Guest Blog Week: Book Sales Demystified

by Eric

I’ve followed Nathan’s blog for close to two years now, and he has done an admirable—nay, outstanding—job of outlining, explaining, reiterating, and overall demystifying the somewhat byzantine method by which manuscripts (produced by you, the author) are acquired, auctioned, sold, &c, and eventually transformed into finished books (purchased by you, the consumer). So first of all, thank you, Nathan, for all you’ve done to make this business a little clearer to the rest of us.

The very last stage of this process, though—the sale of books from publisher to book store to consumer—isn’t really the focus of the blog, and so has received relatively little treatment so far. With Nathan’s permission, I’d like to shed a little light on this last leg of a book’s journey.

I work as a sales assistant at a major trade book publisher (feel free to insert your favorite name here: Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins, &c), which means that my job mostly involves 1.) preparing sales materials for the sales reps who sell the books to a given account, and 2.) keeping track of the promotions we run at said account. Since the account I work on is a national chain (e.g. Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-A-Million), this is a fairly involved process. How does this affect your book once it’s already survived the gauntlet of critique group, literary agent, and editor?

First, the sales materials. Each book that we publish is grouped according to its on-sale date, usually by month but occasionally by span. (There are three spans: Spring, Summer, and Fall.) Within a certain month or span, different sales reps are responsible for selling different subsets of books to the account (for example, the two reps for whom I work divide the list of one imprint; one sells the hardcovers, the other sells the trade paperbacks and mass-markets). For each title in a subset, it’s my job to create a sales kit. My sales kits generally consist of:

- A cover sheet, unique to the account, that breaks out basic information (author, title, ISBN, &c) and provides the book’s subject code, which determines which buyer at the account is responsible for it and what section of the store the book will eventually live in. Each buyer usually specializes in just a couple of genres/categories.
- A kind of “fact sheet” that summarizes all the important information about the book: title, author, ISBN, &c, as well as marketing information, quotes/blurbs, copy, and “comp” information. Alas, yes, your book will be “comped” to a previously published title—either your last book, if you wrote one, or a book that is similar in content, format, and span/on-sale month, if you didn’t—and the comp’s sales figures factor into the account’s initial buy.
- A full-color copy of the book’s cover.
- Any other promotional materials (additional praise/quotes/blurbs, sell sheets, &c) that may be useful.

The sales reps then meet periodically with the buyers at their account and “pitch” them each title. (You thought the pitch was over with the editor’s acquisition. You were wrong.) These meetings are referred to as “selling in” or “sales calls” and they are the meetings at which initial orders are decided. Simply put, the initial order is the number of copies the account’s buyer wants to purchase in time for the on-sale date; any later orders are considered reorders and are used to replenish stock when it runs low. The sales kits are essential to these meetings—the rep uses them to get the buyers excited and to push them to order quantities that are in line with the publisher’s expectations. This generally involves convincing buyers (via cover images, sales data, praise and quotes from famous critics or authors, &c) to purchase more copies than they otherwise would.

So let’s say your book, I AM PRETTY AWESOME, a literary memoir, gets a 2,000-copy buy at a given account. Not bad! Your previous book, I GUESS I’M OKAY, sold 1,500 copies in its first four weeks and has experienced 80% life-to-date sell-through. (Sell-through is the percentage of books an account sells compared to how many it bought.) Not only that, but a couple of big-time authors have come out to praise it and it got a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. Both the rep and the buyer are confident that 2,000 is a good number based on this information.

After the sales call, the reps will either enter the orders into our computers themselves or ask me to do it. At this point, the order quantity is called an estimate, since we estimate this is how many copies of each title the account will initially order. (Keep in mind that we tend to sell books to our accounts about five months before they go on sale, so it’s possible substantial changes can occur to the order quantity between the sales call and the placement of the actual initial order.) Once the order comes in, it is compared to the estimate, any discrepancies are worked out between the publisher and the account, and the books are shipped in time for their release date.

In summary: sales of your previous books, sales of “comp” titles, your platform as an author (as described on the fact sheets), the book’s cover, the current economic climate, events in the news, &c all contribute to how many copies of your book a given account will buy. If you’re lucky—either because you’re a big shot or because you happened to write a book about the life and times of Michael Jackson a few months back—the orders for your book could be HUGE, say, 10,000 copies. This will qualify your title for promotion, e.g. placement on that magical table at the front of the store, and so brings us to the second half of my job: promotion, through a system we call co-op.

