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Queer Book Labels: Are They Helping or Hurting Sales?

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While cultural movements abound trying to increase queer inclusion and understanding, it’s no wonder that there has been a rise in queer books being published and, according to NPD Bookscan, a rise in queer book sales as well. It seems that being an LGBTQ+ book is a good thing right now, at least for sales. But what if, in some ways, those same labels are losing sales as well?

Consider, for instance, the pros and cons of these queer books ending up on various published “banned books” lists. When a queer book ends up on a banned books list, there is a possibility of the book gaining an audience, rather than being repressed, especially an audience that wants to fight back against this oppression and will go out to buy the books in support. This leads to increased sales of certain books.

Unfortunately, of course, not all books benefit from “banned books” lists in this way. This article argues that many books will just fall by the wayside and be forgotten. This is a tragedy, especially for all those potential readers from wherever they have been banned.

For now, however, many publishers still feel that queer books need queer labels to be discoverable. There are other aspects of the books that can be marketed as well, but according to sources in this article, a large percentage of the audience still finds queer books because they are looking for queer books. And that audience isn’t just queer people, either. This article is from 2020, so it’s a bit outdated, you could say, considering how quickly some things change, but the current trends in LGBTQ+ books being sold suggests this may still be the case.

But, even with this seeming success for the books that are making it, we publishers need to ask ourselves, is this actually what we want? Are these people just buying books because they are labeled “queer” or are they actually going to go home and read the book, process the book, and hopefully even love the book and want more like it? Is this trend actually a sign of cultural change or just a phase that will blow over like so many others have?

There are other things to think about as well, in a less philosophical vein. Are such explicit queer labels on our books actually helping reach our intended audience? For instance, this librarian warns that making queer labels too blatant can scare off some of the very people we are trying to reach because they aren’t ready or feel safe enough to walk around with an obviously queer book.

And what about people who would love these books, but aren’t actively looking for “queer” books? Some people are willing to read books with queer characters, but aren’t looking specifically for queer books. Not to mention, there is more to a book than just being queer. For some books, yes, the main point is being queer, with queer characters, and addressing various aspects of queer life, but for other books, it is the genre, the adventure, the plot, etc. that are more central, with the queer characters/stories being a bonus on the side. Are we doing these books an injustice by labeling them as queer, rather than letting them shine for their more central themes?

For now, yes, it still seems like queer book labels are not only helping sales, but one of the leading causes of their sales, despite whatever backlash might come from that designation.

But, hopefully, someday LGBTQ+ characters will be such a normal, accepted part of culture it will be an expected possibility in the books we read. Someday, we’ll be able to go out, look in any category, and find plenty of queer books right alongside their counterparts because it will be accepted that any book, anywhere, may reflect real life with real characters.

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3 Insights Into Social Media for Authors

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Many debut authors feel overwhelmed and confused by social media. Everyone, including your publisher, tells you that you should be doing it, but social media feels like an unnecessary distraction from the real work of writing. However, social media can be creatively adapted to suit the unique work you do as an author. Used thoughtfully, social media can be a powerful tool to strengthen your writing, readership, and career.

With modern digital marketing tools like social media, it is possible for authors with even a modest marketing budget to expand their reach and connect with enthusiastic readers effectively and in a more targeted manner than ever before. Social media can help authors connect authentically with readers and fans, organically expanding an author’s reach and increasing the visibility of their books.

How does an author use social media to market their books organically? These three ways are based on an approach to social media that book marketing expert Jane Friedman recommends:

1) Use social media as a natural extension of the work that you’re already doing

Social media doesn’t have to be an awkward thing that you do because you have to. It can be a natural outpouring of the creative writing work that you’re already doing day in and day out. For instance, you can actually use social media to share some of your writing work. Enthusiastic fans can help promote your work among their network through organic sharing, expanding your reach as an author.

Author Cassandra Clare recently ran a Twitter poll asking her followers which character “snippet,” or brief excerpt, they wanted to see from her upcoming book, Chain of Thorns. Clare regularly shares snippets of her upcoming books on social media, generating interest and enthusiasm among her fanbase so that they are more likely to purchase her upcoming releases.

