No Sales = No Royalties

Spending too much or even too little on your book production can harm you as a self-publisher in ways your may not ever know. You may have the greatest story or the best information on the planet, but if the book buyer isn’t attracted enough to your book to at least pick it up and review the cover and some of the pages, you won’t get a sale.

And why should you as the author be as crass as to dirty your hands with such a mundane thing as book sales? There is a sales to royalty equation that goes like this no sales = no royalties. It would be nice if we could earn money on our writing without having to convince a reader to give it to us, but we can’t. Book sales and book marketing isn’t just a silly inconvenience, it is the truly the engine of publishing.

Critical Questions for the Self-Publishing Author

• What form should your book take to maximize marketability and sales?
  • Do my prospective readers want a hardcover book?
  • Will a soft-cover book appeal more to the readers?
  • Are the readers looking for a bargain or a keepsake?

Presentation Makes All of the Difference

Example of Celestial Seasoning's art

I learned this lesson myself some twenty years ago. At the time, I was working for a natural health magazine in the advertising sales department. One of my favorite advertisers was Celestial Seasonings herbal teas. Their marketing was second to none. Every time they introduced a new product, they hired top-notch illustrators to create the image used on the boxes and ads. They were beautiful. It wasn’t uncommon to have two to three Celestial Seasonings full-page ads in every issue and I can tell you they really dressed up the magazine.

Then as a foil to Celestial Seasonings, was a 1/6 page, black and white, ad for a book which I won’t name for obvious reasons. Their advertisement was ugly to the point of hideousness. It was poorly designed and the photo looked like someone kicked around before inserting it. We tried to bury the ad in places where it wouldn’t wreck our precious image.

We had in place a system to help track advertising results. Celestial Seasonings, of course, always pulled a good response, but at the end of the day, the ugly little black and white book ad would pull equally well, and often more, than Celestial Seasonings. Why? We came up with a lot of theories, but the one that sticks with me after all these years is that book advertisers were consistent with their target buyers. Celestial Seasonings appealed more to the artistic, upscale, yuppie audience. The ugly book ad looked cheap, and offered their product at a discount. It was consistent. The look of the ad matched the purpose. How many books would be sold if they went in with beautiful, full-page ads? I think that their cost would be much greater and their sales would have been less because the message wouldn’t match the purpose.

Make Sure the Message is Consistent with the Marketing

Authors, think about the main purpose of your book, and how you intend to market it. If you can get a clear picture in your mind, many of the questions will answer themselves.

15 stacks of books higher than this

by Bill Ruesch

Latest figures based on ISBN’s reveal that the US published nearly 190,000 books last year.  If you assume an average thickness of 1″ per book, and stacked them one on top of the other you’d have fifteen stacks of books each stack taller than the Empire State Building in New York. Last year–15 stacks of books taller than the Empire State Building. This wasn’t over a ten or twenty year stretch, but just last year. Try to visualize these fifteen stacks standing beside the Empire State Building and then imagine what would happen to the streets of New York City if two, five, or ten year’s worth of published books were stacked among the buildings.

All of this is from US publishing alone!  Another 130,000 books were published in the UK. If you added these books to the stacks it would create another ten more Empire State sized stacks. It boggles the mind.

The Questions to Ask

• Does my book stand a chance?
  • The odds are, please excuse the pun, stacked against you.  Every hour of every day over 21 books are published in the US. The competition is unbelievably tough, but as difficult as it is, if you don’t enter the fray you are guaranteed to fail. Remember as difficult as it is to win a lottery, lotteries are won every day. Like Han Solo said in the movie Star Wars, “Never tell me the odds kid.” That is the attitude you must adopt.
• What is the best path for me to pursue in getting my book sold and read?
  
