Is there a template for authenticity? Or novelty?

Lockdown cliche that I am, I'm been listening in to a few seminars recently. To do with work and to do with my rather bedraggled attempt at being an author. This week's seminar from The Society of Authors promised to combine both - the topic was Marketing your Books.

I did pick up a few tips and once I'd got my head round the idea that the speaker was talking more about what I'd call sales, I was happy to listen in to learn what I should really be doing to sell my books - getting an email newsletter together.

I won't be doing that, though, for a simple reason. Sales is not the prime objective of my marketing. And it's for this reason that I found the tenor of the talk slightly depressing:

There are no new ideas in marketing

All marketing is a numbers game

Just copy from those who are doing it well/properly

This flavour of marketing is something I've touched on before, in relation to creativity. Here, and here. The idea that with a mix of templates, frameworks, tools and algorithms, you can create by formula. And I've discovered a myriad of websites that can churn out content to promote your book, from Canva to BookBrush. And yes, I probably will give them a go, and stick it on Instagram to see what happens. Although I'm not sales-driven, I'm never going to say no if someone wants to buy my books. Of course not.

I am sure I could find a antique-looking map background and possibly some representation of a scorpion and create a nice little promo for my book. But I fear it would get lost amongst all the samey coffee cups, socks, flowers in vases and shabby-chic backgrounds that one sees in book promotion.

The map would not be the genuine article of the place that inspired the book, from the early 1960s, still encrusted with a hint of desert sand.

And the scorpion wouldn't be a fluffy one.

The thing is, there's more to marketing than numbers.

There is magic, mystery, creativity, novelty, authenticity, surprise.

And none of these things are available via a template.

Th' milk of human kindness

I've got a little prediction. Brand managers will notice that the poster girls of 'Purpose' - female empowerment, body positivity and gender stereotyping - are getting a little long-in-the-tooth and been there/done that, and will start casting around for replacements. Maybe something that's a little less MeMeMe?

A few strands of thought will coalesce. Reports about the divisions and fault lines in society. The movements against online bullying and trolling - #BeKind - and the debate surrounding this. The trend to "uplit" in the publishing world. The call for more empathy, even though people that work in advertising and marketing aren't as good at that one as they think. And, of course, brands that have already taken the first step.

Coca Cola has recently announced its refreshed purpose as "unite and uplift". To me this sounds rather like the opposite of the old Playtex Cross Your Heart line which was about lifting and separating. Brushing that aside, though, as Graham Booth states in the blog post, Coca Cola kind of has uniting in its DNA, although there's been some dilly-dallying around with other ideas in the last few years.

The launch commercial, "Could I be wrong?" has been out for a couple of weeks. We've yet to see if it joins the realms of classic Coca Cola ads such as "Hilltop".


And another variant on the "be nice to each other" theme is Cadbury's, whose brand moved (in 2018) from catalysing moments of joy (which are a little MeMeMe) to moments of kindness to others, specifically generosity, with the idea that "there's a glass and half in everyone."

I'm not sure what the best translation is for "kind" in German - there's "freundlich", which also has connotations of friendliness and approachability. Or "nett" which is simply "nice" with the same sort of connotations. And the words "gütig/gutmütig" which are to do with Goodness.

And this is the thing with kindness. I do think it's a valid area for a brand purpose, but it really isn't a one-size-fits-all thing. I'd hate to see the advertising world awash with "th' milk of human kindness" in the way it's been over-run with increasingly cliched babble about female empowerment.

You can ask children to play nicely if you're a nanny or or primary school teacher. But you can't tell adults to be kind. Kindness comes from within, from your values, and isn't just about some stunt involving random acts, or forcing people with extreme opposing views to drink a beer together.

What unique role does your brand play in kindness? Is it about bringing people together, sharing, helping, caring, understanding ...?

I do hope that the idea of kindness will be a rich seam for marketers.

Yet, advertising industry, do I fear thy nature when it comes to band wagons.

You put the words right into my mouth

One of the biggest mysteries to me as a writer is this paradox: when asked what they're looking for above all else, literary agents and publishers will talk about Voice, and specifically, fresh new voices.

Yet most of the recent novels I've read recently have felt as if they could have been written by the same person - or even the same AI algorithm. There's very little out there that feels original in terms of Voice (if you must) or what used to be called style.

The homogenisation of language is observable wherever you turn. From novel straplines /Three painful secrets. Two passionate hearts. One forbidden love) through to clickbait headlines through to comments on social media through to newspaper articles.

And in the world of advertising, as this excellent article by Shai Idelson makes clear.

Predictive text is partly to blame, and worse still, what I call assumptive text (all those "Happy for you" "Congrats! Let's catch up" "What an achievement!" suggestions that pop up on something like LinkedIn).

But at the root of it is human laziness. It's so much easier to click on an off-the-shelf suggestion than think up something original and personal.

