Selling Bottled Water in the Desert

What does it take to build a platform online? I look at blogs and I ask myself why one blog is successful and another isn't. I particular, I look at the blogs run by literary agents and I compare them to those run by authors. As a general rule, literary agents have blogs that have several times the followers that successful authors have. How do we explain this? There is a theory that as long as you write great posts, your blog will succeed. I won’t say that literary agents aren’t capable of writing great post, but if we are looking for someone who can write “great” posts, doesn’t is stand to reason that the typical bestselling writer should be able to write better posts than the typical literary agent? But the numbers don’t add up that way.

The reason this happens is fairly simple. Literary agents are doing what is essentially selling bottled water in the desert. If you’re out in the desert with a bunch of people, the guy selling bottle water is a popular guy. What literary agents have going for them is that they offer a glimmer of hope to the thousands (millions?) of authors out there who are hoping that someone will take an interest in their work. It is not unlike what we see with marketing gurus.  

There’s a fancy term for this, felt need. If you can address a need that a person knows he has, then you stand a better chance of attracting people. But we can’t all be literary agents or marketing gurus. We can’t all be the guy selling bottle water in the desert. So we end up being the guy selling sunscreen, which is more expensive to make, doesn’t sell in as high of volume and people have to be persuaded they need it.

Comments

Cindy R. Wilson said…
"Guys selling sunscreen", that's a good point. You're right, literary agent blogs are just overflowing with followers.

I wonder about author blogs, those who are actually published and have somewhat of a name. Do they have more reader followers or more writer followers? It would be interesting to see, as a writer, which group of people to reach to more if that day comes.
July 10, 2009 at 9:09 AM
Timothy Fish said…
Cindy,

You're right, that would be interesting. I think it would also be interesting if we could somehow determine the impact of the blog on sales, so we know if their efforts are helping sales or helping them in some other way.
July 10, 2009 at 10:04 AM
Michelle D. Argyle said…
I'm not sure how well a blog will impact sales of books, but it sure helps out writers, and is interesting for readers! Popularity comes about my many different reasons and means. I love the interaction part the most. Your posts are so incredibly helpful and insightful. I would love to see more writers over here discussing stuff!
July 10, 2009 at 4:51 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: WestBow Press

Image
T oday, I’m writing a book review unlike any I have written before. Actually, I’m going to I’m reviewing two books and I haven’t read either one. As you may recall, some time ago, Thomas Nelson announced that they were entering the vanity press market, using the imprint WestBow Press. The first books out of that arrangement are making their way down the pipeline, two of which you can see here. The first thing I noticed when they arrived was the size of the box. I arrived home and saw the box sitting on my front step. My first thought was that they had only shipped on of them. The box is the same sized box Amazon.com uses to ship individual copies of my novels. I opened it up and found both novels stacked neatly, one on top of the other. Both books have the dimensions 6” x 9”, a fairly standard size for non-traditionally published books. Publishing a book with that dimension simplifies the process when a book will be published both as a paperback and a hardback. One of the books is p...
Read more

Review: Raider Publishing

Image
A few weeks ago, I received a request from someone who had come across the popular Review: Westbow Press post. This reader requested that I look at Raider Publishing . After asking this reader a few questions via e-mail, I learned that she had used them to publish a book and was disgruntled with them. One of her complaints was that Adam Salviani was not responding to her e-mail and he was “unavailable” when she called his office in New York. This was brought on by her concern because she had not received an advance copy of her book and found that it had been published without her being informed. In her e-mail, she stated that she had been in contact with other customers and they had received the same treatment. I did what I normally do when I receive a request like this concerning a company I don’t recognize. I looked for as much third-party information as I could find on the web. Interestingly, I did that search before I realized she was disgruntled and I found relatively little to...
Read more

Is Tate Publishing a Scam?

Image
T oday, I want to take one more look at Tate Publishing and Enterprises LLC. In case you missed Tuesday’s post, Tate Publishing is a subsidy press that focuses on unpublished authors. They charge a $3,990 publicist setup fee, but they do appear to have sufficient staff to justify their claim that they have allocated $27,000 for each book. Today, I want to look less at promises and more at results. In the interest of showing rather than telling, take a look at the video below: One of the services that Tate Publishing provides is that they create fifteen second spots like the one above and run them on cable networks. They promise 80,000 impressions. Or to state it another way, they promise that 80,000 people will see that commercial. Someone from Tate Publishing is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they charge an additional fee for these commercials. The way I would expect this to play out is that each commercial will air one time with about 80,000 people watching. T...
Read more