A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: Long-term Bestsellers and Short-Term Marvels -- How do they differ?
It is Tuesday. 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 looks at the differences between books that sell well long-term and those that fizzle out. Recently, I decided to analyze two kinds of books that experience good sales to see if there is some general guidance for authors; the long-term steady sellers and the first-year wonders. Book niches and author individualities vary widely, but perhaps some general information could be insightful if you are trying to make some decisions about how to market/promote your book.
Criteria. In analyzing both sets of books, I looked at the following 15 categories of criteria: ARC, prepped followers, platform, social media presence, recognition, networks, publicist, launch, Influencer, SEO, top 100 Amazon, paid advertising, interviews & podcasts, award, and reviews. (Note: all of these topics have been discussed in general in previous publisher conversations with authors; just put the topic in the blog search box, and you will be able to pull up those conversations.)
Long-term steady sellers. For analysis, I looked at our four bestselling long-term steady sellers. While they varied in a number of ways and in some surprising ways did not align with what the publishing industry claims is best practices, they had much in common.
- ARC. None of them had had an advance review copy. There are some reasons not to produce an ARC—if there is no strong hope for a pre-publication review from one of the big reviewers and if the author and his/her followers are chomping at the bit to share the book (i.e., all the pre-work has been done), then an ARC can be a waste of time. However, sometimes there is a good chance for a review, and sometimes authors have not prepared followers to make a good start for book sales; in such cases, an ARC can help.
- Prepped followers. Typically associated with a strong platform, prepped followers can be ready to purchase copies of an author’s book the minute it comes out with or without a strong author platform. All four of these books had hundreds of followers just waiting to buy the book. One of the books sold 422 copies the day the book was released. Prepped followers came in one case from a megachurch; in another case from students and faculty at a private school that trained hundreds (including reporters from internationally renown newspapers); in yet another case, the author ran a popular annual competition, and in the fourth case, the author had extensive high-level government connections with colleagues and their extensive connections wanting the book.
- Platform. Platforms varied, but all four had strong platforms, reaching hundreds/thousands of potential readers through positions as teachers, consultants, and leaders.
- Social media. All four used social media to support or augment their platforms, including website, blog, youtube, and Face Book.
- Recognition. All four had recognized names in their specialty fields.
- Networks. All four had strong networks of colleagues and professionals in the content area in which they wrote their book.
- Publicist. None of the four had a publicist. Given their strong platforms, they clearly did not need one. Publicists can bridge the gap, sometimes, when an author has a weak platform or the book is released prematurely.
- Book launch. A publicist certainly can make a book launch easier and more effective. While book launches are the sine qua non of promotion and marketing if you ask book industry organizations or professionals or listen to the widely accepted advice about how books get marketed, none of these authors had a formal book launch (not even a book signing event). They just moved directly into sales, using their strong platforms.
- Influencer. Two of the four authors chanced into an Influencer (chance is the correct word), who fell in love with their books and promoted them. One Influencer had a couple million followers on his youtube channel, and he put out several videos in support of the book. The other was the editor of a popular magazine with tens of thousands of followers; she gave a voice in every issue for nearly two years to a column from our author—and also interviewed her and wrote articles about her life.
- SEO. All four of the books had very specific keywords for SEO because they were niche books. Interestingly, when new authors make proposals, many will say that their potential market is half the world. If your book is so wide that you have to market to half the world, chances are you are not going to be catching the hundreds/thousands that will really want to purchase the book. Niche books tend to be the most successful, at least for this small publisher.
- Top 100 Amazon. All four books have fallen into the top 100 in their Amazon subcategories from time to time. Many of our books do, and being in the top 100 does indeed help.
- Paid advertising. None of these books used much paid advertising although in an earlier period they benefitted from paid advertising that we, as publisher, did—back when paid advertising was cost-effective. It stopped being so around 2020, and we have not done any full-page or other display advertising since. The point is, I assume, that the Influencer “advertising” and the strong platforms outperformed anything that could have been accomplished through paid advertising, the point being that at least in the experience of these books, hard/skilled work outperformed money. That seems to apply for many of our books.
- Interviews and podcasts. Three of the four authors did some interviews for print media. None did podcasts or appeared on radio/television. (Unless you count Youtube, which was a big boon for the fourth author.) Again, that does not say that interviews and podcasts are not important; they are. More important, however, is that strong platform that buoyed all four of these authors. Without a strong platform, interviews and podcasts help spread the word.
- Awards. Although one of the books has never entered any competitions, three of the four books were award winners. Generally, winning awards is helpful, in our experience.
- Reviews. All four books had scads of reviews (dozens of them), starting with strong recommendations from MidWest Book Review of Books and US Review of Books. Even with a strong platform, reviews helped get the word out to those who would not necessarily interact with the platform.
Short-term marvels. Cutting to the chase, the biggest differences between the long-term stars and the short-term marvels was the presence of a strong platform and quantity of awards and reviews for the long-term bestsellers that the short-term marvels lacked. One of the short-term marvels had an ARC, launch, and publicist; the other did not. The launch pulled in 300 purchases (but 70+ were returned—typical for launches). The other book just had a good first month: 400+ books. What helped both books was that both authors had prepped (mainly through word of mouth) a great many people so that they were eager to purchase the book when it came out. Unfortunately, however, without a strong platform and follow-up activities (such as gathering reviews, earning awards, and maintaining an enduring social media presence), the reader pool became exhausted within 1-2 years.
Finally, a very important difference stood out between these two sets of authors: persistence and consistency. The successful group kept on keeping on week after week and month after month, trying one promotional activity after another, being ever present on whichever social media platforms they used (or promotional approaches other than social media) through lean years and full years; in some cases, the lean years lasted for several years, whereas in other cases, it was more of a quarterly or annual up and down. At times, they were hares, and at times they were tortoises, but they never dropped out of the race. The second group, the short-term marvels, became frustrated or bored with the downturn in sales and moved into other life activities, leaving the press to do all the promotional work (which does not work well at all, for any publisher-author combination).
Bottom line: Persistence is essential, and hard work is unavoidable even with strong platforms. Making wise promotional decisions -- advertising? award competitions? platform-building? -- makes a difference, and most publishers will work with authors to get the balance right. Still, the authors have to do much of the footwork.
Lesson for today's Tuesday talk: Stay engaged long-term for long-term bookselling success.
See more Publisher Conversations with authors HERE.
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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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