Titles and characters: choices with marketing in mind

Catriona Tippin

You’ve written your book. You’re researching your social media strategy. Here are some tips on spotting marketing problems at the proofreading stage – a heads up on how your title and your characters’ names translate into website (domain) names and hashtags. 



An author website may be useful and that’s a domain name you don’t need to think about too much, unless you’re toying with a middle initial, or a nom de plume. Acquire the .com extension if you can. You may plan to use (or squat on) a website that features your title. 

Try out your title as a domain name or hashtag. Runthewordstogether and check for unfortunate juxtapositions. ‘But that’s not all’ and ‘butthatsnotall’ demonstrate this phenomenon. Further sources of juvenile sniggering may be found by searching the internet for website name fails. It’s a potential problem worth checking. 

Short titles make searching easy. Think about your use of numbers in a title too. It’s conventional in the text to spell out in full numbers one to nine, then use digits for 10 and above. If used in a title either form may apply, but a tweet limited to 140 characters will favour the four characters of ‘1000’ over the 12 characters of ‘one thousand’. 

Avoid the temptation to use any of this lot for email addresses/websites/webpages: 

• CamelCase or camelCase depends on uppercase letters separating words 
• spinal-case-uses-hyphens 
• Train-Case-Uses-Hyphens and uppercase letters 
• Snake_case_has_underscores_between_words 
• SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE aaagh! 

Leave all of these for the exclusive use of computer coders and programmers. Domain names (including the domain part of email addresses) are not case sensitive and hyphens may get forgotten. Email addresses should be simple and therefore memorable. 

Avoid punctuation marks in your title, for instance, contractions that need an apostrophe (I’m, let’s, they’re, it’s) or possessives (Carrie’s, Charlotte’s). The punctuation will have to be deleted for a subsequent website name or hashtag and leave an awkward (illiterate?) version of your title. 

Think about words with two spellings; if one forms part of a potential website name it may lead to the need to buy an additional domain name and redirect from it to your main site. Alternative spellings are often Americanisms, but UK English includes curtsy or curtsey, nosy or nosey, smoky or smokey. And there’s gaol or jail. 

Check the abbreviation formed by the initial letters of your title. It doesn’t need to be catchy or memorable, just avoid any unfortunate acronyms. This might matter when your title inspires a trending hashtag. 

Your protagonist may deserve similar attention – they may earn their own website or start trending on Twitter.

• Run your characters’ first and last name together and look for dodgy juxtapositions again.
• Sometimes you can be too familiar with your characters’ names, get someone else to read them and say them out loud. There are various tricks to choosing a character name; for marketing in the digital age a couple of these have taken on more significance.
• Avoid ending the first name with the letter which starts the last name.
• Avoid ‘loaded’ names (Bart, Hannibal, Kanye, etc).
• Search for the name on Google for any unfortunate coincidences or existing existences. 

When publicising your book these details may matter. 

Catriona Tippin aka @ProofReadingTip will be back next month with more proofreading tips. To see previous tips, click on this proofreading link.

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Catriona Tippin has been a member of SCBWI since 2006 and helps organise venues for SCBWI North East. Details of her writing and illustrating here. She proofreads study guides, house magazines and publicity material for two national educational charities, in addition to working on a variety of proofreads and copyedits for the growing self-published world. Her monthly column is intended to give you food for thought, remembering “Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling or typographical error” (McKean’s Law, named after its inventor Erin McKean, editor of the Oxford American Dictionary). 

Ten-Minute Blog Break - 8th April

With the London Book Fair in full swing, the future of publishing is inevitably a key point of discussion. But as fascinating as that subject is, it's good to see our SCBWI bloggers getting on with the main business at hand - writing stuff!


Bryony Pearce is under the cosh, with a 90,000 word book to write by June. Suddenly (to riff on her own Red Dwarf analogy) she's gone from Dave Lister calm to Arnold Rimmer anxiousness. Her main symptom at the moment is the obsessive counting of words, a malady I can sympathise with from my recent redrafting adventure.

