Useful Stats for Authors and Publishers

Someone recently passed on to me some helpful publishing stats. They help me to compare expenditures, time put forth and sales to others in the industry. They also help me to plan more realistically and realize why I often have to do things that other writers aren't doing to get noticed in this industry.

Since Mark Twain famously singled out three degrees of lies:

#1: Lies
#2: Damn Lies
#3: Statistics

we'll take all these figures with a grain of salt and think through their practical implications. You'll notice that some of the stats contradict.

Number of Publishing Companies

8,000 to 11,000 new publishing companies are established each year http://www.ISBN.org .

Here's a summary of the growth in the number of publishers (from Publishers Weekly):

1947: 357 publishers
1973: 3,000 publishers
1980: 12,000
1994: 52,847
2004: 85,000

Number of Books

2006: 291,920 new titles and editions
2004: 2.8 million books in print (Bowker)
2004: 17 new books published each hour in the USA. (Book Industry Study Group)
70% of the books come from small/self publishers.
1999: The top 20 publishers accounted for 93% of the sales.

Small, Independent Publishers and Self-Publishers (http://www.BrennerBooks.co)

• Each averaged publishing 7 titles.
• 60% operate from home offices.
• They earned an average of $420,000 (1997) Compare this to Tom Woll's survey in 2002, which found 70% of the publishers reporting sales of less than $100,000.
  
• Half of the ones earning over $1 million worked from home offices (1997).
• The typical Indie publisher works 50 hour work weeks.
• They publish four times more nonfiction than fiction.
• Quickbooks is their favorite accounting software.

Average Amounts Spent on Tasks (http://www.BrennerBooks.co)

Interior Layout: $5 to $18 per page
Book Design: $10 to $150 per hour, totaling $465 for a simple cover to $3,533.26 for a complex cover.
Illustrations: $276 average.
Average revenue per employee: $97,713.

Hours to Complete Tasks

To write a fiction book: 475 hours
To write a nonfiction book: 725 hours
To produce a book: 422 hours fiction, 55p hours nonfiction
To design a cover: 10 to 15 hours
To edit: a book: 61 hours

Print Runs of small publishers

Average print run: 2000 to 5000 copies. (Tom Woll, Cross River Publishing)

Printing

Lightning Source has more than 2,000 publishers as clients.
30% of the new titles in 2005 were printed in quantities of less than 100 units.

Most initial print runs in at traditional publishers are 5,000 copies.

China is the leading manufacturer of four-color books.

Print on Demand

3.4% of their books sell more than 500 copies.

14.3% sold more than 200 copies.

"Xlibris averages 33 sales per title." Compare with "The average Xlibris book sells about 130 copies." Compare with :"Xlibris did just mail me an advertisement stating that they've published over 10,000 books and sold over 1 million copies. If you do the math, that comes to about 100 copies per book, and most authors probably buy a few dozen for friends and family."(The latter stat found at http://www.fonerbooks.com/best.htm)

I-Universe averages selling 75 copies per title.

Authorhouse claims to sell 108 books per title.

When are you Successful?

According to Authors Guild, a successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies. A successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies.

The average book in America sells about 500 copies. (SM - I wonder if this is speaking of traditionally published books only.)

"A book by the average author - that is, the average author who manages to find an agent and land a deal - sells just 11,800 copies, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit research organization, and RR Bowker, a provider of bibliographic information." (Fast Company Magazine, Getting on the Same Page, November, 2005)

International Sales

In 2005-2006, books shipped to (in order) Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Germany.

Men buy more books than women (internetretailer.com). Compare: "Women buy 68% of all books" (Publishersweekly.com)

Importance of book covers

A bookstore browser spends eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover.

Sales reps give 14 second pitches.

The Potential for New Authors (www.bookpublishing.com)

81% of the population feel they have a book inside them.
27% would write fiction.
28% would write on personal development.
27% would write history, biography, etc.
20% would do a picture book, cookbook, etc.
6 million have written a manuscript.

How Many are Reading?

2002: 57% of the US population read a book.
2001: People in the U.S. read an average of over 14 books each year. (Gallup)
1997: 63% of adults report purchasing at least one book during the previous three-month period.
One third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. (compare to "58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.")
People reduced their time reading between 1996 and 2001 to 2.1 hours per month. (Publishers Weekly)
2001: per capita spending on books per month was $7.18 (Publishers Weekly, May 26, 2003.)