Clare also shares art of the characters in her storyverse created by devoted fans. Sharing fan art is a smart way to engage your fan base as fans adore seeing beautiful art pieces of the characters they love while the sharing of fan-created art requires minimal effort on your part.

2) Use social media as a testing ground for your future books

Friedman explains that social media is a form of content and can be thought of as a micro-publishing platform. Often, these tiny pieces of work that you share publicly on social media can be the seeds for a larger work in the future. For instance, illustrators may post quick sketches on Instagram that later become a full-length print comic book.

Yung Pueblo posted brief reflections on love and relationships on Instagram as an unknown writer. Gradually, he gained a following and eventually published two books, one of which hit the NYT Best Sellers list.

You can also use social media to gauge how readers respond to your work. Paying attention to which posts garner more likes and comments will provide valuable insight into what content resonates most with your fans. This incredible intel can inform your work positively, helping to shape it into something people will be interested and excited to read.

3) Use social media as a way to connect with readers directly and authentically

One of the main premises of social media is that it is a tool to communicate with others. For authors, social media is a way to directly communicate with readers in a two-way conversation. Some ways authors can engage with followers include asking questions, expressing gratitude, sharing experiences, and even expressing frustration.

When authors respond to Twitter questions from followers or thank readers for praise of their books, they come across as more authentic to anyone who happens upon the exchange online. They appear less like a distant figure and more like a human being which leaves a more positive impression on followers.

For the author, it can be gratifying to see evidence of readers benefiting from and enjoying your book that you worked so hard on for years. Social media is a way for authors to discover small moments of joyful connection with enthusiastic readers, which can help fuel your excitement for the work that you’re doing today.

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Inside Ooligan Press: The Beginning Stages of a Manuscript with Ooligan

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The dust has settled. The Where We Call Home launch party went off without a hitch (unless you consider a random man offering Ramon, the illustrator, some homemade chocolate drink in the middle of the book talk a “hitch”). Josephine and Ramon continue to participate in book events and sell the book. I am a proud project manager.

Now we get to do the whole book production process all over again!

My project team is sticking to the nonfiction category, but we’re moving away from the natural sciences; our next manuscript, A Family, Maybe, is a memoir by Lane Igoudin about his and his husband’s struggle to form a family in the mid-2000s. It’s got drama. It’s got humor. It’s got love. My team and I are having a great time working on it.

Much has been happening this term for A Family, Maybe. The acquisitions team wrapped up the developmental edit, we’re working on the copyedit now, and we are about to start on the cover design. For my team specifically, the main focus this term has been on generating the inward-facing documents that will help us market the book. The two main documents that we’ve had our hands on so far are the persona exercise and the marketing plan. The persona exercise is an activity that my team and I did together to make up characters who we think would be interested in the book. We make up a primary audience member and secondary audience member from the ground up, identifying everything from their demographics to their family lives to their favorite foods. Being familiar with these characters’ lives helps us figure out how they would find A Family, Maybe. Would they see posts about it on social media? Would people in their lives recommend it? Would they purposely, directly seek it out?

The marketing plan is similar in the sense that we are creating the backbone of the manuscript. We include the “demographics” of the book (title, ISBN, BISAC codes, etc.) along with comparative titles, hook, back cover copy, and much more. This document serves as the foundation from which all subsequent documents stem. Soon it will be finalized, and then we’ll be moving onto generating a contact sheet. Once we reach that stage, I’ll have come full circle as a member of Ooligan; when I joined the press back in January 2022, the team I was on was in the contact stage.

It’s bittersweet, the thought that I’ve almost arrived at the same place that I started. Professionally, I’ve come so far in the past year. I have so many invaluable skills and experiences that I will take with me into my career. Yet my time at Ooligan is approaching its end. I’ll be training up a new manager in spring who will take over my role when I graduate in June. Although I am looking forward to imparting my knowledge to my successor, I’m finally starting to feel like I’ve really got the hang of this whole Ooligan thing.

But so it goes. I’m going to give my last few months, and the A Family, Maybe manuscript, my all, and I can’t wait to help it be the best it can be. There are some strong contenders for project manager after me, and I know that the next cohort is going to do a fantastic job!