Co-op, in short, is the process by which we work with an account to determine which of our titles get special treatment: placement at the front of the store, on endcaps, in special displays, &c. The account is paid for running these promotions for a set amount of time, either flat amounts or a certain amount of money per book. Any time you see a title on a major front-of-store display, it’s because that book’s publisher paid the account for the promotion. Stephenie Meyer doesn’t magically get her own table, and those “New Release” tables aren’t populated by the store staff’s personal favorites. The publisher and the account agree on time tables, promotions, and monetary reimbursement, and the account is paid upon completion of those promotions.

Of note: co-op is formalized through a legally binding contract process, so it’s not treated lightly by either the publisher or the account. Once the deal is inked, titles are promoted, and once they’re promoted, the account is paid.

Your next question, I imagine, is probably something along the lines of “holy hell, how do I make sure my book gets co-op? How can I help decide which titles it’s comped to?”

Alas, I’m afraid the answer is: you can’t. The vast majority of titles go to their section (science fiction, literary fiction, biography, &c) at on-sale, and the Grishams, Meyers, and Evanovichs receive co-op. To be sure, they’re not the only ones; new authors do get co-op for their titles. It’s relatively rare, though, so don’t be disappointed if your book isn’t front-of-store come release day, especially if it’s your first one.

I hope I’ve helped dispel at least some of the mystery surrounding book sales without dismaying too many of you—the business side of publishing can seem remarkably dispassionate compared to the creative side. Please leave any questions you have in the comments, and I’ll try to answer as best I can.

Next Week's Guest Bloggers Will Be...

Thank you so much to everyone who entered the guest blog contest! There were over 250+ entries and they were awesome. Very awesome. Some were personal, some were wacky, some were touching, some were hilarious, but all were good in their own way. This was actually one of the most difficult contests I've yet had to judge and I spent a really long time agonizing over the choices.

So -- let me say again, thank you so much to everyone who entered. I wish I had time to thank everyone personally, but... well, I have a plane to catch. So THANK YOU everyone.

You will be in great hands next week. I intentionally chose a variety of publishing topics and authors representing different perspectives, so there will be a little bit of everything.

Without further ado, next week's guest bloggers will be (in no particular order):

Eric
Kiersten White
Jordan McCollum
Victoria Mixon
Steph Damore

Also, please note that all opinions expressed by the guest bloggers are their own and may not necessarily be shared by me, Curtis Brown Ltd., the Internet, and/or Ryan Seacrest.

Enjoy!

This Week in Publishing

An abbreviated week in publishing as I imagine the Americans among us will be jetting off early this weekend to celebrate our nation's birthday. I'll post the winners of the guest blog contest tomorrow and they'll run next week.

First up, for all you Brits from whom we stole this fine country: longtime friend of the blog and early contest finalist Stuart "Conduit" Neville's book THE TWELVE goes on sale today in the UK!!! The US version, GHOSTS OF BELFAST, publishes in October.

Via John Askins, Malcolm Gladwell published a review/takedown of freevangelist* (*trademarked - must credit Nathan Bransford) Chris Anderson's new book FREE (which had previously been subject to some Wikipedia-plagiarism claims). Gladwell notes that free doesn't really work as a business model. Seth Godin in turn published a takedown of Malcolm Gladwell, saying free is going to happen anyway. Who's right? You decide. Also you don't have to pay to read any of this.

Author/accused memoir fabricator James Frey recently co-wrote a children's book project that sold to HarperCollins and has already been optioned by Michael Bay. The Guardian's book blog has the rundown.

Mike Shatzkin wrote a provocative post on the evolving role of agents in the new publishing landscape, concluding that the new pressures on agents who previously specialized in mid- or lower-tier books (which are disappearing) could result in some new experimentation. It's a thought-provoking article no matter your take on the future of publishing. (Via Jim Duncan's Twitter feed)

And finally, the Millions put together a truly indispensable preview of one of the most indispensable publishing seasons in recent memory. This fall is going to be huge.

­­¡Que tenga un buen fin de semana!

Guest Blog Mini-Contest

Now for something a little different.

I'm going to be out of the office next week working at an orphanage in South America through Travelocity's Travel for Good program - more on this when I return. Rather than the usual mix of re-posts and best-of-posts, I thought I'd open things up to you, the bloggers and would-be-bloggers who read the blog.

So. Want to get something off your chest? Want to build some blog traffic? Want to tell the world about your love of reality television shows? Want to mock me mercilessly? Now's your chance.

