If we lived in the Prairie Home Companion’s village of Lake Wobegon, all of our book titles would have above average sales.  Want to know whether your book’s sales are above average?  The staff at the Southern Review of Books (SRB) have come up with a rough benchmark based on some recent industry sales data.  They have computed that the average book sold 7,608 copies in 2007.  How did they determine this? 

First, they started with data from W.W. Bowker showing the number of books published in the U.S. in 2007.  On May 28, 2008, Bowker released its latest statistics on book production in the U.S. and estimated that 411,422 new titles were published in 2007.  Of those, 276,649 were traditionally manufactured titles (ink on paper), and 134,773 were digitally manufactured titles (toner on paper), also referred to as print on demand (POD) titles.  Bowker derives its book production figures from year-to-date data from over 72,000 U.S. publishers and include traditional print as well as on-demand titles.  Audiobooks and E-books are excluded.  

Next, the Southern Review of Books staff considered unit sales from the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), which shows that U.S. publishers produced 3.13 billion copies of their books in 2007. Dividing the BISG unit sales by the Bowker figure of 411,422 new titles, one gets a mean average of 7,608 copies per title.  Thus, any title selling more than 7,608 copies would be defined as “above average,” and any book with fewer copies sold would be “below average.”

Here are some caveats from SRB about the average they computed:

• The mean is an average of low-run POD titles combined with high-run traditional titles.  POD runs typically don’t exceed 1,000 copies, since this is not economically feasible.  This means POD titles are generally below average from the start . 
• Similarly, offset runs for ink-on-paper titles typically become economical above 1,000 copies, so traditionally published books are more likely to be found in the above-average category.
• The average above applies only to titles published in 2007. 
• The numbers from BISG and Bowker are based on reporting systems that use samples and don’t necessarily produce absolutely accurate information.
• It’s unlikely that unit book sales published in 2007 would follow an unskewed normal bell-shaped curve distribution. That’s because roughly two thirds of new titles were conventional ink-on-paper titles with large press runs, while one out of three, or a third of the total, were toner on paper print on demand books that likely had small press runs well below 1,000 copies on average. That would produce a distribution skewed to the right, or positive/traditionally published side of the distribution.

With regard to the last point, here is what we would expect from an unskewed normal distribution.

# of std. dev. from avg.	# of titles	% of titles
1	279,776	68 %
2	111,084	27 %
3	19,336	4.7 %
4 or more	1,236	0.3 %

Unfortunately, we live in a world where such distributions are skewed.  But the 7,608 average is at least a starting point.  So if you want a title to be above average, figure out what it will take to sell 7,608 copies (plus one).  Averages are useful, but here are some suggestions for the future:

• A more interesting average in today’s multimedia, multi-format world might be average IP revneue units sold, which would include copies sold in any format - print, electronic, audio, etc. 
• Compute averages based on a more comprehensive and detailed sales tracking database like BookScan.
• Compute averages for categories.

Perhaps uUsing mulitple averages, will allow all of our titles be above average.

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Bruce Batchelor has long been a publishing pioneer, innovator and leading advocate for independent (”indie”) publishing.  He recently shared his experiences as a publisher, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing the book publishing industry today.  Bruce is the founder of Trafford Publishing, where he publisher more than 10,000 authors from over 100 countries during 11 years as the company’s publisher and CEO.  In 1995, while at Trafford, he invented print-on-demand (POD) based publishing. 

He is the author of numerous books, including his latest, Book Marketing DeMystified.  Always an entrepreneur, Bruce has been the recipient of an Award of Excellence from The Financial Post and recognized by Profit Magazine as CEO of one of Canada’s top ten fastest growing companies in 2004) and 2005.  Today he heads up Agio Publishing, his latest book publishing venture.  

FPP - Publishing has always been a tough business. How did you get started and what motivated you to enter the business?

Bruce - My first publishing was simple and profitable: our high school yearbook was a money-maker, then I published a monthly high school newspaper (also profitable). After university, I self-published a book of stories and maps of the Yukon River and that was a lovely income source for many years — and regional bestseller. Then, with a group of friends, we published The Lost Whole Moose Catalogue: a Yukon Way of Knowledge” in 1979 — that sold over 20,000 copies and stayed in print for 25 years and inspired two sequels and the creation of a northern publishing company. So I didn’t realize publishing was supposed to be a tough business — it was a fall-back source of money for me when I wasn’t doing other work-adventures.