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Reimagining Marketing with Curriculum-Based Teaching Guides

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Here at Ooligan Press, innovation has been the name of the marketing game in the past couple years. To market a book, you’ve got to market your brand.

This is where extending outreach to new or secondary audiences reimagines a stagnant brand strategy. We’ve taken the hassle away from literary analysis and created an online, self-guided curriculum for teachers, librarians, and independent learners alike.

Marketing to Educators

We all know Ooligan is staffed by Portland State graduate students. It would seem only natural that Ooligan serve educational or academic audiences outside of the typical target consumer. So, why teaching guides? And what titles will be included in this new outreach?

Extending our outreach to educators is really all about brand strategy. Every book has a specific target audience, but teaching guides act as promotional materials that appeal to a singular audience across multiple genres. This outreach attempts to solidify a stable target audience for our press. And a stable consumer means a potential increase in sales.

With creative writing exercises, reflection questions, and interactive activities, Ooligan’s new teaching guides will appeal to educators as well as the homeschooled learner or the not-so-enthusiastic reader. Not only do these guides reinforce Ooligan’s mission of regionality, community, inclusion, and social-emotional awareness, but they also strengthen pre-existing connections with educators and the Multnomah County Library.

In fact, as Ooligan Press’s 2021-22 Marketing Manager, I was shocked to learn that the press actually had dabbled with teaching guides in the past. With curriculum-based teaching guides of backlists like Ricochet River and Sleeping in My Jeans drowning somewhere in the deep, dark Ooligan archives, I took inspiration from the strategies of yesteryear and am seeking innovative ways to reimagine how these strategies may be more consistently and successfully implemented now and in the future.

In particular, we will be focusing this effort on YA titles. They may be fiction or nonfiction, but must teach valuable social-emotional lessons or spread awareness about key regional, historical, social, or political spheres. Think of it this way: if one of our YA titles can contribute to meaningful discussion in either a high school classroom or library setting, it is probably a worthy candidate for a teaching guide.

So, what does the process actually look like? Well, it’s taken some trial and error. First, the 2017 teaching guides from Ricochet River and Sleeping in My Jeans had to be redesigned. While the curriculum the 2017 Oolies had created is smart and interactive, the design was not much more than a PDF-converted Google Doc with some on-brand fonts. To ensure each guide seamlessly adhered to its respective title’s branding aesthetics, one volunteer crafts a beautifully designed guide. The sparkly new Ricochet River and Sleeping in My Jeans teaching guides are live on the Ooligan website’s Educator Portal, where access is just a simple click and download away for educators and independent learners.

The tricky bit? Creating the actual curriculum for new titles. Each teaching guide must have a particular set of interactive activities, discussions, and additional materials like comparative readings, teaching slideshows, and K-W-L curriculum worksheets.

Whew! Oolies are multi-talented, absolutely. But it’s not like all book publishers are versed in the art of curriculum building, so how the heck do we do it? With the assistance of fellow educators, our curriculum will be reviewed and given the green light. Once this happens and the curriculum has been created, a callout goes live for yet another designer to conceptualize and design the curriculum into a brand new teaching guide.

What’s Next?

Promotion, promotion, promotion.

With all this hard work, it’s crucial that we ensure these standards are incorporated into future production schedules. Project Managers now have access to a Teaching Guide Checklist to assess their title’s appropriateness for a teaching guide. In the Marketing Plan stage, project teams will begin planning for teaching guides in their Marketing and Publicity Highlights, and will begin production after blurb requests—before publication.

Oh, but that’s not all. We’ve got to spread the word. Social media promotion and community connections will be important here. So, get to work on those social media collateral callouts and continue to reach out to educators and libraries for some awesome deals on class sets. This year at Ooligan we’re all about innovation. If all is implemented successfully, teaching guides can set a precedent for a stable target audience within our little independent graduate press.

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Inside Ooligan Press: Your Manuscript is Accepted! Now What?

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Note: This is part of the blog series “Inside Ooligan Press”, about how we take a manuscript from an idea to a professionally published book.

