What Does It Mean: Genre?

When we get ready to send out a query, one of the things an agent or editor will want to know is what genre the manuscript fits into. According to the Encarta dictionary, genre means:

1. category of artistic works: one of the categories, based on form, style, or subject matter, into which artistic works of all kinds can be divided. For example, the detective novel is a genre of fiction.

 

Knowing the genre helps determine your target market, and gives agents and editors an idea of what comparable books have been written. If the market is saturated with that genre, or it is in a genre that has been selling especially well, that might affect the agent’s or editor’s interest in your manuscript.

Agents and editors each have their own area of interest, so you don’t want to waste your time, or theirs, sending queries to places that don’t handle the type of work you’ve written. But sometimes a novel or nonfiction book will contain elements of more than one genre, making it hard to classify. One way to narrow it down is to visualize where you’d expect to find your book if you went looking for it in a bookstore. For example, where would your young-adult-historical-romantic-suspense novel (or whatever you’ve written) fit best on the bookshelf at Barnes and Noble?

Choosing the appropriate genre can be confusing, so I’m going to write a series of blog posts about some of the genres in fiction and in nonfiction. I’ll do one or two a week, so if there’s one you’d like me to discuss right away, leave a request in the comments. In the meantime, here are some sites that list some of the different genres in fiction:

http://www.agentquery.com/genre_descriptions.aspx  A list and brief explanation of some basic genres in fiction

http://www.cuebon.com/ewriters/genres.html A long list of genres, with lots of subgenres

 http://www.writersdigest.com/article/genredefinitions/  Writer’s Digest list of subgenres, with brief descriptions

 

What genre you do prefer reading? If you’re a writer, what genre does your work usually fit into?

 

[Via http://thewritingplace.wordpress.com]

SWEET & CYNFUL

Ok, So CYNFUL owner Cynthia Ultsch has been busy again making some cute new items which she released yesterday, if you havent got yours yet, i suggest you get on over there!

Skin       :Curio: Acorn-June 2-Calla Lily

Hair     >TRUTH< Trisha – Espresso

Top   [ Cynful ] Sinful Shorties – Black

Bottoms    [ Cynful ] Jeans Shorties – Grey (Leggings included)

Shoes    Kboots- black (Exile)

Earrings  -LC- Pierced Heart Earrings – Black Glass

Necklace  Aurora Borealis~ Casandra Necklace

Happy Shopping

K Xx

Get out of the office and interview a customer today

Today I watched a snippet of an interview with David Meerman Scott on his blog, Web Ink Now.   In the interview, David made up a new acronym: “MSU” – it stands for Making Stuff Up.   He points out the lunacy of the behavior of marketers and product managers who sit in their conference rooms with nice cosy Aeron chairs, making up theories about what they think they should do to sell to customers. Instead of spinning theories about how people buy their products, these marketers should get off their behinds and go talk to their buyer personas.  It would be transformational – you would learn something new about what people really need.

This resonated deeply with me.  I’m a huge believer in getting out of the office and meeting some real buyers and users.   If we are inwardly focused, we’ll lose touch with the buyers and users and end up missing the mark.   Sadly not everybody shares this view… One of my previous startups had a leadership team that was very inwardly focused.  They persisted in Making Stuff Up.  Predictably, most of the stuff didn’t work and the product didn’t sell very well.   The startup eventually perished.

So don’t get caught in the MSU mentality.  Get out of the office and do some interviews today!

Social Media ROI

Social Media = Positive ROI  Companies that are widely engaged in SOCIAL MEDIA surpass their peers in both revenues and profits.   300,000+ business have a presence on Facebook Dell sold over 3,000,000 computers over Twitter.

Blendtec quintupled sales with “Will It Blend?” YouTube videos 37% of Generation Y were aware of the Ford Fiesta via Social Media before it even launched. 

What these statement speak LOUDLY is Social Media has given POSITIVE RESULTS with low overhead.  THAT speaks volumes by itself.  BUT marketing wants ROI’s drawn up on paper.  In today’s marketing….not happening presently.  Traditional marketing has lost it’s high dollar appeal, fueled by this economy, its generating a mass movement to Social Media Marketing.  Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI…old media was Pay to Play…do you think the majority of media dollars will reside there tomorrow?

