Author Blog

Everyday we communicate with people, and when we're not directly talking about our "big idea," it's still reflected in what we say (and often do). As we use sites like Twitter and Flickr, other people are getting a sense of what and how we think about things. This either leads them toward our content, or away from it.

Business Week had a great article about how publishers could learn from this, and offers a few specifics to follow. The one that particularly jumped out at me is "Go electronic from the get-go." Yikes. Authors everywhere will read this and cringe at what might have happened (or will happen) to their manuscript. But it's another indicator that this isn't all about publishers, or authors, or someone else. It's about all of us. The more each of us do to help, the more we look at how communication effects and enhances content, the better.

I'm sure many of you would agree that it would be great to have a full-time salesperson to help book speaking for you. But, that must be expensive, and you can't afford the salesperson until you get more speaking, right?

Not so, says Bill Stainton and friends. This post is filled with tips on what kind of person to look for, how to pay them, and how to get the best opportunities that make both you and the salesperson a good amount of money. With the right fit, it can work to everyone's benefit. Of course, there's likely going to be some trial and error to find that person, but it'll pay off in the long run if you heed the advice of some of these tips.

Every author has a different story about how they got published. Dan Schawbel got his first book published at age 25. With obviously little background and experience, how could he convince publishers to take him seriously?

You can read his story here.

What's interesting is how he established legitimacy through his personal brand. Without this, he would have been just another person with an idea that the publisher would have a tough time selling. With a strong personal brand, Dan was able to establish credibility, and offer proof of his investment in the project.

Applying this ourselves, any of us can leverage a higher degree of credibility for book deals, media attention, clients, and the list goes on. Read Dan's story, and ask yourself the questions, "How well do people recognize me, my name, my work, and my ideas?" In answering those questions, you'll find greater solutions to missed opportunities.

THE 10 AWFUL TRUTHS ABOUT BOOK PUBLISHING

Steven Piersanti, President, Berrett-Koehler Publishers
July 26, 2007

1. The number of new books being published in the U.S. has exploded.
Bowker reports that 291,922 new books were published in the U.S. in 2006 (Publishers Weekly, June 18, 2007). This includes 47,203 new books in categories covered by BK books: business, economics, sociology, personal finance, philosophy, and psychology.

2. Book industry sales are flat, despite the explosion of new books.
The Association of American Publishers reports that U.S. book sales in 2006 were $24.2 billion, down 0.3% from $24.3 billion in 2005 (Publishers Weekly, May 28, 2007). And U.S. book sales were almost flat from 2000 to 2004 (Publishers Weekly, May 30, 2005).

3. Average book sales are shockingly small, and falling fast.
"Here's the reality of the book industry: in 2004, 950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies" (Publishers Weekly, July 17, 2006).

4. Bookstore sales peaked in 2004 and have been declining since.
Bookstore sales declined 1% in 2005, 3% in 2006, and 4% in the first five months of 2007 (Publishers Weekly, February 19, 2007, and July 16, 2007).

5. A book has less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore.
For example, the number of business books stocked range from less than 100 (smaller bookstores) to approximately 1,500 (superstores). Yet there are 300,000-plus business books in print that are fighting for that limited shelf space.

6. It is getting harder and harder every year to sell books.
Many book categories - including business, current affairs, and self-help - have become oversaturated. It is increasingly hard to make any book stand out. New titles are not just competing with almost 300,000 other new books, they are competing with more than five million previously published books available for sale. And other media are claiming more and more of people's time. Result: the same amount of marketing investment and effort today as a few years ago will yield a fraction of the sales previously experienced.

7. Most books today are selling only to the authors' and publishers' communities.
Everyone in the potential audiences for a book already has hundreds of interesting and useful books to read but little time to read any. Therefore people are reading only books that their communities make important or even mandatory to read. They have no time to read anything else. There is no general audience for most nonfiction books, and chasing after such a mirage is usually far less effective than connecting with one's communities.

8. Most book marketing today is done by authors, not by publishers.
Publishers have managed to stay afloat in this worsening marketplace only by shifting more and more marketing responsibility to authors, to cut costs and prop up sales. Nearly all book proposals that we receive from agents now have an extensive (usually many pages) section on the author's platform and what the author will do to market the book. Publishers still provide an important role of making books available in sales channels, but whether the books move in those channels depends primarily on the authors.

