Let’s Make This Personal . . .
By Peter Nevland - Sep 29 , 2009
“Make sure you attach a cover letter.”
“Include a well-designed marketing plan.”
“Tell ‘em about the following you’ve developed on your blog.”
“Throw in something extra that will keep them from forgetting who you are.”
That’s all great advice, especially the one about attaching a cover letter. But lost somewhere in all the strategies and helpful hints designed to secure the attention of a company trying to make a profit on your creativity—is a personal connection.
I’m not talking about romance, seduction, or flirting, at least not in a scandalous type of way. Publishers are people, too. At least, I think they are. And if that’s the case, it might alter the way authors go about trying to get noticed by a book publisher.
“We originally got volume pricing on printing because we took the reps out drinking. They liked us,” said Clint Greenleaf, CEO of Greenleaf Book Group, in an Inc. Magazine article. It’s not the part that says he “took the reps out drinking” that got my attention, but the “They liked us.” Clint also says,
“We knew distribution was a big part of the picture, so I went down to Nashville to Ingram, the biggest wholesale book distributor, and kept talking to them. We ended up as a resource on their website.”
Either Clint read Ingram‘s website like I did, or they actually are, as their website proclaims, the “largest wholesale distributor of book product in the world.” You’d think that they’d have a system and bureaucracies, procedures, and processes to jump through like so many carnival hoops to secure a business relationship. You’d think he’d be intimidated by their size and the opportunity they represented. Instead, he seemed to bypass their usual evaluation process with continual face time and evenings at a local bar. He communicated to them that they would be fun people to work with, that they would provide something that other publishers wouldn’t: a personal connection. Turns out that they cared more about that than evaluating exactly how much money they could make.
Why is this true? Our “knowledge is power” society proclaims that qualifications should ultimately secure jobs, deals, or contracts. But the common statistic that I hear says that eighty percent of jobs are attained through people with whom we have a prior relationship. I know that it was at least that high for me when I booked gigs for myself as a performing artist.
I have a feeling that we’re not as Vulcan, not as intellectually driven, as Western popular opinion would lead us to believe. It’s why business owners make deals on golf courses, online daters with pictures get far more responses than those with none and politicians still kiss babies. People make decisions based on their previous experiences and on their feelings just as much, if not more, than their reason. Book publishers are no different—that is, if they are indeed human.
Now, just to make sure that people in networking organizations don’t try to use this to prove that they hold the exclusive key to career success, let me say this: If you don’t have a marketing plan, established following, and an understanding of how to write for a targeted audience, no amount of personal connections can induce a wise publisher to promote your book. Networking can do only so much. If somehow you do manage to skate by on charm alone, I don’t envy the problems you’ll encounter when you actually have to get something done.
If you’ve already prepared yourself for the things that make a book into a success, turning a potential business relationship into a personal relationship will get your foot in the door or give you the edge over your competitors. It could even cause who you are to become more important than what you’ve done.