Here's how this will work:

- Please e-mail a guest post between now and noon Pacific time tomorrow (Thursday) to querycontest@gmail.com.
- Please limit yourself to one entry.
- Please do not e-mail entries to my work address.
- Make sure to format your blog post in block formatting (i.e. single spaced, double spaces between paragraphs, no indenting, plain text) for easy copying and pasting.
- I will choose the five best, most helpful, funniest, awesomest posts to run next week and link to the guest blog author's blog or website or Amazon page or favorite charity or what have you. The topic is totally up to you, although some relevancy to this blog's themes will probably receive preference (but not necessarily!).
- I regret that I will not be able to run every post, and thus some blog post writing may be in vain. But! You can always use the post on your own blog, or, heck use it in your novel. Recycling encouraged!
- Rules and guidelines subject to change without notice.
- Did I mention you only have a little over 24 hours? Sorry for the short deadline!! (Actually it was intentional).

I aim to leave you in good hands. Thanks, everyone.

Sports Novels

Regular readers know that I am really into sports. I approach the NBA Draft like it's a holy ritual and I could rattle off the stats of obscure Sacramento Kings players from the 1980s.

So you'd think that I'd leap at every sports book that came my way. But here's the thing: sports novels for adults are tricky.

All you need to do to see what I mean by that is to look at which sports-related books have been successful. There are very, very few successful pure commercial sports novels. While I'm sure there are exceptions, the ones that tend to make it are [genre] + sports, whether that's suspense plus sports (e.g. Harlan Coben's novels featuring sports agent Myron Bolitar), literary fiction plus sports (e.g. SHOELESS JOE, the basis of the movie "Field of Dreams"), fantasy plus sports (e.g. SUMMERLAND), or John Grisham novel plus sports (e.g. BLEACHERS, PLAYING FOR PIZZA).

On the other hand, there is a thriving market for sports narrative nonfiction, whether it's MY LOSING SEASON, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, THE BOYS OF SUMMER, etc. etc.

Why would this be?

I think what's behind the difficulty of pure sports novels is that sports already provides so much human drama and narratives and storylines that a straightforward novel about sports is almost redundant. Sports provides a real life narrative experience that makes novels feel almost hollow in comparison.

Thus, in order to give readers something that they can't already find just by following the NFL or NBA or curling, an author has to bring something new to the table, whether that's by introducing suspense or fantasy or literary merit or a real-life behind the scenes look. I also think this is why children's sports novels are successful - they tend to feature kids as protagonists, which offers something different than the real sports world.

So if you're thinking of writing a sports novel: verisimilitude isn't enough or even what you should be aiming for. It's important to bring something else to the field.

Breezing Through Voicemail

I don't like to complain. I don't.

But this one is kind of funny.

For as long as it was in development I had been looking forward to the new Curtis Brown website like a kid waiting for Santa Claus.

Why? Submission procedures online. Bios. Specifically my bio.

I was dreaming... DREAMING about the moment I could just refer one of the many time-consuming query calls I get every day to the website. Finally, finally I would be able to say: "Have you checked the website? No? Curtisbrown.com. Everything you need. Bye bye. No, really, go to the website, I'm... no... website... I'm hanging up now."

Better yet, I changed my voicemail message to mention the website. Here's what it says:

"Hi, you've reached Nathan Bransford blah blah blah (paraphrasing!), if you are INTERESTED IN SUBMITTING A PROJECT FOR REPRESENTATION OR IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE, CURTISBROWN.COM." (I don't actually shout, I restrained myself.)

Problem solved, right?

Nope. Problem not solved. People just breeze right through the message. I get these voicemails constantly: "Hi, I'm so and so from such and such place (for some reason they always say where they're calling from) and I'm looking for a literary agent." Some people just call back later.

Foiled. Better yet, I don't think I can make it any clearer, but I'm open to ideas in the comments section.

I don't think this post will cure the problem, but.... just wanted to share. Happy Monday!

This Week in Publishing

This week! The publishing!

We'll start waaay back in the Great Depression. With our current economic downturn affecting..... everything, including culture, are you curious about what people were reading back then? Me too. Would you believe werewolves, dog books, and business books?

Knopf Doubleday (I'm still not used to saying that) has quite the Fall season coming up, what with books by Dan Brown, Jon Krakauer, Margaret Atwood, Pat Conroy, and Jonathan Lethem, among others. Bookseller Arsen Kashkashian takes a look at the catalog with the reverence it deserves, but calls it "Random House's Hail Mary" and discusses the decisions a buyer has to make with such a momentous list.

Speaking of bookselling, agent Andrew Zack posted a takedown of the Bookscan service, which purports to report (say that five times fast) 70% of book sales and which publishers rely on heavily, but as any agent knows, actually reports FAR, FAR LESS I SWEAR I HAVE THE ROYALTY STATEMENTS IN FRONT OF ME DON'T BELIEVE BOOKSCAN THE SALES TRACK IS FINE I PROMISE. Ahem. Little, Brown editor in chief Geoff Shandler also weighed in in the comments section.