So, you wrote a killer query letter and submitted a proper proposal. You won over Acquisitions and we pitched your project to the press successfully, then we offered to publish your book: now what? For the sake of transparency and in an effort to demystify this crazy little thing called publishing, I humbly offer you an inside look at what you can expect when working with Ooligan Press.

Once you get notified that our pitch was successful, we enter into the contract negotiation phase of the process. We are a small, not-for-profit press that generally cannot offer author advances. However, authors are compensated for their work, receiving industry standard royalty rates for trade paperbacks based on cover price and units sold, paid out biannually after publication. The Publisher and author negotiate terms of the contract including dates and deadlines for revisions, the final manuscript and any additional materials, and publication, among other things. This process generally takes about two weeks, give or take, during which time it is encouraged that the author has a trustworthy individual review the contract with them.

Once the contract is signed, we will typically go straight to work with a light or heavy developmental edit, determined by the Acquisitions Editors when we evaluate your manuscript. As a teaching press, we accept manuscripts that are strong and show immense promise, but that offer learning opportunities for the members of the press. This includes the need for editorial work. Expect to do revisions! The Acquisitions Editors lead a team of editors in reading and analyzing your manuscript to determine what is working and what needs work based on our knowledge and experience. We craft an editorial letter full of our critiques, compliments, and suggestions for revision and deliver it to the author for review. We follow up with a phone call or video chat to discuss the letter if the author feels it would be beneficial to do so. The DE process takes about a month, sometimes more. Then the author gets to work on revisions, for which they also get about a month to complete, though timelines may vary based on the project.

During development, your title may change. Sometimes it is necessary to tweak the title, or change it altogether, but not always. Acquisitions Editors must consider best practices for title generation and consider whether yours is appropriate for the genre and market, the literal and connotative meaning of the words or phrases used, and whether it encapsulates or represents the content found within the book. If we feel a change is necessary, we provide the author some alternative titles to consider and deliver them with the editorial letter. While the author’s input is taken into account, the final title is decided upon by the editors.

While we are hard at work developmentally editing your manuscript, you will be completing Ooligan’s Author Questionnaire: a document that will be used by all departments to produce and promote your book. While this questionnaire is lengthy and can feel slightly invasive, the author can of course choose which questions they will and will not answer depending on their comfort level.

Upon delivery of the revised manuscript and questionnaire, the author is then introduced to their Project Manager: the person who will see the project through the rest of the way. They are responsible for keeping the production of your book on track and are your primary point of contact for questions and concerns after acquisition and development.

Your manuscript will undergo copyediting by a team of editors, led by Ooligan’s Managing Editor. Depending on the needs of your manuscript, this may be a light, medium, or heavy copyedit. We use The Chicago Manual of Style as our primary style guide. This process may take one to two months depending on the time of year and the current stages our other titles are in. The author then receives the edited manuscript and reviews and implements the editorial suggestions, for which they typically get a month to complete.

While these editorial processes take place, your book’s dedicated project team, led by your Project Manager, has already begun their work crafting the sales hook, back cover copy, and so much more. They work with the managers of each department, Acquisitions, Editing, DEI, Digital, Design, Marketing, Publicity, and Social Media, to create a master plan to produce a quality book and launch it into the world. But wait, there’s more.

Be sure to check out future installments of this blog for a look at more stages of the production and promotion process at Ooligan Press!

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Social Profit in the Process of Publishing Poetry

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Many avenues come to mind when we think of marketing a book. Social media, public-facing events, local outreach, and more—there are numerous ways that authors and their teams can work to get consumers interested in the upcoming release. However, the one genre that seems to be overlooked here (leaving the responsibility to therefore fall on the writer) is poetry. Such has been the case since the debut of poetry collections, but I would argue that, in order for the genre to reach its full potential of artistry and audience, the marketing style must become a collaborative process.

