Thursday + Gregory Huffstutter = The Ad Man Answers
Advertising Make-Over #3
For the final Advertising Makeover, our “winner” is Alma Alexander, who entered the contest by contacting the Ad Man’s website. (Another example that a fully-functional homepage is a must-have, not a wish-I-had.)
Alma is the author of THE SECRETS OF JIN-SHEI (HarperOne) and the YA Fantasy trilogy: WORLDWEAVERS (HarperTeen). She’s specifically asked for help around the three Worldweavers books: GIFT OF THE UNMAGE, SPELLSPAM, and CYBERMAGE. Here’s the book jacket copy from the series opener:
“When there is a battle to be fought, it is you who can choose the place of the battlefield.” Thus says Cheveyo: mage, teacher, and the first person in Thea’s life to remain unimpressed by her lineage. From birth, great things were expected of Thea, but her magical abilities are, at most, minimal. Now, with Cheveyo, Thea has begun to weave herself a new magical identity, infused with elements of the original worlds.
Back in her everyday life, she attends the Wandless Academy, the one school on Earth for those who, like her, can’t do magic. It is at the Academy that Thea realizes she will indeed have to fight, since her enemies are hungrier and more dangerous than she thought. Fortunately, her greatest strength may be the very powerlessness she has resisted for so long…
Looking over Alma’s author
website, there’s several positives:
- A microsite specific for
her Worldweaver books
- FAQ
There are a few elements,
however, that could be improved to streamline the user experience:
- The microsite doesn’t
easily link back to the author’s homepage, so when you’re in it, you might
never realize the larger AlmaAlexnder.com exists
- There should be more
cohesion between elements of microsite and homepage. For example, Alma’s
bio is much more extensive on homepage than microsite.
- Alma has a nice bit of
social networking on her microsite (Facebook stream), but why is that not
incorporated into her larger homepage?
One additional morsel of constructive website criticism for Alma. And this one goes out to all published and un-published writers. Forgive my bluntness, but:
NO… PICTURES… OF… YOUR… CATS
Really, the same goes for all pets. It’s the equivalent of showing up to a job interview in flip flops and cargo shorts. You’ve just made it nearly impossible to envision you as a working professional. All that hard work creating a “writer’s persona” from book covers, reviews, links to Amazon… all shattered with one JPEG of your pet tabby.
Let’s examine the websites of the authors currently ranked high on Amazon for YA Fantasy:
How many corgi’s, calico’s, and cockatu’s do you see on those four websites? None. Because pet pictures scream “Hobbiest,” not “The Next JK Rowling.” And if you aspire to the same success as these talented writers, study at how they conduct themselves online and emulate it.
(Of the 4 authors listed above, Garth Nix has the most dynamic site with special fan content – podcasts, polls, sweepstakes, e-cards, message boards – and clean navigation thru his series novels. We’ll be further discussing Garth’s website in an upcoming Ad Man interview with this NY Times Bestselling author.)
The only author I’m giving a free pass on the “No Pets In Your Website” rule is Marshall Karp… partially because I love the guy, partially because he does it organically, with humor. Karp’s dearly-departed Jett had a “cameo” in his latest book, has a Bio page on Marshall’s website on par with other characters, and even wrote her own book review. Note how Marshall uses his pets’ book review to cleverly drop important pieces of marketing information – book release date April 1, hardback edition – so there’s a hidden agenda. It’s not just “look at snapshots of my fuzzy four-legged children.” (No surprise Marshall is himself a former Ad Man).
If you must indulge in pet pictures, relegate them to your Facebook page, your blog, or your Shutterfly account, not your professional author website.
OK, rant over. Back to Alma.
Alma has created a book trailer around her Worldweavers series:
Book trailers are a great
way to bring your novel alive with sight, sound and motion. The most effective author videos also
entertain while capturing the flavor of the narrative. Here’s some of my personal faves:
The preceding videos from Toby Barlow and SG Browne don’t regurgitate book-jacket copy, but rather use their respective novels as jumping off points. But if you decide to include some plot summary, here’s two authors who executed it well:
There’s an old saying in
advertising: “Sell a good night’s sleep, not the mattress.” To that point, look no farther than the
TV commercial for MJ Rose’s first REINCARNATIONIST novel:
Notice how MJ doesn’t even try to sum up her entire novel in the short 15-second commercial. Instead, she sells the experience of staying up all hours engrossed in a good thriller.
So what is Alma selling?
Is it a 400-page hardback that weighs one pound and has a pretty cover? Or is it, according to the graphics of her book video, the following story:
From the time of her birth
Great things were expected of Thea
But her
magical abilities were, at most, minimal
So after she
enrolls in the Wandless academy
She begins
to weave herself
A new
magical identity
Which aids
her as she battles
Magically
sinister email
And unlocks
the secrets
Of a
mysterious white cube…
Could Alma somehow sell an experience, instead of summarizing her plot?
From what I can tell, the Worldweavers novels tap into the wellspring of feminine teen angst – being a misfit, feeling powerless, yearning to find your place in society.
These are powerful, universal emotions that can form the backbone of Alma’s advertising campaign. Instead of spending 90 seconds talking about Wandless academies and mysterious white cubes, what if her video were to take a different approach:
Have you
ever wondered if you belonged somewhere else?
A different
family?
A different
school?
A different
world?
Born into a
family of magicians
Thea was The
Girl Who Couldn’t
Worldweavers. The trilogy by Alma Alexander.
For every young
woman struggling to find her place
Weave your
new identity
Weave your
dreams into reality
“If you
thought Harry Potter wasn’t fair to the fairer sex,
Worldweavers
is for you” – Wands & Worlds Reviews
Now
available by HarperTeen everywhere books are sold
www.Almaalexander.com
OK, so I fabricated the blurb. But it’s a good one and could be solicited to help place Alma in the same category as JK Rowling’s The Boy Who Lived, while creating a point of differentiation. Note that very little of the above copy was focused on the plot, and instead went after the emotional core that speaks to hormonal teens.
What if Alma were to take it a step farther and ask teen fans to submit videos of them talking about their life struggles? Especially if they could speak to how reading Worldweavers affected them:
“My best friend told me that
she was moving to Houston…”
“I want to be an artist, but
my parents won't pay for college unless I go into Engineering…”
“My older sister went into rehab and I didn’t know how to handle it, but then I read Worldweavers -- and thinking of Thea gave me the strength to redefine my relationship with my sister…”
Alma could incentivize fans into submitting these videos by giving away prizes – say a Dreamcatcher or custom knitting needles – then post the clips on her microsite as companion pieces to her book trailer.
Again, the point would be to emphasize that she gets what girls are going through in this formative stage, and her books speak to those emotions.
In any case, if Alma just removes the pictures of her cats, she’ll already be on her way to further literary success.
Thanks to all the readers
who submitted their books for advertising makeovers – golf claps for your
bravery. We’ll do it again
sometime!
Gregory Huffstutter has been punching Ad Agency timecards for over a dozen years, working on accounts like McDonald's, KIA Motors, Suzuki Automotive, and the San Diego Padres. His first mystery, KATZ CRADLE is on submission while he's working on the sequel. The first 100 pages of his novel are linked here. For general advertising questions, leave a comment or send e-mail to katz @ gregoryhuffstutter dot com with 'Ask The Ad Man' in the subject line.
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