Becky Robinson argues that book promotion money should go toward getting books into readers' hands and driving event attendance, not expensive publicity. She contrasts what publishers measure (units sold) with what authors actually need (client acquisition).
But here's the thing, Peter. Before anyone hires someone like me to help them promote their book, my deeply held belief is that distribution of copies of the book into the world, like seeds that can grow, is way more valuable than hiring any publicist.
OK.
So, and I coach people to that. Hey, look, before you decide that you're going to spend $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 with my organization to launch your book, you need to first put the money into getting the book into people's hands. Matt Holt is a publisher with Ben Bella. Matt Holt Books is his imprint, and he says there are 2 things that, that move business books: books in hands and butts in seats. So butts in seats refers to people at events, and, you know, you may have some control over getting invited to events, but what you do have control over ultimately as the author is, can you give your book away and get it into more people's hands?
Well, and stay there for a minute because this is one of the stressors that I have around publishing is that, listen, a publisher's success metric is really, really simple: number of units sold less the cost, right? So advance, printing, publishing, whatever. Did we sell X number of books at some level of profit? And black, white, win or lose, period, full stop. That's it for the publisher. Now, on occasion, maybe there's a brand builder and they're fighting for Obama's book or something like that, but but let's parking lot the crazy outliers. For the most part, they've got to sell more books at a price that is reasonable and profitable, period. For an author, almost every author, and I'm talking nonfiction business, the folks that you and I work with, book sales really are not the deal. Yes, it's nicer to sell more than less, but the revenue isn't the point. So I would argue in your game, You know, in, in your case, whether you sold 3,000 books or 30,000 books, 30 is better than 3. You know, I'm not the greatest math person. The better metric would probably be, wow, did this book help us acquire 10 new clients this year or 30?
