As we scramble to find new ways to reach readers we discover that there are things that work and things that don’t work. I’ve tried everything from handing out business cards to kindle-carrying travelers at an airport to running ads on Craigslist. And I’ve done all the regular things too – interviews, promotional sales, blogging, etc. Just as there are things that do and don’t work there are also things we probably should or shouldn’t do. One of the things that’s been done in various different forms is coat-tailing. Coat-tailing is the process of attaching your book to another book that is selling well. In the interest of determining where the grey areas are I’m going to describe various forms of coat-tailing and ask for your input on whether it’s ethical or not to coat-tail.
Here are the types that I’m familiar with:
Tagging
When I published my first novel My Temporary Life and it began to sell I was coat-tailed. At that point, a couple of years ago, you could pick tags and insert them in a specific section of your Amazon product page. For example, for my romantic suspense novel that had coming of age elements I picked “love story”, “boy meets girl”, “coming of age” and other similar terms. This is not a category or genre section, it’s a tag that helped Amazon’s bots pick up the words from your page and directed readers to your book, and again, tags on your product page are no longer used. Readers could also pick tags and insert them. Some of the tags that readers associated with my book, which again was selling very well at the time, were names of other authors and titles of their books. Lots of them. Although this was certainly a compliment to my work I hoped it didn’t mislead actual, real readers because when I checked most of those other authors’ works were not similar to my book. Do you think it’s ethical to tag someone else’s book with your name or book title?
Reviewing
This is a common practice and many of the books that purport to help you sell a gazillion books will outline how to do this. Authors review a bestselling book and insert their name or book title into the text of the review or even the headline. Quite often they’ll sign the review with their name and “bestselling author of…”. Some even post a link to their own book as part of their name. Do you believe it’s ethical to insert your author or book name into a review?
Purchasing
This is a tricky one. Authors and a group of their followers purchase the author’s book as well as another book that is selling well, usually in the same category as the author’s book. Then, they promote the book at the same time they promote their own. In doing this, if enough readers purchase both books, the more popular as well as the author’s work, the author’s fortunes can rise and fall as the more popular book’s sales increase and decrease. Usually this is done over a short, concentrated period of time. If enough books are purchased the author’s original book will show up in the “Customers who purchased this book also purchased” section. This is a golden opportunity to coat-tail to a high-flying book. Is it ethical practice to manipulate purchases and coat-tail in this fashion?
Posting
Uninvited, an author posts a link to his or her book on another author’s Facebook page. This would be a new post that a less-popular author posts on more-popular author’s page and includes a link to their own work. Ethical or not?
Commenting
Less-popular author comments on a blog or Facebook post that more-popular author has written and includes a link to their work. Is this acceptable practice?
I have a wise mentor who helps me from time to time with all kinds of problems. If I asked him the above questions I know what his answer would be. He’d tell me that I should always check my motivation. I know he would. So if I write a review and I feel it’s in the best interest of the review to reveal who I am or what books I’ve written I should certainly do so. If I’m dropping my name in the hopes that readers of the review perhaps check out my work then perhaps my intentions are less than honorable. I’m no angel and don’t claim to be and I write this post in the hopes that the ensuing discussion shows us where the boundaries should be. So, go ahead, have you done any of the above? Would you do any of them? Should we be coat-tailing?
I really like the advice of your mentor. I’ve never engaged in any of the coat-tailing practices you outline. although I’ve witnessed nearly all of them (the “purchasing” one was a new one to me). I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say practices like that are unethical, but I say they lean towards smarmy and probably don’t win us any friends.
Interesting thoughts, Martin. I’ve never used any of these techniques and I don’t think I ever will. My standard is this: What if every single writer did this? If every single writer tagged reviews on similar books or commented with links on other author’s more successful blogs or FB pages, it would be awful. On the other hand, if every single author tries to get an ad on BookBub or ENT, so what? I understand I am giving up some degree of visibility by not following guerilla marketing techniques, and I’m okay with that.
I echo Melinda. Er, no, I’m not that desperate to lose the respect I have.
When writing a review it might be acceptable to say your name and author of yada yada. It may give credence to the review, but I would be careful not to flaunt too much. The other areas seem as it could be consideres tacky. Personally, if I could afford it I’d hire a publicist.
