Cold Calling with your Book in Hand. Do you have the Stomach for it?

by A.M. Khalifa, thriller writer, Google+

In the world of indie publishing, digital is king, thanks in no small part to the publishing revolution spurred by Amazon. But for many of us writers, the notion of selling a physical book still carries a romantic, even irrational sense of accomplishment. Consider this: Although I make more money selling eBooks, I get more excited when I sell paperbacks. Perhaps the knowledge that someone out there preferred to hold, smell, feel and touch a copy of my book—even though a much cheaper and more convenient medium was available to them—is somehow comforting.

Getting your printed book in brick-and-mortar bookstores however is one of the most uphill challenges of publishing. The large chains are pretty much in intensive care with a bleak prognosis, and independent or small-published writers are at the bottom of their list of priorities. Even Barnes and Noble which has so far managed to hold on to dear life, only pays lip service to supporting indie writers. They have an opaque program that allegedly will stock the works of “local” authors in the relevant chains. But if you've ever tried to communicate with your local Barnes and Nobel to pursue that, you will have likely discovered that it’s a hit or miss and depends entirely on the mood and temperament of the Community Relations Manager you end up speaking to. Not to mention that the reigning Barnes and Noble culture looks down on print on demand books.

Which leaves small and independently owned book stores and mini chains as the most viable option. I am happy to report that I have had remarkable success getting my debut novel Terminal Rage stocked in a select number of bookstores in North American and Europe. In London for instance, I am proud to be stocked in all branches, save one, of the beautiful Edwardian mini chain, Daunt. 

The Chelsea branch of the mini-chain Daunt, London, UK

Figuring out the best way to get stocked in indie bookstores came after a bit of trial and error.

Because most of us in this business spend more time behind screens managing our digital empires and building and nurturing our tribes, we tend to also communicate primarily through electronic means. It's faster and more convenient.

When I first started querying indie bookstores electronically, I was overwhelmingly getting ignored or rejected, which was demoralizing. Then it dawned on me that on any given day, most indie bookstores probably field hundreds if not thousands of emails from new writers like me with the same idea. Each professing to be the next best thing.

So I tried something different. I started calling the bookstores to set my self slightly apart, and sure enough my success rate instantly shot up to about thirty percent acceptance.

You probably know where I am going with this: Ultimately, the most effective way to get your book picked up by indie bookstores is to go there in person, with your book in hand for a good, old fashioned face-to-face pitch. As a writer, if you are not willing to look a book buyer in the eye and get passionate about your writing, how do you expect them to do the same over email or a phone call?

Indie book stores are typically unique establishments owned and staffed by folks who are extremely passionate about books. Like Linda Nurick of Cellar Door Bookstore who plays an integral role in promoting reading and supporting local writers in her local community of Riverside, California. I have found that the best way to connect with them is in person, because they need to get excited about you as a writer as much as they need to appreciate your book. Assuming you have an excellent and professionally-produced book, my own results suggest that walking in an indie bookstore to cold call will net you extremely positive results.

However, there are a few things to take into consideration if you decide to give cold calling at indie bookstores a shot. First and foremost, research each and every store in advance. Some of them specifically request that you don’t show up unannounced, so respect their guidelines. Some small bookstores are often highly specialized in a limited number of genres which may not coincide with your masterpiece. And remember that for all brick-and-mortar stores, space is the number one premium. If a book store describes itself as "tiny", "cozy" or "small but mighty", it's most likely they have a minuscule and highly curated inventory with a limited appetite for risk. So it would probably be a waste of your time and theirs to try. 

Ultimately, I've found that the most receptive are the small- to medium-sized general bookstore that sell new books, with no outright guidelines against cold calling. With that said, even if you target your bookstores intelligently, there is still a chance they just may not be that into you. Don’t take it personally and move on.

Writers, what have your experiences been trying to get your books stocked in brick-and-mortar bookstores? And readers, do you proactively make recommendations to your local bookstores when you don’t find your favorite authors stocked?

