bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

As I am now writing my dissertation (ha!) these round ups are focused on what dedicated SFF UK imprints are doing to digitally market themselves, their books and their authors to their fans and wider readerships.

Voyager: are gearing up for the release of George R R Martin’s long-awaited A Dance with Dragons – released 12 July. It’s been six years since A Feast for Crows, not that we should complain. According to initial reviews, it’s going to be well worth it. We should also celebrate Voyager’s new free app to ‘reward’ fans’ patience. There aren’t many apps for SFF titles, and that George (first names basis) has one is great, but also maybe demonstrates that to have time and budget dedicated to an SFF imprint author, that author needs to have proven himself (with a HBO series perhaps).

Orbit: are also gearing up for their biggest release, possibly of the whole year (warning: bias alert), Jim Butcher’s Ghost Story on 28 July. And in the process, Mark Yon, reviewer and administrator at the excellent SFFWorld, has been diligently slogging through The Dresden Files’ backlist (someone has to do it) and providing weekly reviews. Despite being a nerd for Jim Butcher, I am one fan (such a small word) who will NOT be eagerly awaiting the release of Ghost Story, because I’ve already read it. A staff member at Little, Brown on my work experience may have been subjected to several hours of My Love for Jim Butcher, and, possibly hoping I’d read it and shut up, produced a freshly printed copy for my greedy mitts. In response, and much to her relief, I exploded with happiness. Just another 12 months ‘till the next one. It’s embargoed so no review, unfortunately, except to say (without spoilers), that it’s… necessarily a departure from what readers are used to. I also recommend a re-read of Changes, to understand just how necessary a divergence Ghost Story is. Harry wasn’t just on the edge in that last book, he was free-falling from it.

Gollancz: are still celebrating their 50th anniversary. This time they’re publishing the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction online, free of charge. The first two editions won the Hugo Award – I wonder if it’s possible for an online resource to do the same? I’m also curious to know how much this makes sense commercially. But it is great publicity for Gollancz, so maybe they will reap the benefits elsewhere. Or, you know, maybe they’re just nice. You can eagerly await the launch by watching this space, following them on Twitter or visiting their Facebook page.

digital marketing - science fiction and fantasy

Over the last few weeks this blog has been focusing on what the four imprints I’m using as case studies for my dissertation do to digitally market their books. As promised, this is the exciting* summary of my findings, looking at which imprint out of the four – Tor, Orbit, Voyager and Gollancz – most effectively uses digital marketing to promote its authors and titles. Here are the results.

TOR

With no blog, a Facebook page I can’t find (although I’ve heard rumour of there being one) and an area on the Pan Macmillan website that is more shop than shoptalk, Twitter is Tor’s hub for digital marketing. Events will get mentioned, review links posted, pictures of tours and author ventures plugged. Editorial Director of Tor Julie Crisp is always present on Twitter, tweeting Tor’s latest campaigns, communicating with readers and providing relevant links, whilst not being overly pushy about the books she’s publishing. She helps to trend topics like #towelday – 25 May is Towel Day in memory of the late, great Douglas Adams - really taking advantage of what Twitter (and fans) can do. Tor UK is on there too, tweeting about subjects relating to its list with personality and a good degree of vim. Tor is also using Twitter to advertise its competition in cahoots with SFX magazine for cover designing – a unique way of promoting a title. Some stats: Tor’s Twitter stream has 1424 followers, Julie Crisp, clearly doing something right, has 1520. I recently heard that Tor has been allotted the budget for a new blog, so it’s obviously deemed an important tool in digital marketing – it will be great to see what Tor does with it.

ORBIT

Orbit UK has a larger team than most other dedicated science fiction and fantasy imprints, with various folk in charge of digital, publicity and general marketing, and Orbit USA and Aus/NZ banding together as well to digitally market as a global imprint, which is worth bearing in mind. Although it has a strong Twitter and Facebook presence, the most remarkable part of Orbit’s digital marketing strategy is its website. Orbit’s website is its hub for marketing, and what a hub. It streamlines the UK/USA/Aus/NZ imprints into one, accessible source of information. As well as containing its publishing schedules and author profiles (with links to websites and details about its titles), Orbit’s website is basically a very well-maintained blog. It contains, among other things, guest posts from authors (not always from Orbit’s own list), editors, editorial assistants and the very excellent, always enthusiastic, Art Director Lauren Panepinto. The site also contains a blog roll and links to SFF sites, and allows for comments on each post, maintaining a healthy online community. It really is a smorgasbord of information. Some stats: Facebook – 2292 likes. Orbit Twitter – 8727 followers. Orbit Editorial Assistant James Long Twitter account – 801 followers.