  • First dispel the notion that all you have to do is write well and you’ll become rich and famous. That’s a fairy tale. There is no happily ever after for 99% or more of all authors. Even Mark Twain in his heyday knew the value of marketing. It has been recorded that he had 10,000 people selling his books for him. If Mark Twain had to arrange for his own book sales, it isn’t too far of a stretch to think that you would have to too. Even traditionally published authors have to participate in selling.  The Red Hen Association has downloaded an interview with a contemporary published author, Casey Sherman. Mr. Sherman has some very enlightening things to say about book selling today. Check it out at Casey Sherman interview.
  • Consider the genre of your book. Small independent publishers produce four times as many nonfiction titles as fiction. There is a reason for this disparity. A nonfiction book usually has an identifiable market.  A book of fiction has a more difficult time locating its audience; however, a novel has the potential for much greater sales in the long run. According to  http://BookStatistics.com popular fiction comprises 55% of book sales, followed by 10% religious nonfiction, and 9% cooking and crafts.
• How many books do I have to sell to make money?
  • Large publishers say they have to sell 10,000 books to break even, but for self-publishers without huge overheads break even can come much sooner. It is difficult to name a figure for profitability because costs of printing, editing, art, illustration, and cover design can, and do differ for each book. Simple math is all it takes to determine earnings. Add all the sales and then subtract all of the costs. Be sure to keep records of all costs including transportation to and from events, mail and shipping expenses, professional services like accountants and attorneys, meals if you are out of town, etc. Not only will you want to report expenses to the IRS to decrease your taxes, but you can’t get an accurate break even number without it. Self-publishing is a business. It’s best if you treat it as a business and not a hobby.
• How have other authors done it ?
  • In today’s world it is easier and more difficult at the same time to be heard among the babble. The Internet makes it possible to reach out to the entire world. You can setup and start a blog for free in minutes. Just think, you can launch a soap box and speak to the whole world right now. The problem is that 175,000 other blogs are started each day according to Cnet. Nonetheless, a blog has become a necessity. A stagnant blog, will not serve you. Just because you build a blog site doesn’t mean that you will attract visitors. You have to market the site, in order to market yourself and your book.
  • Arrange speaking engagements where you can sell and sign copies of books.
  • Go to where the potential readership goes. If your book is about race car drivers, see if you can get the book into NASCAR events. Maybe your book is about fairies, go to FaerieCon or other fairy festivals. Got a cookbook? Go to places where cooking is the topic. Be creative and think in terms of places people might be who would relate to your book even if it is a stretch. I have a friend who writes books about Dutch oven cooking. He has an arrangement with a Dutch oven manufacturer to put a sales piece about his books in the box of every oven they sell.
  • Be fearless. Call on buyers for stores and ask them to stock your book.
  • Get your book on library shelves. Contact the American Library Association for places and times of librarian conferences.

  Will these tips really work? They aren’t guaranteed, but they will help. The biggest tip is make your own fame. If you find a way to become a household name, you will sell books. There’s your guarantee.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman and I have been connected on LinkedIn for some time now. His comments on my various blog posts have always been insightful and on point. Recently he sent me a link to an article he had written regarding e-Books and I thought it shed some new light on the question of to e-Book or not to e-Book? I enjoyed his perspective so much that I asked his permission to republish it on this blog.  –Bill Ruesch

Best-Selling Author Asks: How Do You Autograph An E-Book?

Author: Dr. Gary S. Goodman

At one of my most memorable book signings, I had just finished speaking to a group of 450 managers. Each had been provided a copy of one of my books, and it took me a good half-hour to inscribe autographs to those that patiently stood in line.

That happy scene came to mind I was just reflecting on some advice I gave to an aspiring author.

I suggested she start the journey into print and prestige by publishing an e-book. Build a track record with one of those, and then pitch a bricks-mortar-and-paper publisher on transforming the piece into something tangible.

Separately, I mentioned she should tell publishers that she performs before “live” audiences, which would make avid book buyers in the foyers of various venues.

Then it hit me. You can’t AUTOGRAPH an e-book, can you?

This is one of the medium’s major drawbacks. As an author of hard-copy volumes, some of which have reached best-seller status, I can tell you much of the allure of purchasing a speaker’s tome is that it is a memento.

You can pull it off a shelf, or even display it in a neat tabletop bracket, so your friends and colleagues can be impressed that you got up close and personal with someone at least moderately prominent.

There’s the signature to prove it, and the personal dedication, to YOU!

You can pass that volume down to your grandkids, and beyond, and it may gain significance and even extrinsic value with the passing decades.

An e-book will in all likelihood never be prized as a “first edition.” Nor can it really become a “rare” book, either, as long as it can be preserved in electronic storage systems, which become ever cheaper.

We can’t tout an e-book as being in “excellent condition,” either. Indeed, most of the characteristics that lend books an aura or prestige and uniqueness tend to vanish when they become digital, only.

E-books will be with us for a long time to come. Yet, will they ever serve as reminders of special events or meaningful encounters the way conventional books do?

Authors aren’t the only people to inscribe dedications in books. We do the same thing for friends and loved ones when we give them as gifts.