FPP- At Trafford Publishing, you pioneered the idea of print on demand. What inspired this innovation and what hurdles did you have to overcome to put it into action?

In 1994 I was consulting to a number of provincial and federal (Canadian) ministries to help them cut costs on publishing technical and policy manuals. These documents need changing periodically, so are ill-suited to offset printing. That’s when I discovered print-on-demand technology existed and could be used to print a single copy “on-demand”. Up to this point, the technology was being marketed as suitable for short runs of 300 to 500 copies. The challenge was to be able to show a catalogue of documents, take orders (with payment) and submit up-to-date print files to the DocuTech device — all in an automated fashion so the clerical-accounting overhead wouldn’t be too onerous. Fortunately the world-wide web was just beginning, so we created one of the first on-line stores (in 1995) to display our wares, collect orders and credit card payment, and relay the printing instructions and shipping papers to our contracted print shop.

The next hurdle was getting books/manuals/whatever to sell. We began with a few government manuals but soon began to solicit new books from authors and publishers. From that point, the business grew exponentially until Trafford Publishing had over 140 employees, offices in 4 countries, and sales of about $1 million per month. By the time I left in 2006, we’d published about 10,000 titles for authors living in over 100 countries.

FPP- After leaving Trafford, you formed a new company called Agio. Could you describe Agio’s basic business model and what do you think is most unique about Agio’s service offerings for authors?

Bruce - “Conventional” publishers incur all the expenses and have all the control over the content, appearance and marketing.

Agio and similar “collaborative” publishers share the costs and share the control.

Self-publishing on one’s own or using a service such as Trafford or AuthorHouse or Lulu means the author pays all the costs and has all the control.

At Agio, we only work with authors and books that intrigue and inspire us. The approach is collaborative. We insist on top-quality writing, editing and design. We contribute about half of the costs, and share the royalties with the author (Agio gets 20%; author gets 80%). We create customized marketing campaigns, and expect the author to be active in promotions. We don’t sell books to retailers on a returnable basis and we use short discounts to maximize royalties.

FPP- On Agio’s website it states that “Our company is committed to corporate social responsibility . . ” Could you explain how that affects your daily operation and management of the firm?

Bruce - Here are some of the things we do.

•  We print on-demand so there is minimal waste
• The paper stock is not from virgin old growth
• We generously support social and environmental charities
• We only work on books that are positive (or benign) about social and environmental change
• We don’t support ‘returnable’ book sales because this causes overprinting and wasted resources
• Zero commuting costs (we work from a home-office!)
• We share our ideas through presentations and my blog
  - we consult to other publishing companies to help them adapt to the changing business environment.

FPP - How do you see technology impacting book publishing over the next 5
years?

Bruce- The industry is being transformed — in much the same way the music industry is, only the book publishing industry is a few years behind. Rising resource costs and better technologies will accelerate the adoption of eBooks — regardless of what booksellers and old-school publishers might hope. Bookstores will fail, following the pattern of music shops and video stores. The books that are bought in printed editions will be produced using print-on-demand, with POD factories located in every major city and all countries.

Because the cost to “publish” is heading toward zero, the number of new titles will balloon from 2007’s count of 411,000 annually in the USA to 1 million.

The major publishing companies will lose their oligopoly advantages and will dwindle in scale and importance.

FPP- What Internet marketing tools have proven the most effective in your experience?

Bruce - Know your audience and target your publicity to them. Certainly selling on a short discount is a great help since you are gaining way more royalty per sale.

FPP- You are both a publisher and an author. Does being an author yourself help when you are working with Agio’s clients?

Bruce - Yes. I can relate well to their emotional and financial situations, and that helps both comfort and inspire them to push for clarity and quality in their books and marketing.

FPP - What is the profile of your ideal author client in today’s publishing environment?

Bruce - Someone with joy in their heart and a message to communicate.

FPP - What do you believe are the biggest challenges facing the publishing industry today?

Bruce - Inertia in processes and thinking. The US book publishing industry is wasting between $1 billion and $2 billion each year because of widespread paranoia about ending the practice of overprinting and selling books on consignment (”returnable”). That practice could be changed in months if a handful of publishers showed leadership and attention to the environment and their own financial situation!

The blockbuster top selling authors will soon begin leaving the big houses (as Madonna, The Eagles and Nine Inch Nails, for example, have left their music labels) to become “independents”. Cue the bankruptcy folks at the 6 biggest publishing companies. Those big companies have massive infrastructure to pay for — most of it will be without use soon. Smaller publishing houses might be more nimble.