VOYAGER

Bearing in mind Voyager’s small team, it doesn’t have a Facebook page and its page on HarperCollins’ website is a bit impersonal (in-keeping with the overall professional image), but it does have a Twitter and blog, maintained mainly by one dedicated Assistant Editor, and a few guest bloggers. There tends to be about one to two posts every fortnight, and they can consist of: reviews from HarperCollins’ staff members of Voyager’s books, an huge ongoing campaign for George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, countdown widgets for upcoming titles for blogs and websites, trailers, the occasional book of the month, cover launches, a heads-up for its new ventures, a post on its physical consumer marketing campaign for Peter V Brett and a few non-marketing related posts, which arguably is good digital marketing in itself. The blog/site also contains links to other sites and every post can be commented on. Its Twitter account contains links to its blog posts as well as plenty of perky communication with fellow tweeters and readers, particularly considering there is only one person behind the tweets. What I like about this (warning: personal preference) is that HarperCollins is a hugely commercial publisher but the Voyager feed feels personal. Some stats: Twitter – 2577 followers.

GOLLANCZ

Gollancz does not have a strong blog presence although its website is good, and the team know how much time it can exhort updating it (hence its book and author of the month). Therefore Gollancz’s strengths lie in its Facebook and Twitter presence. Its main technique is to run competitions for readers to win its titles (admittedly, it hammered this more a few months back). It would be really interesting to find out how these competitions affect sales, if at all, as I think it’s a unique way of marketing, and great for smaller budgets (although the postage and packaging costs must be immense). Gollancz also: knows the beauty of a good hash tag, posts YouTube links to author interviews and trailers, flags up signings, reviews, posts pictures, links to other relevant information it feels its readers will find interesting (rather than making the rookie error of only talking about itself), news about its award nominations, and a whole host of other links and comments. Some stats: 1865 people ‘like’ its Facebook page, on average Gollancz posts 2-3 times per day, and it has one sister Facebook page, Gollancz Dark Fantasy, which has 3608 ‘likes’ (thank you, Charlaine Harris). Gollancz Twitter has 3144 followers, and Gollancz Dark Fantasy Twitter has 977. This might only be something I find fascinating, but this shows Dark Fantasy fans are more likely to follow its Facebook page than its Twitter stream, and vice versa for Gollancz main.

Conclusion of summary: Every imprint has its own way and knows how to digitally market its books into a reader’s heart. Unfortunately, man power, time and money are huge factors regarding what avenues you can take. Hence why Twitter and Facebook, being free, are great tools.

Active, healthy blogs look to be the way forward. Orbit’s just zings off the screen. Voyager’s is good, and would benefit from more time and posts (not always an option when one person is doing the posting), Tor’s is on its way. Gollancz could benefit from updating its blog more – but time factors probably get in the way so it picks and chooses when it utilizes this tool (eg, for its 50th anniversary).

Voyager and Tor (I may be wrong) both don’t have Facebook pages. Gollancz demonstrates why it’s important to reach fans both through Twitter and Facebook, through its discrepancies between Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter followers.

With Twitter it is worth the editors and other staff having personal accounts that tweet about the industry. Julie Crisp has more followers than Tor UK but it’s probably a surety that she achieves the same promotional benefits for Tor’s titles as Tor’s actual Twitter stream, only people can feel more connected to an actual person, rather than an imprint.

Both Voyager and Orbit have a brand of their own away from their publishing groups – this could be important as it builds and taps into that essential fan community. They both also have less ‘personal’ pages on their publishing groups’ sites, so this caters for a wider readership.

Conclusion of conclusion of summary: Orbit’s model of digital marketing is fantastic. They demonstrate the ideal Twitter/Facebook/blog/website combination – all regularly updated and mostly interactive. But time and budget are huge factors that not every imprint can indulge in, which is where the personal touch, and a bit of ingenuity, comes in.

