Hi there,

Welcome to a new edition of Reedsy’s (in)frequent marketing newsletter! I’ve been a bit silent recently, but I’ll make it up to you over the next few weeks, starting with a series of regular newsletters on one of my favorite topics: retailers— and specifically, how you can get them to promote your books for you.

See, the first thing you have to understand about bookstores is that their goals very much align with yours. All bookstores — from online retail giants like Amazon down to your neighborhood brick and mortar bookshop — have one objective: selling the right books to the right readers. Which also happens to be your objective, right?

So if you want them to sell your book, in particular, you need to put yourself in their shoes, and understand what it is that they know about your book. 

As you can imagine, an indie bookstore owner (or even a giant online retailer like Amazon) doesn’t have the capacity of reading every book that gets published. So their knowledge of the titles they have in store will come from two sources:

1. What the publishers (or authors) tell them about their books; and
2. What readers tell them about their purchases.

For example, if a publisher wants a store to stock and promote an upcoming release of theirs, they will usually supply an information sheet: with the cover, the book description, early editorial reviews, and anything else that may help the store understand whom to sell the book to.

All this is effectively what indie authors do when publishing a book on Amazon (or any other retailer). We supply retailers with all the necessary metadata for them to be able to quickly get to know our book:

• The book cover
• The title and subtitle
• The book description
• The series metadata
• The editorial reviews
• The author bio
• The categories
• The keywords
• Etc.

The clearer and more precise this metadata is, the easier it will be for the retailer to understand what our book is about, and where it fits in the market. This is the key to them understanding whom to recommend it to.

Note: If you hate writing your book descriptions, or get confused by all this metadata stuff, remember that this is something a professional marketer can help you with!

While this publisher-supplied metadata is crucial, it is naturally not the only information that retailers rely on. After all, metadata is subjective, and can be easily manipulated. For example, if I know that romantasy is on the rise, I might pitch or describe my new epic fantasy release as romantasy, when in reality it barely contains a romantic subplot. If retailers took my word for it and sold my book as a romantasy, their customers would be disappointed — and a disappointed customer is the last thing any retailer wants.

So what do retailers rely on to complete the puzzle? You guessed it: readers.

If I tell you that my book is a romantasy, you might take that information with a pinch of salt. But if ten customers of yours, who you know are all huge romantasy fans, tell you that they loved my book, then you’ll know it’s a romantasy.

Remember the old “show, don’t tell” adage? It applies to this as well: authors/publishers tell retailers who their books are for. Readers, through their purchasing behavior, and reviews, show retailers what books they actually enjoy.

This is where big online retailers have a massive advantage: they own, control, and analyze the purchasing data and behaviors of their customers. Based on a customer's purchasing history, they can map out how books relate to one another: if they notice that many readers who bought book A also bought book B, they can infer that these two books are appealing to the same audience.

This is what Amazon’s “also boughts” are all about, and I can guarantee you that all other online retailers (Apple, Google, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, etc.) use a similar system to power their recommendations, too.

This is why it’s crucial to ensure a perfect alignment between what you tell retailers through your metadata, and what you show them through your sales (and particularly early sales). If you describe your book as a supernatural thriller, but then market and sell it to an urban fantasy audience (e.g. through a price promotion site, or a newsletter swap with a UF author), you’ll be sending confusing messages to the retailers. 

And as soon as a retailer is confused about what your book really is — and who it’s for — you can be sure they won’t take the risk of promoting it further.

Of course, nailing your metadata and your early also boughts, so that retailers know whom to recommend your book to, is not enough. You also need to make retailers notice your book in the first place.

But that’s a topic for next time 😉

Until then, happy writing, and happy marketing!

Ricardo

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