Sign up to my newsletter below to get:

★ exclusive free fiction
★ writing tips
★ publishing insight
★ Hollywood for writers
★ counter-terrorism scoops
★ middle east analysis
★ book giveaways and competitions
★ exciting updates on the film adaptation of Terminal Rage as it happens
★ free tickets for a party of four to an Elvis Presley concert*

* indicates required field

Email Address * 

First Name 

Last Name 

Special Offer! My sizzling-hot short story, The Jewish Neighbor is available for free, for a limited period exclusively on Amazon Kindle: amzn.com/B00HSN8O8M

* While supplies last. Offers valid only in territories where time machines are legal.

A.M. Khalifa's debut novel, Terminal Rage, was recently described by Publishers Weekly as "dizzying, intricate, and entertaining." 

The ebook version of Terminal Rage is now on sale for $0.99 on Amazon.

My Advice To Microsoft

By C.J. West
Author of The End of Marking Time

Last week I was talking to my friend Libby Fischer Hellman about the Microsoft investment in the Nook business. On Libby’s blog, Ruth Harris, Rebecca Crowley, and I join her in penning an open letter to Microsoft on how best to push the Nook business forward.

I want to expand on some of the things Libby and I talked about that could help Microsoft turn the Nook into a viable competitor for Kindle. I think we all agree that a healthy market is a good thing and that Barnes & Noble for whatever reason just doesn’t know how to sell electronic books as well as Amazon.

Affiliates

The most glaring place that Amazon outshines Barnes & Noble is in affiliates. The Amazon Associates program allows anyone to register and then send traffic to Amazon. When a book is purchased, the site referring the traffic is awarded a small commission. Sites like E-Reader News Today, Pixel of Ink, and eReader IQ make a fortune on affiliate links. Because they are rewarded, they send their traffic to Amazon. 

Because of these sites, the community around Amazon is richer and more rewarding for readers and that makes more readers choose a Kindle over a Nook.

Indie Authors

Amazon has embraced indie authors in ways that Barnes & Noble has not. Compare the KDP Select Program and Nook First. KDP Select welcomes everyone. Authors can make their titles free and it is up to them to promote their own free book and find readers. Amazon relies on automation to scale the program and they reward the indie author and the reader with a platform that connects them both. The community (affiliates) also gets in the act because everyone likes free books and there are financial rewards for participation by the affiliates. 

Nook First is Barnes & Noble’s answer. To be admitted an author must submit  an application to a board that reviews selections. B&N will promote accepted books on their website, but the program can never scale the way KDP Select can and it is exclusivity means that the vast majority of authors cannot participate. B&N is excluding thousands of authors who are out hawking their books every single day.

These two programs are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to author relations, but they are representative of the philosophy of each, B&N is stuck in the bestseller mentality and Amazon is embracing the tidal wave of indie authorship.

How can Microsoft help?

Microsoft Word and EPUB

Millions of authors use Microsoft Word to author their books. It is simple to create a PDF file of any work by saving the manuscript as a PDF file. Since Microsoft owns the most popular writing platform, they could really enhance the Nook business by making a simple and powerful conversion product  from Word to EPUB. Formatting books for electronic publication has become a business unto itself. If Microsoft could make it simple to create an EPUB file, authors would be more inclined to publish on Nook. 

I think right now for most authors Kindle is the preferred platform because that is where the readership is. If Microsoft could make publication on Nook easier, they would be able to make some inroads with Kindle only authors. A side bonus to this is that authors could ship their books to (author) friends who have Nooks, so they could read the book comfortably during the review process.

Nook for Windows

Microsoft also owns the most popular desktop operating system giving them access to millions of computer users who are also readers. One of the hurdles to buying electronic books is the cost of the reader.  Amazon has a free e-book reader Kindle for PC. By creating a product with a better user experience than Kindle for PC, Microsoft could sway casual e-book readers to choose Nook books over Kindle books.

Microsoft could and should include this product as an update to every operating system the produce and should make it standard for any new system sold. 

It will be interesting to see what Microsoft’s financial muscle and technical savvy can do to lift the Nook brand. I foresee a heavyweight fight if Microsoft truly embraces digital publishing and takes it to Amazon head on. 

PS.  This week I released Thugbook, my first standalone short story on Amazon.com. Click over and dive into a new kind of social network. It's killer.

