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What Are Book Store Buyers LOOKING For?
A client recently asked me. What the %$#@! are book buyers looking for? He went on to say “My book is priced right, well-designed and exactly what older American’s are needing… what more can I do?”
I thought I would share my answer in the hopes that it might answer other questions out there.
If the book is well written, has a topic and message that will appeal to their customers, and is well designed, it has a good shot of getting a test order from a bookstore book buyer.
Keep in mind, there are more books published each year than could fit in 7 totally empty bookstores. (And as you know, bookstores are not empty!) Because of this, the buyers can only take a teeny fraction of what is presented to them. Also, the buyers are judged (read: get to keep their jobs) by how many times their section “turns” a year. The sales rate of their choices is closely monitored. So they will pick books that they feel have the best chance to selling off the shelf several times a year.
That is where demand and platform comes in. If an author has a good platform, is reaching out to thousands, or tens of thousands of readers, is showing sales online (seen in Nielsen Bookscan reports) and has a strong PR plan with potential for a lot of media – the buyer will be far more likely to take the book in.
If the book does NOT have all of those things, then the buyer needs to see some other proof that the well-designed, beautifully-edited, fantastically-written, much-needed book won’t just sit on their shelves. There is a chance that someone will see your title on the spine on a crowded bookshelf and pick it up. If they pick it up, there is a good chance that they might buy it. (If they need or want a book like yours). But a book buyer would much rather sweeten the chances of a “turn” by stocking books that will have browse-friendly qualities AND great press. There are enough books out there that have great demand AND are great books to choose from.
Does your book have everything it needs PLUS good PR? Is your book “All That” AND a bag of chips?
Math Lessons For Small Presses – Part 3
Lesson #3 – DISTRIBUTORS
Bookstores buy books from wholesalers and distributors. The major difference is that a wholesaler is publisher’s customer (wholesalers buy books from a publisher) and a distributor is a publisher’s employee (distributors sell their services to a publisher).
A distributor handles all of the après-production elements of getting a book onto a store’s shelves. Publishers agree to funnel all of their sales, warehousing, shipping, and billing through the distributor. They do this work for a percentage of the billing generated by the sale of the publisher’s books.
Like publishers, distributors sell a book to a wholesaler or bookstore at a discount of the retail price. That discount is usually between 45 and 55 percent.
So, if bookstores get about the same terms and about the same schedule, why do they go to a distributor instead of directly to the publisher? Some bookstores (especially bookstore chains) are not interested in setting up new, small, or regional publishers in their ordering and accounting systems for just a few books. They rightly weigh the benefits of a publisher’s book against the time and trouble necessary to order it, and if the balance does not come out in the book’s favor, they skip it. How do new and small publishers avoid this terrible fate? They sign exclusive agreements with a distributor.
A distributor’s cut varies from 25 to 35 percent of the net billing of each book. Just about every distributor has additional monthly fees, and most require an initial deposit for new clients.
Before you balk, keep in mind that it is very difficult, expensive, and time consuming to handle your own warehousing, purchase shipping materials, and learn how to ship exactly how each store wishes their shipments to arrive … and everyone is different. (It’s a little joke they like to play on publishers. I am convinced that bookstore owners get together every two years to devise slightly altered yet completely incomprehensible trafficking instructions.) Then comes the billing, monthly statements, handling claims for books damaged in transit, taking in returns, and reconciling the amount due with what the bookstore believes is due.
After that, consider the money and time it takes to tell the country’s thousands of buyers about your books. The sales reps working for distributors have long-standing relationships with the book buyers in your hometown, across the country, and in the major chains. You would not be able to start a fledgling relationship on your own with these buyers. What an experienced sales rep can often do with a phone call, you could rarely accomplish with six months and a great deal of research, e-mails, flyers, catalogs, paperwork, and free samples.
Back to the math!
A book priced at retail is $16.95
A distributor sells it to a wholesaler for $7.63 (55% discount)
The distributor will charge the publisher on average $2.15 to handle that order.
Shipping and other fees will cost about $1.30 cents a book (give or take)
The publisher gets $4.18 for the book from the distributor 6 months later when the payment comes in.
After the productions costs of $3.25 are taken into consideration, the end profit is about .93 cents a book.
(AND the distributor does most of the work)
So there you have it. Math by an English Major for Publishers. Let me know if you have any questions!
Math Lessons for Small Presses
Lesson #1
PUBLISHERS and how they sell books:
If a publisher wants to get their books into a bookstore or library, they will have to sell their book to a store or a wholesaler at a deep discount. That discount is usually between 40 and 55 percent off of the retail price. It can sometimes be 60 percent or more if the store is part of a chain or a wholesaler that has a central warehouse and has extra costs associated with getting the books to THEIR customers.
The book buyer for the wholesaler or store will contact the publisher, place a purchase order for books, and expect to receive them in five to seven days. They expect to be billed for these books, but will usually require at least ninety days to pay.
If you want to become a publisher, here are a few things you should think about. You have to plan and budget carefully. Small presses usually aren’t paid for three to four months or longer. Plan for not getting paid for 6-7 months.
