Do Book Stores Matter for Book Sales in 2021?

Seeing your book on a bookshelf is one of the greatest moments as an author. But let's be real, buying habits have changed more in the last year than ever before. And bookstores, as much as they're not going away, they aren't what they used to be for authors to sell books. And as a self published author, it's a lot of extra work to get into bookstores. So is it worth it? If you're wondering if bookstores are worth the bother, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that will help you have a huge impact on your readers. And done right will help you grow your brand, build your business, and make you money. The best part, you keep all rights and royalties. So when I self published my first book, More Than Cash Flow, I wanted everything traditional published authors get and more. So I busted my butt to get my book into bookstores all across Canada. And it worked. I got widespread distribution that for many stores is still in effect seven years later. But I but I also got a ton of books returned. And at one point after I did a huge cross Canada book tour, which is what I did to get bookstores to order my book, I got hit with a $1,200 bill for returned books. Thankfully, I'd already pocketed more than 30 times that in book royalties at that point. But it still really stung to get a bill that big for books that had been returned. And before you think, well, why would you make your book returnable? Let me tell you that if you want your book to be in bookstores, you have to make it returnable. So let's talk about your desire to be in bookstores as a self published author. I mean it. Let's have a heart to heart about this because it may not be anything more than your ego wanting that bookstore distribution. Once you really understand the risks and rewards and size them up side by side. First let's talk about the money. We've talked about the wholesale discount to set for your book in a different video, so I'll link to that at the end so you're totally up to date and clear on those details. What you need to know is bookstores are struggling to stay open because they don't make much money per book sold and they have to pay rent, pay their staff, and keep customers coming in the door with marketing. So you have to give them a 40% discount in order to sell your book. To them. So they have any sort of shot of making money on your book when it sells on their shelf. To get yourself listed in a catalog that a store will order from, you need to list your book with Ingram. Ingram requires you set that wholesale discount at 55%. So they cover their costs as well with that discount. So they're keeping 15% and then giving the 40% discount to the store. That's fine. But here is where the problem arises. Bookstores haven't pre sold your book when they buy it. They buy it and hope it sells. Unlike print on demand, your book gets printed when someone buys it. The store has not sold your book. That's what causes returns. They have valuable shelf space, and if your book is sitting there collecting dust, they return it. The math problem, if the bookstore doesn't sell your book, whether it's because the store goes out of business, which happened way more in 2020 than any of us wanted, or they just aren't selling your book from the shelf, you, you have to pay them back for those copies. And the part you need to pay attention to is that you probably made about $4 from the sale of that book to the store. That varies depending on the book size, type, and price. But generally speaking, if you have a print book selling for, say, $18.99, you probably made $4 to $5 on that book when the bookstore ordered it from Ingram to put on their shelf. Here's the thing. The bookstore probably paid like nine or ten dollars for your book. You're not paying the bookstore back for what you made for the book. You're paying them back for what they paid. So you made like $5 and you're paying them 10. So you lost $5 on a book that didn't sell. And where the story got even worse for me when I got that $1,200 bill was when I didn't know that I should check the box that says return and destroy. I checked return to author, and that meant I paid for delivery for every individual copy sent back to me as well. So instead of it just costing me two times what I had made, it cost me two and a half times. Here's the thing. I. I thought, well, I can resell those books. And also the thought of my book babies burning in an incinerator somewhere was beyond horrifying to my author self. You will not burn my book, baby. No, burn the books. Burn them. Better my books than my hard earned cash. So let's just imagine for a second that you were like me and you Got your book into 100 plus bookstores and every store ordered three to five books. Now imagine the chain shuts down or a pandemic hits or some other tragedy strikes. The $1,200 bill sucke. But that wasn't thousands of books into bookstores. I think the number of returned books was less than 100 books at the time. I can't remember those details. I only remember the $1,200 bill. Here's the math that I hadn't done until recently when I was thinking this through for our clients. Knowing the approximate number of bookstores that carried my book and the rough amount the stores I did events with ordered, I probably sold a maximum of 800 books total to the stores. It could even be more like 500. Unfortunately, through Ingram, you don't get to see who's buying books. And so you don't get to know what's bookstores versus online versus Amazon. But keep in mind that I also did a ton of work to get sell through at the stores. I did events, promotions and local media driving people to the stores to get the signed copies I'd left there. So the effort was enormous for that number of sales. So the math. Brace yourself. This was a little ugly when I did it. If I sold 500 books in the store at