Libraries, Nook Readers, and Amazon

By L.J. Sellers and Andrew Kaufman

L.J: In response to one of my blogs about enrolling in the Amazon select program, which requires exclusivity, a librarian posted this comment:
"As a public librarian and a Nook owner, I see another side. We are struggling to offer ebooks and eaudiobooks to our patrons without any increase in funding while still keeping up our print collections for patrons who have not jumped on the ereader bandwagon. We have to deal with everything from publishers who won’t sell to libraries at all, publishers who charge libraries up to 10 times the price of what an individual pays, publishers who limit the number of times the item we purchase may be used, etc. We have access to one company (Overdrive) who will maintain our ematerials, but we are bound by their policies or we can go independent, but the costs and knowledge base required are so astronomical that it currently isn’t possible to maintain our own ematerials. Seems like everyone is trying to figure out the best way to do this.

...It worries me when I read that some of you want to be Kindle exclusive. As I said, I have a Nook and I don’t want to switch to an Amazon ereader for many reasons. It worries me that some day there might be only one ereader and we would all be at the mercy of one company. None of you mentioned selling through Overdrive and I wonder your thoughts on that.

Please know that the library community wants you to make money. We are author’s biggest champions and want you to flourish in whatever medium is popular at that time."

Andrew’s response: I actually struggled for quite some time over the decision to make my work exclusive to Amazon, and the reasons were exactly as mentioned above. I didn’t want to keep people from having access to my work simply because they owned different e-reading devices, didn’t think it would be fair. In addition to that, I believe competition among companies is of benefit to all.

Unfortunately, at the same time, I also noticed that my sales on Nook and other e-reading devices had been progressively dwindling down to practically nothing. In addition to that, on Amazon—the place where I make the lion’s share of my earnings—my sales were also showing a steady decline as the market became flooded with more self-published authors than ever. I was sinking all around and at one point, wondered if I could stay afloat. I soon came to the realization that if I didn’t have readers, I wasn’t going to survive as an author, something that’s as vital to me as breathing. I had to do something.

As independent authors, we face a particularly difficult challenge because odds are stacked against us. We carry the stigma that our work is inferior to traditionally published authors. We also don’t have the kind of wide distribution channels that mainstream authors have, nor do we get cash advances to rely on. We make our money one book at a time, one reader at a time. In short, it’s up to us and only us to ensure our work gets read, and we have to do what we can do increase the odds.

After releasing my new novel, one that I’d worked tirelessly on for more than two years, and after seeing that it was beginning to fall through the cracks, I knew I needed to take action. I believed very strongly in it and knew I needed to do whatever I could to ensure its success. Select was an opportunity to do that, to breathe new life into it, to give it the exposure it needed. In all honestly, was my only option. I took it.

Do I feel badly that readers with Nook and other devices are being penalized? Absolutely. However, I also realize that the decision to go exclusive is not forever; it’s for ninety days, and I can most certainly make my work available to the others after that if there’s a demand for it.

L.J.’s response: I also feel badly for Nook readers, but I’m running a small publishing business that supports my household, and I had to make a profitable business decision. I hope Nook owners will take their case to B&N and ask them to make the changes that will allow self-published books to be discovered. Without that, most indie authors aren’t making money on Nook and have little reason to stay.

As for library patrons, I would love to make my books available to them, but unless I donate them, it’s nearly impossible. Even when I had a small publisher, libraries didn’t buy my books, despite my great reviews and the thousands of dollars I spent sending out promotional material.

As for Overdrive, they don’t deal with individual authors. Even my ebook distributor, which handled hundreds of authors (all with five books or more) had difficulty accessing Overdrive. The other consideration is that indie ebooks typically sell for less than five dollars, and digital files never wear out or need to be replaced, so the library market holds little profit for indies. Still, if the opportunity were available, I would donate ebooks to libraries just to expose new readers to my work. But I have no idea how to make that happen or if libraries can even accept donated ebooks.

The bottom line is: Amazon is the only company that has ever supported my work and helped me access readers, so they have my loyalty.

What are your thoughts on this hot-button topic? 

Have B&N Execs Gone Mad?

