Since I am a full-time writer, the challenge of creating demand for works of art is a topic of serious personal interest for me. So I enjoyed this recent article in Locus magazine by the journalist/blogger/science fiction novelist Cory Doctorow about his experiences in self-publishing, and in particular what he has learned about creating demand for books. (Doctorow is also the co-editor of the great website Boing Boing.)
Doctorow begins by describing one of his chief formative influences as a writer–his stint working as a clerk and sales person in three different bookstores. It’s proven incredibly valuable for him to have worked at both ends of the demand-creation chain–as a product creator (that is, as an author) and as the person in a retail setting who put the product in the hands of a specific customer and either triggered a sale or failed to do so. It might be useful for every aspiring demand-creator to spend some time in both roles–for a car designer or automotive engineer to work the floor of an auto dealership, for example.
And what insight did Doctorow take away from his bookstore jobs? That most new books fade quickly from the public consciousness. They appear briefly on store shelves, garner a couple of reviews and maybe an author interview or two, win the hearts of a few booksellers and some discerning customers, and then disappear even from the publisher’s catalog just a year or so after publication. And those are the best-supported books, the ones publishers put their time, energy, and resources behind.
It’s a sobering reality most first-time authors don’t understand. (Having worked in publishing for many years before becoming a freelance writer, I was familiar with it, of course.) But Doctorow didn’t let these facts discourage him from trying self-publishing. Through lots of experimentation with promotional efforts that failed and others that succeeded, and years of dogged efforts to connect with sympathetic readers using any and all communication methods available in the twenty-first century, Doctorow figured out some labor-intensive but effective ways to launch new books. He has now published several profitable self-published books, including at least one (Little Brother) that has won multiple awards and even appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.
Doctorow’s message to those who hope to create demand for books: “Getting people to care about the products of your imagination is a profound and infinitely complex task that will absorb as much attention as you give it.” Or as I might put it, demand creation is as much of an art as, well, art itself. It’s a challenging truth that every artist (or would-be artist) of our time needs to confront and, somehow, deal with.
— Karl Weber
