Writing and Selling A Book

Writing a book is the easy part - and that’s not too easy - selling it is the hard part.

“The Sex and Cash Theory” from (Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys To Creativity – Hugh McLeod):

“The creative person has two kinds of jobs – One is the sexy, creative kind.  The second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task at hand covers both bases, but not often.”

- My presentation is on encouragement for you, what my experience has been writing six books, and thoughts on what not to do, more than on selling books with great success – which I’m still working on.

-Targeted toward writing non-fiction, although much of this will be applicable to writing fiction too.

This article just scratches the surface on these topics. I've recommended some more detailed sources of advice to you in the body of the article.

Writing A Book

Write about what interests you - and what you think will help people, not what “will sell”. It’s important to have psychic income from what you do. Write to please yourself. That way even if you don’t make much money, and most authors don't, you will still feel as if you have done something worthwhile and will be leaving a legacy that can help others long after you’ve gone ahead. As William Zinssser, author of On Writing Well notes: “People write better, and with more enjoyment, if they write about what they care about.”

Avoiding Regrets – From Larry King’s My Remarkable Journey:

One of King’s eight marriages was to Sharon. He said: “Sharon’s father was an amateur baseball player and he was pretty good. But he went into the Marines, and afterward his father made him take a job in the post office. One time, I took him to an Orioles game. We were on the field during batting practice, standing behind the cage, watching the players hit. It was a typical scene you see year after year, game after game. But as I turned toward Sharon’s father, I saw tears running down his face. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘I should have tried.’ I’ll never forget that, King said. I may have regrets. But one thing I’ll never have to say is I wish I had taken the risk.”

Keep that in mind whether you’re thinking about writing a book, starting to paint, travel or something else you think you might enjoy. What you want to avoid is “The Longest Rock” – sitting in a rocking chair when you’re 79, wishing you had done something, but knowing that it’s too late to do anything about it. Discipline yourself to do what you need to do.

Real Rewards – “The more you practice your craft, the less you confuse worldly rewards with spiritual rewards, and vice versa. Even if your path never makes money or furthers your career, that’s still worth a ton.” (Hugh McLeod again)

Start file folders - Outline major topics of your subject, e.g., real estate principles, put them “logical” order: Real Estate Basics, Property Interests, Model Real Estate Transaction, Contracts (Listings, Offers, Agreements of Sale, Options), Financing and Mortgages, etc. Use these as a working Table of Contents. Put anything you find relevant in the appropriate folder. Once you feel as if you’ve collected enough to get started, start writing. Much of it just comes to you as you work along.

Read other books in the field - Provides broad outline for what you’re going to do and serves as research. I read about fifteen books on happiness and kindness in preparation for writing Your Unfinished Life

 -Helps ensure you don’t overlook anything major in your book. (Particularly important with textbooks.)

 -Provides quotable information you can use. (Generally, anything less than 250 words can be used, with attribution, without the need to obtain formal written permissions.)

Get Started - Start in any section if you have to. Just get going.

Title and Sub-Title – Don’t worry about it. Just give it a working title. As you work, it will come. Use a sub-title too, as I did. It helps to further clarify the title or attracts attention to it.

Write as timelessly as possible - Don’t date the book too soon by using a lot of contemporaneous references. Selling books is a marathon, not a sprint. You don’t want a book to seem dated after a year.

Writing is a perfect example of “flow” - a concept developed by Mihail Csiksentmihali --- a worthwhile exercise of time in pursuit of something higher than ourselves, where sense of time is lost.

Suggestions:

-          Find the best time to write: morning, later at night, during the night. Then use bonus times: summer vacations, breaks, or times when can’t get sleep or wake up at night.

-          Explain what you’re doing, and how you need to do it, to your significant other. Having their cooperation helps. Then be considerate and try to write when it’s less likely to cause interference with daily life, when they’re out or when they’re sleeping. You still want to have a life, and you don’t want to strain a relationship over it.

-          People will ask: “How did you ever write a book?” -  sometimes with the emphasis on the “you”.  The answer: Keep sitting your butt in the chair and keep typing until you’re done. There isn’t an easy way. It takes focus and discipline. If you are always “very busy” or can’t find a time to write fairly regularly, it’s not going to happen. It takes commitment and belief in your subject. We seem to usually find time to do what we really want to do, and to see the people we want to see, no matter how busy we are. You just have to decide if writing is one of your priorities or it isn’t.

