This fantasy business. Dragons and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.

*Writing from somewhere in a hermetically sealed room* With 10,000 words and three weeks to go (*reaches shakily for the Diet Coke*), I thought that this week I would treat you all to the results from my questionnaires about stigma and science fiction and fantasy publishing. While I acknowledge that it is good to provide a balanced result, I’ll happily admit that when I sent the surveys out what I ideally wanted someone to respond with was this:

‘I hate science fiction and fantasy with a passion, it’s just swords and sorcery and Tolkien/Twilight rip-offs anyways, right? I’m just grateful that it stays the hell away from our precious literary awards. My bookshelves heave with long-listed titles. If I see some middle-aged loser reading a trashy fantasy book on the tube, I move seats in case they try to invite me back to their parents’ house to play Dungeons and Dragons in their basement ‘apartment’ while their mum makes us sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Did I mention it was lowbrow?’

And repeat times 100 and I would have had full justification for writing 20,000 words on the damaging effect of stigma on the genre fiction market. HOWEVER, obviously that wasn’t going to be the case *tears up dissertation plan*, but that doesn’t mean that some of the results weren’t curious.

So, from 200 people and two different surveys, drum roll please (you'll be pleased to know I've used pie charts):

THE RESULTS

Here's the breakdown of who people view are the type of readers the market is aimed at:

And here's why people choose not to read science fiction and fantasy:
Wait for the curious part.

Prepare to squint in amazement. Here's what those same people say they've enjoyed reading:

Notice anything (apart from it being really, really small)?

That's right, eagle-eyed reader, they all contain science fiction and/or fantasy elements.

I'll leave you with my favourite response (from a good friend, I found out. Yes reader, I have a friend):

(In response to a question about which covers they prefer) ‘They all look the same – dragons and shit. I seriously wouldn’t read any of them.’

Can I put ‘shit’ in my dissertation?

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

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

UCLan Publishing – it’s the first time these guys have featured here and, well, OK, I’m part of them and it’s my blog so they’re first billing this week. UCLan (that’s University of Central Lancashire, non-UCLanites) have their own publishing house and as part of our Publishing MA, we’re hosting a Science Fiction and Fantasy writing competition. To sum: Anyone can take part. The word count is 2,000 – 10,000 words. It should be speculative fiction. The winning submission will become an interactive eBook. The winner gets £150 and a sense of pride. Avoid cliché. Deadline is 18th March. Complete stories only. So get writing! Full details are on our Facebook page.

Angry Robot Books: as per a previous post, these guys are doing something freakishly similar to UCLan press, but, you know, with a budget. It's unsolicited submissions month - they're accepting complete submissions only - much like another publisher I may have mentioned (UCLan Publishing).

Scrolls: part of the Geek Syndicate network of podcasts (self-described as: ‘fairly drunken, incredibly sexy’. Beautiful), this podcast is an interview with 7 UK SFF writers about getting into writing, whose time was purloined at the SFX Weekender. The interviewees are speculative fiction golden boy Joe Abercrombie, Scott Andrews, Peter F Hamilton, Jonathan Green, James Lovegrove, Andy Remic, Adrian Tchaikovsky and some Camber Sands seagulls. Topics covered: getting re-commissioned; standard rejection slips; how style can’t be taught; mechanics of language; unflinching read-through crews; writing and editing process and how to know when your book’s ready for agents. I particularly enjoyed the slightly awkward misunderstanding between Hamilton (who does ‘know how to tell the story’ and doesn’t need story editing) and the interviewer. Also enjoyable were the solemn, post-interview add-in announcements of each author’s name. Most interesting point this makes is that agents aren’t always necessary for authors – James Lovegrove has had 35 books published and has been more or less agent-free throughout. That said, persistence should come as standard.

Orbit USA: have commissioned a self-published author. Michael J Sullivan’s Riyria Revelations series will be published in three volumes, the first book of which – Theft of Swords - will be out in November 2011. These have already been making their own merry way in the world in eBook form and print on demand and populating the eBook bestseller lists. Compared with Terry Brooks and Brent Weeks by Senior Editor Devi Pillai, who goes on to describe the series as clichéd (bizarrely) but also adventurously fun. Sullivan has this description on his site (the italics and speech marks suggest it is a quote. I suspect it’s his quote): "There's no prophesy, no innocent boy destined to save the world, no ultimate evil to be slain. Just two guys in the wrong place at the wrong time trying to survive." One fan’s comment on the Orbit blog states: ‘Orbit, I hope you realize the legion of fans who have been reading, raving about, supporting, and sharing this great series since its inception.’ I suspect they probably did know, hence commissioning. I also suspect I will be buying Theft of Swords. It goes to show that eBooks have power. And that hype has power over me.

Other Orbit news: they’ve launched their podcast, which can be downloaded on iTunes. The first episode features the much-publicized Joe Abercrombie, who has emerged from the geekdom sphere and pierced the nirvana bubble of mass literary acceptance.