Just a week behind the Blog Break, Space on the Bookshelf celebrates its first birthday. The book review and interview site has covered a surprising amount of ground in those twelve months, and Sally Poyton has a great summary of what you might have missed.

I reported on Jane Heinrichs' One Picture, Three Stories blog linkup a while back, and since then the project has flourished. Now into its fourth month, the latest update brings us brilliant blue skies, New York in the rain and a bygone view of the Philippines.

Surprisingly, those stories about the Philippines weren't by Candy Gourlay, but she pops up on her own blog to tell you all about the event she's running this Friday (11th April) in London. How can you resist a talk entitled "How to Get Published in Children's Fiction," especially when Candy has secured free entry for SCBWI members?

It wasn't a SCBWI blog post, but the article that generated the most comments on the SCBWI-BI Facebook group this week (70 at the last count) was this one on "hybrid" publishing. Many debated whether this supposed third way between traditional and self publishing was really just vanity publishing in different clothes...

Nick.

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Nick Cross is a children's writer, blogger and all-round techno-ninja. In 2010 he was a winner of Undiscovered Voices with his zombie comedy Back from the Dead.

Nick's most recent post was on the Stew Magazine blog, talking about the inspiration behind his latest short story The Door Keeper.

Ask a Picture Book Editor

What makes a good picture book topic?

So last month we challenged you to tell us what you think makes a good picture book topic. I’m sad to say that nobody picked up the gauntlet – very possibly because it’s a tricky topic to tackle! But don’t worry! That’s what we’re here for!

So, what does make a good picture book topic? Well, the possibilities for this are limitless! It’s great to let your imagination run as wild and free as you like, but to help get your work noticed, it might be interesting to consider a topic that will strike a chord with as wide an audience as possible. So a good starting point is to think UNIVERSAL.

1 - Think of your age group and think of something that your reader can empathise with.

These are timeless classics that have been covered again and again in the genre. Why? Because they are universal – they appeal to children of all ages from all ages!

2 - Perhaps draw on an experience from your childhood, or that of your own children.

For instance: a lost toy or getting shut out of the house as in Shirley Hughes' classics, Alfie Gets In First and Dogger. 

We bet you’ve met many people to whom this has happened. That’s why these stories strike a chord!

  

Similarly, Stuck! by Oliver Jeffers has such a familiar idea at its core that it appeals to lots of people. It sparks a memory of when their kite/ball/cat/shoe got stuck up a tree too.

 



Or how about Zoe and Beans: Where is Binky Boo? by Mick and Chloe Inkpen. A much-loved pet and a much-loved toy are never going to be a good combination, but certainly one which will resonate with households all across the country and make for a funny and familiar read.

The key with these stories is that whilst they may be specific to the author, they also fall into that category of a universal childhood experience. It either happened to you, your sibling, your neighbour or your friend.

3 - Don’t feel like you have to shy away from difficult subject matter.

The trick is to handle tricky themes with a suitable degree of:

light-heartedness
emotional warmth
sympathetic tone
humour

Below are some wonderful examples where the author handles their topic with a lightness of touch that prevents potentially ‘worthy’ topics from being dense, didactic or preachy!  

The books also open a dialogue between parent/guardian and children about tricky subject matter. Again, each of these topics is universal – they are everyday human experiences that transcend age and are applicable to everyone.  

4 - GO FUNNY, SURREAL AND BONKERS!

Nothing is more universal than laughter, so sometimes the best topic can be something that makes you smile. There are so many wonderful examples:

From the downright gross

The Disgusting Sandwich by Edwards/Shaw

to the simply sublime wordplay in

Oi Frog!, Kes Grey and Jim Field

or the rollicking rhyming fun of

Dragon Stew, Steve Smallman and Lee Wildish

or the perfectly nutty character and concept in

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, Mo Willems

5 – Try tapping into the familiar then flipping it on its head!