WHAT ABOUT THE ROI’S?  

Good question…but shouldn’t we be answering:

“WHY ARE WE TRYING TO MEASURE SOCIAL MEDIA LIKE A TRADITIONAL CHANNEL?”

 

71% of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40% because:

1.  Low Cost Marketing
2.  Getting Traction
3.  We Have To Do It

Socialnomics blog states really well:  Social media touches every facet of business and it should be viewed more as an extension of good business ethics.  Which, if done properly, will harvest sales down the line.

ROI’S?  Most definitely Social Media is moving and keeping up with technology…Marketing – traditional marketing has just barely started moving in that direction,  realize that people have taken the power of conversations into their own hands. Most people become informed on whether a product or “brand” is worthwhile by opinions and comments from consumers via reviews, Social site, email, and twitter. 
Those can’t really be tracked as traditional ROI’s.  Mcdonalds says it plainly:  ”Our head of Social Media is the customer”

It’s a new era, with old value’s…at the speed of the internet = realtime: word of mouth. 

 

What’s your opinion?

การตลาดป่าไม้

304445     การตลาดป่าไม้     Forest Marketing

บทบาทของการตลาดต่อการพัฒนาป่าไม้ หลักการตลาดและการวิเคราะห์ปัญหาทางด้านการตลาด ไม้และของป่า อุตสาหกรรมป่าไม้ อุปสงค์และอุปทานของผลิตผลและผลิตภัณฑ์ป่าไม้กลยุทธ์ส่วนผสมการตลาดป่าไม้ การวิจัยการตลาดสินค้าป่าไม้ การควบคุม และการประเมินการเปลี่ยนแปลงทางด้านการตลาด

(Role of marketing in forest development, principles of marketings, analyzing marketing problem, wood and non-wood forest products, forest industries; demand and supply for forest produces, marketing mix strategy of forest produces, forest marketing researches, control and evaluation of marketing performance.)

(304445 มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์)

Dear &lsquo;Condominium Developer&rsquo;, A Little Branding Goes A Long, Long Way

Here is something I received last Saturday morning, what I termed as ‘Door Spam’, leaflets/flyers stuck on the front door grille. It is a leaflet for a condominium development. Which one? I really can’t say. This is the second time I have received this leaflet. I cringed both times.

Observe for a moment. What is wrong with this leaflet?

Absolutely Zero Product Branding

Somehow, the creator of this leaflet had failed to provide a name for the condominium. Apart from a spot of personal branding for a ‘Mabel Ang’ and ‘artist’s impressions’ images, no other product branding element is visible on this leaflet. Perhaps they had deemed revealing the condominium’s name as none-too-important, or keeping it a mystery will entice prospects to put in a call. Wrong move I say.

Or perhaps the condo was so badly named, they decided not to use it after reading the article on the importance of naming condos and its significance.

Cryptic Copywriting

What exactly is the inspiration behind ‘cryptic’ and ‘ambiguous’ copywriting? There is a neglect to inform prospective clients of the condominium’s actual address but instead, ‘Minutes to Somerset MRT/Orchard/CBD/IR’ and ‘Prime District 9’ are used.  Come on! That can be anywhere on the southern part of this island.

Is it a top-secret, top-end location that is only to be revealed once you are funneled through the sales pipeline? To see if you fit the bill of a likely buyer persona first, someone who is flushed with cash to spare? But why then did this leaflet appear on my HDB door in Toa Payoh!? I see that as a failure in market research and a waste of money and paper it is printed on.

Does the whole thing sounds fishy?

You bet. The credibility factor is non-present in this effort. For a $800k product, this leaflet certainly did not help in providing consumer confidence to anyone that came upon this. I find it intriguing that if this leaflet does indeed belongs to the ‘Developer’s Sales Team’, why the secrecy and ambiguousness behind the effort?

Perhaps someone from the real estate industry, or close to it, can provide an explanation for this? I’d love to get to the bottom of this! Leave your comments below!

 

Bonus section for the marketer in you!