27% of adult Americans (31% of Canadians) didn't read a single book for pleasure in 2007. (What about people who, like me, read voriously, but almost solely for information rather than pleasure? Would I have had to check the "not read one for pleasure" box? I suppose this tells us something about how many don't read novels.)

Of reading Americans and Canadians, most read more than 20 books per year. http://www.PublishersWeekly.com.

Self-Help Books

One in ten books sold are self-help. (Wall Street Journal, 1998)

BookStores

70% of Americans haven't visited a bookstore in five years. (www.LevinPR.com)

80% of books published by major publishers come through agents. (Michael Larsen)

70% of the books published do not make a profit. (Jerrold Jenkins)

Books are displayed in bookstores for one selling season of four months. If they don't sell by then, they are returned.

Industry return rate is 25 percent for paperback.

Book Reviews

LA Times receives 600 to 700 books for review each week. (Steve Wasserman, book review editor, www.latimes.com)

Government Grants to Publishers

Canadian government grants to publishers: $48 million. (Hmmm...I wonder how writers get into that money?)

The State of Traditional Publishing

Simon & Schuster president and CEO Carolyn Reidy addressed the Evangelical Christian Publisher's Association's CEO Symposium and Publishing University the first week in November. Some of her comments are enlightening and thought provoking. I'm pulling from an article at Publishers Weekly by Cindy Crosby: Reidy: Worse Publishing Environment May Be On the Way.

For several reasons (e.g., a terrible economy and new publishing options), traditional publishers are struggling.

Here's one significant snippet:

"brand name authors continuing to sell but 'everything else is far off normal levels.'"

That tells me that, at this point in history, traditional publishing is for top-selling authors. It may become more and more difficult to be a small fry author in traditional publishing. They're gonna stick with those authors (and bias their marketing dollars) to those who have already established themselves as brands. They'll likely take new authors who already have huge platforms.

Another thoughty statement:

"Reidy also wondered out loud that with self-publishing so easy, 'is it only a matter
of time before one of (the major authors) actually strikes out on his or her own?'"

Hmmm...sounds like they fear that when big-time authors realize how easy it is to bypass the big publishers, they will cut out the middle man and start getting 35% royalties on Amazon sales like those publishing through BookSurge.

Traditional publishers still have a lot to offer, but there are certainly lots of great alternatives out there to consider.

Getting Amazon Reviews

No author can ignore the incredible potential of Amazon sales. And one of the greatest things we can do to get more Amazon sales is to get more Amazon reviews.

Why? Because most of us take the reviews seriously. If I'm looking for book on, say, book marketing, and have to decide between two books, published the same year, with all things equal except that one has fifty reviews and the other two reviews, guess which one I tend to buy (if the reviews are decent, of course)? I assume that more are reading the book with more reviews. The less reviewed book seems like more of a risk.

Most authors apparently assume that getting reviews is a passive indeavor, as they wait for readers to post their comments. But the vast majority of readers don't write reviews. I see great books with only one or two reviews. Even if you love a book, do you generally write a review?

Knowing the importance of Amazon reviews, wise marketers find ways to encourage people to review their books. Thomas Nelson, a major publisher, does this through their "book review blogger" program. Here's their description:

"Any blogger can receive FREE copies of select Thomas Nelson products. In exchange, you must agree to read the book and post a 200-word review on your blog and on any consumer retail website."

Looks like they're buying first class ads at a bargain basement price.

Here's how I plan to do it. I sent an early draft of my latest book to about 30 friends and personal contacts to give me input before my final revision. Twenty-five of them read it. After my book comes out, I'll send a free copy to each of these people - a nice reward for their free editing. In an accompanying note, I'll say,

"Thanks so much for your help in making this a better book! There's no charge for the book, but would you do me one more favor by writing a candid review on Amazon? Here's where you'll find it (put the Amazon url here)."

Since they've already read the book, a review is a cinch.

You could do the same with your relatives, your writer's group, or your writer's association.

Breaking "The Distribution Code"

How will you distribute your book? Bookstores and libraries don't have time to order from tens of thousands of individual authors who sell from a stack of books in their basement. It's much more efficient for them to order from a small selection of wholesalers and distributors.

So how do you get with the right distributors so that your book has a chance to make it into the main places that sell books? Some of the answers are pretty straightforward and others a bit more tricky. Make sure you know precisely what you're getting into.

