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Readin', Ritin' and Wreal Estate--book selling & uts challenges 8/6/2013 5:52:25 AM
At least it isn't real estate Silly me, I thought I was a writer. Nope. The writing appears to be the simple part, the exercise of plastering words on pages to tell some of kind of story, happy or sad, cheerful or mad. That part I can sort’a do, and well I should be able to after calling myself a wordsmith for many years, having one book to show for the effort. The promoting? I’m a novice, a rookie, an amateur just getting familiar with the myriad angles, corners, dead-ends and sub-basements of the book selling business.
Here’s what I’ve discovered. When I was in real estate several years ago, for a very short time, thank goodness, I heard a colleague say: “The only people making money in real estate are the ones selling stuff to realtors.” It was puzzling to me at the time, as I struggled to get my brand out there, capture customers, make those cold calls, establish a presence in a field that was inundated with others doing exactly as I was doing to make ends meet, to be successful. I was a pilot before that. I figured, heck, I’ve flown over plenty of real estate, I ought to be able to sell some of it. Well, the real estate venture is behind me, and now I’m happy to report that I’m a highly–successful… Well, I’m a writer.
Now I find myself trying to get my brand out there, capture customers, make cold calls to bookstores & promotional outlets, establish a presence in a field inundated with others doing exactly as I’m doing to push their products. To say it’s daunting is like saying the pope is catholic, or at least has catholic tendencies.
But something else I’ve noticed. Another similarity between real estate and writing (Wreal estate? Riting?) is that there are indeed people making money by selling stuff to wannabe writers. In the last few months I’ve created an author profile on Biblio Publishing, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Amazon Authors, Author’s Den, Indies Unlimited, Open Library, Shelfari, Library Thing, Google+, Red Room and Published.com. Plus my own author website. Is any of this working? Well, as a wordsmith, I have to ask myself: what does ‘working’ mean? Am I selling books through these sites? Are readers finding The Sky Behind Me on these sites? Are royalty checks overflowing my mailbox? Is the promotional effort working? The answers are–no, not sure, no and not sure. I suspect that without a presence on all these websites and sales portals the book would languish. But the initial question is still valid. What does success mean? Is the effort working? I’m happy to say that it is working, for me. For the three years I was in real estate, I landed exactly two listings, sold exactly two homes. One of those properties I sold to my wife! (long story, don’t ask. There’s more than one way to get a commission. They ought to call it surreal estate).
Here’s my conclusion. For aspiring writers, or aspiring real estate agents, I suppose, the definition of success is where you start. Want to sell twenty homes your first year? Good luck with that. The expectations will kill you, so maybe knock that down to two? Maybe three? Want to write that smash best-selling YA novel, romance potboiler, mystery smash and sell fifty thousand books? Good luck with that. According to Seth Godin on Bertram’s Blog there could have been 15 million new books in 2012. That’s ‘illion, with an M. and the average indie writer sells fewer than fifty books.
The bottom line for me is the writing. As I say in my tag line, It’s not the landing; it’s the taking off again that matters. Price is not the prize, since no one can define the prize for anyone but themselves; it’s the journey toward it. It’s the writing, knowing that someday lightning will strike.
E-books may be that lightning for many authors, of course. The digital book has become 20% of book sales, and the profit margins, again if profit is the end point for an author, those margins are attaining hypnotizing levels, delirious levels considering the cost of inventory for an E-book, which is essentially zero. According to Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, “the #1 Smashwords bestseller, measured in dollars, sold 37 times more than the book ranked #500, and #500′s sales would put a smile on most authors’ faces. Coker was writing in the Huffington Post. His survey included tips on how to sell more E-books, some of which are obvious, some not so much. To whit: Longer Books Sell Better; Shorter Book Titles Appear to Have Slight Sales Advantage; $2.99 is the Most Common Price Point; Lower Priced Books (usually) Sell More Copies. These are just a few of the considerations for marketing books, and they are just for E-books. Mr. Coker does have a vested interest in self-published authors being successful, of course, so the data must be viewed with that in mind, but his numbers, if true, seem to show a trend away from traditional publishing venues to self-publishing as a norm. Prior to the eighteenth century when few were literate, the novel didn’t even exist. Indeed, the word novel comes to us from the Latin Novus, meaning ‘new.’ When people began reading, and the ‘novel’ idea that we could determine our own fate, the age of enlightenment, writers came into their own. At first this ‘novel’ practice was limited to the educated of society, then it slowly crept out into the, well, the less well educated. Now writing and publishing is open to anyone with ten fingers (or eight) and a desktop computer. It’s a new age, indeed. Now all we have to do is define success. At least it’s not real estate.
