Digging Ditches

When the printer completes the book run, he'll immediately fedex a copy to you, and then proceed with the packing and shipping of the books.  If there is something terribly wrong, best not to ship them here, pay freight etc.  work on the problem there.

How often do you see a gummed label on  book with the barcode and price?  Don't all books already have the barcode and price printed on the book?  If they expect to be sold in bookstores they must, since books stores handle inventory control with that universal bar code.  As you learned from the book, the bar codes is only the second half of the deal, the first half is to get the number, the ISBN behind the code, from Bowker.com, and then have the barcode produced, and then applied to the book in the printing process.  This is rather expensive, adding maybe $100 to he price of the book.

It is possible for there to be a slip twixt the cup and the lip, and the bar code is fouled during the book cover design process, and the bar code does not work when scanned in the stores.  For this reason alone you need a technically competent cover designer.  I paid $300 for my extremely simple cover (as you shall see) the motif just being a plain white sheet in a typewriter.  A commonly read people pay thousands, but that is a bit much....

If the bar code as printed does not work, out come the gummed labels, at your expense, to be put on the books.  In my case it would be 1000 copies, but of course I could get the bar code fixed for the next print run, insh'Allah.

For this reason, as soon as I had the real book by fedex, I walked into a bookstore and explained this was fresh off the press and would they scan it?  No problem, scan, and up it came, my book, there on the computer.  All systems go!

So now I am working on my next book.  It is like digging a ditch, which I did once, 165 feet, utility ditch, so, 18 inched wide and 30 inches deep, 165 feet from the house, across the yard, up the hill, along the fence, and to the street.  There as many routes I could take, but once I decided the route, I began by tracing the route with the blade end of the pick head.  and then it was a matter of going over the same route, time and again, ever deeper, dealing with what obstacles occurred, until the ditch was code-perfect.

As I advise, be open to the world with your work.  But Ogilvy says advertising is all in the headline, and anyone can write copy.  So it is with titles to books.  Titles are your best saleperson, and they must be directed to your audience.  David kindly intimated my title is a head-scratcher, and he is right.  As I was writing the book, it was directed at academics who would get the play on words.  Now my market is everyone, most of whom will just think I am advocating murder. O well.

too late now.

Titles cannot be copyrighted.  You can write a book and call it "Gone with the wind" or "The Bible" and there is no law against that.  On my present book, since it is heading into a crowded field (economics), I want to keep the title private, lest some person whose book is done hear my title and capture the same for his book.

I helped a cop write his book, and for the cover and title he and his artist son came up with something catchy.  So catchy, others had done it before.  His title and cover is 99% the same as another autobiography of a cop.  And his particular title is the same as hundreds of other works on amazon.com.  That makes it hard for customers to find you.  Search for your title on amazon before you decide on anything.  At least there is only one book ever entitled Perish Your Publisher, and it is mine

So, I hope you are all now digging trenches, tracing out your book, and find it such joyful activity, in spite of the suffering, that you jump to it first thing, with your coffee.

GMTA

Dr. North is offering this strategy for writing, one I recommend in the book, but only add that I cite all who contribute a correction.

I always release pre-publication PDF versions of my books to subscribers. I challenge them to find typographical errors. They find hundreds. This costs me almost nothing. Then I print the book.

With print-on-demand, I can update easily. But I put in the date of each updated version, so that future readers will know which edition is authoritative: the last one before I died.

I rarely get suggestions for changes in my arguments. Readers confine themselves to verifiable errors: spelling, grammar, dates, etc. Maybe someone says a section is not clear. But this is rare. I like to think this is because I write clearly.

I do get criticisms for my rhetoric: too confrontational. I always ignore this. Confrontation is my style. 

For another good writing and teaching idea of Dr. North's, with his good admission it is marketing, not control that matters can be had here.