A looming challenge will be too much control in the hands of a few retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart) who will drag us all through a time of their greed to grab outrageous margins and exclusivity — before they are toppled by the next wave of online retailing.

(FPP Note:  In addition to the text interview above, you my also listen to the extended audio interview with BruceBatchelor - 20 MB MP3 file.)

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Blog networkshave been around for awhile and represent a new form of online publishing - functioning as online magazines or newspapers.  In earlier posts, I have talked in general terms about how blog networks might serve as the foundation for a more open model of book publishing.  Now it’s time to talk specifics.

First, the rationale.  Publishing is risky business.  The biggest risk, and the progenitor of most other risks in publishing, is title selection.  Publishers have experiemented with different modelsin an effort to address this risk.  In the past, publishers have relied on the judgment and experience of editors or agents to act as gatekeepers to the publishing kingdom.  Sometimes celebrity status or previous publishing success serve as good rpoxies for judgment and experience.  And sometimes the title acquisition process is more subjective and opaque.  More often that not the results are less than satisfactory.

Another approach is to substitute voting for gate keeping.  How would this work?  Enter the blook network.  It starts with the premise that anyone might be a successful author; we just don’t know which ones.  So provide anyone who has a story, an idea or a manuscript the opportunity to try and find an audience big enough to be book-worthy.  The tool for this is a blog.  The publisher rents the writer space in a blog network with a style guide for blogging in a manner that makes it relatively easy to go from blog to book.  The rental also includes an appropriate set of metrics to track how the writer’s audience building efforts are doing.

Blogs on related topics are linked.  In this way, stronger established blogs help direct traffic to newer blogs.  Blog statistics are tracked by the publisher to determine which blooks are developing an audience.  When pre-established audience targets are met, the publisher is alerted and may decide to publish the writer’s work.  The publisher correlates audience statistics with sales data for books in the category (e.g. from Book Scan) to make the final publishing determination.  In this way, analytics guide the decision to make the publishing investment.  Since the blog has been structured to be easily converted to a book, time to market is faster.  Editors use metrics to identify the best content in the final manuscript, thus helping to ensure a more marketable product.

The blook network helps the publisher find authors who can build an audience sufficient to warrant publication.  And the discovery engine pays for itself (or even earns a profit).  Even writers who are not successful in terms of getting published will have useful information (in the form of metrics, reader comments, etc.) that they can use to refine or retarget their efforts.

The process can be summarized as:

• Replace manuscripts with blogs
• Replace the slush pile with a publisher’s blog network
• Structure network blogs so their content can be readily converted into books
• Combine blog metrics and book sales data to determine when and who to publish
• Reinforce traffic to new writer blogs with links from high traffic network blogs

The benefits to publishers of using this approach are that it:

• Creates added capacity for publishers to take on new writers without expense
• Generates service revenue while the writer is developing an audience
• Provides detailed knowledge of the market before the book is published
• Provides a speedier path to market

The blook network is a potentially powerful tool for helping publishers better manage the risk of title acquisition and provide a firmer rationalization of their investments in editing, production and marketing.

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Recently, HarperCollins announced the establishment of a new imprint that is structuring its business model in an effort to lower two key areas of risk.  According to the New York Times, the new imprint, headed by Robert Miller, will not offer advances to authors and will not accept returns from bookstores.  (Miller, 51, was the founder and publisher at the Walt Disney Co. publishing unit Hyperion.) 

Miller, speaking about the mission of the new unit, said:

Our goal will be to effectively publish books that might not otherwise emerge in an increasingly ‘big book’ environment, an environment in which established authors are under enormous pressure to top their previous successes, while new authors are finding it harder and harder to be published at all.

Advances and returns represent two of the largest financial risks with which a publisher must grapple.  Both risks originate in the uncertainty about whether an author can build an audience for his or her work.  If not, an advance is wasted and returns will follow. 

In lieu of advances, the unit will offer authors a share in the profits.  This sounds attractive, but there are potential issues.  First is the marketing investment made by the publisher.  Typically, less well known authors have used some or all of their advance to market their title.  According to comments by publishing consultant Laine Cunnigham, quoted in Book Publishing News:

A high profit split on top of zero advance means [authors] have to sell twice as many copies to achieve the same reach. If they have no money in the kitty from an advance, the book sinks without a trace.