-          Use up to date computer programs and equipment. May seem romantic to type a book on a typewriter like Hemingway, but it’s highly inefficient. Decide whether you’re longing for yesteryear or want to get something done.

-          When you get a thought, write it down or type it in somewhere immediately. Don’t tell yourself you’ll add it later. I’ve forgotten many good thoughts like that permanently. When you think of it, write it down somewhere.

-          Getting Stuck. Can’t seem to write anything: Find something else to do related to the book, do more research reading, go out, pull weeds, or just do something else. It’s ok. It happens.

-          Use quotations. Provides pithy sources of knowledge and augments your work by using the thoughts of recognized experts.

-          Save regularly. Set up to do it automatically or do it every fifteen minutes or so. Make it a habit to always hit “Save” anytime you have to get up for anything. If you hit the wrong keys or kick out the plug, you can lose hours of work. You might think that you can just do it again, but you will never get it back as completely as you had it before. Trust me, it is very frustrating.

-          Help with Writing Improvement:

- Elements of Style: Strunk and White (White was Strunk’s student at Cornell.)

- On Writing Well: William Zinsser

Copyright –You obtain a copyright on your work as you write it. Registering it with the Copyright Office provides you with proof of it if you need to defend it. Obtain application through the Library of Congress website. Copyright rules can be easily checked on the internet.

Selling A Book

Three Options:

Find a publisher – Very time consuming. Very difficult without an agent. Difficult to find an agent unless you have a track record (Don’t pay “reading fees”.) Sending queries and waiting for answering takes quite a while. Book publishers take a long time to produce most books. Promotion is short term and limited. (You also cede editorial and cover control.)For books in an academic field, use book reps to help you gain entrée.

-          Vanity presses: Pay a publisher to print your book Higher cost, limited promotion.

-          Self-Publishing: You publish it yourself and retain the copyright. Quickest way to get a book in print. Promoting a book is not easy. Like riding a bike. When you stop pedaling, you fall down.

-          Other Sources: Author House, Lulu, iUniverse. Look at copies of books they produced. Layout? Proofreading? Cover design?

-          Self-Publish then send it to a publisher: This can only work if you have truly demonstrable sales.

-          If you are going to handle fulfillment (filling orders) yourself, be ready for a big job. While I’ve done it, I’m not going to talk about it here and refer you to the books I’ll recommend later which discuss it in detail.

Quantities to Print

Find a book broker or book printer to shepherd the publishing process. (Self-Publishing.com. NYC, BookMasters, Ashland,OH) Don’t try to do it yourself or you’ll have an unprofessional looking book. Self-Publishing.com provides a way to estimate printing costs. They will set the book up properly and design a cover. Make sure the cover stock is thick enough so it won’t curl up. Get a completed disc, so you have the whole book available to you. Also, get three separate cover files: the whole book cover, the front cover and the back cover. Some sites will want you to send them the front cover only. If the whole cover is in one file it poses a problem.

Don’t print too many books. Thoreau once commented upon books stored in his attic saying that he was the largest owner of his own books. Ordering a thousand books might seem reasonable, but it takes a lot to sell that many and once printed, it is all sunk costs. (Don’t open cartons until you have to either. Books can get damaged or affected by moisture or heat.)

When you get your book, it’s like first seeing a baby and looking to see that they have all their fingers and toes. You just hope there aren’t any obvious screw-ups. It is very difficult to have a perfect book, even if you have a recognized publisher and a professional proofreader has read it.  Exercise care and just hope it isn’t anything major.

Err on the side of caution. The unit cost of printing a few hundred books is higher, but the overall cost is kept lower. If it’s a real hit, you can always get more printed later, and fairly quickly. I’ve done it the other way and you can wind up with a lot of books. (Luckily, I was able to use one of them in my real estate school, so that cut the downside risk.)

Print 100-200. I ordered two hundred for review copies, filling orders directly and the like. Hook into Lightning Source through Self-Publishing.com or otherwise, or set up with Bookmasters who handle printing and fulfillment. They will print books as needed for you or for vendors POD - Print On Demand. The vendors order through Lightning Source and are supplied directly, within two or three days usually, taking you out of the fulfillment business.

