Jim: In this episode, we’re talking with Kevin Kaiser, one of the marketers I respect most. For the past eight years, Kevin has served as Ted Dekker’s brand and marketing manager, helping build and strengthen Ted’s brand in remarkable ways.
I first met Kevin at ThrillerFest in 2010. As two marketing guys talking shop, we hit it off immediately. It was one of those conversations where you instantly know, “I like this guy. He’s smart, and we’re going to be friends for a long time.” Since then, we’ve become great friends.
Kevin, welcome to the Novel Marketing Podcast.
You’ve built a successful career marketing fiction and developing author brands—something few marketers can honestly claim. What have you done differently, and what do you think has contributed to that success?
What makes an audience-first approach so powerful?
Kevin: I definitely wouldn’t call myself a guru. I’m more of an experimenter who tests ideas and figures things out along the way. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some incredibly talented, bestselling authors, though I never could have planned the career path that led me there.
One advantage was that I came into publishing from the outside. I didn’t know the industry’s rules or what people said was impossible. In hindsight, that may have been my greatest strength. It gave me the freedom to try new things and experiment with authors who already had established audiences.
Having an audience covers a multitude of sins. You know a certain number of people will show up, so your job is to serve and empower them as effectively as possible. That’s a very different challenge from starting with no audience at all.
Jim: You had a chance to see what worked and what didn’t, and then you saw you could make something better as you went along.
Kevin: Exactly. The marketplace has changed dramatically over the past few years. When I got started, you could still buy attention or earn it relatively easily. If you could get a book on a shelf, build relationships with retailers, grow a forum or email list, or even use Facebook in 2008 or 2009, you could reach people without paying for every impression.
I entered the industry at the right time to score some big wins and learn a tremendous amount along the way.
What’s the story behind getthisbook.com?
Jim: You didn’t just think outside the box; you did things other people wouldn’t think of. Can I talk you into telling the subway story? It ended up being very successful for Ted Dekker.
Kevin: Yeah, this was with The Priest’s Graveyard, one of Ted Dekker’s books. For those who aren’t familiar with him, he’s a bestselling thriller novelist. I was his manager and marketing strategist for several years, and this was a big book release. As usual, we got the marketing plan from the publisher, and it included things like subway ads, billboard ads, a full-page ad in USA Today. My big question in that meeting was, “Where are you going to send everybody?” We want people to engage. How are we going to know if any of this is even effective? The answer was, we don’t really know.
Thomas: That’s my biggest pet peeve with old-school marketing. Nothing gets measured, so nobody knows if something’s working, and they keep doing the same bad idea year after year. No one raises their hand and says this is a waste of money when something else could be far more effective on a dollar basis. I applaud you for saying let’s start measuring. I think what we need is more science.
Kevin: Yeah, anything you can do to measure your return on investment and track it is really helpful. My suggestion was, let’s come up with a landing page, a URL where we send all the traffic, so we at least know how many people we’ve got and where they click out to buy the book, on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. They thought that was okay but told me to come back with something better. So I went looking for URLs and found getthisbook.com. It was available. I thought, nobody owns getthisbook.com? I bought it and presented it as a landing page idea. They thought that was a terrible idea.
Thomas: I know how you feel, my friend.
Kevin: The logic escaped me. It just didn’t make sense. After several conversations they finally relented, and it came down to a talk I had with the head of marketing. I said, let me tell you a story. I love your subway ad, but imagine a guy who gets on the subway in New York City. He’s going to work, looking at his iPhone, he looks up and sees Ted Dekker, The Priest’s Graveyard. Before he gets off the subway and up to street level, he’s not going to remember how to spell Ted Dekker’s name. Is it D-E-C-K-E-R or D-E-K-K-E-R? He’s not going to remember The Priest’s Graveyard, but he’ll remember getthisbook.com.
They didn’t really believe me, but they said okay, let’s do this. About a month later, I was on the New Yorker’s website, and they’d run an article about marketing in fiction. It’s still up. It talks about a reporter who gets on the subway, looks up, sees the ad for Ted Dekker, The Priest’s Graveyard, and sees the URL. He goes, “Huh, getthisbook.com.” In his article, he writes about getting home to his computer that night and still remembering getthisbook.com, even though he couldn’t remember the author’s name or the book’s title. It was so sticky. It really stood out to him. That’s one of my more fun stories, one of the big wins I had.
Thomas: I want to underline the approach there, because a lot of people say, “I can’t use that idea, you’ve already bought getthisbook.com.” That’s not the point. The point is that Kevin put himself in the reader’s shoes and tried to look at the advertising through the buyer’s eyes. He knows how to spell his own name, and Ted knows how to spell Dekker, but normal people don’t. When you learn to walk in somebody else’s shoes, you realize a lot of the marketing you’re using falls prey to the curse of knowledge, where you forget what it’s like not to know what you know. That’s the key to effective book marketing.