While the new HarperCollins unit indicated it would utilize more online publicity, advertising and marketing for its titles.  But it is unclear whether the company’s new business model includes an overall increased investment in marketing to offset the loss of marketing dollars represented by author advances.  Cunningham believes more of the authors the new imprint wants to attract might instead opt for self publishing.  Another issue with the new advance policy is the fact that it is based on a percentage of profits rather than a percentage of revenue.  To put it politely, profits are easier to fiddle than revenues.  HarperCollins could wind up opening a new Pandora’s box of litigation and distrust if authors disagree with them over how profits were calculated.  Pub Rants weighed inwith some suggestions for HarperCollins to tune its model and make it more author friendly, including more timely royalty accounting and a faster cycle time for non-fiction works.

The proposed policy of no returns has, not surprisingly, been criticized by many booksellers.  Oren Teicher, the ABA’s chief operating officer, said:

. . . [bookstore] owners would likely want bigger discounts in exchange for books not being returned.” But he said he would be willing to listen to any ideas that might spare “the colossal waste of books being shipped back and forth.”

Returns have been a drag on the industry.  It is estimated that 30 to 40 percent of books are returned by bookstores each year, at considerable expense to publishers, who wind up having them remaindered or pulped.  The practice originated during the Great Depression as a way for publishers to help keep bookstores afloat in difficult times.   According to an article in the Souther Review newsletter, ending returns has been tried before - without success.  In 1980, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. announced it would provide retailers with larger discounts and end returns. When orders diminished, the publisher reversed itself.  Miller subsequently has waffled on the policy, saying non returns may not always be the case.  Not all the reaction from booksellers was antagonistic.  The story quotes Robert P. Gruen, executive vice president for merchandising and marketing at Borders Group, as saying in a New York Times article:

We generally support the idea of looking at potential solutions to a return system that is not working well for the industry as a whole.

It also recalled that several years earlier, Barnes & Noble Chief Executive Steve Riggio had said that he would prefer to mark down books rather than returning them.  Eliminating returns, he said at that time, would “revolutionize the book business and revitalize the book business.”

HarperCollins is running an intriguing experiment with its new imprint and the industry will certainly watch with interest to see whether and how its new policies work.  But does its new business model address the ultimate source of risk for publishers?  That risk is whether an author can attract an audience for their work in the first place.  Here is another way that the experiment might be conceived.

• Go with authors - whether previously published or not - who can demonstrate their ability to build an audience.  Blogs, podcasts and the other forms of consumer generated media may offer the simplest and most measurable way to do this. 
• Partner with these “investment grade” authors early to help them tune their content and better understand their audience.
• Use a marketing ramp for titles that builds on the audience the author has already established.  The ramp starts with lower cost, lower risk marketing initiatives and uses success there to fund higher cost, higher risk marketing campaigns.

Publishing is a constantly shifting balance of power between authors, publishers and booksellers.  Technology and the evolving economics of enteratinment are altering that balance.  HarperCollins’ new imprint is no doubt the first many experiments with established book publishing models that we’ll see int he coming years.  Think of it as the industry’s version of climate change.

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Book Vid Lit

by Sheila Clover-English

Sheila Clover English, the CEO of Circle of Seven Productions, has been a pioneer in book video production, marketing and distribution for authors and publishers.

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Nielsen ratings systems did away with using view counts to measure website success and instead switched over to time spent as a way to rate. This way of measuring success is far more indicative of real life engagement by a viewer. You can have 100,000 hits, but if the viewer isn’t there long enough to at least absorb the message of the video those hits are meaningless.

Matt Cutler, Vice President of Visible Measures, a company that tracks online behavior, estimates that more than 30 per cent of consumers abandon an online video within the first 10 per cent of its stream. He goes on to give an example saying that for every 100 viewers you will have 30 that will click away within the first 10% of the video. This is called “Initial Attention Abandonment.”

Some of the reasons for Initial Attention Abandonment have to do with trust, transparency, engagement and entertainment.

Trust - This has more to do with branding. Is this a brand viewers know they will have a good experience with? Will they get the kind of content they’re promised by tags and titles?

Transparency - Is the video in a place where the person can tell what they’re going to get? Do they realize they’re getting an ad or are you trying to trick them into thinking it’s something else? Not only can you lose a viewer once they realize they’ve been tricked, but this is a quick way to damage your brand.