9. No other industry has so many new product introductions.
Every new book is a new product, needing to be acquired, developed, reworked, designed, produced, named, manufactured, packaged, introduced, marketed, warehoused, and sold. And the average new book generates only $100,000 to $200,000 in sales, which needs to cover all of these product expenses, leaving only small amounts available for each area of expense. This more than anything makes publishing a crazy business.

10. The bookselling world is in a never-ending state of turmoil.
The thin margins in the industry, high complexities of the business, intense competition in a small industry, low staff salaries, and expanding competition from other media lead to constant turmoil in book publishing. Translation: expect even more changes and challenges in coming months and years.

10 Wonderful Truths About Publishing

By Michael Larsen, AAR
Inspired by Steven Piersanti's 10 Awful Truths About Publishing

1. Thanks in part to technology, publishers have the ability to edit, copy-edit, design, sell books and subsidiary rights, promote to the trade and the public, and print and distribute books more effectively and creatively than ever. They understand that to compete with other publishers' books and other media, they must do their best. Big houses are taking more pains with jackets, hiring specialists to do online promotion, and investing millions of dollars to digitize their books to sell electronic rights. Big-Apple publishers may have sister companies abroad or in Hollywood in the same conglomerate that may want to buy subsidiary rights. Email enables this complex web of relationships to function faster and more efficiently than ever.

2. The phrase "unpublished author" is obsolete. All you need to be published is a manuscript. You have more options for getting your books published than ever, some of which - ebooks, print-on-demand, podcasting, blogs, and websites -- cost little or nothing.

3. Money doesn't rule publishing; passion does. If publishers believe in a book passionately because they love it, they think it will sell, or it must be published, they'll publish it.

4. Nothing can prevent the success of a book that serves its readers' needs for information, inspiration, beauty and entertainment well enough. Publishers spend millions of dollars a year buying and marketing books that fail, while self-published books and books from small and university presses become bestsellers.

5. Television and word of mouth and mouse enable books to succeed faster than ever. One of our authors, Cherie Carter-Scott, got on Oprah, and that afternoon, her book, If Life is a Game, These are the Rules, rocketed to the top of Amazon's bestseller list. Then its momentum carried it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

6. Anything is possible.
- Dr. Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child Care has sold 50,000,000.
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown has sold 60,000,000.
- The more than 100 Chicken Soup books have sold more than 100,000,000 copies.
- J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has sold more than 300,000,000 copies.
(The series transformed Rowling from a single mother on the dole to the richest woman in England in less than a decade.)
- Barbarba Cartland's romances have sold 1,000,000,000 copies.
- The Agatha Christie mysteries have sold 2,000,000,000 copies.
- The Bible has sold more than 5,000,000,000 copies.

7. Thousands of new authors succeed every year.
- The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
- The Christmas Box, originally self-published by Richard Paul Evans
- Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

These are first novels that became bestsellers and movies. And because it's easier to promote nonfiction than fiction, it's easier for nonfiction writers to make the list.

8. Publishers know how books are selling. They receive daily sales figures from Bookscan that account for 70% of their sales. This enables them to schedule reprints based on sales which lessens returns and helps ensure that stores have a steady supply of books to sell.

9. The more people know, the more they want to know. If readers like one book in a series, they'll buy the other books in the series. So all of the books will continue to sell as new readers discover them. And this is true around the world.

10. Publishing continues to attract bright young people from around the country who bring with them fresh infusions of passion and dedication. There are only two kinds of people in the creative side of the business: writers and frustrated writers. If editors could be home writing the Great American Novel, they would be. The next best thing is being in-house agents for their writers by helping them create the strongest possible books and building enthusiasm for them with the gatekeepers inside and outside of the house.

There's certainly something to be said for being the first one to come out with a big idea, but be careful. Jumping on a hot topic too quickly, before all the variables really have time to reveal themselves, might be devastating to the book's success.

Take our current economic crisis. Authors and publishers are eager to produce the book that will shed great insight into the situation. But who really knows what will happen? Anything can, and that's the risk for stating one's case too soon. Being first isn't what it's always about. But being accurate and insightful usually works every time.