|

Indie Thoughts: Publishers know profit, but haven’t tapped best seller lists

ByJohn Brown

In The Business Rusch: Generational Divide Kris Rusch points out that the new on-demand and long-tail market for books has changed the duration of the opportunity a book has to be successful, but that it seems the industry still isn’t recognizing this in how they measure success.

The problems come from the fact that those of us who run things—people in our forties, fifties, and sixties—use metrics that were developed by our parents for their world, that tightly controlled Mad Men world where everyone was expected to be the same, not just in what they wore or bought but in what they listened to or watched or read as well.

The bestseller list?

It measures velocity. (A good essay on this topic, “The Meaningless Metrics of Fame,”  came from Mike Briggs, husband of Patricia Briggs, earlier this week. I’ve also dealt with it.)

Reviews?

They only want new books, and then only at the time of release.

Brick and mortar bookstores?

They only have room for the latest releases, and then only the ones that are the most popular with their customers (whoever those folks might be).

Books have come late to this fight. Books have been available on demand for only about four years now, in the U.S. In other countries, there’s been even less time.

And we’re all still fighting over meaningless metrics, to use Mike Briggs’ term, because those metrics only measure things that were important around the water cooler, not things which are important now.

What’s important now?

She goes on to say:

The publishing industry isn’t even talking about new metrics. That idea hasn’t occurred to traditional publishing, and indie (or self) published writers are constantly seeking validation from the old system—trying to figure out ways to game the bestseller lists or to get a fantastic review from somewhere that has old-world prestige . . . But at some point, traditional publishers are going to have to develop new ways to figure out which products sell well and which ones don’t. All of their systems—from sales figures (which measure books shipped not books sold) to bestseller lists to critical acclaim—are based on the old models.

Kris is a very experienced with publishing, but her last point conflates internal accounting with marketing. Publishers DO know which products sell.

The primary measure of success in a financial enterprise s not new. It’s been around for 100’s of years. And on demand and long-tail markets don’t change it.

The measure is how much a product or service contributes in profit to the bottom line. You take revenues, minus expenses, and that’s the contribution that product (a book in this instance) makes to your total profit. Or to covering your fixed costs.

Booksellers have measured the success of their books with actual or estimated profits for quite some time. Publishers already know which books sell well and which don’t. No accountant in the world is going to report books shipped as the measure of success. And they don’t. The very fact that publishers have a profit and loss statement and show returns on royalty statements demonstrate that. They look very closely at actual and estimated profits. And to they do this by channel, which is reflected in a small way when they break out ebooks on royalty reports. This is all basic accounting.

Here’s an example. Until Ender’s Game the movie, Ender’s Game the book hadn’t appeared on any best seller list since it was first released. And its release was 30 years ago! Yet over the years Tom Doherty touted its sales numbers many times. Tom knew that book was gold. Of course, he did. Because he doesn’t use best seller lists to tell him what’s selling well. He knows those lists are marketing devices. He has the real data in house. Why would he need a list to tell him anything?

And Tom isn’t going to use books shipped either. Tor may report those numbers to Publishers Weekly for marketing purposes, but he will always multiply that number by an expected return rate to estimate sales. He wants to do that. Because books shipped is meaningless to the bottom line and everyone knows it, including the auditors.

Publishers are well aware of the long tail. They see it with books that have been rotated out of the brick and mortar channels but are still selling in the online ones. They report it in their annual statements. They know the online channels work differently from the brick & mortar ones.

The measure of success is still the same as it ever was—how much profit is this property contributing to our bottom line?

Marketing, however, is a whole other ball of wax.

What the long tail and on-demand allow are marketing campaigns that are impossible in the brick & mortar channel. In brick & mortar you have a limited time to advertise (roughly 8-15 weeks). After that period, most books are rotated out of the store. This means that any marketing for those brick & mortar buyers MUST coincide with the period when the books are in the stores.

But the online channels open up all sorts of other opportunities. You can market forever. And the contribution margin is always positive. The online and POD costs are easily recouped with each sale. (Publishers are well aware of this profit potential; this is why we have so many making grabs for backlists.)