"Available" or "Available with Return Policy"?

One publisher said that they do an especially good job of making their books "available" in bookstores. Hmmm... "available?" What they may mean is that "it's available for any bookstore to order through a major wholesaler."

Just one problem with that set-up: if the wholesaler offers no return policy, then most bookstores won't order it except when a customer comes in and puts through a special order. Why? Because bookstores are used to having the option of returning books that don't sell and getting their money back. (Libraries, on the other hand, will order with no return policy.)

So, if it's important to you to get your books into bookstores, you'll want to make sure your publisher sets you up with the major wholesalers - Ingram and Baker & Taylor - with a return policy.

If you're going the print on demand route, Booksurge hooks you up with Baker & Taylor, while Lightning Source gets you with Ingram and Baker & Taylor. But check to make sure whether or not they're offering a return policy. If not, and if getting into bookstores is important to you (it's not important to everybody), you might need to pay extra to establish the policy.

On Getting a Distributor or Wholesaler

If you're with a major publisher, you're almost assuredly hooked up with both Baker & Taylor and Ingram with a return policy. If you're publishing yourself or with a small press, you need to find out how you're set up.

Ingram won't take books directly from any press that has published less than ten books. If your publisher is very new, or if you're self-published, you'll need to find a distributor that has a relationship with Ingram.

Comparing Distributors

Some distributors passively take orders. Others actively market your book and make personal calls to open up new distribution channels.

Some ask for exclusive rights to distribute your book. Let's say you're with Booksurge and excited about making 35% on each Amazon sale. Could signing an "exclusive" contract with a distributor require you to distribute to Amazon through your distributor, giving you a much smaller part of the action? (This week, I chatted with a representative of AtlasBooks, the largest distributor for small to mid-size publishers, who told me that although publishers sign an exclusive distribution contract with them, they allow BookSurge authors to keep their 35% from Amazon.)

Make sure you know exactly what you're getting in a distributor!

Here's an annotated list of select distributors from John Kremer:

http://www.bookmarket.com/distributors.htm

Ingram lists these distributors as having a relationship with them:

http://www.ingrambook.com/new/distributors.asp

Publicity Tips

Yesterday, I started reading Publicize Your Book! by Jacqueline Deval, a former publicity director of several publishing houses. She emphasizes that even if you have a traditional publisher with a marketing department, authors must market their books if they expect them to sell.

She begins by sharing the story of James Barron, who wrote a "funny and informative" book for expectant fathers. At the time of Deval's writing, Barron had 185,000 copies in print. How did he do it? A couple of things stood out to me:

1) "He stopped by specialty stores like maternity shops, toy shops, and hospital gift shops" to persuade them to order from his publisher and sell the book, giving them a sales order form. He even offered to buy back the books if they didn't sell, but never had to buy any back. Forty to 75 stores ordered, and many of these kept re-ordering.

2) He selected three cities to target: New York City (where he lived), Chicago (where he grew up), and Atlanta (where his wife was from). He hired publicists in Chicago and Atlanta to "set up media and book signings, as well as to go to the sames kinds of specialty stores as he did in New York." I'd never really thought of publicity people as being regional. But it makes sense that some publicists would have lots of regional relationships and know all the possible outlets.

He said, "I work under the assumption that I'm going to get twelve rejections for every yes."

I like that. If I find some success in alternative outlets and discover that one out of 10 will say yes, then it becomes a time and numbers game. If I contact 100 stores, I might get 10 stores taking me. I can wade through the rejections if they net me some decent sales. Cool!

Marketing Ideas from Robert and Kim Kiyosaki

• How can low-profile people publish and sell books?
  
• What if publishers reject us?
  
• What if bookstores don't want to stock our book?
• How can we sell our books?
  

Best-selling author Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, 26 million copies sold, on the NY Times Bestseller list for six years) and his wife Kim addressed some of those questions in an interview. Their main points:

1) He considers himself a poor writer, having flunked out of high school twice because he couldn't write. "I can't spell and don't know punctuation. If I were back in high school today, I'd still flunk."

So he wrote as best he could and gave it to a second grade teacher to re-write, but she made it into a boring textbook. He then gave it to the person who would become his co-author to put it back into more natural, interesting language.

2) He approached the book as an entrepreneur rather than a writer. His background was sales and marketing. From that perspective, most authors are boring. You need to say something that others aren't saying. You need to write with your readers' needs in mind.