What about a retelling of a classic tale? Taking a much-loved fairy tale and flipping it on its head is a fantastic way of tapping into something which lots of people will find familiar whilst giving it that fresh and innovative twist to make your story stand out from the crowd. Goldilocks and Just the One Bear by Leigh Hodgkinson is a really clever and funny example of this.

6 – Think about your age group

Most of the topics mentioned above appeal to that core picture book age group of 2- to 6-year olds. But what about early concept topics for very young children?

First concept books are targeted at 0- to 2-year olds and topics can be as basic as first words, colours, objects, numbers, opposites, animals, daily routines, nursery rhymes, but usually there will be a story arc and a universal theme. Also, the books are predominantly centered around the child’s world, which starts at home.

Here are some great examples:

So these are just a few examples of what might make a good picture book topic! Hopefully they will act as a springboard for your own stories and ideas. The most important thing to bear in mind is whether your story will appeal to as wide an audience as possible. If you want your book to be read by millions, then there must be something universal and resonant at its core that will strike a chord with your readers and get noticed by an editor. 

Having waited over 8 months to hear back from a major publisher, I'm now considering multiple submissions with my PB, but I want to follow the etiquette and not jeopardise my chances. What are your thoughts on multiple submissions? - Hot Frog

NB/EF: It is absolutely fine to send texts out on multiple submission and editors wouldn't think badly of you for doing so. It's polite to let them know you're doing this by email and they will, more often than not, take your kind note as a prompt to give you the constructive feedback you require!

What do you see as the key differences between writing for 0-3 and 3-6 age groups? - Helen

NB/EF: The key differences in writing for the two age groups are content, vocabulary and also topic. Books for the pre-school age group tend to focus on concept books and very simple stories, centred around the child's world and daily routine. Perhaps think of early concept books as helping to lay the building blocks for the experiences and emotions that come with more complex narratives as the child develops.

Natascha Biebow is editor, mentor and coach at www.blueelephantstoryshaping.com

Ellie Farmeris Senior Editor
at Little Tiger Press www.littletiger.co.uk 

People, you know who you are, I AM doing my homework

Now that Bologna's Bologna'd, it's time for London to do the Book Fair thing. The London Book Fair is this coming week and I'm sorely tempted to go if only for the Dragon's Den style pitching event on Thursday. I'm sure I could learn a thing or two.




This week on Words & Pictures we closed the month that marked the passing of time for us with a comprehensive overview of time travel in children's fiction from Sam Hawksmoor. My favourite time travel book has to be Alison Uttley's Traveller in Time and my favourite film Back to the Future, obviously.

Chitra posted a new Slush Pile Challenge - Penny Holroyde wants to know if we can write funny. All very appropriate for the week of April Fools. Or is it? To write funny you need to be far from foolish. As Nick said on the blog break , funny (spoof) writing needs a well functioning brain.

Nicky Schmidt's brain has functioned very well to give us her insights on marketing by social media. It's all about engagement with readers rather than just shouting about your book.

I recognised his work from Philippa's report on the Grimm Girls Exhibition in Chichester in January but didn't know much about Walter Crane or The Aesthetic Movement until Chloe Yelland's piece on Friday. On Saturday it was great to read that Germany is raving about Janet Foxley's Muncle Trogg and yet another SCBWI sails out of Bath Spa with a distinction for their MA, Congratulations Janet and  Margaret Carey Award Honorary Mention, Kim Lloyd.

That was last week.

This week I am doing my homework for Book Bound (hence limited brain space for editorial writing) and you can look forward to the second Ask a Picture Book Editor. There are more Proofreading Tips - reading over my MS, boy do I need those - and a report on the latest Sketchcrawl - don't know how that works or even what it is! Look in on Friday.

Don't forget to vote for your favourite Crystal Kite Nominee. Log in to your home page on scbwi.org and vote from there. First round of voting closes Monday 14th April.

Have a great week!

