Increasing the Odds
That the Book Will Be Read

Samurai Shortstop
(Dial 2006)
by Alan Gratz
ISBN-10: 0803730756
ISBN-13: 9780803730755
Buy this book
via Amazon.com.

"An author's work doesn't end when she turns in the last revision," says author Alan Gratz, "it shifts from writer to publicist." Gratz should know — he parlayed publication of his debut novel, the young adult historical Samurai Shortstop (Dial, 2006), into impressive sales of 10K within its first six months.

How did he do it?

Step One was writing a gripper of a tale that’s garnered critical kudos and nabbed prestigious honors, like being named among the American Library Association’s Top 10 Best Books for Young Adults.

Steps Two through Fifty: Promotion, promotion, promotion.

For an entire year, Gratz immersed himself in publicity books, seminars and his own trial-and-error experimentations. He applied all he learned to Shortstop’s promotion, thus landing his book in reviewers’ headlines and readers’ hands… and royalty checks in his pockets.

Now, in addition to working on two more novels, Gratz has developed a children’s book publicity workshop to motivate other mid-list authors, “those of us who don’t get six-figure promotional campaigns for our books,” he says. He generously shares with us the highlights.

AUTHORLINK: Alan, so, say I’m an author who’s just sold my first or second book. What can I expect from my publisher's marketing/promo/PR departments? What will I be expected to do?

GRATZ: The typical mid-list author can expect a major publisher to do two things: put your book in the seasonal catalog, and send your galleys out to top-level book reviewers. That’s it. And when I say top end reviewers, I mean the biggies like Kirkus, School Library Journal, BCCB, Booklist, and VOYA. That may also include a few nationally-syndicated regional papers, like The New York Times or Washington Post. It’s a very short list that doesn’t include many large markets—like my city’s major daily paper for example, The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The publisher’s catalog gets taken to bookstore accounts and promoted by sales reps, but on average each book may only get a few SECONDS of presentation time—in a sales visit that lasts two or three hours!

In general, publishers work from the top down; they send press releases and galleys to the biggest, widest-reaching media and review outlets, and that’s it. Everything else is the author’s responsibility.

AUTHORLINK: How important is publicity to a book's shelf life? If the work is well-written and in the bookstores, isn't that good enough?

GRATZ: There are many authors who choose—deliberately—to do no book promotion whatsoever. Either they feel they don’t have the time, or they feel overwhelmed, or sometimes they just abhor self-promotion. In such cases, they let the publisher do what they do, and rely on good reviews to build word of mouth. And sometimes books do very well with no effort from the author at all.

I prefer to err on the side of doing more, not less. I hate to leave it to chance that someone will discover my wondrous book there on the bookstore or library shelf among the myriad others. Anyone who’s been in a bookstore or library lately knows how many books are there on the shelf, and for those of us lucky enough to even GET on the shelf at all, we’re then faced with the reality of being a one-inch spine among four feet of books. (And woe be unto you if your name causes you to land alphabetically on the bottom shelf of a bookcase.)

The effects of publicity are hard to quantify though. I can’t point to my postcard mailings or my press kits or my website and say, “Ah, I sold three hundred books with this promotion, six hundred with this one, one hundred with this one.” I have to look at my efforts cumulatively: In the first six months, I sold ten thousand copies of Samurai Shortstop, earned out my advance, and started making royalties. Would I have sold as many on the strength of the book alone? I doubt it. I think it’s a good book, and it’s been well-reviewed, but if nobody ever hears about it, who’s going to know to buy it?

AUTHORLINK: What is a publicity calendar? How do you put one together? How do you use it?

GRATZ: My publicity calendar was born out of an attempt to get a handle on all the things I wanted to do to promote Samurai Shortstop. When you consider the many different things you can do to promote a book, from building a website to printing up postcards to creating press kits and mailing them to media outlets, the job really can look daunting. By plotting out when things had to happen, I was able to break the work into manageable loads and prioritize my publicity efforts month-by-month. The trick is to start with the pub date of your book and work backwards, through about six or nine months. I have a half-day seminar I present to SCBWI regional chapters where I detail all the publicity I do and when they come due in the calendar.

AUTHORLINK: Should an author rely on the publisher to create a press kit, or should he put one together himself? What should it include?

GRATZ: Your publisher isn’t going to make a press kit for you. Again, the most your publisher is going to do is mail galleys and press releases. A press kit is like a press release on steroids. Mine include a press release, reviews, synopsis, excerpt, bio, Q&A, author photo, and cover scan. All of these are slipped into a simple pocketed folder with a half-page sticker of my book jacket on the front. The kits aren’t cheap to make or mail, so I am selective with where I send them. I do, however, know they are used: I have seen direct quotes from my press releases show up in articles, my author photo and cover image often get used in newspapers where others’ don’t, and I have done radio interviews that have used the questions from my Q&A verbatim.