The New Yorker's indispensable book blog The Book Bench tackled a crucial and weighty question this week: is Lauren Conrad's novel L.A. CANDY any good?

Oh, and speaking of celebrity news, my bunker buddy Dick Cheney sold his memoir for a reported $2 million.

In news-via-John Ochwat news, speaking of Dick Cheney, there's a hilarious contest over at the Globe and Mail to name his memoir. Ooooh the possibilities.

Also via John Ochwat, John Scalzi tackles the question of why debut novelists always seem to be in their thirties (except of course for those precocious teenagers). Why is it? Well, it takes a while to write a novel, and anyway, most writer's first novels suck.

Over at Bookends, Jessica laments the poor state of communication in the publishing industry and how frustrating it is to have to chase editors who are so uncommunicative you start to wonder if they're still alive. Hear hear.

And JA Konrath tackles a tough question in a really awesome, comprehensive manner: when should you self-publish?

And finally, I'm really going to miss the King of Pop. I don't know if we'll ever again have someone who is as talented a singer, songwriter and dancer. RIP.

PSA About Vampires

So there's this book called TWILIGHT and it's kind of popular.

Whenever there is a popular book, my inbox explodes with query imitations. There was the epic and ongoing TOTALLY NOT HARRY POTTER deluge, quickly followed by the TOTALLY NOT DA VINCI CODE phase. Often these queries boldly come right out and say they are the "next" [insert book they are imitating].

The current TOTALLY NOT TWILIGHT era we're in blows all of the other eras out of the water, particularly when you combine it with non-vampire paranormal and/or urban fantasy tropes. Well over half of the queries I am receiving these days involve some combination of vampires, zombies, faeries, pixies, ghosts, and/or Dick Cheney.

Now, don't get me wrong. This doesn't mean that you can't write or query me with urban fantasy/paranormal. The opposite in fact. Just look at the bestseller list.

And before I get angry comments, let me also say that I'm not accusing everyone who writes in these genres of imitating TWILIGHT. I'm not saying that.

But I think it's important to keep some things in mind if you are querying in these increasingly well-trodden genres:

1. I don't know if I speak for other agents, but I'm getting some serious vampire/faerie/zombie fatigue. Whether it's the misfit teenager who is secretly communicating with a ghost or the misfit teenager who is actually a vampire (or, conversely, has a crush on one), I've seen it all and I'm seeing it often. Now. That doesn't mean I don't want you to query me with urban fantasy or paranormal. But I'm not going to be favorably disposed to something that sounds like the same old paranormal story. It needs to be something different and it needs to feel fresh. I know it's really difficult to do something different and fresh when everyone and their mom and their grandma and her mom are writing paranormal. But thems are the breaks.

2. Do. Not. Mention. TWILIGHT. Don't mention TWILIGHT. It never existed. You didn't read it, it has no bearing on your book, you aren't comparing yourself to it, you're not living on the same planar field in which that book was written. Don't mention it in the query. Agents don't want the next TWILIGHT. Well. Caveat. We want something that is as popular as TWILIGHT. But we don't want a straight up imitation. And saying your book is going to be as popular as TWILIGHT just makes you look.... well, like you think faeries are real. (They're not, are they?)

3. Understand what you're up against. You might think that because you happen to have a novel in the hot genre du jour that it's going to grease the publication tracks and you'll soon be showing off to your friends with a new hardcover of the next TWI... that other vampire book that is kind of popular. Keep in mind that because there are so many people writing these novels now, the stakes are raised. Ground has been trodden. You have to either trod new ground or trod the existing ground with spectacular, mindboggling execution. It's not, in other words, easier.

Ultimately, the same old advice applies: write what you love, write a really amazing, incredible book, and let the gods of publishing take care of the rest. Or should I say the publishing zombies...

You Tell Me: Where Did You Hear About the Book You're Reading?

Last week we all shared what we're reading at the moment.

Marketers and publicists and literary agents and everyone else interested in sales wants to know: how did you hear about it?

Also: where did you buy/borrow/acquire/steal it from?

Can I Get a Ruling: Does Listening to an Audiobook Count as Reading?

This came up in the comments section while I was incapacitated, but I thought it would make for a good Can I Get a Ruling:

Does listening to an audiobook count as reading?

On the one hand, you're absorbing a book. The method doesn't matter, right?

On the other hand, someone else is doing part of the work, aren't they?

What do you think?