Name recognition…
In the book business, some marketing gurus think this is more important than any particular book in an author’s oeuvre. Some people call it an “author’s brand,” as if the author were a CEO of a corporation looking out for the brand name of their products. When authors advertise, I call it PR and marketing. The marketing is for the individual products, and the PR to increase name recognition of the brand and defend it, although advertising gurus will probably take exception to those distinctions. You can’t have name recognition without good products, and no product lacking name recognition will sell as well as one with it, and subsequently add to that name recognition. It’s a two-way street—the advertising traffic has to flow both ways. So say the gurus.
If true, self-published and small-press traditionally published authors will have a tough time in today’s publishing environment, especially if they’re just starting. There’s a lot of competition, and Big Five traditionally published authors are competing with everyone else too, for the most part, unless they’re coasting and pushing books from authors already having name recognition. P. D. James’s name recognition is secure among mystery readers; Steven M. Moore’s is not.
Those authors who already have name recognition have the advantage that marketing efforts can be focused on their next book. Consider James Patterson, CEO of Patterson Books, Inc., which runs the largest assembly line of books in the world. His new book The Cornwalls Are Gone recently appeared in a full-page ad on the back page of the “Arts” section on the NY Times March 28, the back page of the front section on April 4, with another ad on the back page of the “New York Times Book Review” on March 31.
Never mind that the co-author, Brendan Du Bois, whose name was in small print and who probably wrote most of the book, also appears—the name recognition will be for James Patterson. Also, never mind that when I see a full-page ad in the regular newspaper, I often think of PR recovery and defensive campaigns from bad publicity (Purdue Pharma and Wells Fargo are recent examples). Patterson is just hammering book readers with his brand name (or his publisher’s PR and marketing honchos are). His TV commercials do the same thing, as if Warren Buffett were speaking for Geico (maybe talking to the gecko?).
What I found a bit more egregious were the endorsements on that first full-page ad from authors Steve Berry, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Ian Rankin, and various large newspapers, but I’m not writing this out of jealousy. After all, Patterson is a member of a very exclusive club. No, if the ad is good evidence (and there’s not much to conradict that), I decry the absence of any female author in that list of endorsements. Hey, old guys, some of the old gals are big names too! (And write just as well as or better than you do, I might add.) I probably should go back and find the name of Patterson’s publisher. Maybe it’s Misogynist Press?
I suppose the main business question is: Do such ads work? They do for the NY Times, of course. Someone informed me that the full-page ad in the main newspaper runs $150,000—I suspect the full-page ad in the “Book Review” isn’t far behind. That’s $300,000+ spent on publicizing just one book in one week! Forget the fact that most authors do NOT receive that kind of marketing help, even most Big Five authors. Do readers pay attention to these ads? Probably if they’re James Patterson fans. I’m not anymore. Not because of his PR and marketing efforts. I just got tired of him and his formulaic books that cost far too much (for the price of one of his ebooks, I can read four or five others).
But back to those self-published authors and small press authors who don’t have James Patterson’s name recognition. They (and I, because I’m one of them) have a major problem: These expensive ads work against many good authors of good stories that are just as good as or better than anything Patterson or other members of the old boys’ club write. They prevent readers from reading those good authors and good books by sucking up all the oxygen in book publicity, valuable air those other authors need to breathe in order to build their own name recognition through their books. To summarize succinctly: the NY Times and those other big name newspapers publishing these ads and endorsing Patterson’s book cater to the Big Five publishing conglomerates, widening the gap between their old established authors and the rest of us. No surprise there, of course.
Apparently it will only get worse, at least until all the old boys pass on to sit like cherubs at their writing desks in the sky (or maybe that other place?). Then what will the Big Five do? Maybe Patterson Inc. will become like Dow Chemical, showing more staying power even after the founding CEO is gone? Interesting questions. What do you think?
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Comments are always welcome.
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