Product Description
“We took assiduous notes – or rather annotated our digital text – while reading this guide for writers who want to see their work get onto shelves and screens”
[Brain Pickings]
"Stephen Brown debunks the myth that great authors don't care about marketing."
[Livia Blackburne]
REVIEW
Picture the scene. You’re a struggling writer. You’ve written the most incredible story. You’ve come up with a yarn that’s Twilight times ten, a novel that makes Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy look so last century. There’s only one problem. It’s a major problem, however. You’ve got to sell the thing. You have to persuade people to buy it, both literally and metaphorically. You’ve woken up to the fact that storytelling and storyselling are two completely different things. As J.G. Ballard once ruefully observed: “any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it”.
So, what do you do? How do you ensure that your Twilight times ten gets selected ahead of every other Twilight times ten on the publisher’s slush pile?
Fortunately, there is a simple solution: Instead of turning into the Business & Management aisles of your friendly neighbourhood mega-bookstore, or online emporium, head straight for the fiction section. Yes, the fiction section. The best insights into buying and selling and marketing and branding, and all that other awful stuff, are found in works of fiction, not big boring anthologies or dry-as-dust academic articles. When it comes to sales & marketing, one learned commentator makes clear, “you can learn more from a reasonably good novel than a solid piece of social science research”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of several books (from Writing Marketing to The Marketing Code), «Stephen Brown is the treat you can read between deals without ruining your marketing strategy».
"Selling Stories Successfully" is a short, focused essay. 5900 words.
[Brain Pickings]
"Stephen Brown debunks the myth that great authors don't care about marketing."
[Livia Blackburne]
REVIEW
Picture the scene. You’re a struggling writer. You’ve written the most incredible story. You’ve come up with a yarn that’s Twilight times ten, a novel that makes Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy look so last century. There’s only one problem. It’s a major problem, however. You’ve got to sell the thing. You have to persuade people to buy it, both literally and metaphorically. You’ve woken up to the fact that storytelling and storyselling are two completely different things. As J.G. Ballard once ruefully observed: “any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it”.
So, what do you do? How do you ensure that your Twilight times ten gets selected ahead of every other Twilight times ten on the publisher’s slush pile?
Fortunately, there is a simple solution: Instead of turning into the Business & Management aisles of your friendly neighbourhood mega-bookstore, or online emporium, head straight for the fiction section. Yes, the fiction section. The best insights into buying and selling and marketing and branding, and all that other awful stuff, are found in works of fiction, not big boring anthologies or dry-as-dust academic articles. When it comes to sales & marketing, one learned commentator makes clear, “you can learn more from a reasonably good novel than a solid piece of social science research”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of several books (from Writing Marketing to The Marketing Code), «Stephen Brown is the treat you can read between deals without ruining your marketing strategy».
"Selling Stories Successfully" is a short, focused essay. 5900 words.
