Publishing has a curiously paradoxical attitude toward live (literary) events. On the one hand, every publisher who can scrape up the cash sends any author who is willing to face the possibility of public rejection out on tour, setting up live events at bookstores and pseudo-live events on talk radio and television. On the other hand, the book itself turned literature from a live, public event (Chaucer read the Canterbury Tales aloud; most cultures have employed professional storytellers) into a solitary, private event. In fact, it increasingly promoted reading and introspection as a “higher” form of artistic response than performance and public response. This strange ambiguity has become more powerful since the concurrent rise of the Internet, social media—the very forces that have led us all to try to create virtual communities/markets/readerships online–and self-publishing. When my self-published book, Thirty Percent Chance of Enlightenment, was nearing publication, I started setting up readings within a drivable radius of Burlington, Vermont, and immediately noticed something important about venues. First of all, any amount of social networking and Facebooking made very little difference in the attendance at these live events. The vast majority of people who turned up already knew me or knew of me, or had friends who had recommended me. Certainly, some of those people did get emails about the readings or read about them on Facebook, but from what I can tell the new social media did not make up anybody’s mind. Second, I followed traditional publishing wisdom and set up most of the readings in bookshops. Almost at once, though, it became clear that publishers traditionally set up readings in bookstores because of the relationship between publisher, distributor and bookseller, rather than the relationship between author and bookseller. In today’s guest post, author Tim Brookes shares his insights into how live events can be used effectively to promote books and authors in this age of online marketing.
Nobody doubts that author appearances sell more books than author non-appearances. When I gave a reading I sold more books in one evening than I did in two weeks by the usual someone-somewhere-orders-a-copy-from-Amazon method. But who makes the money? When Random House and Grove Atlantic published my books, they paid for the author tours. When I self-published, I paid to drive around Vermont. Moreover, if I sold, say, ten of my own books at a bookstore reading, the bookseller took 45% and I drove away having lost a fair chunk o’change on the excursion. What’s more, I was struck by how little most booksellers know about staging a live event. Beyond sending out press releases and setting up chairs, almost all booksellers—who were and are invariably lovely people with spotless intentions—gave little thought to the reading as a public spectacle, an act of theater, the building of a small but vivid community. Working habitually with the major publishers/distributors, they didn’t really have much incentive to think outside the box. If, on the other hand, I set up a reading at a college or a library, I got paid to show up. Sometimes I gave a reading, sometimes a lecture, sometimes I ran a workshop—and even charging a modest appearance fee in a relatively poor state during a bad economy, I was paid up to $500 for an evening’s live event. And if I sold a few books, I kept 100% of the income. (Before tax, at least.) In short, the fiscal value of the live event was twofold. Fold #1: If I set up one live event a month, say, then my book sales at live events outpace my general book sales by a ratio of roughly 2:1. Fold #2: Once you look at my total income, including speaker fees, from live events, then the ratio of my total income to my income from general book sales shoots up to anywhere from 10:1 to 50:1. Live events are vastly more rewarding than simply publishing, distributing and hoping. And I don’t want to take the word “rewarding” in too strictly financial a sense: some of my best experiences as a writer have been the conversations I’ve had with audience members at a reading. Especially with my hospice book, Signs of Life, people were telling me stories—entrusting me with stories, really—that in many instances they’d never told anyone else. Here’s another idea. I teach a course at Champlain College that we call Publishing in the 21st Century. Last semester, the class was discussing the difficulty of marketing poetry and fiction and the fact that both are, despite the invention of the book, live events that bring people face to face for a connection that is as much emotional as intellectual. I brought up one of my basic beliefs: that the true new-media pathfinders for the last 20 years have been bands, especially small and independent bands, who have done all kinds of creative things with websites and MySpace but in the end, what keeps them afloat is the live show. Frankly, most concerts are more exciting and better-staged live events than most book readings, but you get the point: there is something intimate, immediate and irreplaceable about meeting someone in the flesh, and if that person (by writing, music, humor, art, charismatic conversation, or all those other live skills) creates a memorable experience, then that experience is not only part of the publishing enterprise, it may be the most important part of the publishing enterprise. One of my students, Adam Butler, said: why not set up a literary road trip? Why not commandeer a van or a minibus, stuff it with writers and their merchandise, and go on the road? High schools, coffee-houses, colleges, clubs—a different show with a different flavor for each occasion, but full of energy, full of real people meeting real people, each writer discovering his or her inner performer, the writing evolving literally on the bus, where bands have traditionally written half their songs. Now there’s an idea that makes Facebooking and Twittering sound like the feeble, attenuated discourse they really are. About the Author Tim Brookes is the author of a dozen books including Guitar: An American Life, Thirty Percent Chance of Enlightenment and Endangered Alphabets. He is a longtime NPR essayist, the director of the writing program at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, and editor-in-chief of the Champlain College Publishing Initiative.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Social media and the hectic pace of today's lifestyle is certainly changing the landscape in ways we'd never imagined.
My first novel, Sweet Tea and Secrets, debuts in May. You've given me lots to consider. Thank you for the gift of your experience.
Posted by: Nancy Naigle | March 23, 2011 at 08:54 AM
I think the idea of a road trip with other writers sounds wonderful. I'd do it!
Posted by: Fatherspledge | April 19, 2011 at 06:06 PM