I don’t like doing coat-tailing from what I have read in this post.
I have never used the tactics above, but I’ve seen almost all of them. Unfortunately, the people who most need to read this post and understand the unprofessional branding of this behavior… won’t.
They’ll head over to FB and put the link to their book on another author’s newly released book page.
Great stuff, as always.
All of these suggestions give me the heebie-jeebies to some degree. If your expertise is relevant to your review of a book, I can see mentioning it — but I’m talking about subject-matter expertise, not, “Hey, I wrote a novel about the same thing this book is about, and here’s a link to it!”
Posting your book links on another author’s Facebook page or in comments on their blog, without being invited to do so, is beyond tacky. It’s like crashing a party and then trying to sell your product to the people who were actually invited. You’re a guest on the other author’s page/blog; behaving like this is a good way to make sure you’re never invited back.
Lynne, you put that very well. Would I crash someone else’s party and shove my book in everyone’s face? Um…no.
Lynne, I once made an announcement about a possible award and someone flew by and left their own marketing stuff and link in the comments of my post without even commenting on my announcement. Very annoying.
No kidding!
I’ve seen nearly all of these things, but I prefer not to do them. I think it’s kind of tacky to post a link to your work in anyone’s blog comment thread or on their Facebook page or timeline, unless you’ve been invited to do so. I know many authors identify themselves as authors in their review sign-offs, and I won’t judge them, but I don’t feel comfortable doing it myself. But that’s just me. Thank you for posting this, Martin.
There will always be people looking to circumvent real, hard work and replace it with the ability to game the system in some way. The things you mention in your blog post are ways to cheat, nothing more.
If someone can wake up in the morning, look at themselves in the mirror, and be at peace with themselves knowing that they didn’t earn their success (if one can call it that), then I suppose that’s their choice to make.
I prefer to put in the work and figure out for myself (or through the help of my community) what works and what doesn’t, and then let my works stand for themselves.
I’d rather be able to live with myself than grab a quick boost in sales.
Most of these techniques I’d classify as used-car-salesmanship, with all the sleaze that implies. On a practical level, however, wouldn’t they also be counter productive? I don’t think trading short-term visibility for long term reputation is such a great idea.
This is a very interesting post to me because today for the first time ever (at least what I can remember) coat-tailing. I was reading an article on Indies Unlimited where it talks about getting more visibility on Facebook. Tagging pages with more likes. I can’t seem to tag from my pages, not sure what happened there but I did share a few threads on my pages and commenting on the similarities in or stories or something like that. It felt a bit bold (ballsy) but I am trying to gain visibility that has been lost. I do think the practices you describe are rather vulgar and I do not care to be that kind of person no matter how much I want my books to sell.
I write terrible from my phone so excuse my last message. I hope you got the point. I might have done a bit of what you call coat-tailing today on FB. I tagged a few pages to my pages and mentioned my book. This is not common practice for me but I am trying to get some of the lost visibility back.
I do think the things you mentioned are not my cup of tea. A girl has to keep her dignity, of course. Thank you Martin for sharing. Just another thing to think about in my already over-loaded brain. 😉
I actually tried putting my link in a review once and Amazon deleted it. (I knew the author so it was fine by her). I decided not to try it again. I knew an author who went into bookstores and put her business card in the pages of a bestselling novel. Another one is when someone goes to an event you have planned and starts advertising their book. People will do anything possible to get their books noticed. I wonder if they realize that many times, these actions just get their books ignored!
Good heavens. People actually do that? Unreal.
Good article, Martin. Never done any coat-tailing. Wouldn’t dream of it, but I have had two authors have the audacity to post their books on my Facebook profile almost seconds after friending me.
I think the answer is a uniform “NO”. If your work can’t make in on it’s own merits and your own marketing efforts, go back to your day job. Stealing face time from someone more successful is still stealing. If you’ve got no scruples about that, then you probably don’t have any scruples at all.