Jan Carr

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Jan Carr is the editor of Words & Pictures. Her fiction is all over the place, she blogs occasionally and loves to write in magenta. You can contact her at editor@britishscbwi.org.

Muncle Trogg love hits Germany... And congrats to Kim for an Honorary Mention!

This week, congratulations go to Janet Foxley for the latest news on Muncle - or Munkel - Trogg who has found success in Germany. Then we celebrate Kim Lloyd who won the Honorary Mention for the Margaret Carey Scholarship.

Janet had been writing children’s books for thirty-five years and Muncle Trogg itself for about seven when it won the Times/Chicken House Prize 2010 for a children’s novel by an unpublished author. Published by Chicken House in 2011, it subsequently sold to twenty-four countries, has been optioned for a film by Sony Animation and short-listed for a number of awards. A sequel, Muncle Trogg and the Flying Donkey, was published in 2012 and a third book will be published in April 2014, but initially only in Germany, where it is called Muncle Trogg and the Long Dragon Flight. Muncle, or Munkel, has had his greatest success in Germany, where he is published by Fischer, and has just won the German Audio Book Prize, which is actually for the reader, Boris Aljinovic, not the book.

 Janet tells us: “I am particularly pleased that Muncle has done so well in Germany as I misspent several happy years of my youth in the country during and after my degree in German. As a result my German is still good enough to discuss the books with the translator and to thoroughly enjoy the audiobooks.” Barry Cunningham, Chicken House Publisher, made this comment on Twitter ‘Our own dear Muncle Trogg has won the First Prize in the German Audio Books Awards - his great smallness grows!’

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Next, please raise your glasses for Kim Lloyd, who received the Honorable Mention for the Margaret Carey Scholarship for her YA novel 'The Last Time I Cried.'

Kim tells us: "I developed the story whilst on the MA Writing for Young People at Bath Spa Uni and I loved every minute of the course. It's improved my writing immeasurably and I've made wonderful, lifelong friends. I've now graduated, with Distinction, and it's nearly time to send my book out into the big, wide world (after a few more edits!) Receiving the Honorable Mention from SCBWI has done wonders for my confidence as it was the first time I sent the story to anyone outside my Uni group and the positive feedback's been great. As a writer, you can feel isolated and question your own judgement, so it's brilliant when someone enjoys what you've written. 'The Last Time I Cried' is, on the surface, a dark tale about a damaged girl who makes some terrible choices, leading to tragedy. However, the story has an undercurrent of hope and redemption and, ultimately, it shows that you can escape the past and look to the future."

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Tania Tay is an ex-advertising copywriter and has been published in Sable LitMag. She is currently writing a YA romantic thriller, is a member of The Golden Egg Academy and is on the editorial team at Words & Pictures.

Walter Crane and Mythology in Children's Books

Walter Crane

Illustration is all about ideas and inspiration which can be turned into a theme relevant to the story – whether it is for a children’s book, painting or editorial illustration.

From her list of inspiring illustrators Chloe Yelland has selected Walter Crane, who demonstrated a unique focus of fairytale combined with mythology, specifically Greek.


Walter Crane (1845-1915), a key figurative book illustrator and decorative artist of the nineteenth century, serves as a perfect example of how fairytale was combined with mythology, primarily due to his use of many themes which influenced his work within the Aesthetic Movement, an organization of which he was a key believer.

In 1863, British painter William Rothenstein said: 

‘Nowhere is the peculiar character of the mid-Victorian aesthetic movement better interpreted than in the children’s picture books’

which reinforces how Crane demonstrated a constructive use of imagination through characterization, where enchantment and mythological subjects within the fairytale, better referred to as romantic themes, appear through a narrative perspective.

Crane utilised symbolism and the legendary medieval world and combined them with fairytale and myth to connect with the Aesthetic movement. These elements are established through art and literature so that readers can appreciate both the beauty and meaning.