*Excitement not guaranteed

digital marketing - HarperVoyager

Over the next few weeks this blog is going to focus on what the four imprints I’m using as case studies for my dissertation do to digitally market their books. Like a bookish clash between Come Dine with Me and Whose Line is it Anyway?, each imprint gets a turn, the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. This post is about HarperVoyager UK.

VOYAGER

One thing that I have not taken into account so far with blogging about Tor UK and Orbit UK’s digital marketing is business models. The term ‘business model’ tends to make my brain prepare to be imminently baffled, but what I mean by it here is pretty basic – the number of staff within the imprint and their roles. In Voyager’s case, having done work experience there, I know that there is a grand total of two staff members dedicated purely to this Science Fiction and Fantasy imprint, one of which handles the majority of the digital marketing. Solo points to her before we even begin.

Website: like Orbit, Voyager’s website is really a blog. While Orbit’s site is maintained in by a triumvirate of worldwide imprints (note: not as evil as it sounds), Voyager’s is hosted by HarperCollins and maintained mainly by one dedicated Assistant Editor, and a few guest bloggers. There tends to be about one to two posts every fortnight, and they can consist of: reviews from HarperCollins’ staff members of Voyager’s books, an huge ongoing campaign for George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (HBO’s TV adaptation - Game of Thrones, new covers, eBooks and the date for the upcoming, long-awaited A Dance With Dragons), countdown widgets for upcoming titles for blogs and websites, trailers, occasional book of the month (book of the every other month?), cover launches and a heads-up for their new venture into YA fiction, a post on their physical consumer marketing campaign for Peter V Brett and a few non-marketing related posts, which arguably is good digital marketing in itself. The blog/site also contains links to other sites and every post can be commented on – so community points to them.

As a side note, Voyager’s sister Australian imprint has a great site – complete with blog, online community, search engine, news and events listings and the tantalisingly titled ‘fun and games’. Who can resist such a tab?

HarperCollins hosts a page for Voyager on their main site. This contains links to the Voyager blog, as well as the Voyager Twitter feed, information about authors and their titles and upcoming books, and press releases. It’s not as updated as their blog, and while it is useful, it feels a bit more perfunctory, and not as welcoming as Voyager main. I will allot practical points for this.

Twitter: their Twitter page contains links to their blog posts as well as plenty of perky communication with fellow tweeters and readers, particularly considering there is only one person behind the tweets. What I like about this (warning: personal preference) is that HarperCollins is a hugely commercial publisher but the Voyager feed feels personal. Points for letting people know when they’re going on holiday, or that they left their pen back at the office when they wanted to mark proofs on the bus.

Facebook: I can’t find a Facebook page for Voyager UK. If there is one and I’ve missed it, I’m sorry (although no points for hiding well).

Digital advances: thanks to HarperCollins’ dedication to all things digital, Voyager has a healthy backlist of digital titles available, although the books don’t have any additional interactive features. They get extra goodwill points however for taking advantage of the digital format for the benefit of their customers. George RR Martin’s beasts tend to be unbindable and a few have been released in two parts – but their digital editions have been combined. Voyager even went a step further and bound the whole 3000 page series so far together in one digital volume for a relatively cheap price.

Blog: see ‘Website’.

Extras: Voyager has a monthly newsletter and a YouTube channel, but it hasn’t been updated for a while. Points to them, but not as many as for a well-maintained channel (admittedly these values mean very little).

Conclusion: contain yourself - an exciting summary will follow after all four imprints have had their turn. Disclaimer: they will not win £1000 presented to them on a silver platter. They will not get to read out the end credits in the style of someone delivering urgent information to someone on a bouncy castle.