I really want to answer with something contrary to the rest of the responses because I’m in that kind of a mood today. I’ve certainly seen all of these done with the exception of ‘purchasing’ which I’ll talk about on its own. The others, I think I agree that they aren’t okay
Purchasing seems like it wouldn’t be cost efficient. Someone defending it would say they’re using the system in place to their advantage. Is this any different than figuring out how to get yourself on a particular obscure best seller list? The people really are buying the books. 🙂 I still think this is questionable because you’re gaming the system and expect it is going to backfire, ending up costing you more than you gain unless your book and the book you’re coat tailing on have an ideal target audience that is almost exactly the same. In that case, over time I’d expect you to get on each others also-boughts organically.
But the question Martin asked wasn’t whether these crossed the line as much as it was trying to decide where the line is. Here are a few more
You can’t tag any more, but you might invoke another author’s name in your blurb (it’s metadata, so I’m guessing it gets some weight in Amazon’s searches) or in the title, which gets more weight although I think Amazon might have cracked down on that. So, if you write legal thrillers that you think are a lot like John Grisham’s and saying so isn’t misleading, are you helping the reader? Are you “stealing” form Grisham? Rich might say the latter, but if it is a good comparison, I’m not sure in this case. Fans of Grisham who are going to be swayed by this or find your book in a search are going to buy his books anyway. Have you taken any money out of his pocket or had any effect on him in any way by doing this? All you’ve done, if it is a good comparison, is helped readers find your book.
Coat tailing can happen other places and ways, too. There are blogs that I follow and comment on frequently. If, for example, I comment at The Passive Voice on a post having to do with reviewing books, am I coat tailing by doing so or lending whatever expertise I have on the subject? The way the comments are setup there, clicking my name in the comments will take a person back to my blog and I’ll sometimes see traffic from there after commenting.
I am in agreement with all of them but the reviews. Now, when I review a book, I use my personal Amazon account and a silly name, “SeaWitch.” However, I’ve had some authors who are more successful than me review my books and leave their name and “Author of (Book Title).” This really doesn’t bother me because I feel it let’s readers know that THIS author, who they may be more familiar with, liked my work enough to read and review it so maybe they should take a chance, too.
One that REALLY gets me is when I read an author interview and the one conducting the interview has to insert information about themselves and THEIR books after every comment. Martin, I believe you did a post on this in IU a while back and I recently saw an interview for Laurie Boris where the blogger kept referring to her work when the interview was suppose to be about Laurie and HER work. Ugh! Drives me insane!
One last form of coattailing I have seen a lot of is an author who is too lazy to market their work, so they attach themselves to someone more successful and sort of hang on to their every comment, blog post, etc. Sort of like a regular Joe hanging out with a celebrity in hopes of being noticed and given attention.
Several of those are actually illegal on amazon, such as putting a link to your book in a review of another. No grey area at all. Others are self destructive. If you post a plug for you book on the timeline of Hugh Howey or somebody like that, you are going to get attacked by his fans and blacken your name.
I don’t see a single thing on that list that looks like a good idea to do.
There are legitimate ways to coattail other books. Creating lists is one. Another might be targeting purchasers of the leading book for your freebie/countdown promo days, hoping to get an also-bought connection. Or just the very simple and widely used practice of blurbing “If you liked…” Or “In the tradition of…”
I review under my own name because it has never occurred to me not to, but I wouldn’t mention my own book for fear of being considered tacky. However, I really don’t mind if authors mention their books when they review mine. It’s just part of their identifying information, and would certainly be used in an official blurb obtained in traditional publishing, and I’m grateful enough for a review not to begrudge them any additional exposure, such as it is. (And frankly, when I see someone write an intelligent review, I’m often more interested in their work.)
Everything else I see listed here strikes me as at least grasping or tacky or helplessly narcissistic, though I’m not sure tagging (which, as you say, no longer exists), is that much different than mentioning similar works or authors in a product blurb, an accepted practice that Amazon even recommends.
I’ve also seen people use best-selling titles for their own books, or choose titles or author names that are clearly designed to be easily confused with them. Or they’ll copy a striking cover design for a popular book. That’s another form of coat-tailing (which also may not be under the control of the author, if they are traditionally published). Of course, this can also be coincidental. One of the cover designs I had come up with on my own for my debut novel was a lot like Lianne Moriarty’s current bestseller. I’m glad I didn’t go with it, since everyone would probably assume I had copied it.
