Oh, god, I love this. Brad Meltzer did a beautiful comeback to negative reviews of his latest book. This, folks, is how it's done:



And don't forget about the always awesome Black Books short that tackles it from a different point of view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS1NOXWVWgo

Von

...had some fascinating data about books, bookstores, publishers, marketing and reading. Things like:

"The younger crowd are larger supporters of large chain bookstores."

Book clubs are still significant sales channels for reaching older readers.

The fiction market is predominantly female. The one area of fiction in which men predominate is science fiction, where 55% of buyers are male.

Stephen King's audience is "middle market." Sue Grafton appeals to an older, low income audience. Stephenie Meyer appeals mostly to younger, higher-income readers.

67% of book buyers who were influenced by book reviews read them online, and 32% did so in print. Overall online ads were the "first level" of book awareness in 2008--54.1% of buyers of a book became aware of the book through online ads, including banner ads, Google ads and publishers' websites. (And likely e-mail newsletters, too!)

Readers first hear about books most often from "store displays" (44.4%). The second-biggest "awareness driver" already is online (including online ads and e-mails from retailers).

I thought the online marketing bit a little surprising, though I suspect further data would help clarify exactly where these ads are running. Is it on big sites? Small sites? Book-specific sites?

Von

Oh, dear god, I can't tell you how much I love this scene from Fall Out, the final episode of The Prisoner. Verbal interplay and quick cuts. Ah, bliss.



( Transcript after the cut )

Von

I've been watching the marketing efforts of Ken Marcus, creator and writer of Super Human Resources for the past few months. Marcus seems like a pretty savvy guy, having an active profile on various message boards including the Comic Book Industry Alliance, active interviews all over the place, and not to mention that he's an associate creative director at an unnamed (though I think it's the Martin Agency) advertising company.

Not only that, but he also sent out a nifty press kit to a number of stores (this pic posted by James Sime of Isotope Comics in San Francisco):



As he explains, "...the whole mailer cost me a little under a grand. A 10 page preview printed from Ka-Blam, 5 postcards, a poster and a color letter. To about 280 indie friendly stores." Lastly, he also wrote a marketing piece over at Robot 6 at tail-end of February '09, covering a lot of what he did (and well worth a look, too).

So, he's active, experienced, passionate and spent money. How did that, especially in light of Diamond Distribution's changes to their Purchase Order Minimums, effect initial orders on the first issue? Well, ICV2.com recently published their March 2009 numbers and the answer is not that great. Super Human Resources did place in the top 300, at #298, for an estimated total sales of 2,052 copies. At $3.50 US, that's a total retail order of $7,182.00, $932.00 over the new minimum of $6,250.00. Knock off Diamond's 60% cut of retail, the cost of printing a full-colour book, whatever small cut Ape Entertainment (the publisher) takes, and there would be precious little left over for the creators involved. Knock off the "little under a grand" that Marcus spent on the press kit and the first issue, at least, is most likely well short of being profitable. Worse, if orders drop by 20% for issue 2 (from 2,052 to, say 1,642), the book would be under Diamond's Purchase Order Benchmark (since 1,642 * $3.50 is only $5,747.00) and orders would probably be canceled (unless Diamond really believes in the book, of course).

It's tough out there, folks.

Von

Alright, here is the complete TV Interview I did for Talk Ottawa last June. This is a big file so I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep this up on our server (and many thanks to kevdead for that, of course). As long as I can, anyway.

For those who have watched the 15 minute part, you should be able to skip to that point fairly easily. I think. Ahem. I'm a little new to this whole video editing thing. :)

So just hit the little "Play" button at the bottom left and it should go!



And a snapshot from the interview (all official like!):



Let me know what you think!

Von

(edited to add that I gave it a wee bump)

Some of you may recall that I did a TV interview on Talk Ottawa last June. I've had a copy for quite some time but getting it online has been a fairly low priority. I finally got a chance to tinker with it and the first 15 minutes are below. If I've done this right, it should work.

Just press the "play" button at the bottom left of the player and it should go.