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

Arthur C Clarke/Angry Robot Books: South African author Lauren Beukes won the 25th annual Arthur C Clarke Award with the excellent Zoo City. Set in Cape Town, this is a Science Fictioner in which people are plagued with their guilt hanging around in animal form, like a His Dark Materials universe where every daeman is a physical manifestation of some horrendous crime. I’m sometimes intimidated by books that win awards – not so with Zoo City – this is an accessible, intriguing and well-oiled read. On accepting her prize (complete with wrap-around Sloth), Beukes said the speech she’d planned went something like this: ‘Curse you, McDonald!’ As Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House originally looked set to win (having been nominated for a Hugo and as it won the British Science Fiction Association’s annual award). But Beukes can prop her books up with her new ornamental bookstand with pride, and in the knowledge that she and her shelf deserve it. Check out the article in the Guardian where it refers to Angry Robot Books as ‘tiny UK press’, which is both adorable and probably soon-to-be inaccurate after this win.

British Library: you know you’ve made it in history when you’re featured in a British Library exhibition, just ask the dinosaurs. Now Lauren Beukes, thanks to her Clarke win, along with China Miéville, George Orwell and Audrey Niffeneger, will be part of an incredibly exciting exhibition on Science Fiction called ‘Out of this world: Science Fiction, but not as you know it’. Available from 20 May through to 25 September this year, the exhibit’s blurb grandly states that ‘Science Fiction is revealed not merely as a popular literary genre but as a way of looking at today’s world and presenting alternatives: radical ideas about science, politics, society, the future… and the nature of reality itself.’ Asking questions like ‘Who are we?’, ‘What is reality?’ and, perfect for a Sunday afternoon pondering, ‘When and how will the world end?’, from earliest writings to modern film, this is bound to be a thrilling, insightful look into a genre that demands limelight, but doesn’t get it nearly often enough. I can’t wait.

Hugo Awards: the nominations were announced at Eastercon last weekend. The full list is on the Renovation website, but the Best Novel category is as follows:

Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)
Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)
Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

Orbit: I bet you’ve been thinking ‘Hey, that A Genteel Black Hole hasn’t been talking about Jim Butcher for a while, I do hope she’s OK.’ Luckily, Orbit have presented me with the perfect opportunity for me to hammer the fan girl love home. They’re currently marketing his Dresden Files short story compilation Side Jobs, which I read this week. These short stories are mostly from existing compilations and slot in-between his main titles, including (insert squeal here) Changes and Ghost Story. Squeal. Side Jobs is a much-needed filler in the extended wait for the next instalment of The Dresden Files, Ghost Story. Aside from the usual prerequisite moments of arousal at inappropriate times of battle (can no one see a bare neck without biting back a primal roar of need?), this was a superbly written master class in the short story form, with the final original novella (I won’t spoil whose POV it is) showing off Butcher’s increasingly developed talent (insert wizard’s staff pun here). Highly recommended.

Voyager: there has been much love for Voyager author George RR Martin in the last few weeks with the airing of the HBO TV adaptation of A Game of Thrones, the first in his acclaimed A Song of Ice and Fire series. Unfortunately, in the past this hasn’t stopped the deplorable torrent of abuse Martin suffered at the hands of so-called fans for the long waits between books (how dare he eat/sleep/breathe when there’s writing to be done?! etc). The sharp Martin cut to the quick, blogging back: ‘You don’t want me to pull a Robert Jordan on you.’ You probably won’t have missed the continued confusion over whether he’s finished/ about to finish/ will never finish A Dance with Dragons, although Voyager have announced a release date of 12 July 2011 (yes, 2011). As for me, I’m currently reading A Feast for Crows in preparation, and, while not a rabid fan (loving, yes, but not foaming at the mouth), I do wonder how short this series would be if he cut out the names of all characters not relating directly to the plot. I am torn between wanting the richness and depth of the universe these names and histories convey, and just wanting the story to shine through without being bogged down by Ser Wainwright of Gallinfry whose claim upon the Bronze Throne was waylaid in 1044 by the damned Water Voles, lead by Ser Hillary the Waterlogged, who came up the river Blessed, following in the footsteps of his great uncle Baldric the Befuddled, whose voyage was doomed when he travelled 217 miles in the wrong direction on the shady advice of Dudley the Duplicitous, his fourth cousin twice removed. Basically I’m just moaning because he forces my brain to function instead of offering me the plot on a plate. Damn him. Meanwhile, oh look, Sean Bean!

