My last panel for NASFIC was on Marketing. I shared it with J.F. Holmes, former military guy, small press guy – Canon Publishing, a military SF publisher ; and Michael Green Jr., a well traveled data scientist.
Marketing is a tough subject. It doesn’t come instinctively to writers – the skills and mindset necessary to write a novel, are not necessarily the skills and mindset to go out into the marketplace. But appallingly, it’s being dumped on writers more and more.
Unless you’re a runaway best seller, or they sniff that about you, major publishers leave marketing to writers. So much so, that Amazon has a special program where traditionally published authors can buy advertising – imagine that, pouring your advance into advertising your own book, so that the publisher can make enough money to give you another book, and an advance that you can pour into advertising for them.
Small Presses, also mostly leave marketing to the writer, although some of them make efforts for you. I’m sympathetic mostly – running a small press is incredibly hard, requires all kinds of time, more skills than any one person has, and is typically a labour of love. They offload marketing to the writer because they have no time, no money and not the first clue about marketing in many cases.
Of course that makes me less interested in small presses. If they’re not doing anything that I can’t already do for myself, and the area that I’m weak in is the area that they’re weak in… what’s the point. A small press that partners and helps teach or educate you on marketing is great, I’ll sign up. If not, then why bother?
And honestly, the whole field of marketing books is dysfunctional and atrocious. Here’s one thing: Anyone you deal with has their hand out. Editors especially, book designers, artists, marketers of any stripe. Some will help – cover artists. Some are maybe nice or good, but will not help you sell a single copy – editors. Most are worthless. Hire a publicist? God help you.
Anyone who seeks you out is 99.99% of the time, worthless, and usually a scammer.
But anyway, it’s a wide ranging subject, I’ll talk about two practical experiences and observations from the Convention.
A few people asked me if my books were in the Dealers Room.
In the dealers room, a Book Dealer did tell me she got inquiries, people came around to her looking to buy my books. She looked me up on IngramSpark, but since I didn’t do returns, she couldn’t take a chance on me. Fair enough, I don’t hold it against her.
I did the math on returns. Running through IngramSpark you can actually sell your books through brick and mortar bookstores. The trouble is that you need to give a massive discount 40% to 55%, and accept returns – they can’t sell your book, they shred it or send it back.
But here’s the problem, at a 40% to 55% discount, your profit margin on a book is small – like a dollar or two. That’s at a competitive price – you can price your book really high, but then who buys it? Still, a buck is a buck, right? Worth it to get into bookstores?
Except that when a bookstore orders a book, IngramSpark charges you for the printing costs and the shipping costs and administration fees. That’s like six or seven dollars. If a book gets returned (destroyed) you’re still on the hook for that. If you actually go with a real return where they send the book back then you have even more shipping costs and you get a book in unknown condition.
The bottom line for a small press or self publisher on Ingram is that to make up for every return, you have to sell four to six books – just to break even. A good sell through is about 30% to 50%, with 50% to 70% returns.
A big publisher can make this work, because they have huge catalogues, and market best-sellers, that carries them through the returns for the poor sellers or average sellers. They have economics of scale.
You don’t.
The bottom line is that going through regular bookstores and doing discounts and returns is a great way to lose your shirt. So sorry about that, Dealers Room bookseller, I’m not about to cut my own throat for you.
I did talk to a few people in the dealers room – one dealer was quite happy – they’d sold 27 books, that was a record for them. That’s not bad. Assuming $20 per book, that translates to $540.
But then again, let’s assume an average production cost of $6 per book (including shipping), that’s $162. So net $378. Let’s factor in cost of the Dealer’s table – $100. So net $278.
$278, that’s not bad. If you share your Dealer’s table – you can split the costs. $328. Now, the Dealers room probably amounted to a commitment of 20 hours. Breaks down to $16.40 an hour. Not bad!
Of course, if you’re an out of town dealer, there’s the cost of travel, accommodation, shlepping, etc. Even if you’re splitting a room, it’s probably still $50 to $100 a night. Meals… on the cheap, $15 a day. Best case profit margin is $68. Not so best case $132 in the red.
Are there collateral benefits – getting your name and books out there, so that some people might buy them online later? Or just the chance to get out of the house and interact with people? The chance to be in front of people as a writer, to sell and autograph your books in person. There’s a cachet to it. Possibly, but I can’t assess these intangibles.
Still, people do show up at Dealers Rooms and little Comic-Cons. I imagine that some of them make money. Perhaps some make a lot of money, enough to keep them at it. Or for many maybe there are those collateral rewards I mention.
I’m not persuaded of the economics of doing a dealers room table if you’re an Indy Author. Maybe a bookseller or a publisher like Brain Lag with a few dozen titles does better. But overall, I’m not captivated.
I dunno. I work a day job. A lot of writers do. If all I wanted was to make extra money in my spare time, I’d drive an Uber. Writing and selling your books at tables or otherwise, not a great choice.
The question for writers is what to you want to do with the little free time you have? Write or flounder around trying to market?
One thought – as a writer, you’re better served by volume. I think you’re better served by writing a lot, and getting a lot of books out, than you are by only doing one or two and trying to market them.
I sell a handful of books a month, with very little effort at marketing. From time to time, I try things in terms of marketing or promotion, but nothing ever significantly moves the needle. The thing that seems to work for me is having a lot of titles.
I enjoy writing. I’ll keep on doing it. Many more books to come.