(not) Paul Tobin
One of the things that constantly amazes me about the book publishing world is how little control over the cover that most authors have. As a naive youth, I pictured authors strolling into art studios, looking over cover designs with a critical eye, cuffing artists on the back of the head in justified displeasure, then sketching out a few quick designs which the artists would fawn over, gathering around like koi when crumbs are spilled into a stream, and then running off to their drawing boards to do as they were told.
Oh no. Not at all.
In reality, it’s more along the lines of a marketer telling an artist what to do, and then the artist doing up the art, and then a designer honing it according to several unassailable principles, and then getting the publisher to okay it. There! Done! Around about this point, there’s generally a moment when a marketing intern, new to her craft, asks, “What did the writer think of it?” At that moment the marketer says, “Oh, yeah… I suppose we could email him a jpeg to let him know how it’s going to look.” They do so, and then everyone returns to their cocktails. Most writers aren’t very much a part of the process at all.
This, of course, makes it very difficult to judge a book by its cover. Horribly horribly hard.
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I confess. I collect fortune cookie fortunes. The good ones, that is. One of my favorites is “Mistakes bring experience. Experiences bring wisdom.” to which I added, “Then make as many mistakes as you can.” Or as John Scalzi once told the ArmadilloCon Writer’s Workshop class, “Dare to suck.” Human beings learn best through trial and error, you see. And if there’s a time when trial and error is important, it’s during a creative endeavor. No creative does everything perfect the first time. In fact, nothing kills creativity faster than perfectionism. Creativity is dangerous, you see. Therefore, the best, most successful creative environments are child-proofed nests designed exclusively for risk-taking.* For writers, the creative environment is their own skull. Fill the brain case to the brim with negative criticism, and you might as well quit now and save yourself the abuse.
If you write fiction, presumably you’re doing it because you like fiction. Presumably your readers like fiction, too, or they’d spend their time doing something productive like raking a compost heap or shaving their eyebrows.
Man, this is a tough assignment. Why? Because what do I know? What does anyone know? If people knew how to market books well, and consistently, everyone would be doing it. But there are so many pieces to this puzzle, not the least of which are limited time, skill, and money. Are we expected to not just write good books, but sell them as well?
You know, if you’d told me even two years ago that one day I’d be discussing the ins and outs of marketing and promotion, I’d have laughed in your face. In my day job I run screaming from any tasks remotely related to marketing. Technical proposal writing is about as close as I come, and that’s under duress. I’d always assumed marketing was the province of the natural extrovert – something I’m decidedly not.