To hell with New York publishers. I’ll do it
myself.
No, that’s not quite the reason I printed my own book. To
echo M. J. Rose’s article in last month’s Quill, I decided upon a unique way to
market my book on the Internet by appealing to my niche market.
What’s my niche? My protagonist is Penelope, my 9th
great grandmother who was shipwrecked in 1648 on her first day in America and
scalped on her third day. She survived to have 10 children and 502 descendents
when she died at age 110 (as the legend says). This tale fascinates every
genealogist who stumbles across it (like I did), and obviously Penelope had a
lot of descendents. Genealogists tend to flock together on the Internet to
share information about common ancestors and to share email addresses.
The e-book route might appear to be the logical
companion to email marketing, but my daughter owns a real bookstore, Fiction
Addiction in Greenville, SC, and e-books are her enemy. Furthermore,
genealogists will want to possess and display a printed copy of a book about
their ancestors. I know I do—even if I had to write it myself. And you can’t
autograph an e-book.
To start the process, I looked at book selling from the
bookstore’s perspective. The retail price of historical novels of 300 to 400
pages in trade paperback is about $15. The bookstore expects a discount of 40%
off the list price, free delivery, the option to return unsold books, and a
long time to pay for them.
Many “self-publishers,” such as iUniverse, set the retail
price but they set it too high—$20 for a book equivalent to mine. Furthermore,
many self-publishers concentrate on selling “author packages,” not books. And they offer none of the terms a bookstore
expects. The author can’t even buy them cheaply enough to sell to a bookstore.
Thus iUniverse books are seldom found in a bookstore simply because of
economics, regardless of the quality of the writing.
Other publishers, such as Lightning Source and
CreateSpace, let the author set the price and provide options to get your book
into the book distribution system. But those expensive distribution options
consume almost all the revenue from selling the book.
Many unpublished writers operate under the fallacy that
if a book is printed, every bookstore in the country will carry it. The truth
is that it’s a pull system, not a push system. Your book only gets into a
bookstore or the hands of a reader if someone asks for it. If the
Barnes&Noble corporate buyer asks for it, then all right! Otherwise,
someone (that is, you) has to persuade each individual bookstore owner or each individual
reader to ask for it. Marketing is the beginning and end.
The third option is to print a bunch of copies, that
is, to become a traditional publisher. I found that I could get 250 copies
printed and shipped to me for less than $5.00 a copy. At least my economics are
reasonable: a bookstore will sell my book for $15 and pay me $9 for something
that cost me $5. I once hauled 1400 Nicholas Sparks hardcover copies to a book
signing, so 250 paperbacks sounded manageable. Indeed, my stack of seven boxes
occupied less space than my body.
Next question: How do I get my book into lots of
bookstores?
The answer: I only need my book in one bookstore.
Why: My marketing scheme involves email and the
Internet. The Law of Instant Gratification says that if I interest a person in
my book, I need to provide a convenient way for her to order it immediately.
Most websites have a link to Amazon or B&N. My link is to my daughter’s
bookstore; her inventory is also on Amazon Marketplace and B&N Marketplace.
What are the advantages of a real bookstore? The
website looks legitimate; they handle credit cards online, collect sales tax,
wrap and ship; track shipments; and are in business every day.
Make this offer to your favorite bookstore (assuming it
already does a significant volume of on-line business): here’s a box of my
signed books; I will direct traffic to your website; you sell and ship the
books; quarterly you pay me 60% of the selling price; call me if you sell out
and I’ll bring more.
Pick a nearby bookstore if you agree to personalize the
signings because you’ll drive there often, especially if most of your customers
are your 10th cousins.
Next time--the details of preparing a manuscript for
the book printer.
Jim McFarlane
Author of Penelope:
A Novel of New Amsterdam
Available at www.fiction-addiction.com/si/9780061804199N.html
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