And I see publishers taking advantage of these new marketing methods. This last week I saw publisher books not currently stocked by brick & mortar retailers on BookBub, BargainBooksy, and Book Sends. And the industry isn’t totally focused on new books for reviews. I just had a large newspaper agree to look at my book that was published four months ago. Still, Rusch is right when she says that the publishers haven’t adapted one of their biggest marketing tools to take advantage of the new opportunities–they haven’t done anything with the best seller lists.

Amazon has lead the way in creating new ways of marketing books to different types of readers with their best seller lists. These lists create the excitement of discovery.

But every one else is still reporting weekly sales on the big lists.

If I were a publisher, I’d be asking USA Today to provide more than just the weekly view of the top 150 books. And USA Today is THE list to watch because their numbers are not based on units shipped to a sample of stores, but actual sales. Here are some lists that readers would be interested in.

  1. Most anticipated this week: based on pre-order totals
  2. Most anticipated this month: based on pre-order totals
  3. Hot new releases: based on weekly numbers
  4. Hot new releases for the month: based on monthly numbers
  5. Books with legs: last 3 months; I know it needs a different name (grin)
  6. Best sellers of the last 12 months: annual total of units sold
  7. Best sellers of the last 18 months: total units
  8. Contenders: for each of the lists above show the next 150 books (I always want to see the next 100 books after the top 100 on Amazon’s lists; why not show readers the top 300?)
  9. Movers: for each of the lists above show those that have the biggest rise in percentage sales and meet some unit minimum (you don’t want to feature books with 2,000% increase because they went from selling 1 unit to 20), even if they don’t break the best seller lists
  10. Genre: allow all of this to be sliced by genre.

Let the reader select the view they want to see!

Avid readers will gravitate towards the shorter time periods. Those that read fewer books will gravitate towards the longer periods. Everyone who wants to discover something new will go to the contender and mover lists.

This is about marketing. Not publishers measuring success.

And then armed with those numbers guess what the publishers will do? They will go back to the brick & mortar venues and pitch to have some of these same books carried in the stores for the first time (some publisher books are printed digital first) or carried again.

Share

Similar Posts

  • “Vivid and Clear” video, bootleg style

    ByJohn Brown

    Michael Barker generously offered his time to mash up the audio and PowerPoint for my LTUE presentation “Vivid and Clear.” He didn’t have tons of tools so ended up playing the audio on his computer, clicking through the presentation as it played, and recording the event with his iPad as a movie. So the result isn’t Hollywood. But it’s not bad for a bootleg (grin).

    You can find it in seven-part Vivid and Clear (almost…) series on YouTube. Enjoy! And here’s the Vivid and Clear v2.

    He’s now working on Story Turns. Stay tuned for more.

    BTW, a big thanks goes to Aaron Allred who recorded the audio.

    Share
  • |

    New Workshop: How to Write a Story that Rocks

    ByJohn Brown

    Folks, the first tentative schedule for Life, The Universe, & Everything (LTUE) has been set. For the past few years I’ve been teaching a 2-3 hour workshop called “The 3 Things You Must Learn To Write Killer Stories.” I think I must have taught it over 15 times in different venues. Hundreds have attended and said they loved it.

    However, this year I’m going to be doing something different. I’m developing a new two-hour workshop called “How to Write a Story that Rocks.”

    I’ll be teaching it Thursday evening, February 11th from 5 PM – 7 PM at LTUE at BYU. It’s FREE and open to all.

    What I found was that a lot of new aspiring authors get lost in mountains of rules. But great storytelling isn’t about rules. They try to form stories with word counts, chapters, and weird plot diagrams. But stories aren’t about those things. They have a hard time knowing what to write next because they don’t understand how story works. In fact, some don’t know how to start at all. They just flounder in their piles of zing. Finally, even if they can get a bullet outline, they have a hard time turning that into a scene.

    So what we’re going to do in this workshop is this.

