by Dave Haslett (dave@ideas4writers.co.uk)
October 2006

Things are getting desperate in the publishing world. In fact it seems as if booksellers are conspiring to put publishers out of business.

Publishers have to bid against each other for the best books, paying advances they can ill afford. They have to pay for the books to be designed, printed and marketed, and pay sales teams and distributors to get them into bookshops. To get them into Amazon or WHSmith they have to hand over more than half the cover price.

But the bookshop chains have started making additional demands. Publishers now have to pay to take part in 3 for 2 promotions, to have their books displayed at the front of the shop, in the window, or in their own cardboard display stands - which the publisher also has to supply.

Then there are the book clubs, which can demand more than eighty percent of the cover price. That leaves less than twenty percent to print the books, pay the author's royalty, pay their staff and building costs, and so on. A loss is virtually guaranteed. The only reason for going along with book club demands it is that it allows for longer print runs and therefore slightly lower unit costs, so they can (hopefully) make up the loss elsewhere.

If a publisher wants to market a book hard, advertise it in the media, and use all of the bookshops' promotional (aka profit generating) facilities then it's going to cost. How much profit will they make on each book? A few pennies. If they're lucky. One tiny miscalculation and they'll make a loss.

No wonder then that they only seem to want "celebrity" books these days, because these books sell in their millions. Bookshops too (the chains at least) only seem to want this sort of book, because they fly off the shelves quickly, and a few weeks later there'll be another guaranteed million-seller to replace it.

Since you probably aren't a celebrity, publishers don't want your book - no matter how good it is. It might have the potential to sell tens of thousands of copies, and in the old days they'd have accepted it eagerly. But ten thousand sales is no longer good enough. They NEED million-plus sellers if they're to make any kind of profit. And bookshops don't want your book either, because it'll just take up space that they could use for more profitable titles. If it goes on sale at all, it'll be removed again within a few weeks and sent back to the publisher. Since the publisher won't have invested much of its marketing budget on your book, it won't have been in the shops long enough to achieve its potential ten thousand plus copies. So the publisher will drop you, just like they're dropping their other steady-selling authors - some of whom they've been publishing for years.

Now take a look at the music industry which has gone the same way as publishing. The record companies only want the big stars, and consequently can only offer the public a very limited range of music.

But there are countless places where you can find the sort of music you want to listen to. And just about all of them are online: MySpace, iTunes, PeopleSound, and thousands of private websites that sell downloadable tracks and CDs that they've produced themselves.

At first these people were ignored by the music industry and radio stations. And much of it was complete rubbish anyway. But soon the artists who would previously have been snapped up by the record companies (but could no longer get contracts) also started selling their music online. These artists couldn't be ignored. Their sales were massive and too many people were talking about them. Some of these people have now become stars themselves, despite never being signed up by a record company. Others are making a reasonable name for themselves online, satisfying the demands of a niche market, and earning a comfortable living. These people would probably never have got record contracts even in the good old days. And you've probably never heard of them. But the people who like that sort of music certainly have. If it's good enough, people will find it. And then they'll tell their friends about it. Since the costs of producing and selling music online are so low, it doesn't take too many sales to make a decent profit.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to do a bit of marketing too. Ideally, things that don't take much time and don't cost anything.

So here are my solutions.

1. Forget the big publishers, stop collecting rejection letters, and publish your book yourself. Self-publishing is cost effective and easy. You can make much bigger profits on each book than a publisher would pay you in royalties. If you know what you're doing then you can do absolutely everything yourself. If you don't know what you're doing or don't want to do it yourself then have a look at our i4w2 ethical self-publishing service. (http://www.i4w2.co.uk). (At the very least, please read our "why ethical?" page before considering other self-publishing companies.)

2. If you self-publish your book it will be almost impossible to get it into bookshops. Your local branch might take a few copies, but for everywhere else you'll have to go through the central buyer, who will reject almost everything that doesn't come from a major publisher. But as we've already seen, bookshops aren't worth bothering with anyway since your readers probably aren't the sort of people who buy celebrity books. Instead, concentrate on online sales (but not Amazon, who take too much of your profit), mail order sales, trade shows, conferences, and other shops and events where your potential readers are most likely to gather in large numbers. Don't forget beaches, tourist areas, gift shops, petrol stations, motorway service stations, museums, and supermarkets. If you're too shy to approach people yourself, get someone else to do it for you, then share the profits.

3. Learn to sell books your online - that's where I sell most of mine. I learned most of what I know from a course called "The Insider's Guide to Marketing Your Business on the Internet". This course has been around since 1996, is updated every year, and has been the best-selling online marketing course for the last seven years. It costs $197 (approx £103 at today's exchange rate) although the shipping costs from the USA bump the price up a bit. Not only does it teach you everything you need to know about selling online, but if it doesn't work for you they'll refund your money and pay you an extra $200 on top! For full details click on the following link:
http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/893361

(Update: you can now buy "The Insiders Guide..." in the UK from the Entrepreneur Channel (http://www.ec.tv) for £97 + £4.95 postage)

I'll discuss more ways to spread the word about your books and sell them online in the next article.

About the author:
Dave Haslett is the founder of ideas4writers, the ideas and inspiration website, and i4w2, the ethical self-publishing service. He is the author of "The Fastest Way to Write Your Book". For more details please visit: http://www.ideas4writers.co.uk

You are permitted to reproduce and circulate this article in any form, including print, websites, newsletters, ezines and magazines. The only conditions are: (a) the entire article must be used, including the "About the author" section, (b) you must not charge people to read it, (c) the author retains full copyright.