the time I was making $5.80 per book. That's a net payday of $2900. And I had a return bill of 1200. That doesn't include hotels, marketing, or the PR professional that I hired or airfare for those book events. I tied most events in with speaking engagements and other things that actually paid for the trip. But still, even if I had sold a thousand copies through the bookstores, that's still only $5,800 made from a book. When you think of the effort that I put into that. Whoa. When you look at it like that, I start to think about changing strategy away from bookstores. The reality is our company shifted away from bookstores for our clients with the pandemic anyway. But the math and the effort that took to make those sales made my jaw drop. And I'd never looked at it like that before because I'd always looked at total sales. A quick note, because people always ask me. I know KDP Print says they have bookstore distribution as an option, but bookstores rarely, and let me put a massive emphasis on this because it really is rare. They rarely buy from KDP Print because A it's Amazon, not exactly a bookstore's best friend, and B they won't allow books to be returned. But two quick things before you give up on bookstores completely online is still good 55% discount and issues with taking big risks with returns are not the same with selling online through Barnes and Noble and Chapters Indigo or other chains like Walmart. With those chains they will sell your book online and you can have a wholesale discount set of 30% so you make more money even if there is a return. But here's the thing, you can't say okay, Barnes and Noble, you're buying books for your bookshelf, you're getting a 40% discount and if you're buying them to sell online, you get 15%. You don't get to choose. So you're either committing to bookstore shelves and given that full discount for all the books you sell through Ingram or you set the discount so it will only be sold online. Side note, if the numbers got you confused, let me just do a quick point of clarification. Ingram keeps 15% plus their printing costs. So a 30% discount means 50% for the store and 50% for Ingram. Or 55% is 15% for Ingram and 40% for the store. So if you want bookstores to put it on the shelf, you have to set that discount at 55% everywhere, reducing how much you make on that book by nearly 50% even for the books that sell online. In other words, you're leaving money on the table with every online sale. That's why in pre launch we set the discount at 30% and change it post launch. If someone wants to focus on bookstore sales after their book is out, which is when it's most likely to happen for you as a self published author anyway because bookstores want to see that you're already selling books. I'm not discounting how it feels validating to have your book on the shelves of a bookstore. It does. But just being on the shelf does not mean it will sell. Especially since when your book is in the bookstore your title will likely be solid spine out, not cover out on a shelf where someone has to really be searching for a book like yours. The only way to sell books is for you to generate that demand. Which is what I did when my book came out and I pursued the bookstores. But I can't emphasize it enough how hard I work to get sell through on those bookstores on stores that had a lot of stock ordered for an event that didn't sell through. I even ran post event promotions to my email list where they could go to the store and buy the remaining copies and send me a receipt and I would give them a free coaching session or free free access to one of our online courses. I spent $6,500 on three months of being pitched to media to coordinate with my bookstore events and my travel schedule. I got to do a ton of early morning news shows in the middle of the Canadian winter. So delightful. There was tons of benefits to my business for doing all of that, but book sales alone was not worth it. When you think of how much I made from selling to bookstores. All that work combined sold a ton of books. But people will buy that book online now more than ever. So you can do the work, keep more dollars sold per book and not worry about the bookstores returning your books and costing you more money if you still want a few select bookstores to carry your book. Well, in a future video, we're going to talk about the best way to get your book into a local bookstore and become a great bookstore partner. Because selling local can be really smart. If a bookseller knows you, knows your local and likes your book, they will sell it for you when people come in and talk with so it's worth being in a few bookstores if someone in those stores will be excited about it and if they'll order it at a discount rate, that works with your overall strategy. Or you can sell it on consignment, which some will so make sure you've subscribed to the channel so you can catch that video when it comes out. So what do you think? Will you pursue widespread bookstore distribution this year or not? Let's chat about it in the comments below. And right before you do that, please smash that thumbs up button. Go on, try it. It feels so good, especially after all that math. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noboringbooks swag. We have new videos every Tuesday and Friday, so make sure you catch every one by subscribing to the channel and turning those notifications on. Well, you are a lot of fun. Do you want to keep hanging out? I promise I don't do math very often. This video right here though is on wholesale discounts. And this video right here is all about getting your book into bookstores. Even if you only want online distribution, there are some important points in that video that will set you up for success. Both videos are pretty much guaranteed to be useful to you and maybe even a little fun. So click on over. I'll see you there.