Jim: The other thing that comes out of this story is asking the question, and you can ask your publisher this, though a lot of times they won’t have the answer. What is the goal of this ad? What do we want it to accomplish? What action is the end user going to take? A lot of times they don’t know, but it’s worth asking, whether you’re an indie author or a traditionally published one.
Kevin: Let me say this in defense of marketing directors everywhere in publishing. I really have empathy for them. Over 200,000 books were published last year in North America, and it’s a contracting business, with fewer people doing more work. To sit down and strategize for every single author, to find out-of-the-box ways to move not just the book forward but the brand forward, they’re more or less in survival mode most of the time.
Jim: That’s such a good point. My publisher’s marketing people are great, really on the cutting edge, but even so, I say this jokingly, though I’m half serious, “Did you get any sleep this week?” They’re working so many hours for so many authors. That brings us to something you and I were talking about earlier, that nowadays you have to be a marketing person. That’s why Thomas and I started this podcast. It used to be that nonfiction authors had to be marketers but fiction authors didn’t. Now you do, and editors, agents, and publishers are going to ask that question. What are the two or three most critical things you see missing from most authors’ marketing, whether they’re indie, traditionally published, or just starting to build their platform?
What’s missing from most authors’ marketing?
Kevin: The first thing is adopting a marketer’s mindset. It has always been the artist’s responsibility to market their work. You’ll always be your own best advocate. No one knows your art as well as you do, which means no one can explain it or persuade others to care about it the way you can.
Many successful artists learn to think like professionals long before they get paid. Authors should become students of their industry, business, and, most importantly, human psychology. Too much marketing advice focuses on tools: how to use Twitter, Facebook, or whatever platform is popular today. Those tools will change, and some may disappear. But the underlying principles of marketing and human behavior remain the same.
So first, take responsibility for learning marketing yourself. Don’t depend on a publisher. Even if you land a book deal, publishers will ask, “What is your platform, and how are you going to help sell this book?” You need a strong answer.
Second, build your own home base. Every author needs a website, and the most valuable asset they can create is an email list.
Is email marketing dead?
Kevin: People have been saying email is dead for years, but it’s not. Everybody uses email. Modern life runs on it.
Thomas: People are using email for purchasing. My bills arrive by email, and many of my purchasing decisions start there. When I’m checking email, I’m often in a mindset to take action or make a purchase. When I’m on social media, I’m usually there to socialize or be entertained. The real difference isn’t usage; it’s intent. People generally aren’t in a buying mindset when they’re scrolling Twitter or Facebook.
Kevin: Exactly. But you also have to give people content they genuinely want. That reminds me of a conversation I had with Jim recently about writing the kinds of books you would want to read. Too many authors focus on demographics, trying to figure out what a target audience buys and then tailoring their work to fit. Instead, be yourself. Rather than trying to be the next James Patterson, be the first you.
Should you write for the market or for yourself?
Thomas: This is one area where fiction and nonfiction are different. With fiction, you have to be true to the story you want to tell. With nonfiction, you can take a more audience-focused approach. I know authors who sell a lot of books by identifying a group of people, finding the questions they’re asking, and answering them.
That’s much harder to do with fiction. How could J.K. Rowling have known that millions of readers wanted a story about a boy attending a school for magic? There’s no reliable market research for that. She had to be true to her vision, and that authenticity is what made the story resonate with readers.
Kevin: I agree, but I think many writers approach it backwards. They look at books like The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner, identify elements they have in common, and try to combine them into the next bestseller. The pitch becomes, “It’s The Hunger Games meets The Maze Runner.” They’re trying to reverse-engineer success.
Thomas: Right. “Let’s make the characters even sadder and the world even darker.”
We’re almost out of time, so let me ask one final question. Many of our listeners are independent authors—either self-published or planning to be. What advice would you give someone who’s doing everything themselves, without a marketing budget, a marketing director, or a publisher behind them? You’ve talked about taking ownership of the business side of being an author. What are some practical steps independent authors should take?
What’s the secret to marketing on no budget?
Kevin: Everyone is looking for a magic bullet. I know I have been for years. But the truth is, there isn’t one.
One of the most encouraging ideas I’ve come across is Kevin Kelly’s essay, 1,000 True Fans. His point is that you don’t need a million followers to make a living from your art. You need 1,000 people who are genuinely engaged and excited about everything you create.
The challenge is that you earn those fans one at a time. There’s no shortcut. It takes patience, consistent engagement, showing up regularly, and creating work people love. In other words, be awesome.
Thomas: That’s a great article. And he’s not talking about 1,000 Facebook friends. A true fan is someone who buys your premium products, purchases signed copies of your books and shows up to support you. They’re the kind of fan who attends your concert, not just streams your music.
Kevin: Exactly. They’re people you can reach directly and not people you have to pay Mark Zuckerberg to talk to.
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