🌲⭐🍻 Christmas Special: marketing trends for 2021

Deck the halls with wild predictions. View in browser Hey, We made it! It's the end of 2020, and we are ready to throw ourselves into 2021 with lustful abandon. I don't want to jinx anything, but in the words of the immortal philosopher Yazz, "The only way is up." As this is the final newsletter of the year, I thought it would be wise to look at some of the big trends of 2020 particularly with an eye on how they might impact our author businesses in 2021. I'm not particularly keen on picking at the scab of this last year for no reason, thank you very much, but I really do think that there were three or four huge trends this year that are going to bleed into 2021 and continue to reshape our industry. Always remember that change can be good or bad, and you can take advantage of it… or get rolled by it. So let's take a look back right now, but mostly with an eye on what we will do next year as a result. But before we dive into all that, you might want to check out this video I dropped last night on Rapid Release – which is a strategy that lots and lots of you are curious about, and one I dabbled in over the summer. Does 2020 change how we do business in 2021? Hell, yes. That's it. That's your takeaway. More? Fine! You don't need me to tell you that the world changed considerably this year, but I want to specifically focus here on how that impacts the business of being an author. And I want to widen the lens a little to draw in a few more major trends, that are all somewhat interlinked, and will all impact the book business in a major way next year, and even longer after that too. Obviously, the world has been in the grip of a major public health crisis, which is awful and tragic and can't end soon enough. But the fact is that being restricted (or less inclined) to go outside has resulted in more people being online. More people shopping online. And more people reading online. There were lowkey 2011 vibes all year in the world of self-publishing, where a big tranche of readers seemed to convert from print to ebooks all at once in March and retailers, distributors, deal sites, and authors all reported a big uptake on things like free offers (and also questions from less savvy users about how to… download ebooks or sign up to newsletters and the like). The market expanded, in other words. I don't think most people will switch back to exclusively reading print books and exclusively browsing in bookshops when things really do return to normal, whenever that may be. Assuming all those bookshops are still there, of course, which is far from given. It's not all sunshine and roses for ebooks and self-publishers, though. It would also be a foolish to assume that all the economic woe will be restricted to the traditional/physical end of our industry. While ebooks are somewhat counter-cyclical in that they are often cheaper than comparable forms of entertainment, a prolonged economic recession isn't good for any business. And that's certainly a possibility, globally. That said, at least this pair of trends – lockdowns and new readers – seem to have had a positive impact on our business overall, and that would seem to continue into 2021, as weird as that might be to type while the world is still struggling to get a grip on this crisis. But it's undeniable too. The market has expanded, and it has expanded in ways that are generally more favorable to self-publishers and digitally focused publishers and purveyors of cheap ebooks, and those willing to embrace the power of free in particular. Not so when it comes to the other pair of 2020 trends which I see bleeding into 2021. Facebook has been plagued (sorry) with problems since around September where authors have reported a massive increase in accounts being banned and ads being rejected en masse for reasons that often make no sense at all, and then running into huge issues getting this resolved. This is quite different to periods of disruption we have seen previously. Facebook has had phases before where it enforced some policies a little too aggressively; any author who writes romance will be fully aware of just how ridiculously prudish the bots and reviewers can be – who seem to live in the world of Jane Austen where the flash of an ankle could keep a fella going for days and viewing a bare clavicle might mean a spell on the fainting couch. But the problems since September have been different and the reasons for ad rejections or account bans often make no sense at all – something compounded by what can only be described as a systemic failure of the customer service operation across Facebook. I had my ad account banned five times now – and the last time was actually the most serious, as it was at Business Manager level, meaning all my author pages and associated ad accounts, and all my side businesses were banned as well. I did get it resolved, but I have barely advertised on Facebook for the last couple of months – either because I was prevented, or because I was skittish – which covers the normally busy Black Friday to Christmas period. I don't see this improving in the short term. However, the problems Facebook is facing makes all that pale in comparison and is probably why leadership seems distracted. Facebook is facing a pair of major anti-trust lawsuits, one from a bunch of US states, and one from the federal government itself via the