But isn't that exposure rather relevant to the problem of selling your (I'm not published ;-) books? Look at the current Galbraith/Rowling news: unknown, the publishers have shifted 1500 hardbacks to bookshops and punters had bought <500 books. How many will fly off the shelves/internet now it is exposed as being by a known name? Obviously that's an extreme case but there must be a positive effect on an author's sales, current or future, from any exposure of their name.

However not even paying expenses is IMO frankly pathetic, and must make the decision to invest time and money in travel/accommodation very difficult.

However not even paying expenses is IMO frankly pathetic, and must make the decision to invest time and money in travel/accommodation very difficult.

The usual deal is that your publisher pays travel expenses - in my experience sometimes it also pays accommodation, and sometimes the festival picks that up.

BUT that assumes the publisher can actually afford it - it's all part of their publicity/marketing budget (like what gets onto the front tables in the bookshops and gets promoted on Amazon) whether they'll do it depends on a) the depth of your publisher's pockets, and b) how high up you are in their pecking order of where they think it's worth spending that money.

And I'd heard stories of a festival requesting an author from the publisher, and the publisher just not passing on the invitation because it meant a wodge of expenses that they weren't willing/able to fund, but didn't want to say that to the author.

there must be a positive effect on an author's sales, current or future, from any exposure of their name.

Yes, but it's so hard to quantify - qualitatively and quantitatively - and that's what one needs to do when deciding whether to do something.

Add in the sense that your publishers wants you to do it - might not be too thrilled, long-term, if you drag your feet and say you won't - that others are doing it - that some of us enjoy performing - that you'd rather be someone who can say they've Done Edinburgh or Hay or Oxford or whatever... and you end up with a complicated equation for deciding whether to travel half-way across the country and take huge bites out of your writing time, or not.


Edited by EmmaD at 12:57:00 on 15 July 2013


don't know why it's deconstructed my quote box...

Edited by EmmaD at 12:57:00 on 15 July 2013


oh, and then it hasn't!

Edited by EmmaD at 12:58:00 on 15 July 2013

And this, even funnier, from Harlan Ellison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

Mr Coben is pretty clear on his position - and wonderfully articulate.

This same Return on Investment (ROI) problem applies to pretty much everything we do - whether as individuals, businesses or societies - where there is a choice or trade-off: is investing in better GP services going to save money in the NHS? Is it worth putting a man on Mars? Should taxpayers fund HS2? Should I send Johnny to private school or state school? Should I buy a faster/wider lawnmower/car? Should my employer send me to a business conference?

Economics and MBA graduates will talk about opportunity cost and similar.

I know it doesn't address the main issue that you're being expected to offer your time for free, but if it isn't too depressing (hopefully not!) or mechanistic, you could model the cost/benefit using a spreadsheet: Try putting some value on your time - starting point is minimum wage is £6.19/hour for a 37.5 hour working week. You probably work twice that on writing, especially as it's 'not a real job' ;-) Assume the extra exposure from a big event will increase your sales a few percent, a smaller event by less. Add in the costs you have to cover yourself, set a target - see if it all adds up to a positive or negative. Not sure how meaningful it will actually be, but at least you won't be making a decision based on nothing objective - even if there is still a large seat-of-the-pants factor.

HTH Barny


Edited by Barny at 17:31:00 on 15 July 2013

Other advertising however, does not expect to create such an instantaneous effect. The objective here might be to build brand awareness or to create a particular image.

Building brand awareness is, very specifically, marketing, not advertising. It's a strategic thing, rather than a sales thing. Lots of people mix the two things up, but they're not the same thing at all.

All of these things go towards generating the sense that you're one of the authors people are reading. At what point that translates into a book actually being sold, and read, and setting that reader up to read your next book, is next-to-impossible to quantify.

One of the ways in which most industries attempt to quantify such things is by asking customers where they heard about the product, service, company, etc. That way, marketing people gain some kind of measure of how effective each of their approaches is. In this context, a publisher could make some kind of attempt to ask book buyers what made them choose the book they're buying, how/where they heard about it, and what other factors influenced their choice. It can be a little irritating, as a customer, being asked such things, but the feedback that it gives helps to inform marketing decisions such as these.

But I entirely agree that anyone wanting a writer to turn up and "perform" ought to be prepared to pay them something, even if it's only their out-of-pocket expenses.

Building brand awareness is, very specifically, marketing, not advertising. It's a strategic thing, rather than a sales thing. Lots of people mix the two things up, but they're not the same thing at all.

No it's not. I've spent my career working for major UK and international ad agencies and trust me - we often develop advertising campaigns which have a core objective of building brand awareness or developing a certain type of brand image and the campaign is then evaluated on precisely those measures.

Thanks for the Harlan Ellison link, Emma. Very funny, and very true of course. A few years back I went to the Science Fiction museum in Seattle. They have a room there full of videos of writers you can watch/listen to. At that point, I'd heard many stories about Harlan Ellison, most of them scary, but hadn't actually heard him speak. For instance, he'd been banned from taking creative writing classes at most US SF/Fantasy workshops. One reason was that he'd ranted online at the students who once walked out on Gene Woolf's class, accusing the workshops in the process of pandering too much these days to students for fear of not getting applicants and their fees. At another workshop, he set light to the students' manuscripts as comment on what he thought of them.

So, I was expecting this angry, fierce character. And yet I thought he came across as funny, honest and actually quite warm (probably because of the honesty). Wouldn't want to cross him though . . .

Still at the stage where I'd be thrilled to be invited to anything, it's really useful to be forewarned. But I'd like to separate out the not being paid from the bottles of wine. I know we wouldn't give alcohol to children but the latter just feels to me infantilising, once more saying it isn't a real job. It's one thing saying we haven't got enough money to pay you, or the author making a conscious choice to do it for the publicity or whatever, and another to perform for the liquid equivalent of peanuts. I think it would be more dignified to hand them back or give them out to the audience – unless it were very very good wine.