Difficulty of selling books by unknown authors

Dear Carol,
You can feel good about the writing you have done. Your heart is the core of it and it is beautiful. You have inspired so many people and held so many hands. Mine included.

I have thought about the 77 books. Twice a year I get a small check from PA. It is not much, but more than 500 books all counted. I am not proud of that, but I take it. My dismal efforts were what I could afford to do. Every time I went out of town for a book signing, it cost me close to 600 dollars. I do not have the funds to promote other than what I have done. I found that book marks, media kits sent, postcards emailed and all the hoopla that I could think of did not much good. I went to Kinkos and had a lovely A frame sign made that stands 48 inches high with Wooffer's book cover coming and going to put in the malls by the book stores that candesended to shelve my little book if I bought them first. I played the audio version very loud in the mall for all the customers to hear. Some stopped and talked, but most just smiled on by never knowing what the hell was going on.

I have talked to kids and teachers at schools, donated to schools, have my picture in the yearbook of schools who read my book or I read to them, and yet, here I am. Nobody. There are so very many people in this world and to inspire a few of those people takes miracles of talent far beyond mine..

I am not unhappy about it. I will not feel as if I have failed.

I imagine that a day will come when no individual person will write a book out of their imagination, their thought or theory. They will have not one idea that is not purported big business who will tell them what to think.

I thought this the other day when I went to Penny's to buy rugs and towels for my house. The colors available are the colors of the year, and if you wanted a color like butter cookie, a last year color, you were shit out of luck. No, you have to have a shade of yellow that would not match mustard.

I wonder about designer literature.

Tell us what we want to read and we will read it. Not only read it, make a movie of it and little dolls that stock the Walmart shelves, (made in China, of course, by little Chinese children of 8 yeras old, paid 6 cents a day)
Ah,
Life.

Love,
Betty

DT, I'm confused. Isn't Rooftop Diva the one you got a commercial audio book contract for? I looked at three pages of listings at that Worldcat link and each one said, "Book not held: Other Format. CD and Audio Recording." Did you get all those sales or did the audio book publisher? If the latter, how is this an example of a self-published marketing success?

I understand you got the commercial contract after self-publishing, and that's great! But until I see as many self-published books on library and retail shelves as commercial, I won't consider my views outdated. At any rate, I admit I don't have the resources or energy to self-market anything. Kudos to you and all that do!

Betty Fasig wrote:

I have talked to kids and teachers at schools, donated to schools, have my picture in the yearbook of schools who read my book or I read to them, and yet, here I am. Nobody. There are so very many people in this world and to inspire a few of those people takes miracles of talent far beyond mine..

I am not unhappy about it. I will not feel as if I have failed.

I imagine that a day will come when no individual person will write a book out of their imagination, their thought or theory. They will have not one idea that is not purported big business who will tell them what to think.

I love the part about having your picture in the yearbooks! Your stories bring joy to many here whenever you post one. I know they've done the same for children who have read them.

I live among people who are just regular people: shopping, walking around town, buying groceries, smiling. They don't go around feeling like failures because they aren't famous.

Last summer Johnny Depp came to Wisconsin to film the movie Public Enemies. One night a couple of weeks ago we went to Little Bohemia, an actual place in the movie and the story of Dillinger. It was packed. People were having their pictures taken in places of the movie. There were big posters of Johnny Depp everywhere.

Next year it will just be the restaurant where there was a shootout with Dillinger. Johnny Depp isn't even aware all his fans are having dinner there.

Abe once said I'd "made my mark." I meant to add, "we've all made our marks." We wrote books, we edited them, we promoted them.

I love the song about singing and dancing like no one is watching or listening, because that is what we do. We write what is in our hearts and souls and put it on paper and people read it, and hopefully are inspired. Maybe not a million, or even a thousand, but if we make even a small difference with one person that book is successful.

I know that sounds like shortchanging myself and my goals, LC, but it is reality as I know it. I'm just a regular person traveling this earth with all the rest: notorious, famous, or otherwise.

Carol

Carol Troestler wrote:

I know that sounds like shortchanging myself and my goals, LC, but it is reality as I know it.

