big time and money drain just a few years ago," notes Sherri Rifkin, HC's associate director of online marketing, Internet development group. "But the Net has become an ideal, affordable way of getting attention for books in places where people aren't necessarily looking for them. For instance, lawyers visiting a legal Web site might not be in the market for a new legal thriller. But if they happen to stumble across a book that interests them, who knows?"
Mysterious Press often takes a similarly aggressive, low-cost approach to promoting its books via the Internet, says Greg Voynow, director of online marketing at Time Warner trade publishing. "We often send out e-mails with chapter excerpts to Internet mailing lists -- such as DorothyL -- and post excerpts to various newsgroups. It's very time intensive, but we believe it can help build word of mouth, and mystery titles often benefit from that more than other genre titles." Posting a first chapter online in a strategic place, such as the Alt.books.mysteries newsgroup, is often "10 times more effective than an ad in the subway," Voynow adds.
"The true cost of Internet marketing," concludes Bantam's creative marketing v-p Betsy Hulsebosch, "is time. More than any other marketing effort, an Internet campaign takes time to prepare and time to assess, time to research and time to work. We don't always assign a dollar figure to person-hours, but when we do, it becomes immediately apparent that marketing on the Internet is far from free."
CLUE #5: Calculating the Payoff
While the costs of online marketing can be minimal, the rewards aren't easy to calculate. "What's most attractive about marketing on the Internet," observes Hulsebosch, "is the relatively low out-of-pocket expense, along with the word-of-mouth potential. But can I say that an excerpt posted on a fan site or an online author chat was as effective at selling books as a glowing review? Or garnered more response than a powerful broadcast appearance? Or attracted more eyes than a well-positioned, cleverly conceived ad? No, I can't, and I would be surprised if anyone could."
Promoting mysteries on the Web is "much less expensive [than other methods] but often less targeted," adds J Blades, associate publisher of the Ballantine Publishing Group. "You can usually predict the costs for author tours and print ads, and you can pretty much predict what the results will be. You buy an ad in Esquire and you have a pretty good idea who will see it, for instance. What we don't know is when we do an author chat online, how many people will turn up? And while there are many ways to measure Web site traffic, none are very precise."
Scribner's Kirk agrees that it's hard to tell if the publisher's efforts to promote mysteries via the Net are paying off. "But my gut feeling," she says, "is that the exposure our books get on our Web site, at other mystery sites, in chat rooms, in dedicated discussion lists and other places online will make enough of a difference in sales to help us keep some books on the list that might otherwise be cut."
Avon senior editor Jennifer Sawyer Fisher adds: "Despite the ephemeral quality of measuring the success of Internet promotion, we are committed to its use and to building on it to whatever extent is possible."
CLUE #6: Reaching New Readers
The Web's biggest advantage could well be helping readers discover mysteries they might not have found otherwise. There are plenty of ways to cross-promote books in the tangible world. In cyberspace, however, publishers can help potential book buyers discover new authors and genres using nothing more than a few well-chosen subject categories and keywords, for starters.
The ability to easily search the Web helps readers find books they might not have found otherwise, notes Fisher. "Avon's Twilight site features detective data for all our authors, broken down by categories such as sleuth, location and author name," she explains. "This provides several ways for someone to discover a new mystery. Searching by geographical location, for instance, might bring a mystery to a reader's attention that he or she wouldn't have found in a store."
Keyword searches also make it possible to lure fans of other genres -- such as horror -- to a new mystery. (Keywords are the words or phrases Web users type in at search sites in order to find sites throughout the Web with content on a particular topic.)
"The way a bookstore is set up means a book is usually placed in a specific section, like the mystery department," explains Bank at Ten Angry Pitbulls. "That can be a drawback if your mystery is also a horror. But on the Internet, it's just a matter of setting up search-engine keywords to attract the right people. In the case of Choice of Evil, we're hoping to attract horror and gay and lesbian book fans in addition to mystery readers through the keywords we use."
CLUE #7: Expanding Popularity
Online bookselling has the potential to expand the popularity of mysteries. While the pros and cons of online booksellers are still a hot debate, many believe that sites such as Amazon.com are good news for mystery publishers, writers and readers alike.
"The mystery category is dominated by series and series characters, and that makes backlist inventories particularly important," comments Keith Kahla, senior editor at St. Martin's. "The major chain bookstores and independents seem particularly weak on stocking and maintaining backlist titles -- but that's a strength for the Internet retailers with their huge inventories."