For an example of how things are currently run, you could turn to the writer-friendly website pw.org. There, folks who have hopes of getting their work out there can find different guides and tips on how to do so. What’s interesting is their webpage devoted to publishing advice for writers of poetry collections. Poets & Writers almost immediately states that poets should first look into small presses to have a great success rate at getting published, and also at finding people who will be more devoted to helping them develop their work: “We suggest you begin your search for a book publisher by looking at small presses and university presses [. . .] they do not have the resources of larger publishing houses and offer smaller advances, they are usually more willing to help you develop as an author even if your books aren’t immediately profitable.” This suggests a contention between large publishing houses and new poets in the sector of marketing. If larger publishers are unwilling to help new poets develop, then the responsibility lies with poets to first seek out smaller journals, magazines, and publishing houses to get their work out there and make a name for themselves. While this is a concept that is in practice with other genres, it does seem to occur most often with poetry.

And this goes back to the beginning. You could think of poets such as Ezra Pound or Edgar Allen Poe, who both have been remarked as having enough determination and entrepreneurial spirits to get their work published (because they had to). Or Walt Whitman, who first self-published in 1855 before he was taken seriously. The list goes on, of course, and still continues to be added to in the twenty-first century.

In today’s marketplace, self-promotion is a given. The hardship of success for writers, though, comes from the fact that just about all areas of art and creativity are (and I’m trying not to sound harsh) over-saturated. With growing technology and various social media platforms, artists of all kinds are competing for a spotlight. Knowing that, the evidence is clear that poets’ being left to their own devices (literally) for self-promotion of their work just won’t cut it. If the marketing teams at publishing houses would combine their industry knowledge of the booksellers market with the personality and intimacy of the artists’ identities, we’d find an equation for achievement. And while you could argue that using a business to market oneself could be construed as “selling out,” this is a position of privilege—and naivety. New-to-the-scene writers can’t deny promotion if they have no platform to begin with; and the refusal of established artists to collaborate only serves to maintain the divide that disadvantages those hoping to break into the domain, and the benefits of a better relationship would go both ways.

Of course, there is much to gain from simply being on the receiving end of poetry; but there can also be financial security for businesses. In working around poetic language, moguls with a tendency toward the practical can learn new ways to market for their own benefit. As one article puts it: “There’s no doubt that poetry is profitable for brand managers and marketing researchers both. Poetry improves our prose (Stern, 1998). Poetry stimulates our synapses (Sherry & Schouten, 2002). Poetry transports us to the secluded bower of creativity, imagination, management.” Studying verse and the imaginative minds who write them can teach a manifold of pathways for reinventing language. In my experience, that’s the best thing about poetry: reshaping speech for the purpose of distinct, unique expression. By observing this skill set, managerial teams can obtain a better understanding of how they could morph their outreach ideals to draw more people in.

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Holiday Romance Success

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Safe to say, if you’re looking for a sweet, cozy read with a happily ever after, romance is the genre for you; and if you’re also looking for a little bit of holiday cheer, romance has plenty of options to choose from. But the amount of holiday themed romance novels that are advertised through the last half of the year makes one wonder—does anyone read those books after the holiday season passes?

To answer this question, I compared five Halloween books and five Christmas books that are popular recommendations on Booktok and Instagram. Six of the books were published in September or October of 2021, and the other four were published in August and September this year, 2022. After looking at the weekly sales of each of these books from their release dates to this October, the simple answer is no: these festive holiday love stories are not widely read year-round.

Despite this simple answer, however, there are a few interesting exceptions in the six books that have been released for a full year. Particularly, two of the books saw quite a bit of success throughout the year, despite their clear holiday subject matter: The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling and Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper. While the other four books showed a large decline in sales during the months of March through August, these two titles remained quite successful for holiday themed titles. According to NPD BookScan, both novels had steady weekly sales throughout spring and summer. In comparison, every other book published in 2021—Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist by Codi Hall, The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox, The Holiday Switch by Tif Marcelo, and Window Shopping by Tessa Bailey—sold significantly less.

What is so different about those four holiday titles from the other two published at a similar time in the exact same genre? The most obvious difference—those four are all Christmas books. Interestingly, NPD BookScan also shows that these four romances had fewer sales in their first four weeks after release than the two Halloween titles. Sales for the 2021 Christmas releases stayed relatively low, whereas Sterling’s The Ex Hex and Harper’s Payback’s a Witch both sold three to four times more copies. The preference for Halloween novels could lie in the advantage of Halloween being the first holiday of the year between itself and Christmas. However, it could also be because consumers are spending more money during the Christmas season than in the months before Halloween.

