Londonstani and TV ads for books
Robert McCrum writes bizarrely in his Guardian blog that the tv ads for Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani are a “passing fad”. Hasn’t he seen the ads pioneered by Penguin, Headline and HarperCollins for genre authors from Nikki French to Josephine Cox? Maybe he is only interested in “upmarket” names – he quotes Ian McEwan and John le Carée in his blog.
To be fair, it may be that McCrum didn’t notice the other ads. Most are appallingly bad – Headline’s recent tv treatment for James Patterson were hilarious, hailing back to corporate promos fronted by fading celebs inspired by Duran Duran vids. Gawd ‘elp us!
Good TV ads for books are rare. Penguin’s creepy treatment of a Nikki French novel a few years back was memorable. It featured a woman being chatted up over coffee by a nice man. Appearances proved deceptive: he was a serial killer. It played on the stranger danger fears and loneliness of many women. It set my friends – most of whom are not in the industry – talking.
McCrum says dismissively that the Londonstani ads will undoubtedly have some impact on sales of the book, and seems to regard the campaign as Fourth Estate desperately trying to claw back its £350,000 advance. It will, he says, be a rare TV push for a first novel.
I do not agree.
McCrum’s argument is based on a number of false premises. First is that by splashing out money on tv the advance will be recouped by sales. TV ads are very expensive. Publishers’ commercials are so bad because they operate on budgets far below those of other media. Bestsellers, especially literary ones, do not sell in the Harry Potter-like numbers needed to justify a massive spend.
Also, the advance is not quite the amount mentioned, which means the overall investment is lower and therefore easier to recoup. Advances are usually for two-book deals –Londonstani is the same. It is unlikely to signal a one off, but the start of Malkani’s career as an author. I doubt very much £350,000 was paid into his account….he will have received maybe a third to half of that. Have a look at my feature on authors’ earnings, Don’t Give Up The Day Job.
When Gautam signed his deal with Fourth Estate it was because they had ideas for the book that went beyond marketing to the usual suspects: middle-aged, middle-class, white. Gautam was excited by Fourth Estate’s ideas to reach a wider, more diverse audience with Londonstani, a readership not so far from the people he writes about. I know, because he told me this.
Personally, I thought the book was great. It is an astonishing first novel. A lot of the negative press seems inspired by the advance or the fact that Gautam works for the FT (though not being from the same background as your characters never got William Boyd or a host of other white men writing from the p.o.v of women in trouble).
A similar thing happened to Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist - a good book given a rough ride because of the advance. I do not blame critics. Not at all. I blame the crazy way the book trade is going. We are all complicit.
The money is used to signal quality and “must review”. It gets everyone focused inside a publishing company, and is a useful “in” for publicists trying to get authors coverage in an increasingly competitive market and sales people trying to get bookshop buyers to promote a book. The problem is that critics are placed in the position of having to say: is it worth it? Let’s face it, for most authors, their first outing is rarely their best. The advance is a handicap based on what agents are willing to demand and publishers willing to pay. And before anyone says, the author could say no, ask yourself what you would do?
That brings up a whole other issue: inflated advances paid to first time authors because they look marketable and have no sales record to sully their chances with the chains and supermarkets. It is a ludicrous, neophile culture, which militates against nurturing talent and condemns many promising young – and established- authors to either a future of dimishing advances as publishers “correct” past mistakes or a future on the slush pile because their books never earned out
Inflated advances that encourage “is it worth it” reviewing play into the British desire to cut people down to size. Ours is a mealy-mouthed culture. We don’t bring tall poppies down to size, we eradicate them, which makes for very bleak meadows. Or in book terms, very boring bookshelves.
4 Responses to “Londonstani and TV ads for books”
hi danuta. great post. i put a comment on the guardian blog under McCrum’s article yesterday, highlighting that actually 4th Estate aren’t doing any TV advertising – the piece refers to HC Canada who are doing some awful advertising for it – but online only. So McCrum is not only wrong but also doesn’t read his own paper. He seems to have a vendetta against HarperCollins (or anyone that isn’t Faber)
I also link to some of the (critically and creatively) lauded book promos I have produced for titles such as Life of Pi, Hey Nostradamus and Salam Pax over the past 6 years.
Thanks for the feedback Peter. The problem publishers always face is the amount of money they have to hand over to retailers, which is well over half the cover price. It leaves little to spend on proper above the line marketing. It is a scandal. My view, as I have written in the last issue of the Author, is that it’s time publishers stopped being in thrall to retailers and found alternative outlets. Alternatives are out there, but going through them may affect your BookScan figures, and thus your chart place….there has to be a better way,, as the ad says.
I think one problem publishers face, which distinguishes them from other advertisers, is that they have so many individual ‘sub-brands’ and no overall brand, or not one that means much to the consumer. Every author they publish is a separate brand, so unlike Zanussi, or Vodafone, say, who know that every pound they spend on individual products will also increase their overall brand awareness, publishers must fragment their marketing spend. A pound spent promoting Jeffrey Archer, for example, does nothing for any other Macmillan author (me included!). So let’s say a publisher has the same marketing spend as another advertiser, by the time it’s split between all their new titles, with the biggest names getting the biggest share, the individual budget for most books is not sufficient to do anything meaningful. The expression pissing in the wind comes to mind.
I think the internet has enormous potential for spreading the word about books. I think it will develop beyond movie-style trailers though, which as a form will soon get passe and which anyway shows a slight lack of imagination, because publishers have simply taken the model provided by another industry without really thinking how it works for them. There is a lot more you can do online – the interactivity of the medium has yet to be exploited.
Personally, I think Robert McCrum writes a lot of bizarre stuff in his columns.
It could be argued that publishers used to have single brands when authors’ backlist remained in print and available from “all good bookshops”. It is a thought.
That said, I agree Roger, publishers have to spread their money much further than FMCG brands. One thing I have been banging on about for ages, is that publishers should use the talent on film and new media MAs etc and develop ideas for distrubution/advertising of books that are relevant to a new generation. Even by the time I was loitering with intent (and cash to spend) in bookshops, Waterstone’s seemed pretty old and old fashioned.
I grew up in Manchester, clubbing at the likes of the Hacienda and going to raves and bands as much as possible (still do). I read masses, but Waterstone’s, which was then the flagship brand in the book trade, seemed very male and very middle aged nd. worse, elitist. If Amazon had been a reality in the late 80s I have no doubt that it would have whipped Waterstone’s ass, as Amazon has a young, interesting and unselfconscious feel to it (the medium is the message, after all). It says a lot about the state of the book trade in the 80s that Waterstone’s was seen as its saviour.
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