Forsaking Tenure

Here is a NY Times article about professors forsaking tenure in order that that may teach better students better content.  One point one professor makes is he finds he can do better work if he is not under the pressure of deadlines to produce academic papers when expected, on some sort of timeline.  I bet in this system he actually produces more and better published works in time.

How Do I Get ISBN, etc

Hi John,
I have just finished my book and I am ready to publish it. I remember you saying once that you know a really good publisher in China. My book is about acupuncture and will need to be translated into both Chinese and Japanese.
Can you recommend a publisher for me in China?
And if you have time, what is the process for getting an ISBN number or even a barcode? I see you have both on your book which I use for some products from Indonesia. I will also use your book when the books are published in China.

And I do continue to read your posts.
Thanks again,
Edward L


Edward,


Thanks for your note...  check out an entire book on the subject at perishyourpublisher.com

Woods On Publishing

Thomas Woods was a Community College instructor who hit it right with a book, and has been very successful with subsequent offerings.  I place my comments between his article, which can be found at http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/64332.html#more-64332

Nobody Sells “Millions of Copies”

Posted by Thomas Woods on August 25, 2010 11:45 AM

Before I became an author myself, I held an inflated estimate of the number of copies the typical book (bestselling or otherwise) sold.  I also thought the author earned more per book than he really does.  In my experience, the general public shares the misconceptions I once held.

Now for the terrible truth.

Books, says one of my publishers, are some of the hardest things in the world to sell.  Nonfiction books are even worse, of course — next to no one, relatively speaking, reads nonfiction.  It doesn’t help that there were 195,000 distinct titles published in 2005 alone (the latest statistic of which I am aware).  I happen to know of a major publisher all readers of this blog have heard of, which (at the time I heard the statistic) had published 3000 different books in one year.  How many of those sold more than 2000 copies?  About 200.

Books do not sell.

***So much for a publisher's contribution. My book, without a publisher, would rank as a top seller for a publisher, and a perennial seller being available on Amazon.com for 8 years now.***

On top of that, an author with a trade publisher typically earns 15% of the cover price of a hardcover.  Common contractual terms run as follows: 10% for the first 5000 copies, 12.5% for the next 5,000, and15% for all copies thereafter.  Paperback editions earn the author 7.5% of the hardcover price.  That’s before taxes, though one small consolation is that royalty income is not subject to self-employment tax.  It’s also before any agency fees — your literary agent, if you have one, will typically earn 15%.  Mine, who has helped me with several of my titles, earned every penny, but it’s still a deduction from your income.

***If you build your own market through teaching, you need no literary agent... so you keep that money.***

University and academic presses are typically less generous.  Sometimes you are actually expected to prepare your own index, if you don’t want to be docked to have one of their in-house people perform that service.  I did the indexes for a couple of my early titles.  It is an unspeakable task.  Royalties, moreover, typically don’t exceed 10 percent, and usually operate on a sliding scale beginning with 5 percent.

It’s embarrassing to recall, but I remember thinking The Church Confronts Modernity, my book with Columbia University Press, would sell around 10,000-20,000 copies!  After all, I thought, at least that many people would be interested in the subject matter it deals with, so of course it’ll sell that many.  Ahem.

***Yes, that many that are interested, but never that many that will buy.  It is a fascinating ongoing topic, and it would sell perennially if a course were offered on the theme.  To would be teachers:  Prof. Woods is too busy to stake out a claim on this topic on the internet.  Do not be discouraged that he has a book, and a name.  Given his seminal work in this area, a young scholar can come in with confidence and build a franchise on one's own on the topic, on the web.  I bet Prof. Woods would give his blessing, if not lend a hand occassionally.  Competition means "to strive with," not "to fight with."***

My most successful book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (2004), has sold about 170,000 copies so far.  That is a veritable miracle for an unknown author with little access to mass media.  But it’s well below what most people assume I have sold.