Also, as an entrepreneur, he considered related sales. In fact, he wrote his book as a brochure to sell his $200 game.

3) He overcame rejection. All the publishers he pitched the book to said that it sucked and would never sell. Wholesalers and distributors didn't want it. Bookstores didn't want it. So, he self-published 1000 copies.

4) Market your books. He paid a publicist thousands of dollars, but got only one small speaking opportunity. He then took out an ad in the Radio-TV Interview Report, which landed him interviews with a few big-time radio stations. Then the big bookstores started calling him because people were asking about his book and they needed to stock it.

Someone asked Kim why she was attending this marketing conference. After all, they had already sold millions of books. She responded, "That's why we're on the bestseller lists." They're always learning about selling and always promoting their books. "You can never stop promoting, never stop selling. I never stop selling."

Marketing Ideas from Jack Canfield

Today I listened to Steve Harrison interview Jack Canfield, co-author of the wildly successful "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series. Here are my takeaways.

His credentials: He sold over 115 million books over 41 languages, has been on Oprah, Larry King, etc. One of his Guinness World Records is to have the most books on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time.

His motivation: to change the world and make a difference.

How did he get started?

In college, he majored in Chinese history. But he took an elective class in psychology and fell in love with the subject. In grad school he studied education, then taught in an inner city school. He wanted to learn how to motivate his students and succeeded to such an extent that he began training other teachers. He then wrote a book about helping students, but discovered that if you didn't let people know about the book, that people wouldn't buy it.

At a teacher workshop he was leading, a person said, "My husband's company needs this." He hesitated to accept, thinking it was out of his field. But she assured him, "They're just kids in big suits."

He always illustrated his concepts with stories. People would ask if the stories were in a book. So he made a list of 70 stories, hooked up with Mark Victor Hansen and his stories and created their first Chicken Soup book.

But they were rejected by 144 publishers. They were both in debt, not making much money, and had to market it themselves. 18 months before it hit a bestseller lists, they began interviewing scads of people who had written successful books, asking, "What do you do that we need to learn?" They looked for patterns and created a marketing plan. By the end they had a #1 bestseller and later a bestselling series. A Chinese company just got rights to use their books to teach English in China.

Had he not said yes to teaching those businessmen, he would have never gotten to where he is today. Now he speaks to thousands.

His mission: "To inspire and empower people to live their highest vision in a context of love and joy." He helps others to live their vision, not to adopt his vision.

Harrison: "Did you just get lucky? What made the difference?"

Hanson: We make our own luck. We started thinking differently; thinking like a marketer. It took several years to get beyond the stigma of marketing - thinking that it was something less than legitimate for an author. It took a shift in attitude, a learning of techniques and strategies.

Harrison: Many authors have passion to serve and make a difference but feel awkward about self promotion. What would you say to them?

Canfield: If you had a cure for cancer, would you have a fear of being a self-promoter? Believe that what you have is extremely valuable. To not share it hurts people. If you have food for the hungry but don't tell the starving you have it, you've done them a disservice. You're not an egoist, you're simply helping people.

Don't hide your light under a bushel.

There's both a feminine and masculine aspect to creating a book. First, there's the creative part of giving birth to the book. Then there's the masculine sideof pushing it out into the world and supporting it. Don't put the baby in the dump.

Mark Victor Hanson was more outgoing than me. You might need to team up with a person who's more out there.

Mark and I had to become our own ad agents. We couldn't afford to hire a PR agent. But we won both a book publicist award and an Abby Award, beating out the professional PR people.

If you wanna be successful, you've got to do the work.

Things authors can do:

1) Decide (from Latin "To Cut Off"). Cut off alternative paths. We have over 2000 people who've said they didn't commit suicide because of a chicken soup book.

2) Expect to succeed. A publisher said, "You'll be lucky to sell 20,000 books." The publisher laughed out loud at them when they told them they wanted to sell 150,000 by Christmas. Now the publisher has profited wildly.

To visualize success, we took the NY Times bestseller list and typed in "Chicken Soup for the Soul" and put them in hallways, in our office, etc., to visualize the goal. We would visualize whole bookstore windows with their books in it. Today there's often an entire category of books called Chicken Soup for the Soul in bookstores.

We spent 8 or 9 minutes each day visualizing images of success.

Rather than say, "We're writing a book, we'd say, "We're writing a best-selling book." Dream big. It doesn't take any more energy or time to dream a big dream than to dream a small one.

