Being In The Book Business Cuts Down On Your Writing Time

The countdown stands at six days to the release of the "Why Is Crater Lake So Blue?'' novel, although I think Amazon is selling the book now. And about 13 days to the start of the mini-book tour.

I was trying to remember the last time I'd written anything. After being amazed I could spit out 85,000 words in a relatively short time I now haven't written anything in quite a while. I find myself interested again in starting the process of a another novel. But I don't find it SO interesting that I'll do it without some confirmation from critics or the marketplace that it would be a meaningful endeavor.

I'm not into writing "for myself.'' The thing that interests me about writing a novel is writing it well enough for it to be considered credible, professional work that could appear in a bookstore. Anything short of that and I'm not much interested.

However, having said that I think a recent post on this blog is what writing should be about. The author said he was quite happy that his children's book was loved at his school. I think that's a success. If you can write and make the people around you happy that seems to be well worth the effort to me.

But back to my original point. it's very difficult to be in the book business and be a writer, too.

Michael LaLumiere
www.whyiscraterlakesoblue.com

The Countdown Begins - How Many Books To Take

Twelve days to the theoretical book release - "Why Is Crater Lake So Blue?''

The first order of books shipped to the wholesalers Friday from way up in Minnesota. Wholesalers and distributors are loathe to list books for their customers unless they have the books on the premises. Thus I'm a little late with giving stores time to buy the book for my regional book tour the second week of July. You have to be so far ahead in this business just to be on time.

A ten-day book tour in Southern Oregon. Yikes! Let's skip the fact that I've never done a book tour or a book signing or actually been in public much, just the logistics are daunting. What kind of clothes do i need to pack. What sort of attire will be required for a TV interview spot in Bend, Oregon?

And how many books do i lug around with me for promotional purposes. My publicist says 6 to 8. But then I'm hoping to show our children's picture books to store managers when I'm up there. Will they even be interested? They'll probably just want to see if the Crater Lake book sells first.

I don't even want to think of the book signing nightmare scenario where nobody shows up. OMG.

If you'd pre-order a copy of the book on Amazon I might feel a little better. How about it?

Michael LaLumiere
www.whyiscraterlakesoblue.com

But What About The Children's Books, Michael?

My goal in beginning this experiment was to publish children's books. Well I had to learn how to create a book first which took some time. But when I finally got the children's books printed I realized there was a giant hole in my strategy.

How in the heck do you market children's books?

Unfortunately, marketing children's books is a pound-the-pavement, reading-to-kids-in-school and stopping-at-stores-one-at-a-time sort of business. That's way down the list of my things I do best. And the ugly truth was I didn't want to do those things. And my partner wouldn't do them either.

Oops.

That's when I came up with the Crater Lake strategy. If I could make "Why Is Crater Lake So Blue?'' a successful novel then it would be much easier to do some piggy-back type marketing of the children's books.

That's my story anyway and I'm sticking to it.

The good news is I've found marketing this novel much more in my skill set than the children's books. This strategy better work because we're finishing up the third children's book and it's good. but I need to get it into the marketplace to give it a chance.

Michael LaLumiere
www.whyiscraterlakesoblue.com

Getting Listed On Amazon.com

I mentioned to someone yesterday that they could pre-order the new novel at Amazon.com.

It made me think of way-back-when, (three years ago or so) when as a newbie I thought how big a deal it was to be listed there for a self-publisher. Turned out anyone could list a book on Amazon - all you had to do was open an Advantage account with them. They take 55 percent off the top and make you pay to ship to them. They're happy for you to try and sell a book on their site.

One of the big mistakes all beginning authors and self-publishers make is not understanding that the saying "If you build it they will come'' is absolutely untrue when it comes to most businesses.

In the music business performers are starting to successfully sell cd's on the Internet. I think that will continue to grow until the music business as it was, say, 10 years ago, will be totally dead.

That won't happen for books.

The marketing machine for celebrity and entertainment, etc., is 24-hour non-stop in magazines, the Internet, TV, whatever. All that marketing drives the customers right to the music specific websites. Those sites get the customers to buy there or sends them on to the performer's website to buy a download. Music performers are figuring out that they're giving the music companies a lot of money that they could keep if they just paid attention.

There is no such thing with books. As you all know the buzz for books in on a down trend.

And what that means is you're biggest task will be marketing. And it will have to be excellent marketing or your books will get awfully lonely there on Amazon.com.

Michael LaLumiere
www.whyiscraterlakesoblue.com

OK What Newbie Mistake Did I Make Today?

Believe me there is always some newbie mistake I'm agonizing over. Fortunately some aren't very big but add them up altogether and, well, it's agonizing.

So I get the proof of the new book in the mail from the printer. The printer happens to be in Minnesota. (Did you know Minnesota was a hot bed for printing companies? Who knew!) Anyway, I couldn't bear to be the only one looking at it so the book designer/formatter graciously looked at it, too. She says hardly anything can go wrong with a book these days because everyone uses a PDF format which doesn't break. "OK, but could you look at it?''

Anyway, despite my wanting to rewrite every chapter, we gave it the OK and I sent a signed piece of paper back to the printer. Well, turns out the printer needs all the pages back, too. Apparently they use the text they sent me as a guide in the printing shop. That takes a couple extra days which isn't much except every day counts in getting the book from the printer, to the fulfillment people, to the wholesaler, to the bookstores. And now I've cost us crucial time over a newbie mistake. And everything adds up.

Oh well. Another newbie mistake I'm becoming more aware of is that I under priced the children's books that we did last year. At the time I established the price of the book I didn't know much about distributors and wholesales and the enormous percentage they take. Thus the profit margin - if you can call it that - on those books is negligible.

Damn.

Michael LaLumiere
www.whyiscraterlakesoblue.com

The Good News and The Bad News

So I have a wholesaler handling the new novel - Partners/West based in Renton, WA. They liked the idea of my book because they're regional and are always looking for Northwest-related titles.

When you start talking or mailing to bookstores they'll want to know what wholesaler is handling your book. They don't want to hear that you're selling it direct. They can't handle that. They don't want to buy from every author that walks in the door. They want to buy from one place - no fuss, no muss. Who can blame them. I wouldn't want to go grocery shopping at 57 different grocery stores.

So it was a big hurdle to get over when Partners/West signed us up. They are well known in the Northwest and our initial target market is the Northwest so life is good.

But the big problem was the giant in the bookstore wholesale market is Ingram. They had turned the book down through a program with a publishing association. They didn't think it would sell enough for them. They didn't think it would make their minimum of $20,000 in sales for them. So see ya.

That was bad news because some book stores will only buy from Ingram. Plus they have the reach across the country where Partners/West doesn't. It was a big hole in our opportunity and a very good consultant I work with said you have to get in the Ingram database or you can't reach your stated goal.

For the record my goal is to get into the mainstream book marketplace and hold my own in the literary fiction category.

Turns out there are a couple niche distributors that have special deals with Ingram. They basically sell the small independent publisher created books to Ingram through their contract. So by signing up with this niche company I can get into the Ingram database.

The niche company accepted the book. That's the good news. The bad news is they charge heavily for getting you IN. If you don't know, the standard deal you get from a wholesaler/distributor is called a 55 percent discount. That means right off the top of the retail price of your book they take 55 percent. Now turns out these niche companies get to tack on another chuck of percentage.

Yikes. Not such a good deal. But big picture, it's the only way to reach the stated goal above.

Michael LaLumiere
www.whyiscraterlakesoblue.com