Engagement - Does the video give them something to do? Be it physical or mental or even emotional, does the first 10% of your video offer them a way to engage the video? Some videos can be a talking head that just delivers a message, but with every viewer sitting there with their finger on the mouse just waiting to go on to the next thing, there aren’t going to be a lot of videos that can be just an ad message delivery system that will be successful.

Entertainment - Give your most gripping, most powerful, most complete message about your story or product that conveys to viewers that they are being, or about to be, entertained within that first 10% of your video. People have so much to choose from to keep them entertained. Why should they watch YOUR video as a source of entertainment? You need to have something that conveys how entertaining your video is going to be for them right away or you will lose them. You can’t “build” your story or message to a climactic end unless that initial “building” is a sensational opening.

What should I include in the first 10% of my video?

You should have visuals or text that immediately convey all of the above elements. Not an easy task. Let’s take a look at a successful book video that includes all of these elements, Dark Possession by author Christine Feehan. You can watch the video yourself at Dark Possession - Christine Feehan - TV Version.  I chose the MySpace site specifically because MySpace requires a viewer to watch just over half the video before the view is counted. If you watch less than half, the view won’t count. This video has been viewed nearly 20,000 times.

Trust- The title and description let people know what the video is. It is a book video. It is about the novel by Christine Feehan.

Transparency- From the start we let people know it is a book video by stating it is from Bestselling Author Christine Feehan.

Engagement- The engagement here is emotional. You see the couple running for their lives. You’re told two worlds are colliding, the living and the dead. Now your viewer wants to know what’s happening to the couple. What are they running from? Who are they? What are they? You have engaged them by making them want to know more and by putting an attractive couple in a dangerous environment.

Entertainment- The viewer is given a sense of romance, danger and adventure within a short period of time. They get special effects and at the end, “the tease” that leaves them wondering what happened.

People are more likely to share a video like this. There are several elements that are worth having a conversation about. The video, through text and visuals, poses questions while bringing the viewer into the action.

How can you keep people from clicking away? Well, if I knew that I’d be making the big bucks! But, I can speculate just as well as any major media goliath can. Part of what keeps them from clicking away is the video itself. Part of it is where the video is located. Is it where people who like paranormal romance reside? Part of it is timing. Your video may end up having something in common with a current news topic. There may not be a whole lot of new content out at that time. Part of it is the topic of the storyline. There are so many factors that go into what will make people stay and watch the video that you really have to concentrate on the things you CAN control.

Make a great book video. Make sure the first 10% of your video offers enough to keep them watching. Give it a good title, tags and descriptions. Distribute it to the right online destinations. Instruct your client/author/publisher to utilize it. And then, just like CBS, HBO, NBC or any other media giant…hope it goes viral.

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Blooks - books based on a blog - are becoming more and more popular.  Authors, especially unpublished authors, can benefit from blogging their material first as a way to build an audience for their work.  There are enough blog to book success stories now to make this an attractive option.  Many of the early blook successes were more the result of serendippidity than plan.  In this post, I outline one approach for authors who are intentional about creating a book from a blog.

Title.  Use the same title and subtitle for your blog that you would like to use your book.  This has the advantage of allowing your blog to double as a book website after publication.  Also, it makes it easy for your blog readers to find your new book.

Table of Contents.  Layout out your blog categories to roughly corresond to the table of contents for your book.  Using exactly the same titles for categories and chapters may not always work.  Also, some standard table of content names won’t make any sense for a blog - e.g. Introduction or Epilogue.  The idea is to have a kind of one to one correspondence in mind so that when you go produce your manuscript, you’ll be able to map your blog content to the right places in your book.

Chapter content.  Your blog posts become the content for your chapters; content tagged for a particular category can go in the corresponding chapter.  If you have a post tagged for multiple categories, the flow of your content will probably dictate which chapter it lands in. 

Bibliography.  The links in your posts become your pointers to reference material that appears in a bibliography or set of end notes.

Visuals.  Pictures, illustrations and graphs may present a bit more of a challenge.  If the pictures you want to use in your book involve licensing or permissions, you may have to use substitues on your blog (or go without) while you are negotiating. 

Author bio.  Most blogs make it easy to share your bio, either as a blurb on your main blog page or as a separate page.  Include your picture, and both a short and long form bio for yourself which can be incorporated later into your book.

