Hurry Up and Wait: Literary Community Is a Platform
What exactly is a platform? How do you create one?
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Posts Tagged: marketing
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #200: Amplify
“Being misunderstood is a really terrible feeling.”
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Market Researching My Desire
I noted the weirdness, and then filed it away until a time I might really consider the implications of wanting to bury someone’s stockings. I was lost in metaphor, which meant I was lost in everything.
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FUNNY WOMEN #147: Marketing Roundtable at Skinny Cow©
But is this implying enough that thin is the final message? I’m not sure. Sexy, we’ve nailed. But how do we make it clear thin is the goal?
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When Marketing Trumps Truth
This is how gay-male-identifying, biological women become straight chicks. Investigative journalism morphs into emotional memoir.
...moreLiterary Loyalty, Sad Sequels, Sadder Fans
Loyalty seems to have no payoff for fans of every and any book that has ever had a sequel, because these next installments almost always disappoint—but why does it have to be this way? For Cultured Vultures, Nat Wassell gives a few examples of flaccid sequels and continuations; discusses responsibility from the author, publisher, and […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Will Evans
Will Evans, Executive Director of Deep Vellum Publishing, talks about publishing translated works as well as the Texas and Dallas literary scene he wants to help grow.
...morePublishers Need Diversity, Too
The publishing industry is at a cultural turning point, with recognition and celebration of writers of color on the rise. But despite the surge in the publishing industry’s interest in works by writers of color, the people working behind the scenes still lack much-needed diversity. Recent studies have found that the majority of those who […]
...moreYellow Is the New Black
Publishers know that most book buyers can’t adhere to the age old adage to never judge a book by its cover. The result has been an uptick in yellow book covers as book sales move online. Yellow is an eye-catching color, especially on screens, explaining memorable covers like Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings.
...moreWhat’s in a Name?
If there are indeed an infinite number of universes, it’s nice to think there might be one where all of the books we have come to know bear their original, author-intended titles. For the Paris Review, Tony Tulathimutte pulls back the curtain on the process of book naming to reveal that the title we see […]
...moreBook Marketing in Five Minutes or Less
Does the idea of marketing the book you’ve slaved over for years cause nothing but dread? No problem! Minimize the time you spend thinking about your book’s promotion by taking small steps that can be completed in five minutes or less.
...moreTo Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish
At the Guardian, Ros Barber explains why she believes self-publishing is not a valid alternative to traditional routes: Traditional publishing is the only way to go for someone who writes literary fiction. With genre fiction, self-publishing can turn you into a successful author (if you can build a platform, if you enjoy marketing and are […]
...moreA Nation of Readers
At The Atlantic, Yori Applebaum chronicles a marketing tactic taken by American publishers in the midst of World War II. They sent free books to the troops overseas, succeeding in raising sales, Applebaum argues, by making a nation of readers.
...morePong Was Not For Boys
How did video games go from being completely gender-neutral to being the centerpiece of a male-dominated, often misogynistic subculture? Polygon’s Tracy Lien investigates in a fascinating history of the industry’s relationship to gender. It’s interesting whether you’re into video games or not—though, as the article points out, if you play Bejeweled, Angry Birds, or even […]
...moreDefending Women Writers
Roxane Gay’s on HTML Giant talking about the covers of chick-lit novels and the stigma attached to their formulaic visual coding, though the feminization of book covers is taking over more than just the chick-lit genre. It’s unfortunate that women writers have to consciously avoid being pigeonholed into chick-lit genre or are marketed via book […]
...moreAttention Spans are Not the Problem
A few weeks ago, I argued that the Internet age was uniquely well suited to selling short story collections. A few commenters did not agree with what seemed to be implicit in my argument: the idea that the “short attention span” or “ADD” culture is in fact better for short stories. Instead, they said, short […]
...moreA Faithful Grope in the Dark
Are marketing departments running the major publishing houses? Do editors and agents know what they’re doing? Are small presses the future of literature? Is everything a crapshoot? What’s a first-time novelist to do?
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