    1. I’m going to bring in some ideas for character, setting, and problem. We’re not going to generate from scratch as we’ve done in the past because I want to get to the next steps.
    2. Then I’m going to teach you how to go from idea to outline–we’re going to do it together, and you’re going to learn exactly how to know what comes next 
    3. Then we’ll go from outline step to scene sketch.
    4. Then from scene sketch to draft.
    5. At every step I’ll be pointing out key story development concepts and principles

    When we finish, you should be able to:

    1. Identify the essential story objectives and story development questions–get these right and the rest doesn’t really matter. This will include the HANDFUL of key things you need to worry about and develop with character and plot.
    2. Develop more likeable and interesting characters
    3. Develop more powerful story concepts (call it premise, problem, situation, whatever). Once you get this the story writes a lot of itself.
    4. Explain the real Story Cycle. Not Campbell’s mumbo-jumbo hero’s journey. Not the three, five, seven, nine acts. Not Freytag’s diagram. Story.
    5. Explain what it means to “move a story forward,” “increase the stakes and tension,” “complicate the plot,” “complicate the motive” and how that’s done using surprise, conflict, motive, and problem. Included in this are “turns,” “rugpulls,” and “reversals.”
    6. Use the Story Cycle concepts to generate a story bullet outline and take a bullet step idea and turn it into a scene.
    7. Explain the creative principles that help you generate stories more easily.

    Larry Correia will be there as well. So I’m expecting this to be a very helpful workshop. I’m going to do all I can to make it as good or better than the first.

    Share

  • Will Kindle save Asimov’s, F&SF, and Analog?

    ByJohn Brown

    It’s widely known that total circulation (sales) numbers for the main science fiction and fantasy magazines have been dropping for years. For example, in 1983 Analog’s circulation was around 115,000. Asimov’s and Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, while not that high, were in the same general ball park. A lot has changed since then. Sales took a huge hit in the early 1990’s and continued to drop almost every year. However, last year something wonderful happened. Numbers went up.  

     

    Gardner Dozois, in his summation of the SFF industry for 2010, found in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Vol 28, from which 2010 and 2009 numbers were taken, mentions that the growth numbers for Asimov’s subscriptions were driven in large part by “digital copies sold for e-readers through devices such as the Kindle,” and that Analog’s increase in subscriptions was “also largely because of digital sales.”

    We all know that ebook took off last year. It will be very interesting to see the increase in total circulation continues for these magazines in 2011. Here is the supporting data that was collected from the reports in The Year’s Best Science Fiction volumes 20 – 28. Total circulation is made up of subscriptions and newsstand sales. Sell-through is a measurement of the % of the copies displayed in newsstands (at Barnes & Noble etc.) which sold. I added the Realms of Fantasy figures just so we could see, with the magazine recently dying its third death, just how big it once was.

     

    Of course, a fascinating question is: what are the chief factors that led to such a drastic decline in the first place? But I don’t know anyone who has been able to provide data to suggest what the chief cause(s) are. If anyone knows of one, please post in the comments.

    Wikipedia: Analog Science Fiction and Fact,

    Share

  • The Surprising Truth About Militias and the Second Amendment

    ByJohn Brown

    When the founding fathers spoke of “militias,” they were not referring to a bunch of yahoos running around in the woods with paint on their faces outside of state control.

    They were referring to a citizen army under state control.

    So is “militia” just the old-time word for what our army is today?

    No.

    A standing or “regular” army is one made up of professional, full-time soldiers like the US Army, the Marines, the Navy, and the Air Force. And it’s permanent, meaning you don’t disband the army when the fighting is done.

    A militia back in those days was something completely different.

    The problem of a standing army

    The founding fathers knew they needed to provide for the common defense, but they saw standing armies controlled by a central government as an immediate threat to the liberty the new union sought to preserve.

    Why would they think that?

    Easy. History was littered with case after case where standing armies had become a law unto themselves and oppressed the populace. One glaring example is what happened to the Roman empire. It suffered centuries where this faction and then that faction of the army was in control, and it brought nothing but a continual procession of civil wars and bloodshed.

    History also showed that even if the military didn’t take over, kings and queens were happy to wield standing armies to impose their will and oppress the people. Remember: the world then was ruled by monarchies. The founders had never seen a standing army wielded by any other type of power.

    So the founders didn’t want to give a president or any other central authority that power. They feared doing so would only pave the way to the ruin of the new nation they sought to form.

    So if you don’t have a standing army, how do you defend your country?

    The fyrd

    The founding fathers thought they saw a solution in a tradition of duty that went back hundreds of years in England. In the days when the Saxons ruled England, the kings and dukes would muster and deploy the fyrd to help them fight their wars.