Carol, it doesn't sound to me like you're short-changing yourself, but I detect some resignation. Just upstream you said you'd like to be commercially published. If you wrote nonfiction in the field you're credentialed for -you ran a mental health clinic, right? -you'd have a good shot, at least with a smaller publisher. I know you said you're not interested in that, but getting published in that might open doors to getting published in something else that you're more interested in, later.

My own experience is that my second pub, Cengage, asked me all kinds of questions about my first book, even though it had zero to do with the Cengage proposal. Several years later, Pearson hardly asked me anything at all when they saw I was pubbed with Cengage. The Cengage contract took about 5 months to get; the Pearson one took about three weeks. So I think my first, small-publisher book had something to do with getting on with the bigger ones, but I may be wrong.

LC,

Thanks for the information. Perhaps it is about writing "what we know."

I'm working on the credentials situation however. Not that I'm going back to school, but just re-focusing.

Carol

LC wrote:

DT, I'm confused. Isn't Rooftop Diva the one you got a commercial audio book contract for? I looked at three pages of listings at that Worldcat link and each one said, "Book not held: Other Format. CD and Audio Recording." Did you get all those sales or did the audio book publisher? If the latter, how is this an example of a self-published marketing success?

I understand you got the commercial contract after self-publishing, and that's great! But until I see as many self-published books on library and retail shelves as commercial, I won't consider my views outdated. At any rate, I admit I don't have the resources or energy to self-market anything. Kudos to you and all that do!

LC, you are confused. I tried to link you only to libraries that hold the paper book that is seperate from the audio book. The worldcat format button will show 21 libraries that hold the paper book. Those placements were all personal marketing and included the major city libraries that I listed. I have plugged in the name of some unknown authors with commercial deals and came up with similar numbers. These placements were before the audio deal and caused it to happen from demand from libraries for an audio version of the book. Calls from buyers to the audio publisher tripped the switch for them to contact me to publish the book.

LC, all of this really does not matter because when someone is determined to defend a certain position, evidence to the contrary matters very little as there is always a reason to discredit what is being presented. I just want to say that there are often many paths to reach a destination. I have left the concept of a book behind and moved on to content provider. My bestselling piece currently a 15 piece ebook poetry collection. My audiobook is doing something but it takes 6 months between statements to know what that result is. It is all out there working 24x7.

DT, I'm not trying to discredit anything. The Worldcat link showed over 300 listings, and I wasn't about to go through all of them. So you placed the paperback in 21 libraries yourself. Great -but the lion's share was still placed by the audio book publisher, right?

Anyhow, I don't care how anyone goes about selling anything or who they publish with. Shelagh started this thread by asking why most self-published books have such small numbers, and if it was due to the authors being unknown. I just gave my .02c ...anyone is free to ignore.

Betty Fasig wrote:

I thought this the other day when I went to Penny's to buy rugs and towels for my house. The colors available are the colors of the year, and if you wanted a color like butter cookie, a last year color, you were shit out of luck. No, you have to have a shade of yellow that would not match mustard.

I wonder about designer literature.

Tell us what we want to read and we will read it. Not only read it, make a movie of it and little dolls that stock the Walmart shelves, (made in China, of course, by little Chinese children of 8 yeras old, paid 6 cents a day)
Ah,
Life.

Love,
Betty

Sorry I'm back into this thread a little late again.
What betty say's here struck me, we are constantly being told what we want to see, hear, eat and read. Now I'm no fool I know that that is just advertising strategy. Tell the world what they want even if they really don't want it and most of them will believe they want it.

So the publishing world like every other business follows that strategy we are told what is and what is not "Traditional" and forced to believe.

So here is my response.
"Hey tradition I aint gonna be your BITCH!"
Anything in my view that stiffels true creativity or restricts it through the confines of so called rules or formula aint getting my vote.
On this Board I have read some very talented people's posts and I respect them because they hold true talent in their writing hands, it is people like them who will break boundaries. Because of that I am confident about our future as writers. So head toward that boundary and "CHARGE"

dmondeo wrote:

So here is my response.
"Hey tradition I aint gonna be your BITCH!"
Anything in my view that stiffels true creativity or restricts it through the confines of so called rules or formula aint getting my vote.
On this Board I have read some very talented people's posts and I respect them because they hold true talent in their writing hands, it is people like them who will break boundaries. Because of that I am confident about our future as writers. So head toward that boundary and "CHARGE"

Now that's my belief! It is about choices. Do I want that work out in the world enough to change it to make it "marketable" to a publisher who will get it out there to bookstores and libraries? Would the changes take the soul out of the book or would it improve the work? Or is it better to self-publish it to get my creation out to not quite so many people but those who will enjoy it?