Better to write books and let someone else handle that part. It is time consuming and restrictive. Who handles filling orders when you need to go to Atlanta to be with your mother or go to Europe for three weeks?

Spell Checkers and Proofreading

Spell checkers find some obvious errors, but certainly not all of them. I proofread all of my books. There was professional proof reading on the ones produced by a publisher. It helps in a lot of ways. (Eliminates errors, improves usage, suggests things you haven’t thought of.)

Test: Which one these is the correct spelling of this Greek Stoic philosopher?

a.      Epictetus

b.      Epictecus

c.       Epecticus

d.      Eptectius

On the three books I produced, I proofread them myself. I had no major errors on the first two. On the last one, I must have read the whole book twenty times and thought I caught just about everything. Luckily for me, someone I ask to do a review for me (Dr.Gordon Livingston: “How To Love” and “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart”) was kind enough to point out about five things I had missed. (I recommend his books to you as a help to anyone. He is an MD and practicing psychiatrist. No one can read his books and not see themselves or others they know in them. He also offers very practical insights and suggestions for improving your life. It’s an obvious plus if you have credentials, proven expertise or celebrity when trying to sell books.)

Check exact titles of books you quote – even though you think you know the correct title. I’ve gotten that wrong too.

It is almost impossible to proofread yourself. I’ll never do it solely again. Get a professional proof reader. It will probably cost about $750 or so. The book broker or printer will have one or can hook you up with one. It makes sense to use someone they’re used to working with.

Write the cover copy yourself. No one should be able to do it better than you can. It’s your book. The publisher will also do it or the book broker or printer can assist you also.

Consider using a photograph on the back cover. Get it taken professionally. Make sure to get a release from the photographer to be able to use it for all promotional purposes for the book, or a general all purpose release where you can use it for anything, not just the book cover. If photos for other uses are not covered, the photographer may require additional compensation to use the photos later. I would also give a small credit to the photographer next to the photo and give them an autographed copy of the book.

Must have an ISBN and bar code on the back cover, lower right corner. Library of Congress and other numbers are also useful. The book broker will help you. Speak to a librarian. The book trade won’t carry a book without an ISBN and a bar code. Book brokers and printers may be able to get a better price for ISBN from Bowker than you can.

Put the name of your website on the back cover.

List the price on the book on the back cover in the lower left hand or right hand corner in US dollars. People want to know what the book costs and retailers want it on there too. However, you don’t want to dissuade people from buying by putting the price on the front.

Include a category or categories, so that the book will be put in a section of a bookstore you want it:

“Self-Help/Motivation”, probably should have been “Self-Help –Inspirational” but I didn’t want it pigeon holed as a religious or “Christian book”, which it isn’t. When I finished the book I saw that I had pulled good thoughts from a variety of cultural and religious traditions, even though that was not an avowed purpose from the start.

Have an index. Have a professional indexer do it. It adds to the usefulness and professionalism of the book and libraries prefer them.

Include a bibliography and/or other recommended sources on your topic.

Book Promotion

Determine Your Market: Principally female readers 35- 65, public libraries, character and values courses for students, religious groups

Books to Help You:

The Self-Publishing Manual –Dan Poynter

 1001 Ways To Market Your Books  - John Kremer

Sell Your Book on Amazon – Brent Sampson

Plug Your Book – Steve Weber

Things To Do

Bowker.com – Go to: Publisher>General Trade> Add or Update Your Information in “Books in Print”. List your book information as early as possible.

News Releases – Send to newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations and include in your package mailings, along with a flyer, bookcards, etc.

Amazon.com – Amazon is the world’s largest seller of books.

Amazon Advantage –Sell books directly through Amazon Advantage (Click all the way down at the bottom of the Amazon home page to sign up). They will tell you how many books to ship to them initially and subsequently for re-orders.

or

Set up to supply them through Lightning Source and they will get the books they need automatically without any involvement from you. (You need to tell them you will be doing this.)

Your job is to pull orders through the system with your own promotion. The better the book sells, the more they will promote it.