Beauty and the Beast by Walter Crane, 1874

Take Walter Crane’s Beauty and the Beast as an example. In a statement surrounding Aestheticism and myth, art historian Elizabeth Prettejohn describes Crane’s methods as

"the intextuality of the movement through art as well as literature"

The fan is a symbol of the birth of Venus, a reference to either the Roman goddess of love and beauty, or Aphrodite from Greek Mythology. In the illustration above the woman is holding the fan to represent comeliness within the context of the story, whereas the beast is desperate to find the love of a beautiful woman to break his curse.


 

Front cover of modern edition

One other feature that fascinates me is characterization. In Beauty and the Beast there are hints of medievalism, combined with aestheticism. Taking clothing as an example, you can see that they are from different ages despite the scenery being Victorian. The woman has a combination of classical Greek dress to demonstrate her beauty as the first main protagonist to the fairytale. And the beast is wearing an old Turkish uniform which associates with Victorian Medievalism in reference to his partial humanity, which he masks through the suffering he is forced to endure - some may call it a punishment - for his selfish actions.

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Chloe Yelland is a student at Derby University, studying for her BA (Hons) in Illustration. Her blog is here, or follow her on Twitter.

Linkedtwitfacetumbletube - From The Other Side

 Nicky Schmidt

A while ago I posted a piece about social media on my blog and how the business of building a platform, when you don’t have a book to market, is an exercise in play and procrastination. 

To take this further and clarify what I said, I want to explore and expand on the benefits of social media.

Social media has an unquestionable and powerful place in the marketing mix. Its effectiveness, however, depends on entirely on how you use it. To restate the point, if you don’t have a product to market, don’t bother. Yes, go ahead and set up your social media platforms – so someone else doesn’t take your name - but then get on with writing the book. (You can indulge in a bit of social networking to connect with your peers, publishers and agents and to understand the nature of the beast – but avoid being sucked in.)

Let’s assume that you’ve written the best book you can and now need to implement your marketing plan. 

As I said in another earlier blog post about the basics of marketing, the best form of marketing is word of mouth. 

The other critical form of marketing is customer engagement and customer relationship management. 

What social media offers is the opportunity to leverage both of these vital elements in a highly personalised way.  It allows your readers to talk about you and your book (word of mouth) and it allows you to have a conversation with your readers (customer engagement - which can in turn encourage word of mouth).  How win-win can you get?! 

At this point, two things arise: 

First off, most authors I know aren’t using social media to talk to their readers. They’re mostly using social media to chat with family and friends. While it’s important that writers have a place to share their woes, successes and daily cat pictures, to think that you’re marketing when you’re chatting to your pals misses the point. 

Secondly, while your pals may buy your book, they are not your market. And those who persistently promote their books to their friends mostly waste their time and irritate their friends.

So how can you use social media as a marketing tool?  

Engage, be real, be relevant 

Picking on the point above let’s realise for a start that you should never shove your book down anyone’s throat – no one likes it, neither your friends nor your market.  

Really good and effective customer relationship management is a two way street, it’s about having a conversation – and, like branding, it’s about being real. That means is you have to listen to what your readers are saying. And social media is a brilliant way of doing this. Write a blog post and reply to comments. Tweet something interesting, and respond directly with @ to any replies. Post interesting Facebook statuses and respond to comments.Thank people for following you. Use people’s names. Speak with them directly.  Engage, engage, engage - and promotion will take care of itself. Also remember that every person you ignore is a person disappointed and potentially a customer lost. 

People, being what they are, want to be heard. While they want to know about you, they also want to be seen as important in your eyes. It’s like any relationship and it is basic psychology.  Readers want to know you care enough to talk to them. And they will always expect real life, real human engagement with you. Consider this point next time you’re irritated by a call centre.  

Remember also that as a children’s or YA writer you carry responsibility. You may even be something of a hero because you’ve spoken to something in your reader through your book.  And being a hero is a tough act and not to be taken lightly. 

