Maybe you really don't
want a trade publisher
Last week I attended a retreat with Mark Silver who runs Heart of
Business. He's a business consultant with some interesting book
publishing experience.
What to expect from trade publishing
It's hard to get rich in trade publishing. Oh, it's done, and we hear
about it. There's Harry Potter, just as a for instance. And there are
recognizable names, like John Gray of Men Are From Mars fame and Wayne
Dyer and ...name whomever you like.
Consider, however, the vast majority of books. Or even a best seller.
According to an article from the Washington Post published in the Los
Angels Times on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007 called
So many realty titles. What's a reader to do?,
best sellers don't, on the whole, sell that many copies. This
year's top selling real estate book (Find It, Fix It, Flip It!: Make
Millions in Real Estate--One House at a Time by Michael Corbett) has
sold only about 31,000 copies since January.
Do the math. The book retails for around $15. It's probably generous
to say that roughly half have sold at full retail, and the rest at some
sort of discount. But let's use $15 for our purposes.
Of course, I have no real idea what Corbett's contract is, but if
it's typical, he's probably making around 7.5% on the net sales
or something around $1 to $1.25 per book. (Actually, it's much more
likely to be a buck or less.) Being generous, he's netted less than
$40,000 so far, and that doesn't include payment to his agent. If he's
lucky, he'll probably get something like $3,500 a month for the first
year, before taxes. That's far from a fortune. But it is fairly typical
of a mid-list book.
Other Possibilities
What if your book could also serve as the textbook for a class of
some sort? Or a lecture series? Or as more detailed information to sell
to newsletter subscribers?
In other words, what if your book could be sold directly to your
niche market?
The chances are you would be able to sell your book for a much higher
price if you publish it yourself. Maybe much more.
Mark Silver has a 300 page book called
Unveiling the Heart of Your Business.
The ebook version costs $65 and the paperback one sells for $85 plus
shipping and handling. He sells a surprising number of these books as a
stand-alone product. And if you work the numbers, he only has to sell 42
a month to equal the gross income of Corbett's book.
But he sells this book, and others, as a required add on to his
classes. Not only that, his clients, like me, are raving fans and feel
every penny spent is worthwhile, and he does it all without hype.
He's not alone! Take a look at
Clickbank.com. If you search in the
business to business category, the first 5 books there sell for $97,
$176, $47, $97 and $67 - an average of just under $100 each. If you look
at the sales pages, you'll see a ton of hype, and I have no idea about
the value of any of these books. But they are selling. What if you could
do something similar, honestly?
What if you broke your book into 12 chapters and sold it on a
subscription basis? If your price was $9.95 per chapter, at the end of a
year you would have collected $119.40 per book.
Okay, it's not THAT simple
Obviously, it's not just a matter of publishing your book yourself
and setting a high price on it. Sales aren't automatic. There's a ton of
thought, planning and marketing that needs to be done to make a profit
with a book this way.
But given the realities of trade publishing, alternatives are
certainly worth considering.
And that's the point.
Write well and often!