You will have to pay to ship the books to them. They rarely will pay a small press for shipping. If you want to take a stand, I applaud you! But it will cost you some sales.
Now, are you ready for the big hit? Publishers may not even see the money they think they are owed because the books are bought on a returnable basis. Fully returnable. One hundred percent. (Or as we used to say when we were kids: backsies!) After a publisher has shipped a book to a store, the bookstore has the right to ship it right back for any reason.
So, a book priced at retail is $16.95
A publisher sells it to a wholesaler for $7.63 (55% discount)
The publisher then waits sometimes 6 months for the $7.63 or for the book to be returned.
If the book’s printing and design/editorial costs are in line with what they should be, each book should have cost the publisher approximately $ 3.25 per unit to produce.
The shipping and distribution costs of GETTING a $16.95 book to the wholesaler is usually around $3.50 a book. (this factors in calls to stores and wholesalers, sample copies or flyers sent to buyers, shipping of books, materials, returns… it assumes that you are doing everything yourself.
That leaves the publisher .88 cents a unit in profit.
Where does all the rest of the money go? Why does a wholesaler take so much? That leads us to next week’s Lesson #2
Author Tours
Are Author Tours Worth It?
By Nicole Riley
I am often asked if author tours are successful. We are very honest with the folks we have worked with on what a book signing might look like, yet there are still a number of authors who think there is going to be a line wrapping around the building to purchase their books at every event no matter what we say. Although we would love to see that happen, I would like to provide a more realistic view to the process, and help you define the word “successful” for yourself.
Before going any further, I would like to say that this is my opinion solely based on my experience with booking author tours for the last couple of years. I too often receive feedback that an event was just ok, or the author hoped that more people would have attended, or flat out that this was a waste of time! I would like to add that we have had several clients we have booked extraordinary author events for that have had success written all over them! Many of which have used these events to graduate into another phase of their career development.
Before booking an author tour, ask yourself…
- What makes an author tour successful?
- What defines the word success for you?
- What are your expectations?
- Most importantly, what strategy are you using to reach that definition of success in promoting your tour?
- Do you have a publicity campaign going on in conjunction with your events that includes radio interviews or major network television?
- Have you sent a press release to the local newspaper?
- Have you taken out any ads where your event will be taking place?
- Are you promoting your book on your own website?
- Is the store hosting the event promoting the book on their website prior to the event?
- Are you aware of how much a display and prominent positioning of your book would cost without an event?
- Do you want your book to be in a store weeks prior to an event, being displayed when it might otherwise get lost on a shelf?
- Do you want your book to remain in a store and potentially be reordered because of a connection you may have been able to make with the buyer?
- Do you realize that by having an event you give journalists a great reason to write about you?
- Are the amounts of books you sell at your event defining your success?
I think it is very important to think about these questions. In my experience the most successful tours are those that are synchronized with a publicity campaign of some kind. I have seen author tour sales figures range anywhere from 3-100 books at a signing. If you sold 5-10 books at your signing would you deem your event “unsuccessful”? Of course the goal is always to sell as many books as you can, but I think we should remember that these book signings are equally about selling yourself, as it is about selling books. They are a perfect opportunity for you to promote yourself.
Invite anyone who will listen. Word of mouth is powerful! Piggybacking off of my hometown book sales blog post when I said there will be no one more interested in you and your book than your hometown, I believe the same holds true for the start of your tour. I often will refer to this type of an event as a Book Launch Party. A date that is close to your pub date, premiering in a local store, surrounded by family, friends, co workers, etc. are great ways to jump start your tour! I also suggest finding a store that hosts Local Author Festivals. This MAY bring in an extra book sales for you, but if not wasn’t it still nice to meet other local authors in your community while practicing your self -promotion skills? Successful? Only you can answer that.
If an event is not in your hometown, you will not have your local support system. If you have no media hits, and you factor in the genre of your book and pray that you have been able to reach your target audience through telepathic waves, would it be semi-delusional to think that there will be a line of buyers extending out the door? Is that expectation you set to high? For example, let’s say this is your first book, you have no publicity to speak of, and you just drove many miles to be at your 2nd event on your tour. There are 3 lucky shoppers who run into your table by accident and buy your book, and 2 customers who came in to see you because they saw the in store signage last week. Was this event unsuccessful? I guess it would be if you went into it expecting that you were going to sign 50 books that day. Again, what were your expectations? Are you being realistic? I guess my point is that you will get out of your author tour what you put into it! At the same time I say this, there are times where authors are doing all of the right things and the number of attendees is still low. Maybe it was a beautiful day, or it ended up snowing in June…. I don’t know.
So are author tours successful? I believe they most certainly can be. This is your opportunity to meet potential buyers face to face and captivate them and your audience. Plus it adds a personal touch to your book promotion efforts. Not to mention, prior to the author event your book is given free display that without the event is otherwise extremely expensive! Drive a crowd, smile, talk to people, have fun, share the message your book was intended to send. Be realistic and define your own success!
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