Please - let's not allow the richness of the English language (or any other language, for that matter) to be reduced to the superficiality of emojis.

AI: Master, Servant or Something Else Altogether?

The use of AI in the entertainment industry has been the subject of a number of posts here - there's Creative Direction by Numbers  and Why advertising may be the last refuge for creativity - and if you put my entire blog through your super-advanced AI platform, you'll doubtless find many more.

I was talking with a friend about the publishing industry recently - and how new novels seem to be identikit these days - from the reviews ("heartbreakingly sad yet life-affirming") through to the interchangeable cover designs. Many new novels seem throwaway and forgettable - with a superficiality and lack of edge that suggests they are the literary equivalent of the selfie.

Films seem to have gone this way a long time ago, and this week, I read an interview with the CEO of corto.ai where, yet again, I got the impression that entertainment is increasingly data-driven, and not necessarily in a good way. The company "have successfully developed a quantitative model of how various narrative structures drive performance for movies, trailers and marketing campaigns." And here, I'm assuming "performance" means pure commercial performance, not awards or reputation won, or whether the film will go into the annals of history as a classic.

Here again, if you look at the entertainment example given on the website, the analysis is all about "what were" and "what have been" - that is, the old rearview mirror method of predicting the future based on the past. A self-perpetuating system.

No creative person needs evidence derived from AI to understand that what people find interesting is a balance between "known" and "novelty" - nor can AI really help you to get this balance right for any particular individual. It's part intuition, part good judgement plus a large sprinkling of luck.

In contrast, another AI agency, discover.ai, presents a different philosophy. Less concerned with Hollywood (although I am sure Hollywood could benefit from this approach) and more with brands, this agency makes it clear that expertise in AI and expertise in people work hand-in-hand. The blog post Why we should embrace bias gives another perspective to the one that suggests bias is a negative in research that AI can help eliminate. It's well worth reading, with some points dear to my heart - "No objective truth", "Data is not reality" and "People make decisions, not data". I particularly like the quote from Gary Smith )"The AI Delusion"):

While computers are very good at discovering patterns in data, they are useless in judging how best to apply them in the real world because they lack human wisdom and common sense.

AI is best used to accelerate and augment human intelligence, not substitute for it.

I'm jolly excited by AI - in the way that I'm far more excited by a springboard than a straitjacket.

Book Branding Part 2

In my last blog post, I talked about Author Branding vs. Book Branding, and today I'm going to launch something rather special that's been waiting in the wings (or the hangar) ready to fly.

If I'd decided to go down the Author Brand route, I expect I would have put something together that would have ended up looking like every other Author Website, with a few fun facts about my schooldays, how much I love cake and how many cats I have (none).

But I decided early on that people aren't that interested in me, rather in getting a glimpse into the world of my books: characters, cars and planes featured, links and more. And all my websites do allow a little bit of author-ego indulgence as I'm not completely immune to the lure of the limelight.

The original idea for the look of the website came from Stefan Lochmann, the designer. In the stories a 21st century boy, born into the digital age, travels back in time to the mid-20th century. In the same way that the book design reflected an old book "found" in an attic, Stefan wondered what an "analogue website" would look like.

The idea translated into the websites for the first two books, each reflecting the specific setting and atmosphere of each story, but with the central idea of an "analogue website" made up from signs and materials from those times. So here, for example, we're whisked into a Cold War winter of 1957.

Website for Trouble in Teutonia

As with the book covers, the websites all reflect the essence of the book series: The Past is a Dangerous Country, and play with the digital/analogue theme as well as each having its own individual feel and atmosphere.

The latest story, The Al-Eden Emergency, is set in a 1966 Middle East and Swinging London jetpunk world. There's a preview shot at the top of this post to entice you in, and I can now proudly present the finished website.

Just be careful you don't tread on any scorpions!

Book Branding Part 1

I've mentioned a few times how the concepts of Personal Branding and its subset, Author Branding make me shudder and squirm, which may seem odd for someone with a background in marketing who is running a (slightly bedraggled) literary career on the side.

Looking back at those posts, I found a phrase that turned the shuddering up to full-blown convulsions: "curating and sharing a version of yourself." What the heck is that supposed to mean?  Was Ernest Hemingway occupied with "curating and sharing" a version of himself once he'd spent precious hours and dollars with some snake-oil salesman intent on "discovering his personal brand"?

I'm in the throes of launching a third book, and I rather proudly posted the photo above. A social media acquaintance praised the "great branding" and the comment made me wonder - how did that happen?

I certainly didn't spend any hours or dollars with snake-oil salesmen. Neither did I run off to construct a key, or an onion, or a pyramid, or trawl the thesaurus to find 3 or 4 adjectives to reflect the essence of my brand.

But I did realise that, unlike the narcissistic generation that fall prey to the marketing gobbledegook, I hadn't created an author brand, I'd created a book series brand.

This wasn't a Powerpoint boxes-and-arrows process. The brand had evolved organically and intuitively.

