Marketing Your Short-Run Book
For many people, publishing a book is the first step towards achieving their life’s dream. The second step is often seeing their book available for purchase in bookstores and from online venues. While we’re never one to smash anyone’s dream, we help our clients understand the economic demands and financial repercussions of the sales channel. Understanding the economics involved with short-run publishing can dramatically affect your marketing decisions in regard to traditional sales channels. Creative Continuum stands as your advocate in the sales channel—we look out for your best interests and do our best to help you avoid unexpected circumstances.
The book ecosystem is composed of agents, brokers, distributors, reviewers, chain bookstores, independents, online retailers, and metadata warehouses. In the traditional market, each level of distribution takes their cut—bookstores take between 40% and 55% of the cover price. The economics of subsidized short-run publishing don’t readily work within the framework of the royalty ecosystem where break-even can occur only once thousands of books are sold. Most royalty book authors consider themselves lucky to see somewhere around 10% of the cover price.
“Our typical client with a commercial title publishes between 500 and 2,500 copies of their book,” relates Tom Underhill, Creative Continuum’s publisher. “The economics involved with short-run publishing create a situation that can dramatically affect your decision to market your book through traditional sales channels. If a short-run book with a $20 cover price costs $13 each to produce, the author will never make up the difference.”
Because of the short production runs, we recommend a more hands-on approach to marketing where a per-book profit of $7 makes good financial sense. Some of our authors have seen great results from creative guerilla marketing tactics where they have taken a hands-on role in marketing their book.
Marketing Programs
We offer three packages of marketing materials to help you promote your project.
Basic Reseller Channel Notification
Once we’ve published your book, we deliver your book’s unique ordering information—ISBN, Library of Congress number, publication date, physical dimensions, etc.—to a book metadata distributor. They distribute your information to booksellers around the world, as well as to the major online book retailers, such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble Online.
Basic Book Promotion Kit
For authors wanting a basic level of self-promotion, our Basic Book Promotion Kit includes the following:
- Basic Reseller Channel Notification
- 100 professionally designed business cards
- 100 bookmarks
- 100 postcards
Intermediate Book Promotion Kit
Authors taking a more hands-on approach to self-promotion, our Intermediate Book Promotion Kit includes the following:
- Basic Reseller Channel Notification
- 500 professionally designed business cards
- 100 bookmarks
- 100 postcards
- 100 book cover reprints—trimmed to size or presented as “press sheets”
- 20 8-page book excerpts
- a basic Internet presence with a specific page on the Creative Continuum website
Custom Book Promotion Kit
Authors taking a more hands-on approach to self-promotion, our Custom Book Promotion Kit begins with the following:
- Basic Reseller Channel Notification
- 500 professionally designed business cards
- 500 bookmarks
- 1,000 postcards
- 200 book cover reprints—trimmed to size or presented as “press sheets”
- 20 full-color 13"x19" posters or large book cover reprints
- 20 8-page book excerpts
- a website presence (from a few basic pages on our website to a stand-alone web page with shopping cart)
All you supply is the text for these items—our designers will adapt your cover and book artwork into your marketing kit. These packages make marketing your book a snap!
Lo-Cost/No-Cost Marketing Tips
Here’s some of our easy-to-do and low-cost marketing tips:
- Drop one of your book business card in with all your letters, invoices, correspondence, bills, etc.
- Give a free copy to your local libraries.
- Give bookmarks to everyone you meet: the clerk at the store, the person in line with you at WalMart, your co-workers.
- Supply free copies as prizes for raffles or contests at local churches or schools.
- Give a free copy of your book to people you know who have wide circles of influence: your pastor or priest, college professors, radio hosts, sales people, etc.
- Tell everyone you know that you’ve written a book.
You never can tell who could be interested in buying your book! Call us today at 714-871-1641 to disucss your publishing project and how Creative Continuum can help you achieve your dreams.
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