How meaningful are the criticisms given by readers and publishers? Would making those suggested changes improve the creative endeavor or only make it marketable to a public who would be then told they want this work?

I think each of us has different answers to these questions, even for different writing we do. The answers don't come easy.

Carol

LC wrote:

DT, I'm not trying to discredit anything. The Worldcat link showed over 300 listings, and I wasn't about to go through all of them. So you placed the paperback in 21 libraries yourself. Great -but the lion's share was still placed by the audio book publisher, right?

Anyhow, I don't care how anyone goes about selling anything or who they publish with. Shelagh started this thread by asking why most self-published books have such small numbers, and if it was due to the authors being unknown. I just gave my .02c ...anyone is free to ignore.

DT wrote:LC, all of this really does not matter because when someone is determined to defend a certain position, evidence to the contrary matters very little as there is always a reason to discredit what is being presented. I just want to say that there are often many paths to reach a destination.

LC, you again missed the point. The placement by the audio book publisher have nothing to do with the paper book placements and took place much later. By the way there is a format button on worldcat that allows you to only see certain book types such as paper, cd, audio file etc. so you don't have to go through the all types list.

I have seen posts from others that would say you can't get a self-published book into libraries in major city libraries due to:

1. They only consider certain publishers
2. They only consider books reviewed by certain review sources
3. An unknown self-published book has a stigma of editing and quality issues
4. Their buying criteria would screen out a self-published due to vetting concerns

If I had listened to the "No, you can't crowd" then this would not have taken place:

Subject: Audio Inquiry
From:
Date: Fri, October 05, 2007 9:37 am
To:


Mr. Pollard,

I represent Recorded Books, the world’s largest publisher of unabridged audio books. We also produce an audio imprint in libraries called Griot Audio, the only dedicated African-American audio publisher in the industry, which features Essence best-selling authors like Travis Hunter, Carl Weber, RM Johnson, and Mary Monroe.

Having fielded several librarian requests, I am interested in acquiring audio rights to ROOFTOP DIVA.

I look forward to hearing from you.

_________________________


Rights Acquisitions
Recorded Books


I deleted individual names in this email, but this is one example of what can happen. This was a one off deal, but I'm traditionally published because I self-published and did what many said a self-published author could not do. E. Lynn Harris sold books from his car trunk to beauty shop patrons, the author of The Shack sold books by the case directly to churches and the lst goes on.

Try saying yes it can be done and there are many ways to get there. I'm looking forward to my next audio book statement as I met my advance within the first year.

I encourage everyone to pursue their writing dreams in whatever manner they see fit. I would hate for anyone here to never see their work published because someone dampened their motivation.

Betty, if there is anyone in this world who is NOT a failure, it's you. Your writing talent is rare and unique. Then there are your other accomplishments.

L.C. - I may not have expressed myself clearly because there is nothing at all wrong with continuing to work at another job while writing. A fine example is a good friend who has about twenty books of fiction published while continuing to work as a circuit court judge. Another continues his work as a priest. Several are lawyers. I worked as a newspaper reporter for years while at the same time writing short mysteries and novellas. I was merely pointing out that only a small minority of writers earn enough from it to live comfortably on nothing else.

Quote :

LC, you again missed the point. The placement by the audio book publisher have nothing to do with the paper book placements and took place much later.

Ok, so what IS your point? That you placed 21 copies in libraries? You consider this a success because you compared it to some commercially published books by unknowns and they only had 21 library placements, too? Is that your point? How many retail sales did you make in addition to the book sales?

Personally, I think 21 library sales is very modest, and comparing it to a commercially published book that only has that too, that is faint praise.