I got stuck in one of these. When I review something on Amazon it says “JD Mader – author of Joe Cafe” – it seemed like a good idea at the time. I regret it now, but Amazon won’t change it.
I don’t think it’s unethical, but I do think it is a little tacky.
I agree with your premise, ‘how it feels’, etc. My dad always told me not to do anything I wouldn’t want my mom to know about. I didn’t listen then, but I do now. A writer’s integrity is super important.
A very interesting discussion. Ii’d never heard of coat tailing, but I had seen some of the practises.
I think reviews are the grey area.I don’t mind an author signing off as Fred Dagg, author of ‘How to tidy up sheep’. But no more. And I think I would ask to do so in a review of someone else’s book.
Thank you for raising this and educating me.
Many I wouldn’t do, but some, under the right circumstances are really harmless. It is, I think legit to compare your book to another and use that title so people immediately get it. This is done in Hollywood all the time, i.e.: Avatar meets High School Musical. Or, if you liked XXXX you’ll like this book.
As usual, Martin, you’ve offered a provocative scenario for us to think about and discuss! And as usual, I’ll probably go long… 🙂
Someone was talking to me about MySpace the other day and I told the story of how I finally took my music page down – all those many years ago – because it has basically become a billboard for other bands and musicians to come along and leave news and links about their own projects… with never a comment or mention about mine. The “coattailing” was so rampant it was ridiculous and, I believe, had much to do with artists and musicians ultimately leaving that site for Facebook and Twitter.
Frankly, the concept is the bane of any indie artist, because there’s such a need and impulse to be proactive about EVERY possible way we can promote our work that sometimes common courtesies and proper protocol get forgotten.
My thoughts on each of your items:
Tagging: Using another writer’s name and book title can be dicey, but if the idea is “this book is like that book” or “readers who liked that book will like this book,” it might have merit. On CBBaby, where indie artists sell CDs, it’s an actual part of each artists’ page – stating three other comparable artists. But one would have to be very sensitive and selective, I think. It’s behind the curtain so it ultimately becomes about your own comfort zone with doing it and authenticity is key; don’t tag someone if they really aren’t a comparable book.
Reviewing: I think putting your name and web address at the end of a review is fine. Putting a direct link to your book? I dunno. I do see it done as sort of a signature (i.e., Jane Doe, author of Bla Bla Bla…with the link). I don’t think that would necessarily bother me if it was done on a review for my book, as long as the review was squarely and honestly focused on my book and not some deflection meant to draw attention to Jane’s book. Also, if Jane is a credible author, her ID might give her review of my book more credence, which would be good for me. Again… one has to use judgment.
Purchasing: I’m not sure I see the problem with this one. Isn’t the other author getting a sale and some promotion along with you, the lesser writer? I can’t imagine that higher-profile writer would be bothered much if the lesser writer’s fans were purchasing and promoting their book too… seems like a win/win. Or am I missing something on this one?
Posting: this goes back to my MySpace story. It bugs the crap out of me when someone co-opts a comment thread of mine to change the subject and promote their own work. BAD form, especially when it’s uninvited. If, however, they’re posting an article that supports something or expands on something I’m writing about, that’s different. But to randomly go on someone’s Facebook page or blog, as some people mentioned, and just post up your links, etc.? Dear Lord, what could be more tacky?
Commenting: Most comment threads require or at least ask for a web address (as they do here). If you have all your links, etc., on your website (and why wouldn’t you?), your comment, if it interests people, will guide them right to where you’ve got your book linked. If you randomly embed your web address in the comment? I dunno, don’t that wouldn’t bother me much if it was my thread and it’s sort of a signature thing. Again, as long as the reason someone’s leaving a comment on my thread is to enhance and respond to what I’ve written, not promote their own work.
The bottom line is authenticity. If people are honestly supporting another writer with comments, reviews, purchases, etc., and leave links to their site as part of their signature, that seems appropriate and acceptable. If they’re coattailing in a creepy way that’s about using another writer’s work/page/site/etc. to deflect attention to them, serious breach of protocol.
Thanks, Martin… great questions.