How to Sell A Book, if you smoke a pipe and wear tweed 

Last week, I talked about how selling print books is a very different proposition from selling ebooks. Print books can’t change their covers, can’t radically lower their price, can’t link to the internet, and are sold (by publishers) to huge corporations not direct to consumers.

So how do publishers sell books?

Well, there are two ways to look at it. There’s the way that publishers will talk about (at length) if you ask them at a festival or elsewhere. Then there’s the way that actually illuminates what happens.

How publishers sell books (publisher version)

Let’s honour publishers first by talking about bookselling the way that they do. Selling a print book, these days, is more complicated – more multi-channelled – than it has ever been. So publishers will think about:

• Social media activity, including relatively novel channels like BookTok.
• Some digital advertising (maybe).
• Book reviews via notable bloggers in whatever your genre space is
• Book reviews via mainstream media
• Other media opportunities, from local radio to national press or even (rarely) TV
• Requesting puffs and review quotes from authors and other influencers
• Sending out proof copies to all and sundry
• Festival appearances
• Industry get-togethers that give you a chance to meet bloggers, reviewers, etc
• Industry get-togethers that give you a chance to meet retail buyers
• Industry get-togethers that give you a chance to meet booksellers
• Book signings (less frequent now than they used to be, thank the Lord. Turnouts at these things seldom helped an author’s ego.)
• Book giveaways, however handled
• Price promotions, especially with supermarkets
• Purchasing “book of the week” type slots with chain booksellers
• Inclusion in the publisher’s seasonal catalogue

That’s not even a comprehensive list – and it includes categories (eg: ‘social media activity’) which in itself comprises a whole bewildering and inventive range of initiatives.

That said, what publishers actually do for any particular book tends to be a very small subset of what they could potentially do.

Let’s say that you have a really capable agent from a heavy-hitting literary agency in London or New York. Let’s also say your Really Capable Agent has sold to a highly credible imprint at a major publisher. The publisher concerned has a fancy office building at some glamorous address. They have a billion dollars plus in global revenues and make a very healthy profit on those sales. Let’s also say that your book deal wasn’t even marginal. It wasn’t one of those $10,000 / £5,000 advances that basically say, “Look, we’re not that excited by this, but we’ll give it a shot …”

So, you’re all set, right? You just need to stand back and let this mighty machine do its perfectly polished work?

What actually happens

Well – maybe.

Sometimes, yes, an author will find it pans out, all as they’ve dreamed it. It’s as though they’ve gone to sleep in some frozen landscape, then woken up on a geyser, tossed higher than seemed possible. “Hey, sorry, Oprah, I’m on Jimmy Fallon that night, could we maybe reschedule?”

But mostly – it’s not like that.

Mostly, you have these weird conversations with whichever Glossy Marketing Person your publisher allocates you.

YOU: “Cover reveal on Twitter, OK.”

GMP: “Yeah, it’s called X now.”

“And, uh, the book’s in a catalogue?”

“Yes, we’ve really revamped the way we address indie bookshops, so there are going to be a LOT of eyes on this.”

“And proof copies? When you took me on, you were going to print up some book proofs with a fancy cover …?”

“Well, yes. I mean, we’ve gone the PDF route, in fact, because so many people find PDFs easier to handle.”

“And Festival appearances? We spoke about that too …”

“Yes, we’re really getting your name out there.”

“But nothing booked?”

“Well, we haven’t yet heard back from the Little Piddle Lit Fest team. They were very  enthusiastic at one point.”

“Book reviews?”

“We can send out another email, but it can be positively unhelpful to chase too much.”

“Adverts? I mean, are you taking any positive steps to get this book in front of readers?”

[Glossy Marketing Person does the nervous laughter compulsory when an author mentions a strategy that costs actual money.]

“We really feel that organic reach works better on digital.”

It’s perfectly possible – no, likely – that your marketing conversation goes something like that. And you watch on as this huge machine, this reliable creator of bestselling books and authors, appears to do virtually nothing to support your book.

Sure enough, what looked likely to happen, does happen.

Not many retailers buy your book, and those that do don’t buy it at huge scale. Sure enough, you make some sales, because it would be weird if literally no one bought it, but the sales seem very low.

Nobody from your publisher ever calls you up and says, “Hey, you do know that your career is completely ****ed, don’t you?”, but by the time you get to the latter stages of your two-book deal, the mood music has altered so unmistakeably, you get the message anyway. You always quite fancied pig-farming / floristry / exotic dance as a way to make a living, so you start retraining as one of those good things instead.

You are about to be a former author, except that – like American presidents – you always get to call yourself an author, even if it’s been years since you ran a country / wrote a book.

How publishers sell books (the reality)

What publishers say about selling books is all, 100%, completely true.

But they mostly don’t add a crucial little rider, and everything that truly matters is in that rider.

Your book will get a huge and impressive density of marketing effort if retailers agree to stock your book in significant volumes. If retailers don’t agree stock your book in bulk, we will offer you the absolute minimum of support – and yes, we are well aware that this lack of support will be terminal.

They are extremely unlikely to tell you this directly. They are not likely to volunteer what level of orders they are looking for. They are not likely to tell you if you have / have not met this level.

