"Just a little bit more" makes all the difference
As many of my readers know, I've been working hard these last few months getting everything ready for the Official Publication of my new book, Choose To Believe, which is scheduled for July 5th.
The more I get into this, the more I learn. Over the past 5 years, my business has operated purely online, through my websites and a few active affiliates who believe in what I'm doing. All of my past products were "published" the day they were completed, with no waiting to generate publicity or establishing 'distribution'. Once uploaded to the website, distribution was instant. A quick email to my list and that was the publicity.
Before starting this process of breaking into the traditional channels of book sales, I had read several books to learn what I could and to plan my activities to the best of my ability. Over and over again, the books mentioned that the pre-publication reviewers (those who review books for bookstores) needed to receive an advance review copy at least 3 to 4 months before the official publication date.
So, as soon as the manuscript was complete, with only a few more polishing edits to do, I quickly uploaded the PDF file to LuLu.com and had a few copies printed to send off to the key reviewers. I also set the official publication date for 3 and a half months from then. Shortly after sending the book to the printer, I announced a pre-publication special, and started taking orders.
During the next few weeks, several things took place. We learned of some serious limitations of our shopping cart software, the last requirement for upgrading it became available, and of course that became a priority, so I took a few days to upgrade the software. In the midst of all this, I started working on producing various information sheets needed by any dealer wanting to stock and sell the new book.
A month later, books came in from the printer, and we had a very busy week processing the 600+ orders and shipping them out. Another week to go through past emails to find who I had promised complimentary copies to, compile a list of celebrity authors I'd like to get endorsements from, and get my bearings to move forward.
By this point, I'm feeling under pressure to complete the many tasks still left to do. There's a website specifically for the book to create, resource pages and such that are linked to from within the book itself. There's also a bonus CD to create that's offered within the book (and several folks have already mailed in a request for it). There are distribution partners to contact and set up accounts with. And finally, publicity to generate so the public at large knows about the book.
And only 6 weeks to complete everything.
I know I've wasted a few days running around in circles trying to decide what to do first, and what may have to be cut from the plan. I had gotten hooked on the idea of getting my new book into bookstores, although logically, I know I can do okay without them.
So I sat down to calculate the breakdown between going through distributors to wholesalers, wholesalers to retailers, retailers to readers, and bypassing the middlemen and doing it the same way I've done it for years, direct to readers.
In all this calculating, I discovered something rather startling.
If I sold everything directly to readers, 6400 copies would pay for the cost of the books and produce a $100,040 profit. Since my financial goal for the year is to make $100,000 profit, 6400 copies sold would be a minimum, leaving nothing for marketing. It's very hard to sell books without marketing, so this isn't a realistic number.
However, if I sold just 600 more copies (7000), then there would be a profit of $109,700. Over $9,500 available for marketing. And if I sold 10,000 copies, the profit grows to $158,000, of which I could spend $58,000 on marketing and still reach my personal goal.
Six times as much available for marketing, and only 50% more books to justify it. Another 50% means the marketing budget grows another 2.4 times.
If $10,000 in marketing produces 5,000 sales, $20,000 in marketing should product 10,000 sales, right? Actually, when you do more marketing, the results do more than just add it, they multiply. This is because each message you communicate supports your other messages. One message by itself does almost nothing. Two or three messages might get noticed, but may not be acted upon. A dozen messages working together can be quite persuasive, especially if they are all coming from different media, such as radio, newspaper, internet, and so forth.
If $10,000 in marketing produces 5,000 sales, then $20,000 in marketing will generally produce 12,000 to 15,000 sales. And $100,000 in marketing may produce 150,000 sales.
Every little bit you can add to your marketing budget, the bigger the overall effect you'll see on your bottom line.
So what did I find regarding the use of distributors, wholesalers, and bookstores?
While they can be quite effective in making the books available to a larger audience, a publisher in today's world needs to have more than 1 book to justify the cost of working with them. Getting listed with Amazon.com was simple, and opens up a whole new world of opportunity for me. And considering that they are responsible for 10% of all book sales, the hour I spent with them (and the 55% discount they require) is more than worthwhile.
I will make the book available to the other distributors, but I won't spend any more time pursuing them. My time is better spent serving my readers directly.
And after I have my readers taken care of, I can spend some time offering my opportunity to affiliates, both online and offline.