Search Inside The Book – Sign up for it. Readers want samples.

Buy X, Get Y Program: For $750 for a month, you can have your book paired with a selected book ranked in the top 2000 or so, where both books can be obtained at a discounted price. (Make sure the cost of both added together is over $25, so the buyer qualifies for free shipping.) I did not find it worthwhile, although in fairness to them that could be a function of my book also. For more, they will pair you with a book in the top 1000.

Build Your Amazon page - Working with Amazon is not as easy as it should be. It is not easy to contact the right person and very difficult to speak to anyone. You just have to muck through it. You create your own Author profile, blog, submit news reviews, do book reviews of other books, create book lists, etc.

Request people to do book reviews for you. They must submit them themselves. You can’t do it for them.

Getting Reviews – Good reviews can’t hurt, although they don’t guarantee sales. You want five star reviews.

Barnes and Noble – Set yourself up with them also. You send reviews to them and they will post them. Go to “Publisher and Author Guidelines” at the bottom of their home page. They are not always efficient in listing what you send. With Amazon, you’re very much on your own and have difficulty getting answers.

Borders, Books-A-Million, Powell Books

      Books.Google.com (Down at bottom, click on “Information for Publishers and Authors”, then on Google Books Partner Program: Promote your books on Google -- for free. You provide book information and the front cover to Google and they list your book and make it available through links to   major vendors. It’s a no brainer.

            Worldcat.org- Shows book availability at libraries and also has ordering link to your book    from major retailers.

Create A Book Website – NetworkSolutions.com (about $120 a year includes many pages and e-mail boxes.) There are cheaper ones, but I have found them good to use. Get the stats package also, so you can see how many hits you are getting and where they are coming from. Drive people to the site through other promotion such as book cards and other promotional items, articles, links from other sites (usually reciprocal links which you should select carefully). The idea is to increase your page rank on Google and Yahoo. You can pay to be listed, but I wouldn’t do it unless you have to.

-          Web Page Optimization is a topic unto itself. Try to think of all the search terms that would be used related to your book, then try to increase your ranking on that term on major search engines. After you think you have thought of everything you could, believe me, there are still more. Go to freekeywords.wordtracker.com  or similar sites. You will get many more suggestions there. The top search terms are highly competitive as you might expect.

Paying for keywords ­– You register with sites where you can bid for keyword placement, such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Marketing and others. The best terms are usually too expensive, so you need to try some of the less popular ones. Based upon  trials others and I have conducted, the keywords will cost you more that what you can typically make on most books.  

Drive people to the website and create links to major retailers so they can order directly from your site. Give samples from the book, book reviews, etc.

Write Articles- Write a related or unrelated article. At the end you can mention yourself and that you are the author of: Your Book’s Name, a brief description of it and where it can be purchased.

-AuthorsDen.com

-Ezinearticles.com

Book Reviews – Give a copy of your book to friends and ask them if they would review it on Amazon.com for you. Reviews can and should appear in advance of the book’s publication date.

You will read not to pay for reviews from review services because they will be suspect. I did it and I got some good reviews from it. The general public doesn’t usually know which reviews are paid for in advance and which ones aren’t. Paying for it does not guarantee a good review and if the review is unsatisfactory, there are no refunds. I found the reviewers to be perceptive, relative to points I was trying to drive home.

 Ask authors whose books you have reviewed on Amazon if they would be willing to review yours. I reviewed some books positively because I liked them, not because I had any future expectations.  Anyone who is well known in the field you are writing in would also be good to ask.

Kirkus Reviews – A recognized reviewer of books for libraries. Send them a copy of the book with accompanying information and they may review it.

Pay them $400 like I did and they will review it under their “Kirkus Discoveries” Program. Once you get it, you should not list it as Kirkus Reviews. I’m pretty sure most readers, except librarians, don’t make the distinction. They gave the book a nice review.

Reader Views – They review for $75. I got a good review from it.

Allbooksreviews – $50. They review and send it to Barnes and Noble and others.

Local Media – I sent two different books to the regional newspaper in our area. They reviewed both of them positively.

Sending Sample Copies of Books

Books suggest addressing padded book envelopes in advance so you can send bound galleys or completed copies to media, review services and others, as soon as they are available.

