“To Land a Publisher, an Author Prints Sample Copies for Stores” — Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2012
Count on the Saturday Wall Street Journal for a weekly insight into the state of the publishing industry…usually served with a healthy dose of empathy for authors.
That’s where I read about this intriguing strategy to win a contract from a traditional publisher: Get independent booksellers on your side first.
Isn’t that putting the cart before the horse? In this market, who can tell?
I’ve heard of a smaller-scale version of this technique: an author ‘seeds’ demand by self-publishing a few hundred copies, getting the book all jacked up with an ISBN number and other computer-tracking codes, then sneaking it onto the shelves at local retailers. Then the author or her sidekicks pluck the book from the shelf and innocently try to buy it, triggering reorders in the store’s system. Come to think of it, you could probably pull off this seeding technique with as few as 100 books, if you had nothing better to do than plant them, buy them, and plant them again.
The strategy outlined the other day in the Journal is actually an insidious turn on social marketing. Once you are positive your manuscript is in buy-able condition (and if you’re not sure, it’s not), take it to the owners or managers of a few independently owned bookstores. If you can draw in the owner of a store that specializes in your genre — mystery, cookbooks, travel — all the better.
Sweet-talk the owner into critiquing your manuscript. If the reviews are positive, you have the equivalent of ‘jacket blurbs’ to bring to balky publishers. In business terms, you’ve minimized their risk by pre-selling to key buyers. It’s harder for them to resist reading your manuscript when they know that retailers have taken the time to both read it and advocate for it. And for indie booksellers, it’s sweet karma.
Thanks to WWW’s newest team member, author and ace media trainer, Joanne Cleaver, for this post, and thanks to FreeDigitalPhotos.net for the cool graphic!
It’s an interesting concept to try to sell your book to bookstores before it has been published. However, I see two potential problems.
First, many publishers believe that a novice author’s book has limited sales potential. If you take it to bookstores on your own, publishers will believe that the book has even more limited potential, because you’ve already reduced the number of future (total) sales.
Second, publishers have deep inroads to deliver compelling reviews from the most persuasive review organizations in the genre. These reviewers will almost never review a SP or unpublished book. I am a reviewer for several organizations, including The New York Journal of Books. Twisting the arm of a powerful review organization to accept a review of a SP or unpublished book is like pulling teeth. It almost never happens. Thus, you’ll be handicapped in trying to sell the book to bookstores because it won’t have a convincing review from the reviewers that count the most in that genre.
Finally, I’ve discovered that there are literally thousands of small independent publishers around the world and that most of them will publish a novice author, if he or she has talent and a marketable book. Thus, it is far from impossible for an unknown author to obtain a traditional publishing contract. No, it won’t be with Random House or HarperCollins. The author will need to develop a winning publishing proposal and quite likely submit it to dozens or even hundreds of small publishers. But it can and does work. I was trade published twice without an agent (fiction and non-fiction). Yes, I had to submit proposals to almost a hundred small publishers for my debut novel. However, that effort yielded four solid contract offers, excluding vanity publishers. The last one was by far the best.
I would hold off on the effort to sell your book before trying to get it published. Maybe in a year or two we’ll see some statistics on it. I see it as a technique that might work well with a celebrity, but perhaps not with an unknown author.
Thanks for the thoughtful response! I tend to agree with you but seems in an ever growing competitive marketplace folks are always looking for a quick new road!
Clever…worth thinking about. Thanks 🙂