FTC, both seeking major redress: the break-up of Facebook and the forced sale of Whatsapp and Instagram. Google faces three major anti-trust actions in the USA right now, and Amazon has a pretty major one looming in the EU too. And I would not be surprised at all if Amazon faces an anti-trust action in the USA as well, or if Google and Facebook start feeling the heat in other jurisdictions. Indeed, I expect much of that to happen. So far, Apple has escaped the same fate, but things have been developing very, very quickly since I wrote this blog post back in August predicting anti-trust trouble. That post also outlined steps I was taking to future proof my business, given that Google is how most of our customers search for information, Amazon is where we sell most of our books, and Facebook probably accounts for more marketing dollars spent by authors than anything else (than everything else combined maybe?). I've seen some chatter around these anti-trust actions that has baffled me, quite frankly. Whether that's authors calling for Facebook to be completely shut down or KDP to be broken off from Amazon, I think authors need to really run down the consequences of such calls before advocating for them publicly. I'm definitely not on Team Blindly Supporting Big Tech – I'm not at all surprised that these companies are facing anti-trust actions, or being called to account in various ways given their outsized influence which has only accelerated in 2020 – but I'm very concerned that any remedies which are instituted by the courts don't impact authors too adversely. Lots of author businesses depend on Facebook to reach customers. Lots of authors would go bankrupt overnight if their ability to reach readers on Amazon was compromised. I think authors should be wary of various forces that are pushing for anti-trust actions, and their various agendas. Never forget that the same media companies which own half the newspapers also own most of the major publishers, and if they are advocating for the breakup of Amazon, for example, they probably don't have the interests of self-publishers in mind. To be clear, I'm not against holding Big Tech to account. But I am quite concerned that some of the remedies being bandied about could damage authors. It really would be a huge mistake to assume that Amazon facing an anti-trust action will result in positive or desirable outcomes like exclusivity being axed for KDP Select or royalty rates going up to 80%. So where does that leave us? Why do I have to be such a Debbie Downer? Well, I'm actually not down about any of this! Disruption always shakes up the population of winners and losers, and the prizes often go to the most nimble. I want to protect myself against the worst that these changes could bring while also positioning myself to take advantage of any shifts in the market as well. For example, if lots of new entrants to the world of ebooks is a result of all these lockdowns, and these new entrants are quite price-sensitive, then you could either complain about it, or take advantage of it. Or if lots of people with brand new Kindles and less money to spend means that free books are much hotter than before, you can either lament the end of rising ebook prices, or you can retool your business to make freebies front-and-center again. I'm sure I'll develop all this more in future newsletters, but my general plan for 2021 is to: Be more price aggressive with promotions generally. Get back into box sets. Have more free offers/promotions. For fiction, shift advertising focus at least somewhat from Facebook to BookBub (and possibly Amazon Ads). For non-fiction, focus more on SEO than social media to drive website traffic. For both, keep ramping up with email marketing most of all because this is the very best thing anyone can do to protect themselves from whatever happens in the future. Other things I'm going to explore include things like recording my own audio and selling it direct with BookFunnel. And with non-fiction I'm definitely going to keep pumping out video, although I will focus that more on YouTube than Facebook, for the above reasons. YouTube has also become a surprising revenue source, a driver of book sales, and a source of top quality web traffic – none of which I really expected. I also never expected to create a course, which has been huge for my non-fiction business in 2020, even though I give it away for free. The biggest trend of 2021 may turn out to be equally surprising, but I know that having a healthy mailing list means I can jump on anything and seed anything because I have an audience which I own – I don't need permission from Amazon or Facebook or Google to access that audience, so if I ever need to start again somewhere, or sell ebooks direct, or do something else I can't conceive of right now… I have that power. Hope this gave you something to chew on as we say Good Riddance to 2020. And I hope you are all happy and safe and healthy and looking forward to chowing down over the next few days. I have lots of exciting things coming for you next year and I'll start sharing some of those when I email you next in early January. Merry Christmas! Dave P.S. Final song of the year could only be Matthew E. White with Hot Toddies. DavidGaughran.com Broomfield Business Park, Malahide, Co. Dublin, Ireland You received this email because you signed up at DavidGaughran.com. Unsubscribe