Popular Marketing Mistakes: Cannibalism
1. The Sadness — It is too Much!
When my first book, The Inferior, came squalling into the light back in 2007 it received absolutely wonderful reviews.
“Read this and remember why Science Fiction lit your fire in the first place!”
“An exhilarating read, highly recommended and an incredible first novel in what is going to end up an incredible career.”
It made several “Best of the Year” lists. Foreign editors snapped up the rights. An agent in Hollywood got excited about the idea of a movie. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, for a start, nobody bought it.
By nobody, I don’t just mean sweaty little nerds like myself with fistfuls of notes or book vouchers. No, the shops didn’t want to buy it either. They failed to stock it, or did so in small quantities. They were right too, because the few copies that made it into stores gathered dust or wept quietly in the back of warehouses.
After “Best of the Year” lists, The Inferior began turning up in other places, such as “most underrated book” lists and — now that I have two novels in print — “most underrated series.” That’s a gentle way of saying “loserville.”
Yes, this depressed me and I whined to whoever would listen until I bored my friends to sleep with it. I didn’t understand back then that both myself and my publishers had made some interesting mistakes in our marketing of the book.
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