As you start to post, you’ll want to use blog statistis to rank content and track your word count to know when you have a book equivalent.  A good rule of thumb for a book equivalent is 50,000 - 75,000 words.  You should also track the word count by category.  Remember that your categories are acting as surrogates for chapters.  You will probably to be sure your content is relatively balanced as you go so you don’t wind up with too much or too little content in each chapter.

There are several ways to rank content.  Here are a few examples.

• Page views - the level of overall interest in a particular post.
• Comments - feedback from your readership.  A post with a high number of comments is a good indicator of blook-worthy content. 
• Longevity - the number of days since the original post.  This is useful to find topics that might be evergreen
• Concentration - the number of days since the original post for which there were page views.  Some posts may see all their activity concentrated in a few days (e.g. posts related to news stories) and thus may not be as “durable” as a post that continues to receive page views day after day. 
• Density - the number o page views for the post divided by the overall page views for the blog.  This shows the contribution of the post to overall blog activity. 

In subsequent posts, I plan to share more specifics on the blog to book process, including:

• Ideas for editing posts into a cohesive, engaging manuscript.
• Tools that make it easy ways to track and collect your references.
• Using tags as a surrogate indexing schema.
• Creating a compelling pitch card for publishers using your blog statistics.
• Blook techniques for fiction writers.
• Preparing a blog tour while crafting your blook.

I would welcome any thoughts or ideas that others like to share on this subject.

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Video games can now cost $20 million and up to produce.  Such high production costs raise the risk for bringing new games to market and have spawned a search for ways to extend a game’s IP via cross marketing in other media - notably books, merchandise and film.  Though long familiar to Hollywood moguls, this approach is now being pioneered by Electronic Arts in the gamer world. 

One example where this is being used in a new game due out in Fall 2008 called Dead Space.  A series of 6 graphic novels (or comic books) will be used as a prequel to the game to provide users with background information.   They will be offered for sale at $2.99 each, though a premium edition of the first issue with special cover art will be sold at a higher price point.  As reported on Kotaku, the series will be created by Image Comics with Ben Templesmith and Antony Johnston.  There’s even a book trailer that’s been created for the series.

This is somewhat the reverse of the journey made by Marvel Comics a few years ago, as chronicled in the New York Times.  Marvel’s comic books sales had slowed and the company almost went out of business.  But, like one of the super heroes it markets, the struggling publisher morphed into a Hollywood entertainment power with its own studio and licensing business.  Marvel has combined making its own super hero movies (where it can reap more of the rewards) with innovative financing (using its comic book IP as collateral) to emerge as a successful, profitable moviemaker.

Book to movie deals are continuing at a brisk pace, as evidenced by the regular reports in Publishers Weekly and industry sites such as Freelance Writing.  Major book publishers are also getting into the movie game.  This past fall, HarperCollins, a division of News Corp., announced a partnership with Sharp Independent to develop movies based on HarperCollins books.  These new collaborations, according to an article by Rachael Donadio, give publishers greater participation in movie profits (if there are any) and allow authors to have more say in the selection of screenwriters, directors and actors.   The closer ties with Hollywood may eventually change the nature of literary fiction as writers realize they may need to structure their stories for multiple mediums. 

Entertainment IP in the hgh stakes world of big media wants to be everywhere.  Look for lots more cross media collaborations (some might say contamination); and look for tomorrow’s most successful artists among those who are able to cross media divides and become multiple media “multi-talents.”

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The bookstore chains are still a dominant force in book retail.  According to Para Publishing, in 2007, big chain retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Borders accounted for 33% of unit book purchases.  However, their dominance is steadily eroding.  The primary challengers are online booksellers, notably Amazon.com.  Purchases made through online retailers represent approximately 20% of book purchases.  In fact, books are the most popular product sold on the internet according to Nielsen Online which surveyed 26,312 people in 48 countries.  It found that 41% of internet users had bought books online.  In some countries the percentage was much higher - for example in Korea 58% of internet users had purchased books online.  And in the U.S., 57.5-million had purchased books online.  In all, the direct-to-consumer (Internet, book clubs, book fairs, catalog and other) channel accounted for 35% of book purchases.

More book publishers are also exploring non-traditional retail channels.  In some cases these channels can have a greater impact on book sales than the traditional bookstore channel.  Why?

