What's Your Biggest Challenge with Your Book?

[Bill Frank]

I'd be interested to learn what authors/publishers on this network think their biggest challenges are with their book. I wonder if there's any common, pervasive challenge we all face.

[Robyn]

There is a difference between Distributors and Wholesalers. Of the list given to me by B and N, wholesalers like 'The Distributors', 'Ingrams' and 'Partners' take 55 percent of list price. If there's not enough to be able to afford 55 percent, then printing your book through an independent book printer is something to look into such as Hignell Book Printing, Premier Book Printing ect. that give great rates.

[Bill Frank]

The easiest way to distinguish between a Distributor and a Wholesaler is to look at the functions each offers.

A Wholesaler stores and ships books to booksellers. They do no marketing to let the bookstores know the book is available. If a bookseller wants the book, they can look it up and order it. Ingram is an example of a wholesaler.

A Distributor, on the other hand, stores, ships and markets books to the booksellers. Many distributors have their own sales force calling on retailers. Others use independent reps to sell to the retailers. The sales force sells your book along with the other books the distributor is representing.

Marketing makes the difference in the price paid by a wholesaler or a distributor. If one looks at the contracts offered by the various companies, one will see that a wholesaler typically costs 55% of the retail price of the book. A distributor costs closer to 70% of the retail price of the book. The difference is the cost to market the book.

[Janet Elaine Smith]

Have you tried to find a way to get in touch with Shaq O'Neil? With his new TV program on kids getting fit, not fat, it would be a perfect person to get to toot the horn for your book. I'm sure he must have an agent. It's worth a shot.

[Robyn]

Switch to direct marketing. Email and fax marketing. You get good exposure this way. For B and N, you need to have a distributor and it has to be certain ones.

[Donna Hill]

In terms of marketing, I think it is the time that it takes to be consistent. Meaning that often we are so caught up in getting the book right we tend to forget the writing is actually the easy part. Evaluating what works and what doesn't work: is it a dynamic website, contests, touring across the country, a blog, mailings... there are so many variables. And what works today may not work tomorrow. So it is a challenge to always stay ahead of the curve... if you can see it coming.

[Bill Frank]

You’re right. It’s all about the marketing. It took me a long time to come to that conclusion. It wasn’t until I looked at the value chain of book publishing that I understood. Distributors, wholesalers and retailers earn 70¢ of every dollar for selling books. I used to think that was unfair, until I realized how difficult and how important marketing is. Writing, printing and publishing a book is about 30% of the value of the book. The other 70% is in the marketing.

At the same time, marketing doesn’t have to be onerous. It’s really a matter of being persistent. Break the marketing down into small bite-sized activities and it becomes easier. It takes only five marketing activities a day to generate massive results. Do five things a day to promote your book. Make five phone calls. Send five letters. Contact five independent booksellers. Send five review copies. Five activities a day times 365 days (that’s right, no holidays) is 1,825 marketing activities a year. If only 5% of what you do brings results, that’s 9 successful marketing campaigns a year. Certainly something good will happen with your book based on those 9 successes.

You’d have to go a long way to convince me that the activities must be “ahead of the curve,” however. Publishers, and the entire book publishing industry, are rarely early adopters of any new technology. In fact, they’re late adopters (sometimes even Luddites). The progressive innovations are happening at the two extremes of the publishing value chain: manufacturing and retailing. For most of us, however, we only need to be aware of these changes and have the luxury of adopting them as we see the changes being accepted. The best course of action is to select a “proven” marketing tactic and persistently stick to that rather than chasing what’s new to stay ahead of the curve.

[Adrienne Zurub]

Thanks for this great discussion and the constructive comments! My biggest challenge right now in the prepublcation phase is trying to determine the best way to allocate my limited funds to get exposure, reviews, distribution and targeted marketing.
As I have my own publishing company, Chase & Wunderlick Publishers, I am multitasking on many fronts.

I'm having some trouble trying to prioritize my marketing efforts/strategy because of course, I want my choices to be the 'right and successful' marketing moves the first time out. I know this can be self-defeating behavior...but hey, I'm being honest.

I like the suggestion of doing 5 things a day for 365 days. It breaks down the scope of an overwhelming task.

My nonfiction book, 'The Naked Invisible ~ Notes From the MotherShip' has a publication date in late September 2007.

The excerpt:

[Bill Frank]

Hi, Adrienne. You're focus on prepublication marketing is solid. Now is the best time to begin marketing your book. There are many potential marketing avenues you can take and selecting the most productive ones is difficult. There are three fundamental questions you must answer to best determine which avenues to take.

First, who is the ideal reader of your book? What does she/he look like? The answer to this question cannot be "everybody." It must be more refined than that. A good place to start thinking about your ideal customer is to take inventory of yourself. You wrote the book for people like yourself, therefore it's reasonable to assume that your readers will be like you. What do you look for in a book? Where do you buy those types of books that most closely resemble yours? What publications do you read? To what blogs, websites, etc. do you subscribe? The answer to these questions will help you refine who your ideal reader will be.

Second, what is your platform? Platform is a trendy word in publishing. Having a platform means you have a way, or ways, to reach your potential audience. Oprah has her television show, her XM radio show, her magazine, etc. as ways she can reach her potential audience. Others, like Robert Scoble, have powerful blogs. How are you reaching your audience today - even before you publish your book? Your platform will become one of the most powerful mediums to reach your audience when the book is published.

