The Business of Bookselling
Sales on my book, The Scribbler's Guide to the Land of Myth, have slowed down the last few months. (Well, let's be honest, they've been almost non-existant.) Now, a large part of that is that I have not done a lot of book promotion on it. I'd been waiting to get some detailed information on one matter before I started planning what to do next.
So, today I got that information and it's a little bit discouraging.
This spring, I learned that if you have published your title as print-on-demand, even if your title is listed with Baker & Taylor (the middleman vendor that most bookstores deal with), if the book is not listed as RETURNABLE, most bookstores won't order it to carry in the store. This last June, the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society (also known as GLAWS) had a two day "book fair" at a Barnes & Noble store here in LA (their large one at the Grove). It was then that we learned this glitchy little fact -- the store wouldn't order copies of a book that was not returnable.
I had just joined GLAWS when this was being set up, so all the author spots were filled up. (The authors would get to make a short presentation, and then sign copies.) Plus, I already knew that although my book (published POD through Amazon's BookSurge) was indeed listed with Baker & Taylor, it was not returnable. In the process of setting up this event, the GLAWS organizers learned that the fee with B&T to be listed as returnable was several hundred dollars a year. Since I did not have that several hundred dollars, the matter seemed to stall me. After all, I had already had the experience of pitching my book to the Writers Store here in LA, having the staff really like it, and them express the intent of carrying it.... and then seeing on my sales/orders record on BookSurge that no order had ever been placed. (Not that I get to see who orders copies, I don't. But I do get to see the sales numbers, and how many of them are wholesale orders. I think two copies have sold at wholesale, meaning that someone ordered it through their bookstore.)
So I had a conversation with my BookSurge publishing consultant about this matter this morning, and get the frustrating news. They have totally abandoned the "Returnable option" with B&T. Of course, as a subsidiary of Amazon, BookSurge is going to tout the growing use of online services for book sales. He pointed out that 40% of book purchases (I think that was the percentage) are now done online, and not in brick-and-mortar stores.
That sounds powerful in a phone conversation, especially in the midst of more chatter about how pervasive the internet is becoming. Until you step back and look at the number. It's 40%. It's not even half of all sales yet.
Now, how do the heck to I get a nice solid writing reference book into people's hands? How often do people do general searches for books on writing, especially on mythic symbolism in writing? It's the sort of thing that, mostly, in the past I would see when scanning bookshelves in the store, and go "Ooo, that looks interesting!" I'd pick it up and thumb through it, and decide to get it there. When I'm looking online, I usually already know what I'm looking for.
*sigh*
Well, it's clear that BookSurge isn't going to reactivate the returnable option. So, my next option is to deal directly with stores and have them carry the book "On Consignment". Yeah, right. Fine, I can do that with stores where I'm moderately local to them, but what about stores elsewhere? How the heck am I going to do that? And how do I set that up? How do I even begin to make those arrangements? (Especially at a time when I am strapped for cash!)
It's a puzzlement, when I'm a novice at this game ... business.
In the meantime, I ordered some additional author copies, that should arrive with the next four weeks. I needed to order some because I will be attending Loscon on Thanksgiving weekend, taking part in some of the panels in the writers track of programming, and selling copies of my book at the GLAWS booth. And in January, I'll be speaking at the GLAWS monthly meeting about mythic underpinnings for all kinds of stories, and I want to have copies available there too. There's also the matter of a publisher in Spain who requested a review copy to see if it was something they would want to translate and offer in Spanish. (Now that I've ordered new copies, I can go ahead and send them one.)
And I need to retool my marketing strategy. *sigh* I don't really pimp the book's site as much as I could or should. Nor do I really drive traffic to the blog for the book (seriously, I need to update it more frequently). So, given the way the world is these days... I should set up a Facebook presence for the book ('cause I'm NOT going to use my personal page for that kind of pimping -- at least not to that degree). And give into the current trends and explore the world of Twitter.
The frustrating thing is that the book, so far, has received uniformly high praise. But I keep wondering if my readers who have expressed great appreciation for it ever even mention it to another person, at least to the degree that the second person buys it. Actually, I do know a couple of friends do recommend it to others. But it's a very slow process to get started. I knew this going in. I might dream of a blaze of glory lighting up the sky, saying "Buy this book!" But that sort of thing just doesn't happen on its own.
To say the least, it's been an eye-opening process in learning these little details about marketing a book. The glitches an author faces, especially when said author has going the print-on-demand route.