The primary problem with the bookstore channel is returns.  These can cost a publisher and generally the cash flow timing with wholesalers, distributors and bookstores is not favorable.  Returns were implemented by publishers during the Great Depression as a way to help out the bookstores.  They have remained entrenched ever since and are a drag on publishers’ profits.  Sales are generally final in non-bookstore retail channels making them more attractive.  The downside is that access can be much more difficult or require a specialized salesforce.  The other problem is payment.  Publishers often don’t get paid for 60, 90 or (more usually) 120 days.  This can wreak havoc with cash flow.  In the non-traditional retail channel, publishers can avoid both of these problems.

Non-bookstore retail venues use different selling models.  For example, Starbucks sells only one book at a time in its stores, featuring a title for several months. Costco, Walmart and other big box retailers carry bestsellers as well as a selection of lesser known titles.   A recent New York Times article on non-reported that sales of consumer books sold through such nontraditional outlets grew by more than $260 million. 

These can be broken down into:

• warehouse clubs - e.g. Costco, Sam’s Club
• mass market retail -  e.g. Walmart
• non-traditional accounts - big box retailers (e.g. Home Depot), drugstores and grocery stores, gift and specialty stores
• mass market wholesale

Non-traditional book channels can often offer a book greater exposure to its primary audience.  An interesting example was highlighted on the bNet Business Network.  A book titled “A Gentleman Gets Dressed Up” was picked up by Borders, and was placed in the Health and Diet section.  According to Nielsen BookScan, since 2003, the book has sold 4,000 copies in the retail bookstore channel.  By contrast, Jos. A. Bank Clothiers and Brooks Brothers have purchased 8,000 and 15,000 copies for their stores, respectively. 

Another instructive example comes from the world of children’s books.  In an article, Better Than Bookstores: Prime Channels for Selling Children’s Books, written for the PMA Independent, Florrie Binford Kichler examines innovative approaches to using non-bookstore venues for selling children’s books, including:

• Associations
• Children’s book clubs
• Museums/historic sites
• Schools

Potentially, the biggest threat to bookstore retailers could come from the new print at the point of purchase technologies which I have often discussed on this blog.   As the technology matures, it will allow virtually any organization to print and sell books without the need for wholesalers, distributors or inventory.  Publishers have many bookselling options today and may continue to migrate away from bookstore retailers as long as their outdated and onerous returns and payment policies remain in effect. 

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Book Vid Lit

by Sheila Clover-English

Sheila Clover English, the CEO of Circle of Seven Productions, has been a pioneer
in book video production, marketing and distribution for authors and publishers.

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There are two ways to get video promotion for your book.

1. You can create a book video that is meant to be entertaining and place it on user-generated video upload sites such as YouTube or MySpace. From there you hope others will see it and then share it with friends, thus making it viral.
2. You can create a book video ad and pay for placement.

Your video is going to look different, perform differently and be viewed differently according to where you place the video.

Viral videos, those that are made and uploaded for free to social media sites have to have an element of entertainment to them. Social media sites are meant to be “social”, they are not meant to be advertisement platforms. The argument can be, and has been, made that all book video are ads.  Keep in mind that all music videos are ads as well.  Yet, it is easy to forget that and look at music videos as an entertainment or art form.  Book videos should have an element of entertainment to them if you want them to go viral.

How do you make an ad entertaining? First of all you want it to NOT look like a commercial. If you make it 15 or 30 seconds long it is going to look like and acts like a commercial. People on social media sites are becoming more and more savvy. They will look at that and know that you just can’t afford proper placement of your commercial so you’re trying to fool them into thinking it’s entertainment, or that you don’t care that you just tricked them into watching a commercial.

Like a music video, you need to have a story. People want to know what the story is. You can’t make general statements or claims such as, “This is the greatest story ever told” or “An epic love story unfolds within a mystery” and think that’s going to impress people. You can say those things in your video, but you had best follow it up with telling people what the story is actually about. Include exciting and/or appropriate elements such as music, narration or text, enticing visuals, etc. Make it worth the viewer’s time to watch it.

Viral videos = entertainment = appropriate to place on social media sites

Book video ads are meant to be more informative and factual. People know it is an ad. People know that ads try to sell you something. People are used to seeing ads. Your ad still should be exciting or enticing, but it is going to be brief. The briefer, the better. Most ads are 15 or 30 seconds long.

Book video ads are placed in areas where people know they are ads. You can pay for placement on sites like VideoEgg, YouTube (if you can afford it), Viddler or anywhere that allows video ads. They can also play on television or out-of-home advertising. Book video ads should get to the point right away.

