All this month I'm posting letters to Book Biz Santa from readers of this blog. If you have one, please email it to [email protected]
This is part two of a three part letter to Book Biz Santa from 25 authors. Part three will appear on Wednesday.
8. Can you please stop pushing the publishing house's line in your ads (i.e. All six of your books out that month?) We know you have other books to promote but if you want to earn back the money you paid (and trust us we want to earn more), then think about pushing the author and what they have to offer readers.
Santa offers individual toys. So should publishing houses!
9. Please, in the flap copy, don't compare us to other authors--and if you do, check with us first so we don't find ourselves compared to an author who writers nothing like us. But really, we didn't write our work to be "in the vein of" anyone. We want to be originals.
10. Please stop sending books and authors out without a proper web presence. We're just shy of 2005 and it's ridiculous for a book and an author not to have something more on line than their book cover and bio at the publisher's main site. Increasingly, readers get their information from the internet. Saying your author "isn't tech savvy" or saying that their book "isn't for that audience" doesn't cut it anymore. In 2005, not giving a book adequate web presence is like not listing it in the catalog.
11. Can you lower the amount of promotional money you use on the brand name writers? They're already bestsellers, and they'll continue to be bestsellers without the million dollar publicity campaigns. Could you throw some of that money to us?
12. Isn't it about time to end returns? Stripping and remaindering books is one of the stupidest practices in retail. Shelf times are becoming shorter, there's no incentive to sell books from either the bookstore or the publisher sales reps, and the amount of money wasted is staggering.
Instead of printing 100,000 copies of something, hoping to sell 60,000, can't you just print the 60,000 and use the leftover money to market that book?
13. Can you write a royalty statement that makes sense?
14. Can you keep us in the loop of how our book is doing? We have a vested interest in its success, and we can do more to help it succeed than you might think.
(To be continued...)
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