Now, it's going to suddenly stop after about 15 minutes. I need to get the subsequent parts properly encoded but, before I went too far with it, I wanted to make sure that the file was working properly. Once I get all of the interview coded right, I'll put it online. In the meantime, I think this will do.

Hopefully I don't sound like an idiot!

Von

P.S.: I should add that James is a damn good guy; he gave me an entire hour to chat and that's pretty remarkable from where I sit.

One of the reason why I'm so pleased that Mike Shatzkin has finally started a blog is there's some very juicy historical tidbits that people like me really enjoy. One is how Point of Sales data began being collected by bookstores (innovated by Dalton) back in the mid-70s. Now I'm familiar with this story but it's still quite nifty if you're new to it.

"Dalton was particularly innovative. They assigned each book an SKU number. When the purchase order for the book was issued, which would be for many or all of the hundreds of stores, the requisite number of stickers with the correct SKU would go to the stores. When the books arrived, they’d get the stickers, which could be read (by the cashier, not by the cash register). The punched-in numbers, usually correct, created a record. For the first time, buyers in a far-flung book operation knew exactly what was selling. (Or almost exactly, there were more than a few holes in the system.)

If memory serves, when there were about 300 Dalton stores, the sale of 6 copies a week constituted a “hot list” book and 6 copies a month was “warm list.” This was my first lesson in how few books sell enough to create statistical significance in any one store. That’s a critical thing to understand. (Von's emphasis added)

Soon, Dalton had established the concept of “model stock”, books that were automatically reordered based on sales. Smart sales reps learned quickly that getting a model was more important than getting a big quantity buy to the sales health of most books."

Data, data, data. I'm a massive believer that the 80/20 rule applies to both books and comics. Since most books turn so slowly, having accurate data to control re-ordering is very important. Having accurate data to better track "like" books (i.e.: if I sell X of Title A I may be able to sell X of Title Y because they share similar subjects, authors, or whatnot) is very important. And knowing where category strength is helps guide purchasing where there's no other data to be had (i.e.: I sell mysteries like gangbusters so I can take a chance at an unknown author with a brand new detective inspector character. I can't sell romances at all, so almost any romance title will get a hearty "pass" from me when I order).

This is so self-evident to me and yet I'm amazed with how many retail stores don't collect this data or simply don't collect it well (one day I need to tell you all about my three months at a local pet food co-op last fall). And comic shops (the Direct Market) are only now moving to an integrated Point of Sale system (though I still think it's somewhat alarming that some stores are going with Diamond's system rather than an independent one. I generally don't think it's a great idea for a retailer to be so tied to their (often) sole distributor).

The Dalton anecdote above is really amazing when you consider this was the early days of this kind of analysis. And how so many things have changed (barcodes! the interweb!) since then.

Neat.

Von

Filed By Author has now gone into full beta. Co-founded by Mike Shatzkin (while I've never met him, I have a great deal of respect for both him and his late father Leonard Shatzkin), this is a free site that any author can use as long as you have an ISBN associated with your name.

So, jmward14, I'm looking at you.

Same goes for savageknight - right over here.

And coppervale thisaway.

Von

(yes, I've been quiet of late. Very busy and a little anti-social - now get off my lawn! :) )

In case anyone knows dog owners in this area:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/03/24/dogs-poisoned.html

My god there are some sick people out there.

Grumble.

Moggy

Interesting reading over on Richard Curtis' E-Reads blog:

"As we know, the road to publication is mined with perils. It takes intelligence, determination and fortitude to avoid or conquer them. Yet, in my experience there is no guarantee that these virtues will prevail in the writing game. Indeed, there's no guarantee that the most important asset of all, talent, will emerge victorious, at least not without a little assistance from good fortune. For while writing is certainly a solitary occupation, publishing is a social enterprise involving scores of critical processes performed by numerous individuals, many of whom possess considerably less enthusiasm for the product than the author does. And beyond the mechanics of publication and distribution are processes of a magnitude and complexity impossible to reckon, including trends and fads that are no more predictable than the course of a cyclone."

The article first appeared in an issue of Locus some years back.

Von