By CJ West

Last week Barnes and Noble issued a press release including results for the holiday sales season and an announcement that they are seeking to spin off the Nook business. Store sales rose 2.5% and digital content sales rose 113%. It doesn’t take a genius to see where this business is headed. So why is B&N getting ready to spin off the most strategic portion of their business?

The NY Times applauded B&N for the inroads they have made competing against Amazon for a share of the digital book market. They report that B&N has captured 30% of the digital book market and is seeking outside investment to help them compete against Amazon.

I agree with the Times that B&N has its hands full fighting Amazon and that it is good for the business to have another big player in the e-book market, so for the market as a whole, I think the B&N move is a good thing. Amazon has a history of flexing its muscle with publishers and authors. The KDP Select program, where Amazon asks for an exclusive on digital content in exchange for the opportunity to offer a book free to Kindle users, is certainly heavy handed if not anti-competitive.

The problem I see for B&N execs comes in once the two groups are split. B&N has invested heavily in the Nook and when future results begin coming in and there is strong growth in the Nook business and a steady decline (or modest growth) in the brick & mortar outlets, B&N will be forced to make another series of investment or cost-cutting choices and it is the brick & mortar outlets that will suffer.

We haven’t yet felt the long term impact of all those shiny e-readers given as gifts this Christmas—not to mention the many authors and bloggers giving e-readers as prizes—but you can bet those new users have already downloaded millions of e-books in the last two and a half weeks. When the weather gets warmer, those proud digital book owners will be out in parks and on beaches and they’ll become e-reader evangelists like the generations of Kindle owners before them.

To me this move looks like the beginning of the end for B&N stores.  Digital Book World reports that B&N continues to lose money online and off.  It may take 7 or 8 years for financial pressure to force stores to start closing, but B&N can’t overcome the economic disadvantage of selling a mass produced product at a cost higher than its most significant competitor.

Not only does it cost more to stock a book on store shelves, but in-store book buyers have little information to help them choose books. Online customers can click through scores of reviews and ratings, but giving in-store customers access to this information also lets them see how much more they are paying for the convenience of buying a physical book off the shelf.

It seems the only concrete competitive advantage stores have is the physical space to bring people together and I see only a few true indies making the most of that advantage.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the years to come. I for one am glad that my future doesn’t rest on the success of stories printed on paper.

Indie Authors' Co-op for Print books?

By Judith Yates Borger

A couple weeks ago I met with a few other mystery authors who were fed up with the gauntlet they had to run to get a book published in paper traditionally. About a year ago two of them had waived their middle fingers at the big guys and set up their own company. They contracted with the very same distributors who had peddled their traditionally published previous  books to the likes of Barnes & Noble, and, sadly, now defunct Borders. They got a deal with the same folks who had printed their previous books. They got reviews in places such as Booklist. They contracted with a cover designer and an editor. Basically, they did everything their paper publisher had done on their previous books and left them with a paltry royalty.

Now, they get monthly sales reports instead of the semi-annual-who-knows-if-they're-true numbers they had previously received from their publishers. They sell their mysteries for $15 and earn $5.50 per book in royalties. There is upfront financial investment, instead of an advance to earn back, but they start making some reasonable money after they've sold 1,000 books.

"I'm working with the editor, the cover designer, setting up my own promotion," said one of the authors. "But I was doing all that before when I had a 'publisher.' "

His motivation was not to make a lot of money -- although that would be just fine. No, what he likes most about the arrangement is that he has control over his work. Not to worry about a publisher who has final say on the cover or the title of book, or who doesn't have the courage to go into a second printing.

Of course, there is risk involved. What if the distributor goes belly-up? Or the printer gets struck by lightning?  Although the reports just funnel through the lead member authors are responsible for their own bills. Still, the other authors have to write well enough to not bring ill will on the others. No one wants guilt by association.

I've been looking around to see if any other authors are doing the same. I found a news item about one group near Seattle that has something similar going, but I haven't seen anything else.

These authors want me to join their authors' coop. What do you think? I've had two books published in paper by a traditional author, an okay-but-not-great experience. I'm working on my third book now. Should I go the coop route? Join up with these guys, whose work I like?