Game of Marketing

X and I were talking about The Whole Process - and, since it was something I should be blogging about in any case, I thought I would just use our email exchange.  We were talking about querying "to the market" in a sense.  Generally, we were discussing whether and how to use a popular phenomenon to sell the book - specifically, we were talking about the current success of Game of Thrones - which, though fantasy, in fact shares a great deal in common with The Ax and the Vase.



X: I've read most of the Game of Thrones series but not watched any of the show. So I can only speak to what the books contain, and anything the show presents differently or through a lens intended for mass market is outside my experience. GoT, the books, are very much a so-called 'low' fantasy series, concerned much more with political intrigue, bloodlines, religion versus state, etc. Mostly they are fantasy only in the sense that they didn't actually exist, and George RR Martin created them so that he could have 'historical' sorts of countries and kingdoms vying with each other in the way he wants them too. They aren't an alternate history to ours, but probably most of what happens in them would be plausible in our Middle Ages.


D:  That's what I meant to be saying.  It's interesting you bring this up, because it's something I should actually be blogging about. The querying process is much complicated by the question of genre - and for a LOT of people these days. For me specifically, this very phenomenon - that low fantasy, which is becoming very much more popular, is less about magic quests and dragons, but about the freedom to create realities and relations outside the constraints of "real" places (hee - like my idea of Gaul is real ...), and Game of Thrones has been a HUGE looming example of this. More than once for a while now, I have been tempted to use it as an example of the marketability of my own product. Though I think A&V is more textured and (not a great word choice probably) "psychological" than this kind of fantasy, it does have a *great* deal in common with these things, and the way they have just taken off into the stratosphere, especially with GoT's rather remarkable success on cable now, is both tempting and really problematic for me.
D:  My solution so far has been to restrain myself from comparison (it never EVER works, really, to be all "vampires are hot right now; here's my vampire novel" anyway) and insert a solitary item in my query that says my audiences include those interested in Rome, barbarians, religious history, medieval and Norse, and traditional fantasy. I'm still not sure it is satisfactory - which is why I say I should be blogging about it. Displaying the awareness (for agents to find when they Google me - and they do) without making a pointed show of it directly in the query is, I think, the best thing to do.

X:  Yeah, how do you position the book as a real-life Game of Thrones without looking too much like your grasping desperately for popularity. It'd be nice if some portion of the GoT readership comes over, but you want the work to stand on its own without looking like a GoT cash-in.
X:  There has to be a way marketing-wise to say, 'hey if you like things like GoT, you'd like this, and it's based on real-life' without the literal 'FOR FANS OF GAME OF THRONES(tm)' blazoned everywhere.

D:  This is a hard nut to crack, because the show has turned out to be successful.  It is really hard not to position yourself to catch the light of reflected glory - so, to my mind, it has the potential to be worth touching on. Even if not in my first-contact tool, the query.

X:  I don't have any idea how faithful the show is. I think you are wise to slip in a subtle link in some way though.

D:  Well, as I say, putting the old "Genre B is hot, please read my Genre B story" is awful, awful, awful form, and you hope that agents will Google you. For that matter, I maintain the links to my email, blog, and even LinkedIn profiles in my signature block, as you have seen. If they are interested, agents DO search you. I've been able to tell more than once when agents have hit the site, based on timing of queries and incidence of hits to my authorial pages - the bio, the excerpts, the author's note, - even the images. So to add a post about this seems wise, but this week I just have NOT been able to get myself to do much on there (other than b*tching about That Guy at work, and regurgitating the latest query experience). If they want to know your understanding of the market, you can display it at a blog and they don't have to slog it in a query letter. So I think I've found the solution, but I just haven't done anything about it.
D:  I've said all along that having a blog in my real name is primarily geared toward its being my authorial platform, and over time I have worked a lot to refine exactly what is presented there. It's entirely calculated that I do still include dorky asides about Star Trek or annoying stuff that happens during a week or whatever, BUT most of my posting is in one way or another written to be read by (hah) "my public" - and, by that, I intend to mean those who would read my work. I want to put out there as "this is the kind of author I am" *and* at a blog, I can break some of the rules of querying - I can also bend those genres which blend audiences with mine, without apology.  So I focus pretty heavily on my process as an author, but I can also reach out to Trek fans, and all those readers whom, if I tried to stuff them into my query pitches, would make it look like I am trying too hard.
D:  I try to keep the blog looking limber. The variety on which I post is mercenarily calculated.  What seems personal and having nothing to do with writing, usually is chosen in order to indicate something, even if it's just a sense of humor, or the philosophy behind the writer. I've also set myself the task of focusing a LOT more on posting about history, histfic, writing in its aspects beyond the shilling process - and, of course, the shilling, which a lot of WRITERS want to read about. (Yeah.  Need to get better about some of this ...)  So I'm setting myself up as something of a voice of experience even without the "authority" of Being Published - both to put on display to agents my expectations and professionalism, but also proffering the benefit of my expectations and professionalism to anyone who doesn't know this process (whether having an eye toward doing it themselves or simply being interested in it but not from the standpoint of wanting to replicate it - so, people like The Sarcastic Broads ... and also like you. I actually use you, sort of, as my model of audience for non-writers I want to keep READING).