Readers are also more likely to find new mysteries by lesser-known writers or publishers at an online retailer's site than they would in a store, notes Scribner's Kirk. "It used to be that if you read a review of a `small' mystery and went to your local store to buy it, you would never find it. Sure, it could be special ordered, but many readers -- and some stores -- wouldn't want to go to the trouble. Now, with the Internet, you can read a review and order immediately from one of the online sources -- either a mystery bookstore, another independent or one of the large online dealers. That kind of impulse buying is bound to help mysteries."
In addition, mystery and thriller fans particularly enjoy being up-to-date on the latest books by their favorite writers -- and the Internet helps them do that, according to Naomi Gesinger and Patrick O'Kelley, editors of Amazon.com's mystery section. The online bookseller offers a monthly list of forthcoming mystery hardcovers and paperbacks at the "Essentials" box on Amazon.com's mystery page. "With our lists, a reader can browse ahead and see what's coming two months from now as well as place an advance order," the editors explain. "They can be almost certain they won't miss key books."Of course, not everyone uses online booksellers to actually buy books, Walker publicist Cassie Dendurent points out. "Some people -- mystery readers included -- use the sites to research the backlist, to see the entire list by a given author or to check current reviews. With this information in hand, they may go into their local bookstore and buy books there."
CLUE #8: Staying on Track
It's easy to get lost on the Web. It's a good news/bad news scenario when it comes to getting attention for mysteries on the Net. The good news: there are lots of places to publicize the books. The bad news: There are too many places to publicize the books.
"In one sense, promoting on the Internet is easier than other ways because of the many identifiable newsgroups and sites devoted solely to mysteries," notes Dendurent. "By the same token, the almost limitless number of chatrooms, sites, discussion lists and so on that exist, and the new ones that appear on a daily basis, can make promotion on the Internet a challenge."
"Marketing online can be incredibly cost-effective," adds Avon's Fisher. "Since everything on the Web is interconnected, it's easy for surfers to eventually hook up with our online content. Print advertising, though it has other benefits, is basically a closed loop -- if you're reading People, it's not going to suddenly become Entertainment Weekly or Mystery Scene just because you turned a page. Online, it's much easier to drift from publication to publication. Of course, in the same way, you can lose visitors just as easily as gain them."
Clue #9: Copyright -- or Wrong?
Copyright issues can get thorny in cyberspace. Mystery book chapters typically end with a surprise or twist designed to propel the reader to the next page. As a result, mass-distributing book excerpts on the Internet has become a popular way to get the reader hooked -- and thus clinch the book sale. But copyright issues can be a hindrance toward fully exploiting the Net in this manner, says Berman at Penguin Putnam.
"Doing large-scale promotions of our books on the Web is extremely complicated, because of rights issues," continues Berman. "Each book has its own author agreement, and there are differences regarding electronic rights, and so all books have to be considered carefully." As a result, Penguin Putnam is most likely to promote books online with chapter excerpts on a book-by-book basis rather than as part of a coordinated, comprehensive marketing plan.
This particular aspect of Internet marketing, of course, is no doubt just the tip of the iceberg of a problem that may well require re-thinking of various copyright issues.
CLUE #10: It's Just Beginning
To many players, the future of mysteries in cyberspace seems limitless. While the Web appears to be a compelling medium for promoting and selling mysteries, it could also become a popular place for publishing them -- or at least, publishing certain types of mysteries, according to some publishers and editors.
Publisher Mari Florence at Los Angeles-based Really Great Books envisions a future in which some mysteries would span several media. For instance, a metropolitan newspaper could run a serialized mystery story every day and invite readers to go to one or more online sites for clues to solving the crime. The readers could determine the story's outcome with the help of the online clues. Ultimately, the entire story could be published as a book -- which would, of course, be marketed and sold online.
Others aren't so sure that the electronic medium lends itself to mystery storytelling. The Web "will likely have the same impact on fiction that the development of the novel in the 18th century had on theater, p try and other literary arts: none," predicts Kahla at St. Martin's. "Vast segments of the population are not hooked up to the Internet and show no signs of being able to afford that access in the near future. Unless this changes, interactive fiction will not be the coming thing, and the form will have little to no impact on the mystery as a genre."
While some book categories may become popular in electronic format, Ballantine's Blades d sn't believe mystery will be among them. "I think that the average mystery reader is somewhat conservative, in that they resist anything that might be construed as a gimmick. They still want a well-constructed plot, a protagonist to die for and carefully rendered prose-and they want all that between book covers, not on a computer screen."