AUTHORLINK: Press releases – province of the publicity department or author's territory as well? What kinds of things should generate a press release? How should a release be written – just-the-facts-ma'am? Witty? Hard sell? How can an author increase the odds the release will get read?

GRATZ: Press releases are tools both you and your publisher will use to announce the debut of your novel or any upcoming book signings or author visits. You’ll have to write your own, but there are many books and websites that promise to teach you to write killer releases. I think it’s always best to be straightforward and professional, even when your material is not. Adults—sometimes jaded, humorless adults—will be the ones receiving your press releases, and they won’t want to read through a droll and witty press release or a press release written in rhyme. I would also avoid the hard sell: nobody likes being accosted by salespeople, and that’s what you’ll feel like. Better to come off as an enthusiastic author than a desperate sales person.

To increase the odds your release gets read, have a real reason for sending it. Instead of “Author Announces New Book,” try to find an angle that would lead the newspaper to cover you. Samurai Shortstop has baseball in it, so the beginning of Spring Training or the start of the World Series are good seasonal hooks, for example. Hooks are not always possible, but they definitely increase your chances of getting coverage. There are just too many people out there publishing books today for that to be newsworthy in and of itself.

GRATZ: I only send print press releases, as I tend to see e-mail press releases or advertisements as spam. To put together a mailing list, start with school and library websites. Many counties have all of their school addresses listed in one place, and many also list key faculty members, like media specialists. Some school districts even have media specialist coordinators, who may share your information with their minions. You can also find bookstore addresses and personnel online. A good place to start is ABC, the Association of Booksellers for Children, who offer for sale a list of children’s bookstores. A free resource that takes a little more work is the ABA, or American Booksellers Association, whose website lists all member stores and their addresses which you can cull. In my publicity seminar, I offer more tips and tricks for finding and targeting the booksellers and librarians who care the most about books for young readers.

I’ve never explored a press release distribution service, but I suspect this wouldn’t help much. One of the things I preach is demographics of geographics—in other words, identifying target groups for your book, not target areas. I have a feeling press release distribution sites are more focused on geographic coverage—say, every major market in the US—where your money and time would be better spent identifying trade journals and magazines that cater to people interested in your particular story.

AUTHORLINK: What about school and bookstore events – are they worth the trouble? Does an author get paid for them? If so, how does an author set his or her fee? How does an author find and arrange the dates? What is an author expected to do at these kinds of events? Lead a discussion? Read the book? Just sign it? What can an author do to really create an impression, and, ultimately, sell a lot of books at these things?

GRATZ: Let us all take a moment of silence to mourn the passing of the bookstore event.

Seriously, bookstore events outside your hometown are a big fat waste of time for mid-list authors. Unless you are Lemony Snicket or Ann Brasheares or Meg Cabot, don’t bother. No one, and I mean no one, is going to come out to hear a reading by an author they don’t already know and love.

Thankfully, the children’s author has two good alternatives: school visits and stock signings.

School visits are worth their weight in gold. I do two kinds of school visit. The first, set up by a local bookstore (usually an in die) I do not get paid for. Instead, the bookstore arranges to send home vouchers with kids in the weeks ahead of my visit, and then comes with me to the school to sell books to the kids whose parents have sent in checks with the voucher. Working with a book fair company in Charlotte I sold sixty books during a one-day middle school visit.

The problem with such visits of course is that you are going to lose money. Sixty books sold is all well and good, but that $100 or so you just earned in royalties (assuming you’ve already earned out) are hardly going to pay for your gas, motel, and meals. I do events like this when I know I’m already going to be in an area for a different reason. The teachers love you, the kids love you, the booksellers love you, and you sell books. Still, I do far fewer of these, because I cannot afford to do them on a whim; I have to already be planning to be in the area.

The better kind of school visit is, of course, the one where the school contacts you, and you charge them an honorarium and paid motel and travel expenses. I’m getting more and more of these. You should ALWAYS get paid for these gigs, even if you also sell books by voucher. You should not undersell yourself, either. $500 is about the bare minimum you should charge for a full-day visit. To charge less cheapens you, and throws all the other authors charging $500 into question. Many schools no longer go on field trips for security and insurance reasons, but some of that money is still available to bring guest speakers TO the school. I also know of schools that have raised money through bake sales or PTA events to bring authors in—and when they pay you to come in you get treated like royalty. Do an event for free at your daughter’s school, and you’ll quickly see the other side of the coin. When they pay you to come, you get the red carpet; when you go for free, you’re an afterthought.

