Write stuff no longer enough.

• Author: Rasnick, Chris
• Position: Guest column - Column

MARKETING.

Speak this word in a room full of literary types--poets, short-fiction writers, essayists--and watch the cheese fall off the crackers and the wine slosh in the long-stemmed glasses.

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It's not the word itself that rankles but the concept, until fairly recently an interloper in the literary community. Marketing used to be perceived by writers as an indistinct series of tasks performed by a publishing house functionary: a publicist.

Therefore the real challenge was simply to "get published," to find a press willing to take on your manuscript and turn it into a book, which would then be marketed to the reading public through a variety of means, all intended to generate publicity, sales and recognition.

Of course this was never the reality, except for a very few highly marketable authors like the Dan Browns and the John Grishams. Most authors receive little or no marketing support from their publishing houses. Meanwhile, we've witnessed advances become quite rare and royalty rates decrease in recent years.

Small presses--those that publish books unlikely to reach mass audiences--have never been big on marketing, but that is changing. Digital publishing technology has altered the small press landscape by reducing overhead costs associated with speculative press runs and warehousing. Digital presses can produce press runs as small as 25 or as large as thousands of copies in response to a short-term sales initiative, thereby eliminating waste and warehousing.

Small presses are springing up everywhere, and while there may be a shakedown at some point, the proliferation continues. Writers who 20 years ago might never have gotten close to a book deal now find a plethora of small press opportunities and at least a fighting chance to reach an audience.

Unfortunately, this sets up an emerging problem. The marketplace of readers is shrinking while simultaneously being flooded with books, and this means it is increasingly difficult to sort out the valuable tome from the miserable flotsam.

Enter the new challenge for emerging writers: It is no longer a question of how to get published, it's increasingly a question of how to get read. Perhaps this was always the question, but it is now amplified. How does one find an audience when readership is declining and production is exploding? How can your book be one of those that rises out of the flood and makes landfall?

Authors who understand the landscape are...