    The fyrd was made up of all able-bodied free males between certain ages, regardless of their vocation. It was their duty to provide their own arms and defend the land when called by their leaders. So this was an army made up of farmers, tanners, smiths, tailors, etc.

    But the fyrd wasn’t a standing army. Nor was it populated with full-time soldiers. This citizen army was to be called out when needed, and when the crisis was over, it was disbanded, and the men went back to their vocations.

    The militia scheme

    The founders took this idea and tweaked it. Back in the Saxon days, the king controlled the fyrd. In this new scheme, the United States would rely on a fyrd (which they called a militia), but the powers to control it would be split between the president, Congress, and the States.

    First, Congress, not the president, was the only authority that could declare war and summon the state militias. So the president would be the commander in chief when the militia was active. But the minute Congress decided to end a war and disband the militia, that army dissolved, leaving the president as commander in chief of only the tiny number of troops that had been authorized as the regular army (less than 1,000 at the time).

    Second, while the Federal government would provide the weapons the militia would use when it mustered them for war, the state governments would be the ones to appoint the officers and train the soldiers. You can’t run an army without officers. So this would prevent the Federal government from taking control by stacking the army leadership with those loyal to a despot president or Congress.

    So the militia was supposed to be the main force that fought our wars, and it was supposed to be temporary. It’s true that Congress did authorize a standing army, but it was tiny. And with this setup, the founders figured we’d have the army we’d need, but we’d avoid the problems standing armies had posed in the past.

    So militias, as thought of by the founders in the 1700s, were not groups outside the government’s control. They were temporary citizen armies. And power over them was broken up between the president, Congress, and the States so no one group or person could wield them tyrannically.

    1791 and The Bill of Rights

    Accordingly, the founders wrote the articles and sections of the Constitution in 1787 to set all of this up. However, many anti-federalists were concerned that the Constitution didn’t go far enough to protect the rights of individuals and limit the power of the Federal government. In fact, many of the founders were so concerned about the issue that they refused to ratify the Constitution as it was.

    The only way they’d sign on is with the promise of the Bill of Rights. When they knew that bill was forthcoming, delegates from nine of the original thirteen states ratified the Constitution. The delegates of two other states waited until the document was produced. The final two (North Carolina and Rhode Island) waited until 1791 when the Bill of Rights, which includes the second amendment, was passed.

    So let’s look at the language of the Second Amendment in light of what we know about the fear the founders had of standing armies.

    “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

    Why did they include this? It was not because they wanted the citizens to be able to hunt or protect themselves with guns. They figured that was a given. They included this amendment because they concluded that an armed citizenry would make it impossible for tyranny to arise.

    Noah Webster, a Federalist, stated the idea this way when trying to persuade Pennsylvania to ratify the Constitution:

    “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive”

    So the second amendment was included in the Bill of Rights because enough of the founders feared that the Constitution could be read in a way that would allow the Federal government to disarm the populace. Disarming the populace would open the way to a standing army under Federal control. And that would open the way to tyranny.

    When all was said and done, the founders separated the power of the military in this way:

    • Only Congress could declare war and muster the militia
    • Only Congress could finance it
    • There would be no standing army to speak of
    • Only the states could appoint officers to the militia
    • The government was forbidden to infringe on the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms

    So what happened?

    Militias didn’t work

    The problem is the militia didn’t work well enough to actually provide for the common defense.

    It didn’t work during the Revolutionary War. The republic had to create the Continental Army. That army was supported by the militias, but the colonists found they couldn’t rely on the militias alone. They had to have the regular army to fight the British.

    After the war, the Continental Army was disbanded, but the militias simply weren’t good enough to face the threats the new nation faced, and George Washington himself openly lamented it. The troops took a licking in 1791 at the battle of St. Claire’s and then time and again during the War of 1812.

    Heck, militias didn’t even work in the days of the fyrd. In those days, the Saxon and Norman kings relied on their house warriors (their standing army) and mercenaries for most of the work. They only supplemented with the fyrd.

    1792

    After the defeat in 1791, the early leaders concluded they needed a regular army with the training and skill it possessed. So in 1792 Congress authorized the creation of the First Legion of the United States, a standing army of 5,190 men. The legion was renamed “The United States Army” in 1796.