Getting school visits is one of those mysteries of the universe. You sort of have to do school visits to get school visits. Do local schools (i.e. schools where you have almost zero travel expenses) for less, but make the librarians swear they won’t tell how cheaply they got you. Word will get around about your visit, and soon librarians will begin to e-mail. Put your school visit info on your web site, and make up a brochure to have on your table at all signings and festivals and events. You can also solicit school visits by going to the aforementioned school district web sites, getting names and addresses, and sending, “Hi, I’m going to be in your area the second week of May and I’d love to visit your school” letters.

At school visits, I have a prepared talk I give about the genesis and creation of my book. I also offer to do creative writing workshops with smaller classes, meet over lunch with kids who’ve read my book and want to do a “book talk,” and can generate specific discussions based on a teacher’s needs. Bring props if you can, and keep your talk short and fun. Leave time for questions, and always bring takeaways, especially to schools where most of the kids cannot afford to buy your book.

Lastly, I should mention stock signings. These can be profitable in the long run. While traveling, always pop into bookstores that carry your book and offer to sign their stock. You are not offering to have a book signing there—remember, if this is not your hometown, no one will come. Instead you’re offering to sign the copies they already have in store. Most good stores will then put a sticker on the cover that says “Autographed Book” or some such. Signed books get sticker ed, and sticker ed books get faced out on shelves. And what do faced out books do? They SELL. If you know in advance you’re going to be in a town with a very good bookstore, you can even call ahead so the store can order more stock if they want. Before I knew better, I did a book signing at Square Books Junior in Oxford, Mississippi. One person showed up. But the spectacular folks at Square Books know their business, and they had me sign all 35 copies of Samurai Shortstop they had on hand. In the six months following my visit, they sold every last one of them.

AUTHORLINK: What about freebies – should an author invest in having bookmarks, postcards, flyers, brochures, etc. printed up? When/where/ how should an author distribute them?

GRATZ: I’m a big fan of postcards and “takeaways,” like bookmarks or, in the case of Samurai Shortstop, baseball cards. Takeaways are items that cost you so little to print that you can hand them out to a thousand kids at a time—which I’ve done! Most of them will get lost or tossed, but some few will make it home to mom and dad, which is where the money is. I also sell books at these events, and having takeaways allows those kids who cannot or will not afford a book something they can have and hold and not feel completely slighted.

I make my takeaways available at every event I do, school, or festival or otherwise. If your takeaways are so expensive to produce that you worry over who grabs one, you have not created effective takeaways. They should cost pennies per unit, if that. The best source for printed materials is now the Internet, where cheap bulk printers proliferate. I was able to find a company that printed 5,000 glossy, color, double-sided postcards for me for $179.00—and that included the shipping. That works out to 3.5 cents a card.

Postcards I use in multiple mailings, to bookstores, libraries, and schools, using the same lists I generate for press releases. I use postcards to offer free galleys, announce events, and crow about new and glowing reviews.

AUTHORLINK: Websites – how important are they? Should an author have one for each title? One general author website? What kind of content should go on a website?

GRATZ: There is just no reason for an author not to have a website, even if it’s a simple page with a bio and contact information. The Internet is the first place many people—especially children—go today for more info. At bare minimum, you should have a general author website with a picture and bio of you, synopsis and cover of your book, links to buy your book, and contact information for getting in touch with you. Don’t know HTML from a hole in the ground? The teenager down the street does. Hire a kid, or hire an online firm. Some organizations like Authors Guild also offer web design and hosting with membership. Your we site need not be anything fancy—remember, your books are still the stars. To see an example of the basics plus some fun extras, check out my web site at www.alangratz.com

You should’t need a new site for every book, either. That can get confusing. Have one site that features all your work. I’m in the process of redesigning my web site right now so it features Samurai Shortstop and my new book for fall 2007, Something Rotten (Dial).

AUTHORLINK: Can you share your marketing/publicity strategy for Samurai Shortstop? Has it been effective? Have you had to tweak as you go?

GRATZ: Okay, whew. I don’t know if I have room for that here. My marketing strategy for Samurai Shortstop was rather involved, and is the subject of my half-day publicity workshop. I figured things out as I went, so it was certainly something I tweaked along the way. I learned a lot in the process, and I’ve refined the process for Something Rotten, as I’m sure I’ll refine it again when The Brooklyn Nine (Dial) comes out in spring 2008.

I certainly think my campaign was effective. As I said, Samurai sold 10,000 copies in six months, which was more than even I had hoped. I do like to think that part of that was the book itself, but I really do believe you can write the best book in the world and no one will read it if they haven’t heard of it. As authors, our first job is to write the best book we possibly can. Once that job is finished, our new job is to go tell as many darn people about it as we can.

I know this has been rather cursory, but I’d love to come and talk to any writers groups who really want to get down to the nifty gritty! You can learn more, of course, through my web site: www.alangratz.com