5 Ways to Expand Your Book's Distribution

Branded Books... 

Wednesday + Josie Brown = Hype Hell

Place (or distribution), like promotion, price, and packaging, is one of the key P-words in marketing any product.

And its relevance to the book industry is becoming more apparent each day.

Distribution of the physical book is shrinking. While new technologies are opening up ways in which our books can be sold, distributed, or downloaded online, a new reality is  the traditional brick-and-mortar booksellers are keeping less books on their shelves; and those non-traditional retailers that now sell very large quantities of books, like Wal-Mart and Target, have designated limited shelf space in which to do so.

A recent article in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY breaks down the percentage of brick-and-mortar booksellers this way, based on the percentage of their physical locations:

Wal-Mart 3, 959 (35%)
ABA (which would be the indies) 1,954 (17%)
CBA (the Christian bookstores) 1,544 (14%)
Target 1,397 (12%)
Borders 1,151 (10%)
Barnes & Noble 805 (7%)
Costco 360 (3%)
BAM 208 (2%)

In the best of all possible worlds, every book would find its way on a shelf in every bookstore in the country (100% of all brick-and-mortar bookstores). Unfortunately, that is not the reality in publishing, at least not for any book that has not been earmarked by its publisher as a lead book, or has not been written by a perennial best-selling author, or has not had any pre-publication promotion that garnered it the kind of buzz that catapults its advance sales to the stratosphere.

What does this mean for a midlist novelist with a recent release? Let’s do the math:

1.    You can immediately subtract the big box retailers that for any reason have limited distribution, such as Wal-Mart (-35%),  Target (12%) and Costco (3%), or a subtotal of 50% of all physical bookseller locations that will not have your book;

2.    If your book has a story that includes profanity, or is not deemed appropriate to faith-based readers, you won’t find yourself in CBAs either. This drops your subtotal to 36 percent;

3.    Some publishers don’t have the resources to work the independent bookstores in a consistent manner, or for their entire list. If this is the case with yours (and YES, you should ask them to be candid with you on this), your physical distribution universie drops to 19 percent;

4.    Oh yeah, and the chain stores, like Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Borders don’t buy every book from every publisher. And those they do buy might be earmarked for regional or niche store distribution only, or perhaps in limited quantities. Granted, you'll make it into some indies and some libraries by osmosis, so that may pop you back up again.

Still, a 15-25% distribution average is scary, isn't it?

To offset this shrinking brick-and-mortar universe, the smart author has to look for his consumer in unusual places. Here are five ways in which you can do this:

1.  Find Clubs/Groups/Events Where You Can Have your Book Sold in Bulk. Any venue that allows you to cross-promote and sell your book during a member event may be worth going to. Have a novel with Scrabble in the plot, or a cozy mystery that deals with crotchet? Search through Meetup.com or CraigsList.org for ongoing clubs, then email the coordinator a pitch that will have them inviting you as a guest speaker, where perhaps you can read, run a trivia contest, and of course have a bookseller in the back of the room. Do the same on online loops that promote or run book clubs and reading groups. A personal invitation from you, the author, may win you a few more fans.

2.  Promote to Librarians. There are several media venues that advertise specifically to librarians. This includes Library Journal and AuthorBuzz.com. If you don’t have a media budget, a more arduous process is emailing librarians manually, but you can cull addresses from such sites as http://www.publiclibraries.com or http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/libraries/

3.  Promote to Independents that Specialize in Your Genre. Your publisher may tell you that they do all they have done all that they can to get the indies that specialize in your genre interested in your book. Worse yet, they may tell you that they don’t focus on the indies at all. (Trust me, I’ve had several authors tell me this one, and I still can’t fathom it.) Either of these responses should reinforce to you the necessity to do as much promotion as possible yourself, and not just leave it to your publisher. Make up galleys and mail out to receptive or key-genre indies.  Yes, this is an expensive endeavor, but those that do it see results. If your wallet isn’t so deep, consider sending a simple invitation that encourages them to read an online excerpt, and perhaps take part in a contest geared to bookseller. The prize may have them going to the website, but what they read will have them talking about your book to their customers, and that’s what you want.

4.  Promote to Retail Locales that are NOT bookstores. Many authors have had success with non-traditional bookselling venues. I’ve heard from erotica writers that any place that sells x-rated videos is also a good place for their books to be. Books that appeal to brides or bridesmaids make great impulse purchases in wedding shops, too. Time to THINK OUT OF THE BOX.

5.  Do Everything You Can to Drive Online Sales. Very few authors are in the blessed position that allows them to leave it to their publishers to generate the buzz that will get readers excited their books. Bottom line: YOU ARE YOUR OWN BEST PROMOTER. And the cheapest, most efficient, most impactful tool you have is your website. It is the first and foremost place where readers will find out about you and your books.

That said, make sure that they can read an excerpt on your site, as well as the love letters you’ve received from your fans, and the reviews you’ve garnered. (And every review counts, so post it!)

Most importantly, link your site to as many online booksellers as you can, specifically to the subpage that features your book. Amazon is now 10% of all book sales. Its figures has grown by leaps and bounds each year since the company started. Add to that the sales of other large online booksellers, and you can see that future of book distribution may be moving in the same direction of movies and music: off the shelf, and onto the iPod.

If you don't sell your books, you won't be published for long. You've got to get involved. You've got to be a pioneer in the process, perhaps blaze a new trail or two. All bookstores, be they indie or chain, brick-and-mortar or online only, can order your book and get it shipped within a day or two or three. And they will do so, too, if customers are already asking for it. So give the bookstores that nudge they need to order a few copies of your book for their shelves.

BE AN ANGEL: Have a great story about a bulk sale you initiated? Did you stumble on a new way to sell your book to a lot of new fans, outside of a bookstore? If so, we'd love to hear about it, so toot your horn here.  . . .

Josie Brown left the advertising industry to become a crusading investigative reporter. Sadly, in our voyeuristic culture vulture society, there is an insatiable demand (and better pay) for celebrity journalists, which is how Josie came to rub elbows (not to mention egos) with the rich and famous. She still writes about celebrity, sex and scandal, only now as fiction (which, she insists, is just as strange as what she knows to be fact). Her latest novel is IMPOSSIBLY TONGUE-TIED.You can read about her books on her blog: http://www.josiebrown.com.

Branded Books... 

Wednesday + Josie Brown = Hype Hell

Branded Books... 

Comments

[Keri]

Thanks for this super-informative post. I'm tucking it away for future reference.

[Karin*]

once again, Jos, you strip it down.

[Tawny]

GREAT info! Thanks - I'm printing and learning ;-)

[rashenbo]

Very interesting, thank you for sharing. :)