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Creative Ways to Package Fiction

Unusual packaging (such as three-ring binding) can work for non-fiction, but how can you creatively package and sell fiction? This article includes several ideas to help you to go beyond the printed book when finding an audience for your fiction.

When publishing non-fiction, using unusual packaging (such as three-ring binding for a professional manual) can actually increase the perceived value. However, readers expect fiction books to look a certain way, and they may be more resistant to alternative binding methods for fiction books than they are for non-fiction. After all, when they buy non-fiction, they are looking for a way to do something or to learn something they did not know. Fiction is entertainment, and they are used to seeing it packaged in familiar ways.

If you try to sell your novel with a comb binding or other alternative to a perfect bound or hard bound book, you may face obstacles. Because your novel looks different from what they are used to seeing, they may think it is not as good as others they see in the book store. So, let’s look at what you can do to be successful with your fiction and poetry.

One way around this would be to put your fiction on audio cassette. Your audio cassettes won’t look all that different from what they see elsewhere. And audio books are becoming more popular all the time.

Put your children’s stories on cassette, as read by “Grandma”.

Another way to deal with this obstacle is to create something that is completely different from anything they’ve seen before. How could you package your novel differently? You could publish on disk or CD-ROM.

What if you sold your novel by subscription, as a newsletter? Perhaps your story could continue indefinitely. Subscribers would get a new chapter every week, or every two weeks. Delivery could be by mail, fax, or e-mail. This seems like a natural for publicity--the novel that arrives in your e-mail box every week, and never ends! By the way, if this idea seems a little familiar, it’s because you would be writing a serial. Many of Charles Dickens’ works were first published this way, and if it was good enough for him, maybe it’s good enough for you!

Combine the last two ideas, and sell a monthly cassette with the latest installment of your story. This could also be sold by subscription.

Sell your work over the Internet. Post a chapter or two, then let readers know how they can get the rest of the book. When they order, you can send them a paper copy, or a disk or file with the book on it. (Just make sure they know what they will be getting.) You might even give them a choice, with the electronic version priced less than the paper version to reflect your lower costs. For more information on this, see the section on Internet Publishing.

If you write poetry, print your poems on fancy note cards or postcards. Sell the cards in packs.

Print poems in calligraphy on parchment-style paper or on posters. Sell the parchment prints framed as a gift item.

Create personalized versions of your fiction or poetry. Have a standard story which you can customize with the reader’s information—names, places, physical description, pets’ names, etc. People love to read about themselves! Have a questionnaire customers fill out with the information needed to customize the story for them.

What ideas can you come up with? After all, if you’re creative enough to write fiction, you ought to be creative enough to come up with a dynamite way to package it!

You also must be creative in your marketing. The difference between selling a lot and selling a few may be coming up with a unique angle for your fiction.

Putting stories on tape can be good packaging, but a tape is not inherently unique. Create stories on tape and market them as a way to relax on your drive home after a long day at work, and you may have an angle to market. “Rush Hour Relaxers” could be more successful than the same stories on tape without the angle. It’s all about targeting a market. This angle could also generate publicity.

Think about selling your fiction as you would non-fiction. No, I don’t mean trying to pass off the story you made up as a true story. When you market non-fiction, you try to determine who has an interest in your subject and where you would find them. If your target market is accountants, you write articles for their trade journals, you send press releases to those journals and other magazines they read, you reach them through their professional associations and licensing boards, etc.

How does this apply to fiction? What is interesting about your characters? Is one a model railroader? Clubs, magazines, stores, newsletters, etc. devoted to model railroading might be interested, because model railroaders might be interested. What about the occupations of your characters? Professional associations all have newsletters and magazines, and meetings where you could speak. Where is the story set? Newspapers and other media in that area may cover you. Where do you live? Where did you go to school? Is there something in your book that has similarities to current news events? Was the story inspired by something you faced in your life? What is your story? Could you excerpt a portion of the book as a short story?

Come up with as many angles as you can: Who would be interested in this story? Why? Where are they? How do you reach them?

If you are creative enough to write good fiction, you are creative enough to come up with clever ways to package and sell it.

Get more ideas on writing, publishing and selling more books at Selling Books.