***A gold record means a million dollars in sales.  A platinum record means a million copies sold.  If Prof. Woods is getting a royalty of $1.50 a copy, that's a quarter million he earned.  Nothing to sniff at... get excited about smaller numbers!***

Not long ago, someone referred matter-of-factly to the “millions of copies” of Meltdown I must have sold.  Would that it were so.  No one sells millions of copies of a nonfiction title, with a few exceedingly rare exceptions: (1) people with television or radio talk shows, who can promote their books before a huge audience every day; (2) authors whose books are featured on Oprah; and (3) the occasional outlier with a clever or quirky idea, and that attracts a lot of media.

*** As I lay out in my book PERISH YOUR PUBLISHER, returns take those million dollar sales reports down to about half.  the cost is deducted from commissions, and a Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh could care less about any loss on the way to the renown of being a million-selling author, the tax write-off alone is gold.  A sitting on Oprah means massive demand for a short time.  Ramping up to sell a few million copies is risky business, and just how many will you sell?  One million?  Three million?  Wrong guesses cost you.  A visit on Oprah may be exciting, but it is likely to be financially disastrous.***

Even with all the attention Meltdown got, it sold about 55,000 copies.  This is astonishingly low to most people, particularly given the ten weeks it spent on the New York Times bestseller list.  But the publishing world, which knows the dreary nonfiction sales figures all too well, was envious of my publisher for having such a big hit during a depressed period for publishing.

***If Woods makes $2.50 a copy royalty on Meltdown, the ten weeks on the best seller list earned him about $140,000.  If he had perished his publisher, he would have earned more in the line of $660,000.  Now this would have taken a bit of packing and shipping on his part, or he could have farmed it out for under $60,000, netting him about a half million more than he has earned.***

Having been doing this for a number of years now, I’ve come to expect sales to be at about this level.  I realize it’s extremely difficult to sell in excess of 50,000 copies of a nonfiction title, which I have so far managed to do three times (my book on the Catholic Church and Western civilization being the third).  But when you tell people the real figures, they are (understandably) stunned and disappointed.  It’s like telling a relative at a family cookout that you were just accepted at the University of Pennsylvania or the University of Chicago.  Someone in the know realizes you’ve just reached a great milestone.  Many average people, on the other hand, figure you just got accepted at a run-of-the-mill school.

***And some of the greats in Economics have been working out of UN Las Vegas, and St. Augustine was Bishop of Hippo, something akin to being Bishop of Rochester. Don't take this simile to heart, wherever you are, you can stake out your claim on the internet.***

Even though nonfiction titles sell fewer copies than you may have thought, they are not for that reason a waste of time, particularly if you derive intellectual pleasure, as I do, from the challenge that comes with writing them.  Writing a book (with a major publisher) can open major print, radio, and television outlets to you and your ideas, thereby giving you a chance to spread your message to a wider audience than just the reading public.  Authors receive speaking invitations that give them the opportunity to reach a broader audience still, while adding to their (erratic) income.  And so on.

*** Teaching on the net and face to face seminars, you'll get all the exposure you can stand, and get paid a $100 an hour to do it.  You not missing anything missing the media exposure publishers can get you.***

If you want to write a book, then, just be sure to go into it with your eyes open.  Understand that the chances you will become rich as a nonfiction author are slim to none.  But writing a book brings satisfactions other than money, and if those are worth the expenditure of time that your project will demand, then by all means get to work.

**Indeed, it is about lifestyle, not money.  the money will follow.***

Writing In Hong Kong

Teaching and writing go hand in hand for this Hong Kong professional writer.  With seven million people, and a fantastic array of life stories, I'd have to disagree that pursuing money is holding back publishing in Hong Kong.  A recurring theme I see in Hong Kong is that the locals do not seem to know what they have...  I bet there is fantastic literature sitting on computers and tied up in manuscripts that writers are simply unaware of what they have got.  I like the idea of the SCMP writing competition.... this should scare up some good work.