I recently found a post-nuke series called Deathlands. Is it good? I don’t know yet. I just received my copy of Deathlands #1 ‘Pilgrimage To Hell’ today. Maybe I’ll dissect it here when I’m finished. Something interesting is that GraphicAudio, the publisher, has a specific marketing strategy. There are seventy or so Deathlands books, and a large number of them are audiobook only. They state their target as long-distance commuters. I find this interesting as it’s not often that publishers have such a narrow target audience.
More important though, I like to go through everything within my genre to make sure that my ideas haven’t already been exploited by someone else. In most cases, they haven’t been. My configuration of setting and character elements has enough of its own identity that it won’t be confused with others. This is good, but it doesn’t make the fear go away. I have this paranoia that one of these days I’ll pick up a novel and read exactly the novel I was writing. This is mostly an irrational fear, but in some ways a healthy one. It’s good to know what’s out there.
Is anyone encroaching upon your ideas?
To me it is less a question of originality, and more one of differentiation in the marketplace. If your product is the same as everyone else’s on the market, you will be marginalized or forced to fight a price war — as price wars are the result of a market flooded with similar products. Without any differentiating features, companies have no choice but to slash the bottom line.
It’s not like writers on average are the highest paid members of society anyway, so on many fronts we (I say we, not our publishers) can’t afford to slash prices. This isn’t Wal-Mart, right?
Anyway, the questions here are:
- Who is your competition?
- Who are the top three companies publishing in your genre?
- How do those publishers market their books?
- What are the top three brands or Intellectual Properties in your genre? (If you write fantasy one of these is inevitably the Harry Potter I.P..)
How does your product fare against the competition? Have you done any market research lately?
Well, I write fantasy, so there is little to no originality in that genre any more. I just figure I won’t do anything that I have heard or read being done on purpose. I’ve sure I have plenty of stupid fantasy cliches, but who doesn’t?
So here goes
Competition: J. K. Rowling and Christopher Paolini.
Companies: TOR, Knopf, and BB
Marketing: I have no freaking clue :S. Good covers, good writers (in theory), and perhaps good representation in magazines and the like.
Intellectual Properties: Harry Potter, The Inheritence Trilogy, C. S. Lewis (kinda), Tolkien (kinda).
How does it fare?: About as good as a cracker in a pool of water. But that is how it is for most fantasy writers. It’s a brutally impossible market in my opinion. And I’m writing a blog novel in it…that I’m thinking of running through publishers this coming fall…lord help me.
Most people confuse marketing with advertising. I’m not asking you to stand toe to toe with Harry Potter’s advertising campaign. Merely stacking yourself on a branding level. “Do you have a central identifiable character whose name also represents the title of the book?” or “Does that central character have something unique about them?” We’ve all seen wizards. What initially made Harry Potter different was that he was a boy wizard, and he went to a wizard school. That gave it an interesting twist that also made youngsters able to latch on.
These are things that any writer can do for their story and characters, and you don’t need Harry Potter’s marketing campaign to do it. I’m taking about the catchy memes ingrained into your brand from the start. How do you stack up in that department?