In 2004, Chris Anderson wrote an article for Wired
Magazine called:
The Long Tail; he published a book
of the same name in 2006. Although there are lots of details worth
reading, the gist of it is that new technology (online bookstores, etc.)
mean a book that once would have been dropped by a publisher can be
generate small profits almost forever because it's so cheap to keep them
on the market.
I got involved, inadvertently and unknowingly with
Long-Tail publishing when I self-published
Powerfully Recovered! back in 1998.
I'd submitted the book through an agent to who knows how many
publishers, at least 13 of which gave me positive rejections. When I
discovered I could publish it myself for something like $400, I went for
it.
Of course, I had visions of selling at least 100,000
copies... the truth is it's been more like 5- or 6,000, including the
ebook version. Not a fortune by any stretch of the imagination.
Market, Market, Market
What I didn't understand was how important it is to
market a self-published book. I had next to no money to devote to
promotion and I suppose the miracle is that, given my meager efforts,
I've sold as many as I have. And I still receive about $200 a year on
the book, give or take.
Now that I have more money, the thing that prevents me
from marketing Powerfully Recovered! is a change in the focus of my
business and the fact that, even with money, marketing takes serious
time and effort. I've come close to dropping it altogether, but it seems
every time I do I get an email or two saying how grateful people are to
find the book.
The book has become one of those things I truly intend
to get back to, some day... which never seems to come.
True for Trade as Well as
Self-Published
The Long-Tail can work for trade published books as
well as for self-published books. In fact, there's controversy today on
what, exactly, constitutes going out of print. The same technology makes
it possible for a publisher to keep a book in print forever, effectively
reducing the author's rights in many ways.
What new authors rarely recognize is how much they
will be required to do a major part of the marketing even with a trade
publisher.
Which isn't to say you shouldn't consider the Long-Tail when you're
thinking about writing a book. It's a new and important phenomena. But
it helps to have reasonable expectations.