What he learned from W. Clement Stone:

Get into action. Get off the couch. Do something that brings results. Stone would take a wooden quarter with the letters TUIT on it and give it to people who said, "I'll do it when I get around to it." He'd give them one and say, "Here's your round TUIT. Now get going on your project." It's the ones who act on ideas that make them happen.

I use a vision board screen-saver on my computer. Images of my goals keep going before me.

Every book you get into someones hands can change lives forever. Read You've Got to Read this Book. Every goal I've visualized has come through, although not all came through on time.

What visualization does:

You begin to believe it's possible.
You start your subconscious working on it.
You activate a new part of your brain that will help you achieve your goal.

Stone also taught him to use affirmations.

Harrison: And you studied marketing. I saw you at a marketing seminar, having already filled a spiral notebook full of new ideas and having to get out the hotel notepads.

Things to do:

First, be a giver. If you want the best for your reader, this is the 1st. We always identify a charity to share in the profits of each book. Put the charity on the back of your book. People like to buy, knowing that part goes to charity. Plus, it's hard to give without getting. Charities then started putting the book in their literature to sell more - they make more that way.
Give away articles to parenting magazines free of charge. Give free talks. For the first six weeks we went to churches and chambers of commerce. Find the connectors who can introduce you and your books to others.

With our last book, we gave away 2500 copies.

I can point to every free talk I've given an identify people who came up and said things like, "I want 100 books for...."

Become a joiner. He's part of 12 organizations, so that he can network. People are typically weak in finances and networks. Volunteer your time in organizations. He started volunteering in a hospital cutting cheese balls. But that's where he met leaders of organizations.

Harrison: It's the power of 6 degrees of separation.

Speak at conferences. If you're not willing to give it away free, you're not passionate about it. You get to meet other speakers and connectors.

Get out of your office. Writing books is like an iceberg - 10% is writing. 90% is marketing.

Harrison: What if have money issues?

Canfield: Read Speak and Grow Rich. The best way to make things happen is to talk to real, live people. There are lots of strategies. Call associations. It's all learnable.

Buy catologues to find lists of places that get speakers. Know the American associations.

We want to make large sales, not small sales. If Amway could buy it for their employees.... They called numerous organizations that hung up on them. Then got to "D" and a toy store owner talked to them and bought thousands.

We got lists of radio shows and started calling them. We did 600 shows that first year.

On interviews:

We asked Scott Peck (The Road Less Travelled) for his secret. He did 3 interviews a day. Even 10 years later he was doing one interview a day. One hour interviews are best.

Now he does a satellite radio interview, then radio shows. You can do virtual tours. But whatever you do, KEEP GETTING OUT! As long as he does interviews, sales go well. When he takes a week off, sales cut in half.

Harrison: Why do you still do the small stuff?

Everybody's listening to every radio station, otherwise, they couldn't stay going. So start with the radio. Take a 1:00 in the morning slot that nobody else wants to do. Somebody's out there listening. They may hear about the book, read it, and pass it on. It could change that person's life.

He takes internet radio shows, though may be small. We do constant and never-ending marketing. "I never wrote books to get rich; I wrote books to make a difference." So he takes small and big opportunities.

One of the big tools is bypass marketing. Only one out of seven people go into a bookstore to buy a book. So, 6 out of 7 aren't going where our books are. We had Chicken Soup in a Shell station and a bakery. We put them anywhere people had to wait - doctors offices, salons, etc. We sold hundreds of thousands that way. We went to Petco and Petsmart with our book about pets. We use blogs.

Have other speakers sell your books. Sell their books as well. That way you have more to offer.

Think of things I can do for others and what they can do for me. 99% of our stories are written by others. Many have a third or fourth author. I make less per book, but we have another seller.

Watch The Secret. Twenty-four speakers are in that movie. Later became a book. They all cross promoted. Since several biggies were recommending it to their contacts and people were getting it recommended repeatedly from people they respected, many watched it.

Harrison: Give us a key lesson to remember and act upon:

1) Write a great book. Learn the craft, get feedback.
2) Learn how to market books. (Go to the programs. Sit at the feet of the masters. Learn more to earn more.) I spent half of my early money on attending seminars. Become a master. Invest in your education to become a master marketer.

Steve Harrison and Jack Canfield are currently promoting a seminar they'll be doing. You can find information at: www.yourquantumleap.com