Here are a few figures from the success of World Book Night, which was April 23.
130 million people reached through their marketing efforts, up from 35 million for the first year.
607,000 visitors to WBN’s Facebook page during the week of April 22.
Celebrate reading! It is alive and well!
Great quote from William Kent Krueger in his blog:
“Buying from independents is in our own best interest. It assures that no one large entity will control what’s available to us as readers. Freedom–and it does come down to this–is all about choice.”
What are you doing tonight to celebrate World Book Night?
Traditionally bookstores get 40% of the list price of a book. They have overhead to pay from that money in addition to earning a profit. Remember that they rent or own the storefront, they have employees to pay, and they have utility bills that arrive every month.
Don’t be surprised if a store asks for 45% so they can run special promotions.
Be flexible. Consider whether sales can help your brand by getting your name out there even if the store discount means you make very little profit yourself.
Recently e-books have been getting a lot of attention. Big publishers who were slow to enter the game now have as much as 27% of their profits coming from e-books. The market increased 129% over the last 18 months, and it shows no signs of shrinking. So, how do you take advantage of this as an author?
Consider the top and bottom parts of the range first. Some sites allow you to charge up to $199 for a single e-book. That’s great if you have specialized information but for most books, that’s really out of bounds.
Ten bucks is considered the magical touchstone…as in, don’t price an e-book more than that.
Free…well, that’s not really the bottom. It’s zero, so we’re going to bypass that as an option.
$0.99 is the true bottom. Reserve this lowest price point for special promotions that you advertise heavily and that run only for a short timeline, say, a single day.
$1.99 is a nice price point for longer term sales or sales that you don’t market as heavily.
That leaves you with a nice everyday price range between $2.99 and $9.99.
Is self-publishing the new revolution? It sure feels like it. Publisher’s Weekly covered discussions of self-publishing and how authors are breaking into publishing houses through their own efforts in this article. Some of the key points are:
–Do not give you work away for free. Despite what you’ve heard, content does not want to be free. Authors who cannot make a living do not have time to write…and therefore they can’t continue writing. Charge something. It doesn’t have to be much but it does have to be fair.
–It doesn’t take all that much to catch the attention of traditional publishers. Sell 10,000 copies…or even a few thousand less if the timeframe is short…and start sending your book proposal out to agents and publishers.
–Quality still is king. Be sure to edit, proof, and develop your story just as if you were going after the big six publishers.
One of the best things you can do for yourself these days is market your books through the internet. The response time is instant, the reach is unlimited. And the cost can be as little as two minutes of your time.
Publishers respect a strong internet presence these days. They understand what it means about your seriousness as a professional author. They also understand how it can positively impact book sales.
When you’re working on your book proposal for novels or nonfiction, consider your electronic reach. The most common ideas are:
If you’ve ever even dabbled in finances, you surely know Warren Buffet’s name. He’s built an empire worth billions by utilizing ideas that tend to fly in the face of conventional financial wisdom.
His most recent annual letter to investors talks–for three pages out of nearly 30–about the value of newspapers. A few years back, he said he wouldn’t pay anything for any newspaper. Now he’s buying them up at a rapid clip.
What has changed? In our globally connected world, the one thing that is missing is the community connection. Newspapers that are tightly tied to a specific region are the ones he’s most interested in.
This is something publishers have been doing for years. Find your niche. A niche market doesn’t have to be big…it just has to be tightly knit. That means readers who want what you have to offer.
Will you sell over a hundred thousand copies or make a million off each book in a niche market? Probably not. But those aren’t the only markers of success. Providing dedicated fans with a satisfying read…now, that’s something to be proud of.
Earlier this week, I wrote about the rising interest in short stories. Check out this article for more on singles and how they can impact your writing career.
In the New York TImes, Leslie Kaufman says,
“Story collections, an often underappreciated literary cousin of novels, are experiencing a resurgence, driven by a proliferation of digital options that offer not only new creative opportunities but exposure and revenue as well.”
The resurgence of short stories as a viable book form has been growing steadily for the past three years. A combination of factors impacts this trend.
First, publishers have been adding more short story collections to their catalogs because they recognize that a portion of dedicated readers want to be able to pick up a book for a shorter period. Reading one short story in a collection allows them to read for a brief time. They return later, sometimes much later, to the same story collection without having lost the threads they have to remember when reading novels.
Second, stories can be marketed directly to readers through programs like Amazon’s shorts. Publishing a short story as a single download allows readers to sample an author’s work…thus having the added benefit of potentially driving new readers to their novels.
Third, although the internet allows for individual stories to reach certain audiences, they are still within the walls of that magazine’s readership. Collections and single downloads can reach broader audiences.
Finally, short stories have traditionally had an upper limit that doesn’t necessarily serve every story. Electronic publishing of singles and print publishing of collections allows for very long short stories that might otherwise never be published to be disseminated.
Here’s a reminder about the upcoming query letter class. The usual rate to write a query letter for a client is $295. Revisions to existing query letters often cost $225, so this workshop is a great bargain!
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Did you know that your query letter is every bit as important as the opening pages of your novel?
It’s your first opportunity to show your writing skills to a prospective agent or editor, and you need to make it count!
 Laine Cunningham’s clients consistently garner attention from the nation’s top publishers and agents.
During this workshop Laine discusses the three important elements to inject into your query so you can get published. Fiction and nonfiction authors writing books, stories or articles will benefit from this class. Location: Center for Excellence, Register TODAY!
Click the link below to register for this awesome class.
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Laine has presented workshops and lectures for The Loft, the nation’s largest independent literary organization; the National Writer’s Union; The Writer’s Workshop in Asheville and writing conferences across the country. If you want to learn how to impress an agent or editor, I will see you there!
Cheers,
Alice Osborn
Write from the Inside Out |
The New York Times, in the article Music Industry Sales Rise, and Digital Revenue Gets the Credit, noted that revenues rose for the first time since 1999 for the music industry. The industry was hit hard by the availability of downloads, which became popular earlier than e-books.
The lesson book publishers can learn is that e-books are not destroying their own market. Instead, they’re just providing readers with a new format.
Historically, the same thing happened when movies threatened the radio shows people relied on until then for entertainment.
Now book publishers are changing the pace at which they respond to new technologies. They have to become more nimble than ever before in order to ensure that their market share is distributed across new and old formats. Some publishers, who at first thought e-books were a fluke or were simply not worth investing in, are pulling as much as 27% of their annual profits from the sale of e-books.
Print is not dead. It’s simply now electronic ink!
A Norwegian show on firewood has caused controversy.
If you’ve ever wondered whether your particular topic, genre or category has an audience, the answer generally is yes. It might be a small audience but passion, even for firewood, can make for a success. You might have to redefine success, but the controversy over whether the bark should be placed up or down when new logs are added apparently has sparked the most responses!
The lesson: Don’t worry about your audience. Write what you’re passionate about and the audience will follow.
If you’ve ever considered funding a project through Kickstarter or similar site, check out this article. It talks about the community involvement and personal connections needed to create a successful campaign.
Ever wonders what happens to books that are no longer in the forefront of readers’ minds yet don’t go out of print? They’re on the publisher’s backlist. Usually anything more than a year old (and sometimes things less than 12 months old) are backlisted.
Think of it as a backwater where the already scant marketing assistance is even more rare. Yet if you want to get your hands on the rights so you can self-publish it and market it yourself, you’ll often meet opposition.
Here’s an interesting take on a trend to buy up backlists and redistribute them with fresh vigor.
Writer's Resource/Sunspot Lit 