While the complete year of data is not available for the holiday romances released this year, the beginning of this same sales pattern is shown in the BookScan numbers for the 2022 releases. When comparing all ten titles together by weekly sales organized from publication date rather than calendar year, the Halloween titles—Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match by Sally Thorne, The Kiss Curse by Erin Sterling, and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna—mirror the sales for last year’s stories. These three Halloween stories had strong sales numbers right at release followed by a slight decline, then a steadying of numbers a few weeks after publication. The Christmas title, however—Codi Hall’s There’s Something About Merry—has low numbers with neither an increase or decline since release. This differs from the 2021 titles because they all saw an incline during the months of November and December, then a decline in the month of January. Presumably, Hall’s title will follow the same pattern.

Ultimately, while the answer to the initial question of “are holiday romances read year round” is no, the Halloween titles still see reasonable success throughout the year. Whether this is because romance readers are always in the mood for something a little witchy, or the fall season is the go-to for a cozy read, the numbers prove that if you want to write or publish a holiday read, Halloween is loved year-round.

Halloween books discussed in this post:

    Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match by Sally Thorne
    Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper
    The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling
    The Kiss Curse by Erin Sterling
    The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

Christmas books discussed in this post:

    Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist by Codi Hall
    The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox
    The Holiday Switch by Tif Marcelo
    There’s Something About Merry by Codi Hall
    Window Shopping by Tessa Bailey
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Marketing YA Fantasy

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At Ooligan Press we publish about four new titles each year. Each book has a unique aesthetic which is consistent across all marketing, design, publicity, and social media collateral. In order to inform this aesthetic, our team puts together a “branding brief” for each book. This document serves as a way to inform how our marketing should look and feel.

Currently, our team just completed the branding brief for Keepers of Aris, our upcoming YA fantasy novel by Autumn Green. Keepers of Aris is about a young woman, Jay Raremore, who was born with immense and growing magical powers. At the time when our story takes place, Aris Magica, the secretive realm of magic that exists parallel to humanity, is in danger and Jay is the only one powerful enough to save both worlds.

Keepers of Aris touches upon themes such as grief, loss of innocence, and the struggle of battling with real-life and inner demons. Because the content of the story is more advanced, one of our goals is to make it clear in our marketing materials that this is a book that will appeal to an adult audience, as well as to young adult readers. To do this, we need to make it clear that Keepers of Aris, as far as young adult books go, leans more towards the adult end of the spectrum, rather than the middle grade end. Often middle grade novels include cartoonish or illustrated images on their covers or images with recognizable faces or silhouettes, which we have avoided using on the cover. For future marketing materials, we are avoiding bright or vibrant colors and using a darker color palette instead. On the other hand, we also want to avoid communicating that Keepers of Aris is too heavy or dark for a young audience. As a result, we are not going to focus on the violence or bloodshed in the story; this is not a significant focus of the novel, so we don’t want it to be a significant focus in our marketing.

Another consideration when branding Keepers of Aris is how to communicate what type of fantasy the book entails, or what subset of fantasy it falls into. Keepers of Aris can be considered low fantasy, meaning that the story takes place in a world that is otherwise normal, outside of the magical elements that our characters encounter. This is in contrast to high fantasy, in which the story takes place in an alternative world. Keepers of Aris takes place in the modern-day universe, so we want to steer away from an aesthetic that would communicate a medieval, ancient, or futuristic setting.

The plot of Keepers of Aris largely takes place at the Institute, a boarding school for teenagers with magical abilities. To communicate this, we are going to focus on images related to the aesthetic of “dark academia”. Dark academia is typically associated with a darker, moodier color palette and images of gothic architecture, vast libraries, school uniforms, and candlelit study sessions.

All of these things help communicate the tone of the book, which we described as being “serious, somber, dark, and mysterious”. Developing a cohesive brand for a book helps communicate to readers the core message and themes of a book, thereby connecting our book with our target audience.