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

Voyager: are very excited about the upcoming HBE adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones with Sean Bean in the lead. They’ve released a TV-tie in cover. I’m mainly showcasing this because I put a full stop in there on my work experience. I feel that, overall, it has made the reading experience better. OK so it was in the prelims, but seriously, you'll thank me for it.

Tor UK: have provided an extract from China Miéville’s upcoming science fictioner Embassytown (due to be released in May). Read and enjoy! Here’s a bit of blurb for you too (you’re welcome):

Embassytown, a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe. Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet. Here on Arieka, humans are not the only intelligent life, and Avice has a rare bond with the natives, the enigmatic Hosts - who cannot lie.

Only a tiny cadre of unique human Ambassadors can speak Language, and connect the two communities. But an unimaginable new arrival has come to Embassytown. And when this Ambassador speaks, everything changes. Catastrophe looms. Avice knows the only hope is for her to speak directly to the alien Hosts.

And that is impossible.

SF Signal: this is just an amazingly comprehensive site for all things SFF. Compared to SF Signal, my blog doesn’t even register on the radar, it’s just a bit of fluff on the screen that someone could eradicate with a little puff (that’s a quick blow, not a tiny, slightly offensive stereotype, obviously). An unbelievable amount of time and effort must go into this web of knowledge. Sad to say I’ve only just cottoned on to its weekly roundup of free science fiction and fantasy available on the internet. They do the research and I get to say ‘Look, free things!’ Grab a coffee and enjoy.

SFX magazine: speaking of great blogs, SFX have just launched the voting for their first ever Blog Awards. They’re celebrating ‘the best that SF and fantasy fan-driven and insider-developed internet activity has to offer.’ The shortlist is already there. You can pick from six categories: Best SFF Podcast, Best Fan Community, Best SF News Blog, Best Literary Blog (which SF Signal is in), Best Franchise Specific Site and Best Celebrity Blog. I was, of course, a very near shoe-in for that last one, just missing out to the likes of Neil Gaiman and Orbit author Kate Griffin, who is part writer, part lighting technician. She also prone to lengthy, enjoyable posts about anything.

Orbit: last week announced a new short story venture. Curiously, they’re using a robot logo and Angry Robot too have ‘nanos’, short stories available for download only from their authors, something that’s obviously catching on. That’s my passive aggressive way of implying that the robot could be replaced with something less robot-y. Like a tiger. Or they could stick with what works. Orbit’s short stories will also only be available as eBooks from a variety of eBook retailers. No prices yet, but some authors have already been listed, including Mira Grant and Jennifer Rardin. I do love short stories and these do seem perfect for reading on an eReader or an iPhone so it does seem like they might be the gateway drug to full-blow eAddiction. But I just can’t bring myself to part with the physical copy just yet. I still love the way I have to carry an extra bag to work, and how it squishes my sandwiches and banana to a pulp by the time I arrive (banan-dwiches).

TV preview: HBO's Game of Thrones

HBO’s Game of Thrones TV series based on the first book in Voyager author George R. R. Martin’s epic Fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire should premier April 2011. The network have released this behind-the-scenes video that shows-off their series and it looks like it’s going to be, well, epic. Anyone worried that the scope would be too vast to cram into a few episodes will understand why HBO have decided to tackle the books one at a time.

A Game of Thrones won the 1997 Locus award and has been nominated for other top awards since its original publication in 1996. Set in Westeros, the land where winters can last a lifetime, and lifetimes seldom last out the winter, this is a gorgeous and incredibly detailed series that is well worth reading whether you’re a fan of the genre or not. To put it very simply: it begins at the end of summer in a tremulous time of peace and descends through intricate layers of politics between ruling Houses across the land into all out war and full winter. There are supernatural threats building in the North, but the humans have enough to contend with just between each other. You’ll love characters and lose them: Martin is as brutal as he is talented.

As for the television cast, Sean Bean has combed out his Boromir wig for the role of Ned Stark and Peter Dinklage is exactly how I imagined my particular favourite character, the multi-layered Tyrion Lannister, would be. The preview reveals some truly amazing sets so much kudos goes to the art department. The CGI looks like it’s going to meld seamlessly with the large scale sets that look, thankfully, more LOTR alternative history than Zena.

Preview highlight: George R. R. Martin saying that Fantasy is bigger than history. He’s amazing.