Some sources will not review books, unless they are received well in advance of the publication date. For this reason, list the publication date out into the future.

No one will know or care if you have “back of room sales” prior to that date, but once some reviewers see that the book is available for public sale, they won’t review it. (Easily be checked if they look on Amazon and B&N and see that you have it for sale before the publication date.)

Be more selective in sending out sample copies than I’ve been. Often, they either get dumped or someone takes it and lists it for sale on Amazon or other sites and they become competitors for your books.

Read each review source’s rules and get addresses for whom you might send books to in Dan Poynter’s book and others. I would send one to:

Publishers Weekly – No self-published books.

Midwest Book Reviews – They gave me a nice review which I did not pay for. When they send you a review, they do request that you send them some stamps in return which helps them with their costs.

Library Journal

Foreword Magazine

Your Local Newspaper – (Sending a review copy to other newspapers, like The NY Times, LA Times, or to Oprah is probably a waste. Many will only review books from major publishers. Many others do not review books any more.)

Choice – Division of the ALA

Other than these, I would write first, include promotional information about your book and promotional plans, and ask them if they would like to receive a review copy of the book when you send it, put on the mailing envelope “ Review Copy You Requested”

Book Distributors

Ingram and Baker and Taylor – Not reviewers, but major wholesalers to the trade and to libraries. Ingram also owns Lightning Source, so if you get to be part of that program, they should have you listed. Baker and Taylor – You need to keep pecking away. Submit to other distributors as you go along, but they are the big two.

Quality Books – Not a reviewer, but a representative who can sell your book to libraries. (Quality-Books.com) Check with them first to see if they would be interested in a title like yours.

Stamping Books

Often advised that you stamp review copies “Review Copy Only. Not For Resale”, which I did. In retrospect, it’s just better to send the book. It looks gamey and defaces the book and also implies that you don’t trust the recipient to do the right thing with the book. Stamping it also does not stop second hand booksellers from selling the book, nor does it deter most buyers from buying it. When in doubt, send a review copy. It is the best and cheapest form of promotion you can get.

Other Promotional Items

Pencils – Probably a waste of money, although they have long life ad you never know for sure.

Bookcards – Cheaper than brochures. Use business size cards with book and website information on them as handouts to lead people to your website or to vendors. The use of a calendar or other useful information on the other side gives you a reason to give the card to someone and gives them a reason to hold on to it. (A Phillies and Eagles schedule might be good for a sports book. I used that once in a Congressional campaign I managed.) It is impossible to gauge the usefulness of them, but it gets the book’s name out there fairly cheaply. (123 Print.com) Many varieties of cards to choose from.

Flyers – Printed these to send in a Cooperative Library Mailing though IBPA (International Book Publishers Assn. – Membership about $125 a year. Had the flyers printed in Texas, then shipped to California for mailing.) I don’t believe either of these were worth it for me, although the organization sponsors events, special mailings and provides a periodic publication to help small publishers.

Envelopes - (Intuit Printing – 800-548-0289)

E-mail Signatures  - on all the e-mail you send

Blogs – Go for those who know how to use them well. Consider putting the whole book in a blog, chapter by chapter. (If you’re trying to help or inspire people, what difference does it make if they buy the book or not?)

Social Websites – Twitter, Facebook, My Space, etc. Obviously if you can create a viral buzz about your book with tweets or a video, it can help.

Post Office Box – Wait and see if you really need it. I didn’t.

Personal Appearances – Do book related presentations, like this one, not “book signings”. These require preparation and are labor intensive. It is not something I am willing to do a lot of. If you want to sell books however, you need to be willing to do more of it than I’m likely to do.

Try to do book singings at local bookstores. An author who was doing it told me she doesn’t sell many books, but it may get the book on the shelf in the bookstore which may help in the long run. Publishers set these up for authors willing to do them.

There are more than 800 B&N stores. Even if just had two books in each, that’s over 1500 books. It’s not easy getting on the shelves though. You have to demonstrate by previous sales and demand that you belong there.

Sell cases, not books - churches, organizations, individuals, businesses. Offer them as source of fundraising for organizations.

I wish you every success in getting started with your book, enjoying the process and enjoying good sales.