Using Direct Marketing Mailers to Win Online

Direct marketing via mails (physical or electronic) may not be the best form of marketing (it is interruptive after all). But heck, since it is being used and money is going to be spent, might as well use the opportunity to provide content or more information to the prospective customer, right?

So how to do this on limited real estate on a piece of flyer?

By bringing them online to your website through a printed URL. As long as there is compelling content and relevant information provided on your website, you can be sure your prospects will be happy to devote time and attention to your efforts. It is also an excellent opportunity to build a database of customers who are willing to listen to you on a regular basis. With the permission you have received, you are now ready to start a direct mail campaign online. I am sure that is more cost effective than printed materials and manpower cost for ‘door or letterbox spamming’.

Provide your social media information to direct your prospects to connect with you. This is your Facebook or Twitter pages. The fastest way to connect with you.

See? Your investment in a leaflet has possibly doubled or tripled! Perhaps Mabel Ang might want to take a leaf out of this

Self Publishers Guide To The Best Cheap And Easy Book Marketing Tips

source: http://articlescollections.com/self-publishers-guide-to-the-best-cheap-and-easy-book-marketing-tips/

Whether you’ve just published a book or have a book that isn’t selling, now is the time to get to it; start marketing today! Self publishers need to have a good marketing plan to sell books and should be written prior to writing your book and in place a year prior to publishing your book. Your book selling, book marketing, and book promotion planning should begin before the manuscript is completed.

Your book press release should not be written as you would a sales letter or flier, it should be written for the editor and tell about your book in a factual way, no opinion or glowing remarks. Mail a press release to at least 1000 print and broadcast contacts just prior to publishing your title and again and again after you publish; you can never send too many.

Make sure you have at least one good press release, written in AP style, that you can send out for the lifetime of your book.

Using press releases can be a very effective marketing tool if used properly. Make sure your press release spells out the ‘who, what, where, when, and why.’ Learning to write and use powerful optimized press releases can often drive tons of traffic to your website while providing multiple back links that can lead to increased page rank and numerous top ten search engine rankings for your targeted keywords.

Don’t underestimate the value of a good press release for making book sales. Send out the same press release to the editor of your local daily newspaper every week until you are called for an interview or are written up.

Make five telephone calls a day that relate to marketing your book. Create an online contest and list it in online contest directories to drive traffic to your website. If your book solves a problem, focus on this in your marketing.

Get as many testimonials about your book, as possible, from experts in the field relating to your title, not customers; use on your fliers and back of books. I’ve seen publishers lose a lot of money paying for expensive display ads, so beware if you do this; I don’t advise it in the beginning — get your feet wet first so you know what you’re doing.

When you get a nice write up or feature about you and/or your book, have it laminated and set it up on an easel at trade shows.

Every day it’s important to focus on a variety of marketing approaches. If your book fits a specialty market, find a store that fits the genre and offer to leave books on consignment; many publishers have sold thousands of books this way. Make sure not to overlook the Internet; get yourself interviewed or profiled for sites both about writing, publishing and about the topics covered in your book.

Remember to make sure your book is listed in Books-in-Print; don’t assume its already listed. Submit articles to online article directories that focus on your book’s topic to drive customers to your website. Contact non-bookstore booksellers and offer to leave books on consignment.

Build a web site that provides another avenue for ordering, a virtual online press kit and link exchanges with sites that relate to your topic. Make sure to promote and market your book each and every day, both online and offline.

It’s important to publish a website that focuses on your title; you’ll be able to refer editors and customers and all interested parties to your book information with the click of a mouse. Local radio shows and television appearances are good but are often forgotten within hours of the broadcast; make sure to make or get a copy of any television broadcast for future promotions.

Make sure to do some serious marketing and promotion every single day, no excuses. Don’t delay another day if you’ve fallen by the wayside; make sure to focus on promoting, selling and marketing your book each and every day. One of the biggest problems self publishers and book publishers tell me about is the hundreds of books they have in inventory they haven’t set up a marketing plan for; don’t let this happen to you — get prepared now.

For more information on book marketing tips and selling more books go to http://www.TwinPeaksPress.com founded in 1982, specializing in help for authors, self publishers, ebook and book publishers with tips, advice and resources, including information on media, library and other mailing lists, and press releases – online, wire service and offline distribution

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