Customer relationship management, especially via social media, is so much more than promoting your books, your awards and the good reviews you’ve received.  In fact, if all you’re using your social media platform for is to say “Me, me, me!” you may as well go off and boil your ears. 

The best way to understand any of this is to put yourself in your reader’s shoes, then plot your social media strategy accordingly. 

Now, let’s consider that critical thing – your market. 

Go where your market is 

A debate arose a while back on Facebook (yes, it has its uses) about how effective social media is in marketing a book – and many authors complained that they saw limited benefit in it and far more benefit in doing school visits.  It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out this one.  School visits put you in direct contact with your audience, make you real, and give you, on the back of an entertaining presentation, the opportunity to engage your market - and sell your books.  For too many children’s writers though, the social media platforms we’re using go nowhere close to putting us in contact with our readers.  Young adult writers have a far better chance than children’s writers.  But here reality asks why any self-respecting teen wants to connect with some old fart (yes, you and me, dear), unless they’re saying something relevant (irrespective of the guise of that relevance). 

You have to go where your market is and you have to give it what it wants. Many people have said it’s important to be on Tumblr because loads of teens are on Tumblr. That may be so, but it’s only going to be effective if your market is following you and you’re connecting – and I mean really connecting - with them. 

And how do you encourage your market to follow you – well, again, first write a brilliant novel and then make sure you have lots of relevant and interesting things to say. To be perfectly honest, I’m not convinced that social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr offer much return on investment for children’s authors. Facebook has an age restriction. Twitter has never been a huge hit amongst teens. Tumblr, maybe, but only if you're able to connect with the teens who use it.  Goodreads, on the other hand, is definitely an option with teen readers.  Given all that, you are probably much better off focusing your efforts on your web page and a blog – a place where your market can reach you and interact with you in a safe space.  And in terms of what you post – make it relevant to your books.  Written a story about a pirate?  Write a post about pirates, treasure chests, antique maps and desert islands, post pictures of same.  Don’t bang on about your awards and your reviews, because the sad truth is that aside from you, no one really cares. Do things that are inclusive, involve your readers.  What they want, as I said above, is real engagement.  So make sure your posts are interesting and entertaining -  and then, critically, allow and encourage your readers to interact. 

The alpha and omega of social media is about conversation and interaction and community 

  

John Green, together with his brother, Hank, is brilliant at using social media to connect, particularly via the Ning group, Nerdfighters and YouTube vlog (video blog, for the uninitiated), Vlogbrothers.  It’s well worth looking at what they’ve achieved because the whole thing is about engaging with readers and building a community that provides a safe space for angst-ridden teens.  As a by-product, that community will inevitably buy any book Green ever writes.  

Green has done two brilliant things – he’s written wonderful books that are relevant to a particular group of teens – and he’s leveraged his market and built spectacular brand loyalty by creating a unique customer management strategy. He gives, he gets back. 

As I keep saying, this is where power of social media lies – engaging with your market. Correctly employed, social media presents a unique opportunity to connect directly with your readers and to interact with them.  Via various social media platforms you can build loyalty and a following and in doing so tap directly into your market.  You get them to buy into your brand by dealing with things that are important to them and maybe you even get to tell them about you and your book.  The most important thing though is whatever you do has to be two-way traffic. The alpha and omega of social media is about conversation and interaction and community. 

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@NickySchmidt1

Born and raised in South Africa of central and northern European heritage, Nicky is an ex scriptwriter, copywriter, and marketing, brand and communications manager who "retired" early to follow a dream. Although she still occasionally consults on marketing, communications and brand strategies, mostly she writes YA fiction (some of which leans towards New Adult) in the magical realism, realistic and supernatural genres.
When not off in some other world, she also writes freelance articles - mostly lifestyle and travel - for which she does her own photography. Her work has been published in several South African magazines and newspapers. As well as being a regular feature writer for Words & Pictures, Nicky also runs the SCBWI-BI YA E-Critique group.
Nicky lives in Cape Town with her husband and two rescue Golden Retrievers.