As for the list of reasons you gave why self-pubbing is bad, I never said any of that. You are confusing me with the AW crowd. I am indifferent to self-publishing; again, I just answerd Shelagh's question about why most self-pubbed books do so poorly from a numbers standpoint. I notice you haven't addressed that. Do you think your book is typical? Did you read Betty's post? How does it sound she feels about Woofer sales?

And how are your other books doing?

LC, I stopped counting sales a while ago. My point was not how many library placements but what those placements led to. Often it is not how many but the impact the work has when it gets into the right hands. Impact is what caused the demand for the audio version, not numbers. Some of my books have done better than others, but that is not my ultimate measuring stick. A book does not spoil and there is always an opportunity to get it into the right hands.

My point is being on the roster of a major publisher does not guarantee a certain level of success or sales.

L.C

You really are missing the point. For many writers, the only way in is through self-publishing. The fact that this leads to offers of contracts from commercial publishers is the point DT is trying to make. The whole of publishing does not operate the way your books were published. No matter how many titles on bookshelves there may be is not the point. It is the turnover of books that matter. A bookstore may be stocked with fourteen thousand non-fiction titles that sell an average of one copy a month and six thousand fiction titles that average sales of three copies a month. That's fourteen thousand non-fiction books sold per month compared to eighteen thousand fiction books sold per month.

Shelagh,

Your opening question has been the catalyst for another interesting thread. I'm somewhat amused by the controversy between self publishing and mainstream publishing that runs through many threads on this board like wildfire with the advocates of each approach always feeling an ongoing need to defend their methods and rationale at the slightest provocation.

We can all see that the publishing model is changing; we're on the cusp of a digital age if we're not already in the middle of it. New ways of delivering fiction and nonfiction to readers are emerging. Old media may have to re-invent themselves to survive.

That said, as a writer, I have to face the realities of the current moment. While I like the democracy of self-publishing and more smaller presses and what this may portend for the future, right now, self-publishing (especially fiction) isn't going to make most authors any money. Facing this fact is not to condemn self publishing nor those self-published authors who try to beat the odds and who often find creative ways of doing so.

I self-published a novel, not as an act of choice but as a hopeful act of desperation.

Yes, I am happy that the book is "out there." Yes, I feel happy that a fair number of people have read it and enjoyed it.

Financially, the book has been a very large drain on my bank account due to the costs of iUniverse publishing, websites, promotion etc. As a lifestyle, I can't see doing anything else than writing. But, like everyone else, I need to pay the rent and buy groceries, so in many ways five years of promoting a book that took money out of my bank account has--no matter how I view the emotional/spiritual side of my writing--amounted to a very expensive hobby.

Before I took that act of desperation, I queried 200 publishers and--in the middle of the process--lost my agent when another of her writers became a bestselling author and used up 100% of her attention. I have no clue how to sell commercial fiction, much less literary fiction, that's been self published. (The sales stats show that almost nobody else does either.) So, right now, for me, it's not a financially viable option.

The bottom line is that I won't self publish again until every manuscript I produce goes through another 200 publishers first. That's me. But I just can't afford another novel that has sales figures written in red ink.

These are my personal feelings about this as they apply to me and they have nothing to do with the quality of anyone else's work or the way anyone else wants to tackle the goal of publication.

Malcolm

Shelagh, here is your original question:

Quote :

So why do books published one way rather than another sell while others never make it past the 200 mark?

The main reason, as I see it, is that readers like to share their thoughts and enjoyment of reading a particular book with other readers.

How does

Quote :

For many writers, the only way in is through self-publishing. The fact that this leads to offers of contracts from commercial publishers is the point DT is trying to make.

answer that?

Shelagh wrote:

No matter how many titles on bookshelves there may be is not the point. It is the turnover of books that matter.

By turnover, I presume you mean final point-of-sale transaction.

What's the most reliable way to get a bunch of final point-of-sale transactions? Through placement in a popular bookstore chain or through emailing all one's friends and family and setting up a freewebs site?

My money's on the former, but YMMV.

dtpollard wrote:

My point was not how many library placements but what those placements led to. Often it is not how many but the impact the work has when it gets into the right hands. Impact is what caused the demand for the audio version, not numbers.