    In 1792 Congress also passed the Militia Acts. The acts were written to expire in two years. But Congress wrote another in 1795 to replace them. These laws authorized the president to called out the militia “whenever the United States shall be invaded, or be in imminent danger of invasion” and “whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act.”

    So a mere five years after the Constitution was first ratified, and a year after the Bill of Rights, Congress dramatically increased the size of the nation’s standing army and gave the President the authority to call out the militia! It’s clear that right from the beginning the militia scheme started showing some cracks.

    Today

    The First Legion was small. But it grew again in 1808, and then again during the war of 1812. And it continued to grow slowly, then ballooned in the 1900s until we now have more than a million troops in the armed forces of the US.

    The National Guard is what the militias of the 1800s transformed into in the early 1900s, but, wouldn’t you know it, the National Guard is now mostly under the control of the Federal government too.

    What does this mean?

    It means we now have the most powerful standing army the world has ever known and almost no militia. It means our military is a complete 180 of what the founders envisioned.

    I’m not saying it’s bad. I love our military.

    I’m merely pointing out that militias back then meant a certain thing and the founders wanted them for a certain reason. And that we have completely replaced that arrangement with the exact opposite.

    As for tyranny, we still have armed citizens. Maybe this is enough to deter tyranny as Webster claimed. Although the disparity between what the citizens can arm themselves with now and what the regular army has is nothing like it was in the 1700s. So maybe there are other laws and aspects of our culture that have prevented it. Maybe it’s both.

    Either way, it’s important to understand what the original militias were, why the founders wanted them, and what the second amendment was all about.

    More

    Helpful articles

    US Constitution – Provisions for the military

    Here are all of the parts of the original seven articles of the Constitution that deal with the military.

    Article 1 – The Congress
    Section 8

    This section gives Congress seventeen powers. Six of these have to with the common defense. Those military powers granted are:

    • To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
    • To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
    • To provide and maintain a Navy;
    • To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
    • To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; [notice there are only three cases that warrant the calling forth of the militia]
    • To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
    Section 10

    This section prevents the States from doing thirteen things. Three of these have to do with the military.

    “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

    Article 2 – The President
    Section 2

    “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;”

    Article 4 – The States
    Section 4

    “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;”

    Share
  • |

    Your local zombie author appears on Writing Excuses, Plus the Writing Debrief explained

    ByJohn Brown

    After a cancerous death, I appeared on Writing Excuses this week to groan and hold forth with the guys on writing second novels and second books in a series.

    During the podcast I talked about my practice of debriefing after every writing project. A reader just asked what that was, and so I thought I’d explain it here.

    The debrief is a simple thing. I learned it back when I worked as a business consultant. It always provides great insights. Sometimes  it provides massive insights. The principle is to pull back and look at the big picture every once in a while. So here’s what I do. When I finish a project, I sit down and simply list out what I struggled with, what went well, and anything I learned. I list out things I’d do again that worked particularly well and things I’d do differently. This might be about craft or process. Sometimes I might take some time to reflect on the nature of story and read a favorite book about the craft or perform a story analysis on another movie or book. Then I write up my insights in a form that I can read later and know what the heck I’m talking about. This can take a few hours or a few days. This last debrief after draft 3 of CURSE coincided with my preparation for a day-long workshop I had agreed to give on story, and so the insights came thick and fast. I recommend the practice highly.

    Share

  • On writing lesson 5 is up

    ByJohn Brown

    In lesson 5, I share insights on creativity that elude many who start down the path of writing. Not knowing them can cause a lot of frustration and convince writers to quit. Don’t be frustrated. You’re going to learn:

    • What creativity really is
    • How it actually works
    • What it requires
    • And two of the main tools that will help you practice it–hunting zing and creative Q&A

    Here it is: Lesson 5: How do you get and develop ideas?

    Enjoy!

    Share

3 Comments

  1. I would love to see lists like this! The most-anticipated would be an especially cool one, as well as the books with staying power.

  3. I wonder what readers would care about such lists.

    I’m a reader who does not care about any of those lists (or the current NYT ones).

    A list I’d be interested in would be forthcoming books, sorted by date of release, broken down by genre, and searchable by author name. That would make it easy for me to plan what books to buy and read. I actually maintain my own list with some of that information (NOT broken down by genre), but it would be much easier if I did not have to maintain the list manually.

Comments are closed.