The fact that we cannot autograph e-books doesn’t necessarily consign them to failure. It just makes conventional volumes that much more valuable and admirable, by comparison.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ebooks-articles/bestselling-author-asks-how-do-you-autograph-an-ebook-2090439.html

About the Author

Dr. Gary S. Goodman is a top-ranked sales speaker, negotiation speaker, and customer service speaker at Google, and a distinguished, sought-after telemarketing speaker, motivational speaker, and attorney. President of Customersatisfaction.com, he is a frequent TV and radio commentator and the best-selling author of 12 books and more than 1,700 articles that appear in 25,000 publications. President of Customersatisfaction.com, Gary conducts seminars and speaks at convention programs around the world. His new audio program is Nightingale-Conant’s “Crystal Clear Communication: How to Explain Anything Clearly in Speech & Writing,” which you can try for only one dollar at: http://www.nightingale.com/prod_detail.aspx?product=Crystal_Clear_Communication&promo=INTAF416. Professional speaking, seminar, and consulting invitations can be addressed to:gary@customersatisfaction.com.

Thomas Edison

In the case of self-publishers, books are the products. Products, no matter how good they are, must be sold. Even Thomas Alva Edison with his marvelous inventions like the phonograph, and incandescent electric light bulbs knew that nothing moves without a sale. What was Edison best at selling? You are right, himself. He was a self-promoter of the highest rank. Electric light was actually invented 50 years before him, but he got credit because he learned how to make it functional, then he tied his name to it and voila Con-Edison was born.

What’s that you say? You aren’t a salesman type. You can’t sell water to a man whose house is on fire. No matter, I’m not talking about going out and knocking on doors. I’m talking about selling yourself by convincing others that the product of your mind, your book, is worth buying and reading. I know a woman in my area, Nancy Miles, who recently self-published a cookbook. This cookbook has the usual mouthwatering recipes with color photos and such, but it also has the added attraction of allowing her readers to go to her website NancyMilesInGoodTaste.com and use templates to create their own family legacy recipe pages. You can literally create a family cookbook with recipes to hand down to other generations. What a great idea!

Is In Good Taste selling well? It is, but if she had taken delivery and kept it in boxes in her garage, it wouldn’t. Nancy has been working the retail store circuit. She takes a book into buyers and shows them why it is different than the other cookbooks they sell. No high highfalutin’ sales pitch, just confidence gained by a belief in her product, and the desire to give everyone an opportunity to do wonderful things for their families.

The title of this post is Lousy Public Speakers Sell Fewer Books which came to me as I realized just how much publishing is changing. The traditional model is based on the publisher buying the rights, incurring all of the costs of  production and distribution, and rewarding the author with a royalty on the sales. The stark truth is that if traditional publishing was the only route, 95% to 98% of the available manuscripts would never get published. What a waste. Nancy didn’t wait for the luck of the draw. She’s out busily creating a market while she’s waiting to be discovered. In the meantime, she’s earning a pretty good living. I’m going to take a wild guess and suggest that her earnings in the first six months are in the neighborhood of $30,000 to $45,000. Remember, she’s doing this on her own, by herself.

Confidence is the key

My point is you don’t have to be a big time traditionally published author to make a living. You don’t have to be Og Mandino who wrote The Greatest Salesman in the World. What you do have to have is a good book, and the confidence to tell people about it. How do you gain that confidence? There are many routes, many coaches, and many teachers, but for my money, there is no better place to start than with Toastmasters. I’ve been in Toastmasters for four years, and I’ve seen time after time people come to our meetings, stand behind the lectern, and shake so badly that they rattle the table. I’ve seen those same people after their fourth, fifth, or sixth speech in the first manual, literally transform themselves into a confident public speaker. It is beautiful. It truly is. And what’s even better is you don’t have to empty your bank account. My club, Precision Speakers, collects $35.00 every six months. That’s only a buck-thirty-five per meeting. To find a club meeting near you go to the Toastmasters International website.

I suggest you get your shy or reticent self to a Toastmaster meeting right away. Get some club speeches under your belt and feel that confidence rise.

]]> http://redhenassociation.com/chickenscratchings/2010/02/lousy-public-speakers-sell-fewer-books/feed/ 3 http://redhenassociation.com/chickenscratchings/2010/02/what-is-the-guaranteed-path-to-book-publishing-success/ http://redhenassociation.com/chickenscratchings/2010/02/what-is-the-guaranteed-path-to-book-publishing-success/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:38:51 +0000 Bill http://redhenassociation.com/chickenscratchings/?p=541

I remember a television interview with John Lennon of The Beatles fame. The question asked was, “Do you know when making an album which songs will be hits?”

