BrandingFire Blog

Eric Wittenberg is an accomplished Civil War author, cavalry authority and fellow blogger, in addition to his day job as a lawyer. Eric has more than a dozen published books to his credit, including his newest One Continuous Fight:
The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863, and more than two dozen published articles. Eric is often called on as a speaker on the subject of cavalry and as a guide for tours.

A couple of months ago, Eric published a really good series on his blog titled “Things I Wish I Knew Then But Know Now.” The series discussed the lessons Eric has learned over his years as a published book author. The series inspired me to do an interview with Eric about marketing history books from the author’s point of view. (BrandingFire Note: I’ve never been a published author, but I have several years of experience on the distribution and publisher’s side of things.)

BrandingFire (BF): My friend, author Dan Miller, has told me several times that authors need to be prepared to do their own book marketing. He says that unless your name is John Grisham or Stephen King, publishers just aren’t going to invest the time and money needed to market a book properly. Do you find this to be true?

Eric Wittenberg(EW): Sadly, it’s absolutely true. The truth is that most Civil War books don’t sell sufficient copies to give publishers much of an incentive to invest a lot of money into major marketing campaigns. There are, of course, exceptions, as occasionally a Civil War book will hit the bestseller lists - Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals comes to mind immediately - and then the publishers will spend the necessary money.

BF: I know you’ve gone to the trouble of putting up your own websites to promote your books. Is this something you’ve always done?

EW: No, it’s something we started in 2006 with the release of Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg.

BF: Do you build your own sites or do you hire out the job?

EW: I have no competence for that sort of thing, so it’s much better for me to hire a professional to do that work for me.

BF: When you put up a site to support a title, what is your goal for the site?

EW: Sell books and spread the word.

BF: How long do you leave a site up?

EW: Good question. I actually haven’t had to address that issue yet. Plenty of Blame continues to sell well two years later, and as long as it does, we intend to leave the site up.

BF: Have you tried any book marketing tactics that didn’t work? If so, will you share any?

EW: I have found that taking books to Civil War Roundtable meetings generally doesn’t work well. There are only a few I’ve encountered where people are hardcore book buyers, while most just don’t care.

BF: What other marketing tactics do you find to be successful?

EW: Honestly, there is no substitute for word of mouth marketing. Having someone say “this is a great book and you need to read it” is without question the best marketing tool that there is. I try to encourage that sort of thing as often as I can.

BF: How important do you think author signings are for promoting a book?

EW: I think that they’re critical. People like to collect signed first editions of books, and in-person signings are the best way to meet the public and sign for them. The location of the signing and the promotion work done by the sponsor is, of course, critical. If nobody knows about, it’s a waste of time, but if the promoter does a good job of getting the word out, a good book signing can be one of the very best ways to sell books that I know.

BF: You and I first became acquainted through your blog. How important are blogs in book promotion? Any advice to authors considering or involved in blogging?

EW: I have found that blogging is a great way to make and maintain contact with the readers of my books, and I have also found that it’s a great way to remind people of one’s work. If authors feel that they have something to say that’s not just shilling their books, then I would definitely encourage them to try blogging. In September, I will have been blogging for three full years, and I have a large contingent of regular readers. It never ceases to amaze me how many people invest their valuable time into reading what I have to say each day.

BF: How much do you consider the marketability of a subject before you write a book on it?

EW: Some of my projects are carefully calculated to try to select topics that I know will sell, but others are strictly pursuing things that interest me, nothing more, nothing less. As an example, this week, I decided to tackle a tactical treatment of the June 10, 1864 Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, and in part, I selected that topic because I know that books on Nathan Bedford Forrest sell well, and I’d like to make some money on the one of these projects.

BF: Do you have a set marketing budget before you start promoting a book?

EW: No. It all depends on the book and how well I think it might sell.

BF: My personal experience with publishing is that going through traditional mass market distribution channels is very difficult. The discounts distributors like Ingram, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, etc. are steep and leave little room for profit. Has this been your experience?

EW: Not at all. To date, all of my work has been published by conventional, commercial publishing houses, and I wouldn’t even consider a publisher that didn’t use the traditional mass-market publishing channels as the primary means of getting books out there.

BF: What methods of distribution have you found more effective than the “mainstream” ones listed above?

EW: To be honest, none. Short of selling books on the Internet, I can’t think of another means of selling books that is more effective.

I’d like to thank Eric again for kindly contributing his time and experience. If you haven’t read his blog, The Rantings of a Civil War Historian, you should. You can also find Eric’s books at major bookstores, including Amazon.com. I should also mention that Eric and author J. D. Petruzzi are leading a tour at Ted Alexander’s Mother of All Gettysburg Seminars on July 23-27. If you want the chance to have Eric and J.D. give you a personal tour of some of JEB Stuart’s cavalry ride during the Gettysburg campaign, you should sign up ASAP. It’s filling up fast.

In the July/August 2008 issue of Fast Company is a good article on the new visitor’s center at the Gettysburg National Military Park. Setting aside personal feelings you may have about the new center (some I know don’t like it), the article does a great job of explaining why designers of the center went with the choices they did.

• Basically, the goals were to:
• Increase tourism revenue for the town
• Increase average trouist stay in town
• Engage younger visitors
• Better inform visitors about the battle and the soldiers who fought it
• Increase revenues

The article correctly states that historic sites are having an increasingly difficult time vying for the attention of our increasingly attention-deficit citizens. Americans are used to microwave cooking, fast food, 30 minute entertainment shows and 5 minute thrill rides. Taking day-long tours of sites where something happened decades or even centuries before they were born is almost too much to bear.

