The Author's Handbook

15. How to Help with Book Sales

15 How to Help with Book Sales WITH YOUR BOOK FINALLY IN PRINT, YOU DRIVE HOURS to the big city to tape a crack-of-dawn Good Morning America show only to find that the books you’re trying to push are still in a Hoboken, New Jersey , warehouse and won’t be shipped for another three weeks. Or you sit in your editor’s New York office as she jovially tells the story about how all of a sudden every West Coast bookstore is magically swamped with requests for your book, only there isn’t a copy to be had out there—and you can’t laugh because you personally notified her two months ago that the biggest papers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle were about to carry five-part syndication of the book so wouldn’t she make sure that enough copies were shipped to West Coast stores. Or you’re tacking onto your wall dozens of favorable reviews of your book and promotional mentions in prestigious publications as the letter carrier brings a royalty statement that shows your publisher never got any copies into the bookstores. These are not nightmares born of Ecstasy. All three of them actually happened to us and our friends. Every time two authors share lunch, the odds are better than fifty-fifty that they’re swapping horror stories about the latest sales atrocities their publishers have committed. An author would have to kiss a lot of toads before she found that prince of a publisher who’s willing to promote her book even half as much as she’s entitled to. It’s not hard to conclude that publishers generally don’t know how to sell books, or that if they do, they hide it very well. If we want our books to sell, if we want magazines to buy first and second serial rights, if we want newspaper syndicates to run excerpts from our books, we figure we had better sell them ourselves . So pull on those peddler’s clothes over your artist’s smock. Not everything that helps to sell a book involves hustling, pitching and wooing. You can often raise a book’s sales figures just by coming up with selected lists and clever ideas. But even to do that, you have to understand more about the whys and wherefores of book promotion than most publishers volunteer to their eager authors. Start Your Campaign Early Selling your book starts before you even sign the contract. During negotiations, you can test how much promotional effort your editor has in mind. Ask for a 175 clause spelling out how much money the publisher will commit to publicizing your book. You could be shocked: the editor might agree to it. More than likely you’ll be turned down, but to ease the blow your editor just might quote a projected publicity figure or two. Ask her to follow up by sending you a letter with those figures. Again, you’ll probably be turned down. But at each frustrating stage of negotiations, you’ll be clarifying in your own mind what to expect from your publisher—and with luck, you might start your editor thinking promotionally. It could be better to have an editor who promises nothing and delivers exactly that. You’ll know from the beginning that the whole job is up to you. If you’re lulled into believing an editor who promises a million-dollar radio, TV, magazine, newspaper and Good Humor truck publicity tour, you might delay your own publicity campaign until it’s too late for maximum impact. Promises are meant sincerely at the time. But the truth is, editors get excited about nearly every book they sign and it’s not often their decision which books get what piece of the year’s promotional funds. Part of your prepublication planning has to be an assessment of your publisher ’s promotional and subsidiary rights departments. (The two are working hand in hand, hopefully, at getting sales and exposure for your book.) The typical promotion or publicity department consists of one modestly paid and two underpaid staff members who must not only think up the entire publicity campaign for ten or twenty books every month but mail review copies, forward author mail, and perform other menial chores. They form their first opinion of you by reading the Author’s Questionnaire. Typically, you receive this form shortly after the publisher returns your signed contract. It asks...