Publishers are, in the end, profit-seeking companies. Their basic sales model (for print) is as follows:

1. Buy 12 books from debut authors.
2. Do a reasonable (if cost-conscious) job of book production – covers, editing, all that.
3. Present those 12 books to retailers. (That’s why “Inclusion in the publisher’s seasonal catalogue” is the most important element in the list I gave you earlier, even though it seems like the most boring and least impactful element there.)
4. Retailers are getting bombarded by loads of catalogues from loads of imprints from loads of publishers. Even the biggest stores don’t have shelf space for everything. Most stores are small not big. And supermarkets – which sell huge volumes of books – sell very few individual titles. The result is that most debut novels don’t get many orders. That’s just how it is.
5. Publishers then triage, ruthlessly.
6. If a book gets a heavy level of advance orders from a good number of retailers, the marketing artillery will come out in force. The advance orders from supermarkets are most likely to come if the publisher offers significant price discounts, but supermarkets know that they can and will secure those discounts if they back them up with orders. All this is potentially geyser territory; where you wake up on a glorious fountain of sales: your book, in a lot of stores, backed by hefty price promotions.
7. If a book does not get a heavy level of advance orders (and it probably won’t), publishers will, in their smilingly deceptive way, let your book (and your career) die.
8. The publisher then moves onto the next batch of 12 debut authors. You move on to pig-farming / floristry / exotic dance.

All this is perfectly logical.

Retailers can’t possibly stock all the books they’re offered. If a publisher runs an expensive marketing campaign aimed at generating sales in bookstores, that campaign is bound to fail – badly – if your book is invisible in the places where people buy books.

The result is that, if your book doesn’t get ordered in significant volumes, your publisher will simply throttle any marketing effort. They’ll do just enough to stop you being shouty and screamy, but they know perfectly well that the little they do won’t meaningfully shift books.

In effect, modern publisher bookselling is akin to twelve fat men running for the same revolving door. It’s not really an athletic competition. It’s more of a random scramble. But in the end, only one fat man can pop first through that door – and the bliss of Selling Heaven – and eleven portly gentlemen will be sitting all a-tumble on the skiddy granite outside, wondering what happened.

What happened, my friend, is that you just got published.

Pipes and tweed

Now, I should say that all this is very much the pipe and tweed version of things – what happens with a very print-led publishing process. There are, for sure, imprints at big publishers that are either digitally-led or reasonably adept at pivoting between the two. But since the pipe-n-tweed imprints are always the most prestigious, and the ones most likely to create the kind of bestsellers you’ve always dreamed of writing, this model is still profoundly influential.

If you’re startled by my cynicism, I should say that I’m hardly alone. I had a conversation a year or two back with someone who used to run one of the most prestigious imprints in British publishing. I gave him my 12-fat-men analogy, and he essentially agreed. He said that one of the reasons he left publishing was precisely because he felt it had become too much of a lottery, with books elevated by happenstance more than quality.

(And all this, by the way, explains lot about your experience as a reader. Let’s say you read about the new bestseller by Q. It has fancy reviews from X and Y and Z, and it’s selling a LOT of books. So you buy the book and read it, hoping to learn something about how to write … and you think, huh? I mean, books don’t get to be super-big bestsellers unless they genuinely have something special. And you don’t even get to be an ordinary-level bestseller unless you bring a basic competence. But dazzle? Bestselling debut fiction should be dazzling, and it often isn’t. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. This email explains the reason why.)

So what to do?

This email would be Depressing, Pointless and Nihilistic unless it ended with some words of advice on how to win that 12-fat-men-and-a-revolving-door race. And …?

Well, I don’t know.

And this email is too long.

And these emails are ALWAYS too long.

But, that being said, I do nevertheless have some Very Sound Advice to offer.

But you’ll have to wait till next week to get it.

Tell me what you think

As we go further with this series of emails, I’d love to know what you think. What’s useful? What isn’t? What do you want to know more about? Just hit reply, and let me know.

I got a lot of replies last time, so do keep your thoughts coming. I read everything and reply to nearly everything.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Build Your Book Month – Plotting

It’s Build Your Book Month and we’re plotting away.

Sophie’s workshop last week – “Start your book with a bang” was free to all and and generated a LOT of interest. So the assignment this week is:

1. Watch Sophie being amazing here (that link will take you to the Masterclass area of Premium Membership. Not a member? We’ve made the replay free to watch here too.)
2. Upload your opening page (max 300 words)
3. Give us some comments (after your opening) about how you decided on what you wrote.

Post yours here. 

(I’m asking for comments because personally I don’t really start my books with a bang. My most tedious ever opening paragraph? That’s easy. It was the one word: “Rain.” Although, more broadly, that opening was probably beaten out by my very next book which opened with two characters, including my protagonist, discussing a new pair of jeans:

I say, ‘Great. Really nice.’ I’m not sure what to say.

‘My jeans. They’re new.’

‘Oh.’

Any time, Becca Day and her team want a BYB workshop on “How to craft a tedious opening”, I’m their man.)

I’m off to open things in a boring way – books, beer bottles, supermarkets. I’ll see you next week.

Til soon

Harry