A book video ad should concentrate efforts toward a single message. The message can focus on who the author is, which is an advantage if the author is already well known. The message can focus on the storyline if the author is not well known, but the story has a good hook, or current, relative message.

Monitoring the effectiveness of a book video.

Many people are under the impression that the number of views are the greatest measurement of effectiveness for video. That is not true. But, CPM is a well-known, accepted way of charging for ad placement with the number of views being a focal point. The shift for online marketing needs to, and is in many areas, move away from impressions to engagement. It is the engagement of an ad that is most likely to result in an actual sale.

One of the most respected companies that deals in online video, both with ads and viral video, is VideoEgg. YouTube often follows their lead, as do many other video companies. Here you will find a link to a valuable bit of information discussed by VideoEgg CMO, Troy Young. 

Be sure to read the description next to the video.  This is very helpful in understanding where the future of video ads is going.

Impressions to Engagement- Troy Young, CMO VideoEgg

The great thing about VideoEgg’s idea with the rollover/expand option is that the video will still play, but the expanding information would allow graphics and text. Here you could have a picture of the book cover and/or author photo or even photos to represent the storyline of the book. You can also have the back cover copy of something similar, which appeals to traditional readers. The drawback to this is that it is an ad and you have to pay for it. The up-side is that it is pay-per-engagement and not impressions. So, you only pay when someone is motivated enough to click on the ad and activate it.

If you are going to go the route of a rollover/expand ad I strongly suggest not using the author’s name as the primary enticement to engage. If it is a well known author then you’re going to get clicks from fans. You don’t need to advertise to fans. You can get to that target audience through easier, less expensive ways. My recommendation is to have the storyline itself be the enticement.

Whether you decide to try a viral video or a book ad it is important to know the difference. It is important to realize that you can’t mix those medias and expect a successful campaign. You need to know what your goal is when you have a video created.  Let that goal guide you in whether or not you’re going to go with a viral video or an ad.

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First consider the size and structure of the blogosphere.  The popularity of blogs has soared in the last few years.  There are now over 100 million blogs tracked by Technorati, which doesn’t even include the more than 70 million Chinese blogs.  According to recent demographic surveys by the Pew Internet Study and the New York Times / CBS News, blogs have become mainstream and represent virtually every audience and topic area. 

Blogs focused on a given topic tend to link to similar blogs.  What this means is you can use blogs to:

• Develop an audience for your work while you write
• Promote your book effectively and at low cost once it is written

A blog bears many resemblances to a book. Both have a title and subtitle that reflect the content of a book. Blog posts can be organized into categories which serve as a kind of table of contents to classify and group related material. Blog posts, typically 300-500 words in length, represent the raw content of a book. Links within posts or on the blog roll serve as a bibliography, showing references to source material.

How do you attract people to your blog? Initially, through searches individuals make on popular search engine sites like Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. By using popular keywords in your blog title, subtitle, categories and posts, your blog will begin to turn up in these searches. You can discover these keywords using keyword discovery tools or simply checking out popular blogs in your topic area. The more you blog, the more others discover and link to your blog content, the higher will be the ranking of your blog site in search results, and the greater the traffic you will receive.

Blog software usually provides a basic set of statistics that allow you to track important information such as number of visitors, page views, referring sites and average time spent by each visitor. Page views and comments left by visitors for specific blog posts provide an indicator of popular content. This makes blogs an excellent way for you to field test and select material to be included in your book.

Once you have cultivated an audience, you can transform your blog into a great marketing platform. For example, you can:

• Feature your book on a special blog page, with your bio, a book description, excerpts, press releases and testimonials; thus your blog can double as a book website.
• Promote your book to a wider audience by arranging a blog tour.  A blog tour is a series of scheduled guest appearances on related blogs, where you have the opportunity to talk about your book. This is a low cost, high impact method to discover new readers for your work. 

The blogosphere is not the only place to market your work, but it can one of the best. 

Whether you are publishing independently or trying to sign on with a traditional publisher, blogging can be key to your success. More publishers are now starting to view the blogosphere as a fertile ground to find promising writers. Why? As an author who blogs, you can quantify your audience and this is attractive to risk averse publishers.  This is, in essence, the new author book pitch.

Blogging is a low risk, low cost way to build your audience while you are developing your work, and then promote your finished book to that same audience. Give it a try!

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• Finding a Few of Your Favorite Keywords
• The New Author Book Pitch

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