A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: Some Explanations of Diminishing Book Sales

It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.

Today's topic Is the path of book sales from launch to later one. The question that comes up again and again is why do book sales decrease, rather than increase, after the heady days of the book launch are past?

While one might think and hope that a launch is just that--a platform for moving forward, too often the book launch brings the highest levels of sales with a modest or rapid dropoff thereafter. So, what gives?

• Sometimes, the author has put all his/her money and efforts in one basket of eggs: the launch. Once the launch is past, so are the set-aside money, energy, interest, and plans. What now? is a frequent question I get from new authors. Waning promotion and marketing efforts (and the creativity to know where to expand) can be a significant dream-destroyer. (That is why it is so important to have a platform BEFORE you start your book and, at a minimum, before your book is released.)
• Similarly, those authors who have done their job of shepherding friends, family, neighbors, acquaintances, and local communities to purchase copies of their cope find themselves. Those book copies get purchased, but for those without a living, breathing, expanding platform, including a growing mailing list, have equally used up all their sources for potential readers.
• If the book services a very small niche, it could be that the niche has been mostly used up. 
• Once a few hundred books have sold, the used book market activates. Now, used books compete with new books for reader attention -- and many, perhaps even most, readers go for the cheapest version, which is generally the used book version.
• Sometimes, times change, and the book content no longer matters as much. This happened to the dozen of books we published in our pandemic series, but we expected that and planned to move these books to the backlist once people started to return to life as usual. Sometimes, a book can be tweaked to new times; often, one must be realistic:  if you write to the beat of the times, you may not be able to march to the new beat when it changes.
• Sometimes, a book that takes off (may not be at launch but sometime later) thanks to an Influencer, dips in popularity when that Influencer goes on to something else or disappears entirely.
• And there is always the case of the purloined book. It does not happen a lot, but it does happen. It can sometimes be remedied but often the devastating results cannot be reversed. A book stolen and shared for free on the Internet can kill sales. Publishers work hard to prevent this from happening and to step in with a desist demand when it does, but while there are protective laws, sometimes it is nearly impossible to tell who or what is behind the purloining. Then, just sometimes, a stolen book that is reproduced poorly creates more sales. Some publishers have a more sanguine attitude than we do to such situations.

The bottom line is that a launch will not actually launch a book long term unless there is a plan in place ahead of time to make that happen. The most effective way to do that is with a robust platform and burgeoning mailing list.

Lesson for today's Tuesday talk: Books do not keep selling by themselves post-launch; authors need to invest planning, time, energy, and money to ensure that book sales sizzl, not fizzle.

 Read more posts about publishing HERE.

The Tuesday talks reflect real discussions between the management of MSI Press LLC and our own authors or those would-be authors who come through our doors but don't make the cut--yet. If you have a topic that you would like addressed, leave the question in the comment section. Chances are, in our 18 years of publishing first-time and experiences authors, we have had a conversation with one of our authors that we can share with you.

                             

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