Ah, ok. You're saying that even if you made few sales yourself, their large impact brought you a traditional publisher. Fair enough. However. You've said that traditional publishing is outdated, yet most of your eventual 300+ sales came from exactly that -a traditional publisher picking up your book and finding lots of homes for it! Come on, don't you see an irony or contradiction here?

The point you are missing, L.C., is that it is very difficult to persuade publishers to sign up unknown authors. Whether you agree or not, it just is. Simon Haynes said this on his website about traditional publishing being an alternative to POD:

"What's the alternative?

The holy grail is a publisher who offers you a contract with a
substantial advance on royalties (say, a four or five figure sum),
prints thousands of copies of your book up front, gets them into
hundreds of bookstores, posts out dozens of review copies to media
outlets & reviewers, sends a large batch of freebies to their sales
reps, pays 10% royalty on retail price of the book (NOT net) and has an
established, comprehensive distribution channel which will get your
book into stores, public libraries and schools right across the country.

Is it difficult to get published in this manner? Hell yes. Is it
impossible? No, but you may have to write and abandon several books
before you break through, treating them as no more than practice. And
it's a long, long road... it can take years of work to become
proficient enough at the trade to attract a publisher's interest. In my
case it took eleven years from writing the first sentence to putting my
name on a contract."

http://www.spacejock.com.au/PrintOnDemand.html

Shelagh wrote:

The point you are missing, L.C., is that it is very difficult to persuade publishers to sign up unknown authors.

Where and when did I ever say getting a commercial contract was easy?

And again with the "unknown." The point YOU are missing is that for nonfiction, it isn't necessarily a matter of being known. It's a matter of being credentialed. People writing nonfiction in areas they have no credentials for will, of course, be rejected. They then perceive getting published as "hard." How hard was it for your husband to get his Elsvier contract?

LC, I'm beginning to wonder what your point is. It seems to me that for various reasons people use different methods and approaches. Fiction is far different than the things you write. Most of it has no hope whatsoever of being picked up by a major trade publisher. For some, a small press provides an alternative. For others self-publishing is their only possibility and at least allows them to see their book in print.

Making it even more difficult for unknown writers of fiction today is the move by Borders to place better-selling books with front covers displayed. This cuts down considerably on the number of books stocked and makes it even more difficult to sell those with spines displayed. That includes nearly all if not 100 percent of books by first-time writers. In every phase of the business the deck is stacked against the newcomer. It always has been and is even worse today.

Dick Stodghill wrote:

LC, I'm beginning to wonder what your point is.

I was answering the original question, which I thought was: Why do self-published books sell so poorly? The thread evolved into something that did everything but answer that.

Re Borders, since they don't stock my nonfic book on their shelves, they suck, and I don't pay attention to anything they do. LOL

LC I'm moving on. There is no contradiction. I self-published, penetrated a market, generated demand and was sought out for a book contract. I did not alter a single word of my book for the audio version which is an exact reading. I am the author of both the paper, audio and ebook versions of my books. It just happens that my audio publisher contacted the rights for that version because they knew because of inquiries that they had a demand for it among their customer base. Yes the audio version is in more locations and it should be. Let me tell you that I went on a second library demand generation campaign for all versions of the book by going directly to libraries and asking them to consider both versions. The royalty check comes to the same guy, me. I link to all versions of my work on my website.

I have no war with myself, but I understand that by moving ahead with publishing my book I was able to create another opportunity that I could have missed.

LC wrote:

Shelagh wrote:

The point you are missing, L.C., is that it is very difficult to persuade publishers to sign up unknown authors.

Where and when did I ever say getting a commercial contract was easy?

And again with the "unknown." The point YOU are missing is that for nonfiction, it isn't necessarily a matter of being known. It's a matter of being credentialed.

Now, you are just being pedantic. Non-fiction covers poetry, biography and much more where credentials don't matter a jot. Being known, however, means a great deal. Jane Goody was a dental receptionist before she appeared on reality television. Her biography sells because she became a media star. A biography of Jane Goody the dental receptionist would not have sold more than a couple of dozen copies to friends and relatives.