Kelly McClymer's Blog

Truth in advertising. No one believes it exists, and we all get sucked in by it now and again. I set my remote to skip all the home shopping channels, but every so often I’ll deliberately watch one to remind myself what it takes to sell a product — energy, enthusiasm and a good pretense of confidence. Billy Mays and ? ? have a wonderful show that deconstructs dynamo marketing and — despite the fact that I made fun of dh for watching it at first — I recommend to anyone who wants to market an invention, a product, or is considering self-publishing a book.

Here’s the truth — even when you are a new or mid-list author following a traditional model, you have to market your book somewhat. Book signings, blog visits, library talks, etc. That level of marketing is nothing compared to what you have to do if you choose to self/subsidy/vanity publish. You need a course in being Billy Mays’ evil twin to sell enough books to recoup your initial investment. There are No Rules is a great site to start with, if this sounds good to you.

Before you ever invest in self publishing, you need to know who your audience is, how big it is, how you’re going to reach them with your marketing efforts, and how you’re going to convince them that they need to buy your product. Then you need to do some big time number crunching. For example, if you are going to sell a romance novel (because, of course, the market for romance novels is the strongest in the commercial publishing world), you need to know what romance readers are clamoring for that they are not getting (because they’re not going to trust you to give them more of what they can already get from their traditional sources). How many of the readers really want this exciting and new book? What price will turn them off (if your audience is used to paying $8.99 for a mass market paperback, will they pay $22.50 for a hardback of your new and different book?). What are the best methods for reaching that audience? Obviously, the supermarket, Walmart and Target. Can you get your book on those shelves (the possibility ranges from slim to none, but don’t be afraid to do the legwork, just in case you really are Billy Mays’ evil twin).

After all that market research work, you’re ready to sit down and figure out how many books you need and how much you can afford to pay for them in order to make a profit. So, let’s say you have found you have an audience of 10,000 potential readers for your new and different book, who for convenience’s sake, will find you on Amazon if you use the right keywords — new, shiny, book. That knocks out marketing costs, which can run upward of $5,000 – $10,000.

So all you have to do is produce the book, with the help of a self/vanity/subsidy publisher. And there are so many out there willing to take your money. How do you decide which is the best one? Easy. They don’t take more profit out of the enterprise than you do. Crunch the numbers. They charge $5,000 to prepare your book for publication (no editing, just cover, ISBN, exposure on internet sites, and access to a POD site). You get 5 copies to use to obtain reviews, book signings and talks, enter into prestigious contest (hmmm…5 copies doesn’t go very far there, so maybe you want to pay for 20 more copies, and pay for the shipping and handling).

In order to break even, you need to sell 5000 copies at $1 profit to yourself, per book. If you price your book at $10, and your subsidy publisher pays you 50% of net (which means all expenses — like Amazon’s 65% cut for anything sold on its site — come out first, before your royalty is figured). Now, your audience is all Amazon, which saves you marketing $$. So, a book priced at $10, after Amazon’s cut of 65%, will net you $3.50. Enough to break even and make $2.50. If you sell 5,000 books. Oh wait. You only get 50% of that, your subsidy publisher takes the other half. $1.75. Still, that’s 75 cents profit. At that price, you can break even selling fewer than 5,000 books. Unless your subsidy publisher subtracts printing and shipping charges from your net. In which case you will lose money on every book, while your subsidy publisher makes money on every book (not counting the initial outlay).

Okay, you say. Then I’ll only offer e-books. No shipping and printing on e-books, and my Amazon audience all have Kindles anyway, as my market research shows. Great. Then you’re back to 75 cents profit. If your audience will pay $10 for an ebook, when they may be able to get new and shiny and different e-books for $5. Hmmm. If you drop your price to $5, then after Amazon takes a cut, you net $1.75. Then your subsidy publisher takes 50% of that, leaving you a tidy…87 cents. In other words, a per unit loss of 13 cents per book. You will never make a profit on your book. Your subsidy publisher will.

A smart number crunching business person would never make this decision, right? You’d be surprised how many people jump into subsidy publishing without doing any market research, or even looking at the profit/loss picture to see how (and if) they will break even, and what they need to do to make a profit. Every business has a percentage of owners who leap in without crunching numbers, but not every business has a predatory subsidy model that will make a profit even if the business owner does not. If you ask the right questions, do the right research, and crunch the numbers, you can evade the predators. If you don’t, you will be eaten.

For a funnier take, try this take on reading between the lines of Vanity Press hype. It’s almost like you can hear Billy Mays on truth serum.

Kelly