Menu

Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

Books That Should be Trending

Wednesday, September 21st, 2022

New blogger coming at you under the pen name, The BEAUpire Diaries. I am one of three interns at Beaufort Books this Fall 2022 and I will be starting my first blog post off by talking about what’s trending, what I’m loving after reading what’s been trending, and what should have gotten more attention as trends have passed along. 

Every few years, the book community seems to change what genre/theme of books is trending amongst readers. There is no predicting what those books will be, but once they’re trending they are suddenly everywhere until we’re all sick of them and onto the next “new” thing. In the early 2000s, vampire/supernatural books were the thing with Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, The Vampire Academy, Vampire Kisses, Eighth Grade Bites, and so many more. It then trends moved on to dystopian novels for a bit with some iconic movies following like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner. As much as we would love to bring all those books back for the sake of nostalgia, they are (for now) meant to be left in the past. 

What I am really seeing as a trend in books nowadays is the cheesy rom-com with bright and colorful cartoon covers that all kind of look the same. However, I like others have yet again fallen for the trends and am loving and buying all the romance. 

Below you’ll find all books that I have loved reading, featuring a little bit of all the trendiest genres/themes — a few have done pretty well in the market, and there are some that deserve to do even better, but enjoy.

Lacie’s Secrets by Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist

In no way am I biased by adding this book to what I’m loving, but one of our books, Lacie’s Secrets is one of the best spooky fall time reads to have on hand during these upcoming months of gloom. For readers and fans of Big Little Lies and The Haunting of Hill House, Lacie’s Secrets is a psychological thriller that takes place on the coast of Maine, when Kate’s sister disappears 18 years ago, and in the present time, her mother suddenly dies inheriting their estate motivating Kate’s return and the unraveling of secrets begins.

Buy Lacie’s Secrets

Alienated by Melissa Landers

Somewhere after the boom of dystopian titles, the sci-fi genre attempted to be the next big trend. The 5th Wave did well, but the others that followed lagged behind. Alienated by Melissa Landers was a book that I loved years ago romanticizing life living alongside aliens when Cara Sweeney falls for the first alien exchange student, Aelyx.

Buy Alienated

Bad Romeo by Leisa Rayven

With all of the swoon-worthy, new adult romance going around, I am surprised that this book hasn’t received its moment in the spotlight yet. This was the first adult romance book that I had read back when I was a senior in high school (six years ago) and I was so obsessed with it that I had my own fan cast. Bad Romeo follows the good girl meets bad boy trope when Cassie Taylor meets Ethan Holt while in acting school and they are cast to play Romeo and Juliet together.

Buy Bad Romeo

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

One of the most recently published and trending books that I wanted to feature is Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood. This is also an example of one of those iconic cartoon romance covers, but I guess they beat the romance covers that have shirtless, hairy men. Ali Hazelwood is well-known for her book, The Love Hypothesis, and a few others. I have yet to read this book, but I did buy it when it came out to add to my neverending TBR stack. Love on the Brain follows the enemies-to-lovers trope when Bee is offered her dream position with NASA the only setback being she is partnered with Levi Ward who has made it clear in grad school his feelings toward Bee.

Buy Love on the Brain

I am looking forward to continuing to work with Beaufort Books for the Fall 2022 term and writing more wildly interesting and creative blogs. The romance genre has always been a favorite of mine, so the blogs may lean heavier that way, but nevertheless. 

Sincerely,

The BEAUpire Diaries

Authors in the Driver’s Seat: Nielsen for Authors

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

I just got an email earlier today from an author talking about a huge jump in her Amazon ranking. This is a common scenario, and always a cause for celebration. However, I cautioned her that a major spike in Amazon sales rank (from, say, 1,000,000 to 100,000) does not necessarily indicate huge numbers of books sold. I understand this can be hard for an author to hear, and also hard to believe–such a big change in numbers must mean something! But the relative ranking system means that to go from #100 to #1,  you need to sell a LOT of books, but to go from 1,000,000 to 100,000, the sales don’t have to be that extreme.

I love it when my authors are involved in the marketing and sales process. What sells books is not Beaufort putting them out there, but our fantastic authors tirelessly introducing their books to people at speaking engagements, on their blogs, on television, even on the subway. Having an enthusiastic and involved author makes my job easier and more rewarding. I’ve tried to provide feedback to authors about sales, but I have dozens of authors, and they don’t stop being interested in their books when I take on new books.  It’s overwhelming to try to keep everyone posted about what their book is doing more frequently than they get royalty statements. So most authors turn to the most responsive real-time reflection of sales that they have access to–Amazon’s sales rankings. (I admit that I do it, too, when I’m trying to see immediately how effective an author’s appearance on a particular show was.)

Which is why I’m so thrilled that Amazon is going to start providing authors access to Nielsen sales figures through the Author Central program.

The LA Times goes into detail here.

I’d encourage every author to go sign up for Author Central. It enables you to fill in your author profile on Amazon, link your blog to your books, etc. And now, it’ll give you access (for free!) to the same tools publishers have to gauge sales. Every week, authors will be able to see their updated Nielsen sales figures. Those don’t represent all sales (special sales, library sales, the author’s own sales at events, and some other channels are not reflected in Nielsen’s numbers), but it’s a much more useful way to gauge success than Amazon’s sales ranking.

I think this is a great step forward, and will give authors more tools to help sell and promote their books. Kudos, Amazon.

Margot

What is Book Marketing?

Friday, November 12th, 2010

Betsy Lerner, whose office is right next to Beaufort’s new office, has written a brilliant article on what it means to market a book. If you’re an author, drink this in, because it will help you immensely when you publish your next book. If you work with authors, forward this to everyone you know! It’s really applicable to anything you want to market, but especially books.

“People who have long given up on Santa, on lower taxes, on the likelihood of Lindsay Lohan’s rehabilitation, still believe that Oprah would like their book. Is this the Quixotic self-belief that compels a person to write in the first place? Or that leads him to be believe that his book should be a bestseller, and that everyone on the planet would like it, no matter that it’s about copper buttons in 18th Century France.”

http://publishingperspectives.com/2010/11/should-i-tweet/

But the article isn’t just funny and snarky, it’s also incredibly informative. I wish every agent, editor, and publicist took the time to share this information with their authors, because it’s not their fault they have misconceptions about the industry. Readers only ever hear about the one-in-a-million success stories–the first time novelist with the six figure advance, the self-published book discovered by mainstream publishing that takes up nearly permanent residence on the New York Times bestseller list. They don’t hear about the hundreds of thousands of books that don’t work, because nobody does. That’s why they don’t work.

Enough from me. Go read the article.

Margot