sell « Robin Writes

You’re moving right along, doing your thing, promoting yourself and your books, and all of a sudden—BAM!

You lose friends; people say mean things; sometimes, even, people threaten to “stop” buying your books and say hateful things about you.

What the hell just happened?

People. That’s what happened.

First, it’s really hard to comprehend because you probably aren’t like this. You probably don’t send hate messages and you probably don’t jump to conclusions and you probably don’t spread rumors. And it’s really hard not to take this personally.

I’m telling you, resist that temptation.

Fix the problem, if there is one, and issue an apology and move on. Assuming, of course, that what happened is not at all justified. If it is, you’re kinda screwed . . .

A couple years ago, there was a message board circulating that said some not-very-nice-things about me. These people assumed that since RHP was a new publishing house, we were either A) crooks and criminals or B) clueless. On this particular site, folks seem to jump to conclusions quite a lot; there are many long-time writers on there who seem to “know everything.” I use the word “writers” because most of these people haven’t been published; I reserve the term “author” for ones who have.

I addressed the concerns mentioned with simple answers; those didn’t satisfy a few people, but I stopped. I’d answered their questions. An RHP author saw the thread and jumped in and said, basically, hey, RHP is JUST FINE. I SIGNED WITH THEM.

End of story.

Last week, an RHP author had a social media account hacked. No other explanation. The alleged post, of which I only saw a screenshot, was completely out of character for this author and anyone with half a brain would have realized that.

Sadly, it seems many people do only possess half a brain; I started receiving email. Not the author—no one asked the author. They felt it necessary to email the publisher and threaten not to purchase any more RHP book if we didn’t immediately remove this author.

One of them also couldn’t distinguish between “your” and “you’re,” but I digress . . .

I didn’t ask if they had EVER bought an RHP book, although I did tell one of them that I doubted they’d intended to “place a large order.” Whatever that means.

It was kind of a cluster there for a couple days.

Long story short, the author issued both a private and a public apology via social media, as did RHP. Okay, RHP’s post was a little weighted on sarcasm, but come on! DON’T jump to conclusions, right?

Lesson: periodically Google yourself, see what’s out there; check your social media accounts for “bad” things. Fix problems immediately. And issue an apology.

Then forget it and move on.

Yeah, here we go again. But I read something the other day that said book events can cost an author $500, and that’s just not accurate.

Well, unless you count the therapist bills before and after . . .

Most authors are absolute crap at selling their books. The biggest reason is distribution, if you’ve self-published. You’re competing for shelf space with professionally produced books, but even if your book is very well done, those other books have distribution. Booksellers can pull up a website and order them in about five minutes, and that’s after they’ve seen the book in some publication or other and decided their customers might like to read it.

You, however, have to depend heavily on yourself and other people, most of whom are not book professionals.

If someone tells me his book is great, I’m going to take it with a grain of salt. Of course you think it’s great, you wrote it! If your mom or your best friend tells me the same thing, again, grain of salt. If someone whom you’ve paid to read your book, or exchanged books with, tells me it’s great, re-read the first two sentences in this paragraph.

Your cover, front and back, will tell a bookseller that your book is interesting, or not. The interior formatting will tell him if it looks professional; the story will tell him that it will sell, or not. And all that has to be damn good to get your book on a shelf in a bookstore.

Of course, you can sell your book other places, and this is where a book event comes into play.

Contrary to the article I read, you seldom, if ever, have to pay to host a book event. Most bookstores will do it for free, IF your book meets all the above criteria: cover, interior, story. Some will do it anyway. If you want to do an event elsewhere, sure, you might have to pay a nominal fee.

Your other costs are purely optional, like swag, cards, bookmarks, posters. Some will help, some won’t. Depends on a number of things.

And of course, books will cost you because often you have to provide your own copies and work on a consignment deal.

If you self-publish, and your books cost you $5, you can sell them directly for $10 and make a nice profit. If you’re doing consignment, you’ll only get a percentage of that $10—on average, 60%. So you make $6 and pocket that extra dollar.

Does that sound painful? Not really—authors under contract with a publisher would make about the same in royalties. This is not a get-rich business, this authoring stuff.

If a bookstore takes 40%, and your publisher gives you a decent discount on your own books, you can have roughly the same result if you have to do a consignment deal. If your publisher gives you 40%, you’ll break even; any less than that, you’re losing money.

Maybe that’s where they came up with the $500.

Oh, right, the therapist bills:

It’s really, really hard for introverted authors to make calls and go into bookstores to schlep their books. Nerve-wracking, even. Therapist Bill #1.

It’s even harder and more anxiety-producing to talk to bookstore customers about your book. Therapist Bills #2-10.

But, sorry, you have to force yourself. Remember, a bookseller is not there to babysit you—they have customers, some of whom you hope to sell to, and they should, ideally, be busy ringing up those customers. So it’s up to you.

The best tip I can give you is to take someone along to that book event, a friend, or even another author. It’s SO MUCH EASIER to talk about someone else’s book—the two of you can switch off, and talk about each other to potential readers. Piece of cake.

BUT.

Do make sure that you and the friend or the other author DO NOT SIT AND TALK ONLY TO EACH OTHER. In fact, don’t even sit. Stand, be approachable, smile, make eye contact, etc., etc. TO POTENTIAL READERS.

Oh, and something else I’ve noticed: don’t check your phone, don’t let it make noise. If it’s an emergency, they’ll keep calling and you can excuse yourself. That email is not important either. Focus on the here and now, on that potential reader.

And sell books.