John Lennon didn't know

John replied that he never knew, in fact the ones that made it often surprised him. I think that is probably true of books too. Sometimes, not frequently, but sometimes, a book succeeds even when the author wishes it wouldn’t. Take the case of J.D. Salinger who detested the success of The Catcher in the Rye, when asked in an interview, “Did you think it would be such a popular book?”

Salinger’s response was, “It’s been a nightmare.” And that was all he would say on the subject.

By a raise of hands how many authors out there would be unhappy if they had his success? I know that I wouldn’t. I’d be jumping up and down and praising the Lord. My dream come true was Salinger’s nightmare.

How can you know if your book will be a bestseller?

How can you know if your book is going to be a hit? You can’t. There are too many factors involved to make anything a sure deal. You can have a beautifully written manuscript, with superior editing, a wonderful design and even though it should sell – it won’t. There just aren’t any guarantees.

Let me give you an example from my own life experience. Twenty-six years ago I was involved in publishing a natural health magazine called The Herbalist. As a service to our advertisers, and a way to monitor ad response, we included a bingo card. For those who don’t know, a bingo card in a magazine has nothing to do with the popular game named Bingo. It is a mail-back card with numbers matching numbers inserted into the advertisements. A reader could circle the number on the ad that interested them. We collected the data and sent computer printouts to the advertisers. Sometimes an advertiser would get pages and pages of response and sometimes they would get very little. What surprised me was the success of a tiny, 1/6th page black and white ad for a book. The ad was poorly designed and the photo used was so bad that it looked like someone dropped it and ground it into the dirt with their heel. It was so ugly we took great pains to place it in inconspicuous places so it wouldn’t ruin the look of our magazine. Month after month this small ugly ad pulled some of the best response. It often out-pulled beautiful, full page, full-color ads.

We tried to come up with an explanation of why this was happening. Someone suggested that the ad looked so cheesy that people assumed it was a bargain. Others thought the subject of the ad was more germane to our readership. We didn’t know what the truth of it was then, and still don’t today. Things work or they don’t.

There is only one guaranteed way to fail

That’s the point with publishing. There is no guaranteed way to succeed and only one guaranteed way to fail. The sure way to fail is to not publish. Maybe J.D. Salinger should have gone this route. It could have saved him a life of seclusion.

Can you improve your chances of success? You bet! There are many roads you can take to promote your book. The good news is, if one road doesn’t work for you another might, and The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors has been formed to help you succeed by shining a light on the path. We will do our best to help you, but the real magic is to keep trying. Don’t give in to discouragement and keep trying. That’s the best advice anyone can give.

1. The association is intended to create common ground for all self-publishing authors to mingle, share their experiences, and assist one another. This is a place where the successful can pay it forward and the novice is assured of safe, reliable guidance.
2. The association intends to provide educational opportunities to help writers achieve their goals more surely and quickly. These educational opportunities will include:
   1. White Papers, Books, and Free Blogs.
   2. Seminars, Trade Shows, and Conventions.
   3. Self-study audio and video tapes.
   4. Publishing news and opportunities.
3. The association hopes to support authors in developing credibility in the marketplace, by:
   1. Developing standards and helping self-publishers abide by the standards to create increased pride and professionalism.
   2. Establishing a Red Hen trademark and allow self-publishers whose products meet tough standards to use the mark on their books and other marketing materials.
   3. Work toward equal access to booksellers shelves.
   4. Carry on the cause of self-publishing through speeches, blogs, and seminars.
   5. Create public relations and marketing opportunities for member authors such as: Creating a book review section on both blog and newsletter.
   6. Publishing co-op catalogs to send to libraries and book stores.
   7. Sponsoring events such as book fairs, to highlight Red Hen authors.
   8. Explore and advise writers on opportunities that may be available elsewhere.
4. Protect authors from the Wolves and Knaves that prey on new writers by:
   1. Developing standards for would be services such as printing, editing, graphic design and allowing the approved to carry The Red Hen Association trademark.
   2. Surveying members who use unapproved vendors to gather information that could be valuable to ranking them for service, quality, and costs.
   3. Keeping an eye on lawsuits, and court cases involving shady services to advise members to steer clear of them.

   Whew, this is a long ambitious list and not complete. There is much to do before this hatchling can fly. I won’t be able to accomplish these tasks alone, so if there are writers out there in cyberspace who can see a way to assist these efforts please let me know who you are and how you can help. Thank you.

If you have a book ready to market, are just finishing writing a book, or have plans, it isn’t too early to learn how to implement the practices you’ll need to make your book sell. Social networks are big and getting bigger. You can use them as a beginning point to developing international credibility. I learned a great deal from The Author Platform, check into it and see if they can help you on your way. Just click here for more information.

