Chicken Scratchings

Posts Tagged ‘Sales’

by Bill Ruesch

Maybe two seconds is generous. It’s really a second or less. No one will even pick up a book if it isn’t appealing. No one. A glance is all you will get–if that.

What is the first thing a reader sees when they decide to look at your book? Think about it. That’s right–the cover.

If your mind jumped to cover art–Stop!–and back-up. There are at least nine other things you need to consider before exploring cover art.

I’ve spelled out  nine basic cover and binding methods self-publishers  would be wise to consider before printing their books. Before choosing a binding method there are three basic questions to explore:

• Who will read this book? How old are they? Do they come from specific regions or have a common ethnicity? What is their level of education? Is it intended to be educational or entertaining?

• What do they expect to see in a book? If sitting on a bookstore rack what would attract the reader’s attention over your competition?

• Is the intended cover and binding method in harmony with the intention of the book? For example, I once saw a book that looked like a how to book. It’s cover announced that it would be informative. The title of the book was Everything Men Understand About Women. I opened the book and all of the text pages were blank. There wasn’t a line of type to be found. It was a joke, of course, and everything worked together perfectly to set the reader up for the humor.

The first two questions have to do with the demographics (external features) and psychographics (motivations and values) of the prospective reader. Once you understand who and why, it is vital to determine how. Give them what they expect. If you are too far afield of what they are looking for, they may not recognize it when they see it. For example, it would throw a reader off to discover an in-the-shop trade manual with a premium hard cover. Alternatively an autobiography of a respected person printed initially as a commodity paperback. It would be as discordant as seeing a well-heeled gentleman drive away from Beverly Hills mansion in a 20 year old beater with car cancer.

Elements of a Premium Hardcover

1. Premium Hardbound. Could include expensive features like leather, gilt edges, bookmark ribbon, foil stamping, printed end sheets, and premium text paper. Could be sewn as well as glued. May or may not have a dust jacket.

2. Good to Fine Hardbound will have features like cloth wrap, foil stamps, maybe PUR glue, burst bound. Almost always has a dust jacket.

3. Hardbound with a printed wrap. Children’s books are often printed this way with pictures or art on the cover. Some will have dust jackets, but it isn’t necessary.

4. Commodity hardbound. Most self-publishers will never order enough books to make this a viable option. These are the types of hardbound books sold by book clubs in mass. They are hardbound books but made with inexpensive materials.

5. Perfect bound Trade Paperback. The text pages are glued directly to the spine and the spine is squared. This method is highly favored by self-publishers. The book size is generally larger than paperbacks on the rack and the materials are of higher quality. Selling enhancements could include foil stamp, foil emboss, and high gloss cover coatings.

6. Standard perfect bound. This method is very similar to Trade Paperbacks but made with less costly paper and cover material to minimize cost.

7. Commodity or rack paper backs. These books are printed as cheaply as possible and generally in larger runs. When an author sells paperback rights to a publisher this is the production method utilized. These books romance novels, murder mysteries, sci-fi thrillers, are meant to be disposable.

8.  Plastic coil, wire-o, or comb binding are used for books that must stay open and flat. Cookbooks, repair manuals, and other how-to books may opt for these types of bindings. The drawback is that they don’t have a printed spine. When put on a bookshelf the reader has to pull the book out.

9. Saddle-stitched. Saddle stitching is printer talk for two staples in the backbone.  This can be found more commonly on thin catalogs, or magazines. Think TIME magazine. It is the least costly way to go but has several drawbacks, there isn’t a spine, it seems like the book is not a book but publication, and there is a limit to the number of pages.

Can You Spend More to Sell More?

Making a wrong choice will impact your sales, there is no doubt about that. The funny thing is you can’t hedge your bet with spending more. Not only could you be wasting money, but it might backfire and decrease rather than increase sales. The rule is make sure your book cover and binding method are in sync with the demographics, psychographics, and expectations of the reader.

By Bill Ruesch

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.

Your current printer may not tell you these things, but I will.

In my day job I am a printing broker. I on December 3, 2009 I marked off 20 years of self-employment. Beyond that I have nearly 20 more years of other experience in the printing business, some of it on press, but mostly in sales. I’ve been there, done that, so you can trust that I know what I’m talking about.

Printing is a very competitive business. To grow and stay viable printers must buy expensive equipment. It isn’t unusual to find a small company with a million dollar investment on the floor. New multi-color presses can easily run between one million to three million dollars. The only way to make this kind of investment payoff is by keeping the presses running. Having an idle press is like making a bonfire out of hundred dollar bills.That’s not something they want to do–would you?

What secrets do I know that you may not know?

1. You are the printer’s greatest asset. Without you the printer will have to close-up shop. Imagine being in their shoes, they are saddled with huge debts and the only way to pay back the banks is to keep their customers happy so they will continue bringing in work to keep those expensive presses running. They want you to be satisfied and will do almost anything to make sure they keep you. Try not to take too much advantage of this knowledge though. If you hold their feet to the fire too often, they won’t have a leg to stand on.
2. Every print shop is equipped differently. What difference does that make? Plenty. Printers buy equipment to meet the needs of their market. If your project is outside of their sweet spot it won’t be as efficient for them and cost you more. Suppose you’ve done a thousand jobs with them and everything was great, but your 1001 job is a little different, do you know when to change?
3. The printer’s employees have different levels of experience. I had this conversation with the owner of a successful printing company in my area, he said, “What would you rather have, a shop with the state-of-the-art equipment and people to run it that were less experienced, or equipment that was a little dated and operators that were the best in the industry?” He opted for the state-of-the-art equipment. It worked out well for him, but they had more rejections than a printer with more experienced personnel. Choose a printer based on your needs and expectations. If the price is good, but they make a lot of mistakes, is it worth it to you? Or, if there are few errors, but the cost is higher are you willing to pay the price? Don’t you think it is important that you know if the printer shares your same philosophy?
4. Much of the profit comes from buyouts. The printer’s markups on paper and other services like die-cutting, foil stamping and the like usually run around 40%. If you provide your own paper, or arrange for other services you can cut your printing bill substantially. WARNING–things happen on press that are not the printer’s fault. Just because a certain amount of paper is budgeted for the job doesn’t mean there won’t be a jam up, or other press problem that could eat your stock. If you provide paper and end up short on the order it will be your problem–not theirs.
5. Small substitutions can make a big difference in price. You don’t necessarily have to change printers or beat them up for a better price. Ask the printer if a small change in the size, or a different paper, or binding on another side would make a difference. You’d be surprised how much money you could save. That doesn’t mean that your printer was gouging you, they may not have focused on the alternatives until you asked. They may have assumed that your specifications were set in stone. Let them know where you are willing to make changes and you both benefit.
6. Quantity is the greatest factor in unit cost. With offset printing particularly, the longer you run the smaller the unit cost gets. That is because the printing estimate is created using two basic components, fixed costs and variable costs. Fixed costs include things like overhead, pre-press, and press set-up. They are the upfront expenses every printer must bear. Variable  costs are paper, ink, and press-time. Variable costs are determined by how much time or materials you use. Fixed costs are set, so the longer the press runs the fixed expenses are amortized. The total cost, however, goes up, but the unit cost goes down. Why does this matter? It matters because of point No.2, your current printer may not be as cost effective at larger quantities.

If you’ve printed a book and need help selling it, you can learn the fundamentals of network marketing with THE AUTHOR PLATFORM. It is an exellent educational tool that will jumpstart your bookselling. After all, what good is a book if no one reads it, and who will read it if they don’t have it? How do they get it–they buy it, of course.