“While a movie studio can roll out Indiana Jones sequels, there will never be a Gettysburg 2: Robert E. Lee’s Revenge. The best they (historic sites) can do is to modernize their presentations.” (from the article)

“Most people aren’t visiting to learn. They want to have an experience, to be immersed in something.” Elliott Gruber, vice president, Gettysburg Foundation

You can read the full article here.

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National Trust for Historic Preservation

I found another interesting blog from the folks at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It’s called Show Me the Money and it’s all about federal grant opportunities that may help out organizations active in historic preservation. It’s a worthy read for any group needing money.

As a side note, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has really embraced blogging as a way to communicate important information to history sites and garner feedback from readers. Their willingness to open up to this process (as opposed to shutting it down and trying to control the conversation) is astounding, inspiring and should be applauded. They are really living their mission to the fullest online and I personally thank them for their leadership in the wired world!

Downtown St. Joseph, MO

Image via Wikipedia

StJoeNews.net published an interetsing story on Sunday, June 29th titled “Museums look to the future“, noting that St. Joseph, Missouri has a number of good museums (including the Patee House Museum and Jesse James House Museum), which is both a blessing and a curse. Culturally, it’s great for the city, but the museums are having to compete with each other for limited visitor dollars. Many are starting to look harder at the possibility of getting government tax support. One museum director said museums will need to receive 28% of their income from government support. That’s a staggering number. Nearly a third? Other people the reporter interviewed wouldn’t give numbers like that, but they generally all agreed that government support is needed.

And the thing is, this isn’t just in St. Joseph. It’s like this all over the country. Museums are generally struggling to make ends meet and the task is getting harder as the economy staggers along and gas prices skyrocket. But is the answer government tax support? Raising admission prices? Corporate sponsorship? A combination of these tactics? Or some other solution? I think all history-related organizations are going to have to start getting creative with ways to bring in money. I also think they’re going to have to reevaluate their organization from the top down. Are you telling a good story? Are you telling a cohesive story? Are you working to personalize the story so that it engages your audience? Are you approaching your finances from a business standpoint (even if you’re a non-profit)? Notice in the St. Joe story, this quote:

“If they (the museums) are going to last, you have to operate them as a business.”

Terry Oldham, director of the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art.’

Another good point made in the story is that one of the most costly expenses for many museums is simply finding good help. Volunteers are extremely helpful, but they’re hard to find and not always available, the way paid employees are. Good help is not only hard to find, but it can be expensive.

So, is your organization looking to the future and wondering how to handle rising costs and dwindling customers? Have you found any ways to start dealing with the money crunch? What is your organization doing to bring in more dollars or protect the dollars you already have?

If you are into history and marketing historic sites, you really should check out Heidi Glatfelter’s blog Marketing Early America. Heidi has more than a decade of marketing experience working with non-profits and she’s really connecting that experience with her passion for history and pumping out some good information for anyone involved with history-related organizations.

I didn’t know Heidi until I ran across her blog a short while ago, but I’m happy to find someone out there who shares my passions for history and marketing and is trying to be a beacon to help guide these worthy groups.

Now, GO, READ, COMMENT!! Be heard!

I ran across a nice site called Cultural Heritage Tourism run by (again) The National Trust for Historic Preservation. On their site, they list the Five Principles for Successful and Sustainable Cultural Heritage Tourism. It’s worth a read. The third principle - Make Sites and Programs Come Alive - really hit a cord for me.

If you haven’t read the November/December issue of Civil War Historian, the Attention to Orders column (letter from the editor) is worth a read. Editor (and noted Civil War reenactor) Nicky Hughes sometimes steps aside and lets his wife Susan (equally noted Civil War civilian reenactor write in the space. This issue she writes about the hidden peril facing many historic sites: a lack of money and support. She notes that many of those sites that are in danger of closing look prosperous. She reports on two Baltimore sites and one near Richmond which closed this past Autumn.

Baltimore lost the Baltimore Civil War Museum and Fells Point Maritime Museum. Both were satellite museums run by the Maryland Historical Society. The society was hemorrhaging money and the closures would put the back in the black in about a year.

Flowerdew Hundred is a historic plantation nearly 400 years old. It was also the location of General Ulysses S. Grant’s crossing of the James River in 1864. Turning Flowerdew Hundred into a historic destination was to a great degree the work of lawyer and investment banker David A. Harrison III. But Harrison died in 2002 and the family has decided to stop funneling money into the site. The site cannot support itself financially on its own. The only option left to them was closure.

Susan Hughes says that even with the elevated public awareness historic sites have received in recent years, many of those sites are still struggling. She says it’s time for historic sites to start looking at their destinations with a “business” eye and mindset. Something that is alien and hard for the administrators of many of these site. Yet, Hughes is right. Sites all over the US that don’t have access to unlimited amounts of money are turning things around by using a “business” mindset.

How is the situation with your historic site or group? Are you struggling or are you thriving? If you have issues or would just like some fresh perspective, drop us a line and we’ll be happy to give you some input. In the meantime, keep fighting to tell your story and keep your branding irons hot!

Here’s a great blog post from the Brooklyn Museum on how they did a recent test with Twitter. While the result wasn’t a resounding success, they should be roundly applauded for having the guts to test out an idea. I hope they get the opportunity to do it some more. They also deserve massive kudos for sharing the results on their blog. Heck! While we’re at it, I’ll throw them a high five for even HAVING a blog!

Great job, Shelley Bernstein & the Brooklyn Museum!!

Paul Williams over at Idea Sandbox posts these great Cocktail Napkin Wisdom images. , along with the two pennies, may be worth more than your whole week’s salary!

If you aren’t familiar with Paul, you should check out his blog. He’s very creative a great read.