We are living in a new age of publishing. We are seeing the rapid rise of the self-publisher. I liken it to the changes in the music business during the 1960’s. It started with Rock and Roll. This new music hit the music industry so quickly and so hard that the entrenched establishment couldn’t wrap their minds around it. Then came the Beatles, and the British Invasion. Every album the Beatles cut redefined the genre. Music experienced an era of creativity pushing up from the grassroots (no pun intended for the band called Grassroots). Every high school in the country had at least two or three starry eyed groups practicing in their parent’s basements or garages.

60's World Shakers

I try to imagine myself in the position of a record executive. Music is flooding in from everywhere. Groups with strange names, strange sounds, and strange behaviors are climbing the charts. What do I do? I can get on-board or try to wait out the insanity. The problem is that I don’t have any point of reference. There isn’t a definition of Rock and Roll. Almost anything goes. So, what do I do? I shrug and open the studios to just about everyone, hoping to find something the boomer kids will buy.

Today the floodgates are open in publishing. Why? Big changes in book print production have created this new era. In the past traditional publishers held all the strings. The cost for an author to go it alone was prohibitive to anyone but the rich. If someone decided to self-publish, their efforts were tagged  with the derogatory title of vanity publishing.

The rise of computer’s word processors and the development of digital printing have made it so reasonably priced that almost anyone could get in the game. Furthermore, there are e-books, and audio books. Finally, the Boomer Generation has grown up and there are millions, upon millions of people that think it would be groovy to write a book. As a boomer myself, I can tell you that our generation loved the spotlight. We marched, we rallied, we protested. We got our pictures in the paper when we did something completely egregious. Boomer was probably the right name because we were loud, intrusive, and obnoxious.

The boomers are the right people to lead the publishing revolution. We have never been satisfied with status quo. We are self-reliant, and don’t really trust the establishment. We know how to organize. The tribe of boomers is enormous and powerful.

If you get the idea that I am in favor of this revolution, you are right. I am in awe of what is transpiring. The Internet, Computers, Alternative Publishing methods, have breached the dam and I’m sure this is just the beginning.

Creating a book is only the first half of the job. It’s like the Yin, the Yang comes with promoting and marketing. TAP (The Author Platform) is a relatively easy program to follow to learn Internet marketing, selling through Amazon, and other methods. Click here for more information.

breathe in the ancient wisdom

I stirred up a lot of conversation with my blog post titled, “How Can You Call an eBook a Real Book?” Most of the chatter was on LinkedIn through the writing and publishing groups I belong to. I was very surprised to read comments from  self-confessed, dyed-in-the-wool printed book advocates who are becoming wobbly on the issue. Don’t throw in the towel yet.

eBooks have already seized our minds and our imaginations. The possibilities are incredible, all except one. Yesterday I tried to pull up a document on my computer. A dialogue box popped up that said the file had become corrupted. It suggested some ways to fix the file–none of them worked–so, I’m left with reconstructing the document. If I can.

What was here one moment is, whoosh, gone the next. I’m sure if I call my service tech at the Bomb Squad he could find it by going through the mysterious back doors. These are the places us mere mortals dare not tread. To go in there, even for a peek, could set up a chain reaction that might destroy the entire planet. It is not worth the risk. I have to weigh my options carefully, do I bring in the Bomb Squad and spend money I don’t have, or try to reconstruct the document, or let it go, like a loose kite floating endlessly and aimlessly through cyberspace?

Do you understand where I am going with this? Permanence is the question. Books whether written on stone tablets, sheepskin, papyrus, cotton paper, or wood pulp stock have passed the test of time. Doggone it–they last. They may not stay in tip-top condition, but they have longevity.

How long will your computer hold files intact until they start getting iffy, weeks, months, or years?  I expect to see eBooks purchased by the average buyer as having a comparable short shelf life. If the computer gremlins don’t get them, technology changes will. I have a book of poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson in my library which must be at least 125 years old. The paper is brittle, and the binding is weak, but I can pick it up and read it anytime I want. No dialogue box will appear in my hand saying sorry the file is corrupt. Many of my other books are older than 40 years, even the cheap paperbacks. In a world where the average computer is ancient in five years, the possibility of a file hanging around for even 20 years is ludicrous.

The bottom line is electronic books are risky. You will have to replace them regularly if you want to keep them viable, or just get used to losing much of your collection each and every year. Now you see it–now you don’t. Paper to the people!