How Books Get Sold

Agent Nathan Bransford's blog has a great guest post about the process of how books get sold from the publisher to the book stores (and become visible to you on the shelves). Check it out. Especially if you're an aspiring author, it's helpful to know how the retail side of the business works. (And why you see certain books on display at the store and not others.)

good post about book marketing

Editorial Ass has a great post about book marketing, which includes lots of basic, practical advice, as well as some ballpark numbers for how much stuff costs (which is really helpful). It's definitely one to check in with once you've got that book contract in hand and are trying to understand how your book might get marketed. (I'd sure like to have problem soon with my new book...)

good post about Racism in Publishing (and how you can help)

Editorial Ass has posted an interesting take about how race plays out in what books you see available on the bookstore and library shelves and offers a simple suggestion.

(Be sure to read the comments, too--it's generated a very interesting discussion.)

great blog post about book returns

I've been known to rail against the industry practice of allowing unsold books to be returned to publishers by book stores. But Wordhoarder has a much more detailed discussion, along with ideas for how changes might occur in this post (the comments are good, too).

Public Libraries

There are about 16,000 public libraries in the U.S. (that's counting branches; there are about 9,000 administrative library entities).

I was curious about that because the fear seems to be that with current media and economic trends, book sales will fall, while public library usage is up. I use the library constantly and we probably have 4-10 books out at any given time. I'd thought to myself, "Oh, hey, my book doesn't have to be a huge bestseller through stores and Amazon, if it just gets bought by enough public libraries." But alas, even if every library bought a copy of my novel, it still wouldn't earn me enough to pay for, oh, let's say a whole year of my daughter's college tuition. Though it would still be a very good amount of sales for any literary novel, don't get me wrong and I'd be plenty grateful. (And for those libraries who don't already own a copy of Tornado Siren... no time like the present.)

Hm.

great agent article in Poets & Writers

I just read this terrific article/interview in Poets & Writers (Jan/Feb 09) with five hot young literary agents. Now that I'm submitting my new novel, I'm on the lookout for all kinds of info about agents. These guys had me laughing out loud and just amazed by their energy and knowledge. Check it out.

guide to how to approach bookstores

I was reading back posts from the Folio Literary Management and came across this very nice talk with a bookseller on how to best approach book stores. I followed all these steps with Tornado Siren a while back, and they worked pretty well. I was able to set up a bunch of signings at local stores. Still, I wish I'd seen this post before I started (and I'll look at it again, when it's time for the next book to come out).

Wish they were all like Playscripts

Okay, sure, sending me a check is a good way to get me on your good side. I have a couple plays published by Playscripts (Christmas Breaks and Pumpkin Patch), and I just got a royalty check for a couple hundred bucks, thanks to a production around Christmas time.

But there's more to it than just that--what's especially cool is that Playscripts pays not just once a year (like some other play publishers), but they pay royalties every month that you earn more than $100. And for June and December, the minimum threshold is only $20. So instead of keeping my money in their bank account for most of the year, they actually send it to me. What a concept.

It's all automated, and I can go online to their Playwrights Information Center anytime and check the status of my sales and productions--the web site will tell me how much I can expect in my next check, which theatres/schools still haven't paid yet, the total number of online views a script has had, total sales (both in units sold and dollars earned for each script).

It's really an ideal setup for the writers whose work they publish (and for a numbers guy like me, pure heaven). I know that some other play publishers have similar setups--I have experience with Brooklyn's old version, which gave totals, but they only paid once a year. I don't know the details of the others, though it seems like Heuer has something close.

What I really wish is that book publishers would/could adopt this same model. This is extremely unlikely for large publishers, because they sell through such a variety of outlets, though there must be some central system, somewhere in each publishing company that keeps track of all this, doesn't there? The other big stumbling block would be the practice of allowing bookstores to return unsold books--which is just plain dumb. If book publishers did away with returns, then, in theory, they could set up an automated royalty system like Playscripts that would pay authors every month, with very little hassle for the publisher (and make the lives of authors much more sane and earn lots of goodwill). Though of course they would lose the interest on all those piles of money they sit on all year. I think it'd be an interesting competitive advantage for a publisher, with regard to landing authors, if they could pull it off.

I won't hold my breath for big book publishers taking up the Playscripts model, but I wish that small publishers (and all other play publishers) would find a way.

glad they still like me

It's always a good thing when people say nice things about you, especially if they happen to publish your books. Lynn Price said some very nice things about Tornado Siren over at her Behler Blog. (She even posted the first two chapters, so folks can get a sneak preview.) The book's been out for a while now, so it's not just the standard PR, book plug sort of thing. As I try to put the last few chunks of work into the new manuscript, it's reassuring to be reminded that people liked the first one.

Sad State of Publishing: Snowman wisdom

Art mentioned this blog in his comment to my previous post, but I thought I'd put up a link:

http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=64473

Bob Eckstein's got a great sense of humor and some very interesting numbers about his book, The History of the Snowman.

I can definitely relate to how hard it is to get people into the stores to hear you talk about your book. And he's been chatting on Good Morning America and had photo shoots with People Magazine. Must be nice. (I aspire to have his level of problems and disappointments.) And even then, it's hard to get people to come into the store and get them to buy your book.

The post is definitely a good reminder of how much work it is to publish and sell a book. (And even then, it's not going to keep me from trying to publish and sell my next one.)

He has a good web site, too. If you're an author with a book coming out soon, it's definitely worth taking a look: http://www.historyofthesnowman.com/

Didn't trip on my feet (Tornado Siren reading report)

The reading last night from Tornado Siren at Brookline Booksmith. I'm especially grateful to half a dozen friends who showed up on a weeknight and squirmed through the First Light crowds on the sidewalks to find us down in the basement. Counting all the bodies in the room, there were more than a dozen people on hand to listen to me ramble about the book and read a few of the most exciting pages (where Victoria sees Ben for the first time and manages to get herself swept up in a tornado). It felt like it went pretty well, and I even sold a book.

I stayed to provide support to my fellow writers, who lined up at the podium every fifteen minutes for a couple hours. We had quite a variety--historical fiction, a book on eating disorders, Boston political geography, the history of daylight savings time (more interesting that you might think), spirituality and religion in the classroom, a story about a Japanese brothel. Though the crowds were pretty active up on the street level, not many folks managed to filter their way downstairs to us. Never easy to drag folks to a book reading, especially if you're not already famous, I'm afraid. (I just want to be Nick Hornby, is that too much to ask?) Still, we had fun, and sold a couple books here and there.

Reading from Tornado Siren at Brookline Booksmith on 12/4/08

Tomorrow, as part of Brookline's First Light Celebration, I'll read from Tornado Siren at Brookline Booksmith. Local authors will be reading from their books from 5pm - 8pm. I'm on stage (in the basement) at 6:30pm, if all goes as planned. I'll have fifteen minutes to make people fall madly in love with the novel. No sweat.

If you're in the area, please stop by. There are lots of good books being highlighted. (And we don't want to feel lonely down there, with just a bunch of us writers.) This set of readings is organized by the Brookline Authors Group, which has been meeting for about a year now, and has put together a cable video series on books, as well as other events.

changeable lens

For those of you who are interested in maps and stats, definitely check out Worldmapper, a site that puts together various world maps, based on proportions of various statistics in different countries.

While you're there, check out the Books Published (per capita) map. China's bigger than I expected in this one.