It had started with the story, and from the story, the cover. What kind of image and design could reflect what this book was about: A Boy's Own Adventure for the 21st century boy - or girl. I briefed the publisher with this picture, amongst others:

That went some of the way, but together we decided that the book shouldn't merely look retro, it should look and feel "found," as if a youngster from today had discovered it in an attic, or an old toy-box. We were lucky to have a super illustration, a composite of some of the elements of the story - a ferocious tiger, a Sunderland Flying Boat, and the young hero with his RAF officer "Grandpop" peering through some jungle vegetation. The first goes at design took the route of comics - bright colours and power-packed typefaces.

But, we hummed and hah-ed. It looked action-packed, and retro, but maybe too reminiscent of Commando Comics. And they were great but unashamedly trashy. Would people - especially young readers - get the irony?

I went to a different designer who tried a different approach - to get the "found book" feel in the cover design, with muted, slightly yellowing tones, and less in-your-face graphics. The publisher was inspired - and chose paper quality and colour, as well as the matt cover finish to complement the design.

When it came to the second book, a pattern was set - the illustrator had two characters, an aeroplane, a beast (which would also appear on the spine) and action to play with, in a very different setting. The strap line came almost as an afterthought - I stuck with "The past is a dangerous country" because I couldn't think of anything better. And it was growing on me.

With the latest book, things could have gone pear-shaped. My publisher didn't have the time or resource at that point to see it through, and the original illustrator was no longer available. But we had built up enough "branding" by now for the designer and I to understand what was needed. The illustration is of a slightly different style, but this reflects the focus on older readers and a more complex narrative structure as the series evolves. The consistency in the two characters in action, the creature and the aeroplane remains.

What's interesting is that it was only with the third book that I realised I had a brand. And it wasn't just to do with the stories themselves, or the alliterative titles, or the "found book" design and style. I had a strap line that summed the whole thing up: "The past is a dangerous country."

If we must talk about brand essence, then that strap line is it.

My next blog will be about creating an "analogue website." Keep your wireless tuned.

Happy Hybrid

In the autumn of 2018, I celebrated becoming the owner of two passports – and thus two citizenships – German in addition to my native British. I’ve always enjoyed being something of a mongrel, and I believe that in the future, having experience of both cultures, languages, and ways of doing things will stand me in good stead for whatever life throws my way.

Designer dogs

At around the same time, I signed a publishing contract for the third in a series of retro-style adventure stories for 9 -12s. And this signature would also lead me towards a new status, this time as an author – what I believe is called a hybrid. Nothing to do with roses, or vehicles, or designer dogs with funny names, but rather an author who is both traditionally and self-published. But before you start imagining the story of an author bravely “going it alone” after enjoying the dizzy heights of publication by one of the Big 5, let me gently remind you of what you already know: every path to publication is different.

My “traditional” publisher couldn’t be less conventional. And my “self-publisher” has often been described as a Rolls-Royce.

Boy’s Own adventures for the 21^stcentury boy – or girl

Although I’ve written fiction on and off throughout my life, it wasn’t until I’d completed a fourth novel that I decided to take this publication business seriously. This particular story was inspired by my father, who’d been an RAF pilot during the Cold War years. When my young son started asking questions about the granddad he’d never known, a delightful question whizzed its way into my head:  what if a 21^stcentury boy, born into the digital age of smart phones, Google and virtual reality could meet a hero of the analogue age, and experience all the adventures of those days?

Cue a reimagining of the Boy’s Own-style adventure story for the 21^stcentury boy – or girl. I did have interest from one or two agents, but in the end, it was a competition run by a small press (Earlyworks Press) that was my stepping stone to publication. The Bother in Burmeon was published in 2012 by Circaidy Gregory, an Earlyworks Press imprint. Two years later, a sequel – or is it a prequel? – saw my young hero whisked back in time for another adventure with his Grandpop, this time in Trouble in Teutonia. For both of these titles, I’d enjoyed the creative freedom an author has with a small publisher – I had considerable personal input into the cover design and the look and feel of the book (carefully produced to reflect the retro-style) as well as writing the story. A drawback of a smaller publisher is that marketing budgets don’t stretch further than a few posters and flyers, but the advantage is that the author has licence to do their own thing. I had great fun contacting my old chums in advertising and design for the websites and the YouTube trailer.

Going it alone

The next book was rather a long time coming, as work and family life gobbled up much of my spare (writing) time. My publisher gave an enthusiastic but non-committal response to the story in theory as I crossed my fingers and got on with polishing. But after a few months, the woes that can beset a small press became more and more apparent. Lack of time and resources. Other priorities necessary simply to keep afloat. Promises made to other authors way in front of me in the pecking order. A decision deadline came, and I was advised it would be better for me to find another publisher or go it alone.

I have to admit this flung me down in the dumps. 2018 wasn’t my greatest year.

For the rest of the story, please continue here