Third, what media would you like to cover your book? Which magazines should review it? What radio shows should feature it? Which newsletters will review it? Begin listing all the media you think are important for your book. Identify as many as you can. John Kremer suggests creating a list of 100 top media for your book. Once you know what media will benefit you most, begin a search (on the Internet or in your public library) to find the correct people inside the media to whom you'll send review copies of your book. Begin contacting them immediately to create a rapport. Start by commenting on what you've read, or seen, that interested you. Compliment them on it. Create a dialog, if you can. Don't be discouraged if you can't, however, it's equally important that you get your name in front of them so that when the time comes for you to send a review copy, they are familiar with your name.

If you do these three things, you'll begin to focus your marketing efforts so that when the time comes to do your five marketing activities each day, the activities will yield the highest impact. Note, by the way, that all three things I recommend cost nothing to do (except your time).

[Robyn]

Try faxing and emailing libraries with a deal for when they buy direct. Remember, libraries can obtain your books at full price through other library distributors. For that reason, don't discount advertising to libraries in the U.K. who have a distributor that is in kind between North America and worldwide. There are also several groups that showcase your books at library shows but that does cost. Jenkins Group is one that seems professional.

Library sales are not hampered by returns and surprisingly they can often order more than one book.

[Bill Frank]

Your book certainly fits a narrow niche. Finding a publisher for such a niche may be difficult. You've identified that publishing is a business. Although I don't agree that it's ALL about the money, any publisher must make money on the books published. The most popular books are called Best SELLERS, after all.

You characterize your book as not fitting any one publisher's profile—too Christian, too, feminist, too latina, etc. Is this based on feedback you've received from publishers, or is this your perception of your own work? It's not my experience that publishers turn down book proposals by characterizing them as too much of one genre or another. They simply turn them down. Is it possible that your own beliefs about your book are blocking you from seeking the right publisher? There are over 63,000 publishers in the United States, according to the Book Institute Study Group in their report, "Under the Radar." It's hard to imagine that one of these publishers wouldn't be interested in your work.

Have you done some simple research? Go to the bookstore and identify some books similar to yours. (I know no book is exactly like yours. Find some that you like in the same general genre as yours). Find out who the publishers are and contact those publishers. Repeat this process on Amazon, too. These are the most likely candidates to publish your book. Don't be dismayed if they reject you, however. There are over 172,000 new books published each year. And there are unknown numbers of manuscripts submitted. It's a numbers game with the odds stacked against a first time author.

There are three main ways to publish a book today: subsidy publishing, self-publishing and POD publishing. Each has its own risks and rewards. Subsidy publishing is traditional publishing where a publisher buys your manuscript, and pays you an advance against royalties for the book. The publisher edits, prints, binds, distributes and markets the book. The publisher, in other words, takes all the risk and you get paid a royalty for every book sold (beyond the advance). Advances for first-time authors are typically low, ranging from $0 (according to one New York Times article) to $5,000. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rarer and rarer.

Self-publishing is what the name implies. You are the author AND the publisher. You take on all the duties of the publisher: editing, printing, binding, distribution and marketing. You take the risk. You pay the money. You get all the rewards, if the book sells. The challenge for most authors is this. Writing is a solitary act. It favors an introvert. Selling books (aka publishing) is a social act. It favors the extrovert. It is rare, indeed, to find an author that excels in both. It's rarer still to find an author with enough money to properly package and market a book. One colleague puts the cost at $25,000 to properly package and distribute a book.

POD publishing is a hybrid. It's self-publishing with some of the risk minimized. You pay a POD publisher a fee to prepare the book. The POD publisher designs the book, prints and binds it and makes it available for distribution. The author is responsible for editing and selling the book. Each time a book is sold, the POD publisher pays the author a royalty. Books don't get sold, however, unless the author is actively marketing and promoting the book. Most POD publishers charge between $500-$1,500 to prepare the book and make it available to the distribution channels. The biggest disadvantage of POD publishing is the high cost of providing books to alternative distribution channels besides bookstores. For instance, in your case, if you decided to sell your books to the Unitarian Church (a likely potential buyer), it will cost you a great deal to buy the books from the POD publisher to sell to the Unitarian Church. There may not be enough revenue margin to profitably sell the books.

[Bill Frank]

In the final analysis, books ARE about the knowledge you share. There are always potential buyers for your book. Chris Anderson explains this in his best-selling book, "The Long Tail." The challenge for you (or your publisher) is to find out how many people there are are and how to find them. The key to successful publishing is to identify who the potential buyers are BEFORE you write the book. See my comments in my earlier post to Adrienne Zarub.

[Shel Horowitz]

Bill, I think your fingers got ahead of your thoughts. Subsidy publishing is not traditional, advance/royalty-based publishing, but it's what you're calling POD--where anyone can buy an inexpensive suite of publishing service and become a published author.

However, POD is more accurately used to describe a printing method of printing only as many copies as you need at a time. Yes, subsidy publishers use this process--but so do many traditional publishers and true self-publishers.

While there are certain circumstances where subsidy publishing makes sense (I have one of my books available through Infinity, in fact), in most cases, the author would be better served by true self-publishing.

Also, it doesn't have to cost anywhere near 25K to self-publish. Most of mine come in around 5K, including all costs.

In my seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, I go through the advantages and disadvantages of four different publishing models in great detail: http://www.grassrootsmarketingforauthors.com