An author for one of my publishers recently did an ad campaign on facebook, and he asked if he could see the sales to compare them with the ad campaign. The following is the reply from the publisher. It's a great eye-opener into the reality of being a small-press publisher: (This is printed with permission)
PRINT
We sell our print books through the following:
1. Ingrams
2. Website
3. Folletts
4. Brodart
Of the above, Brodart and Folletts sell directly to libraries and bookstores. They send us purchase orders and I fulfill the purchase orders and bill them. Brodarts pays very promptly. Folletts pays somewhat promptly. (Although they did send me a check for $0.00 last month. I’ll try not to spend it all in one place.) Generally the only books they buy are the ones that have been reviewed in PW or LJ.
If people order from our website, they generally pay in advance. I sometimes have libraries or stores order via email or phone and depending on the situation, I may or may not get payment in advance. If I do not get payment in advance, it can take FOREVER to get payment from some bookstores. Since I’ve been stiffed so many times in the last year on these invoices I am beginning to be more hard -nosed about demanding money in advance.
This paragraph edited by request of the publisher: We have a contract with one distributor who is very large, but is notorious in the business for being slow to pay. I have no way of tracking our sales through them. It just has to be a pleasant surprise when and if I receive a statement from them.
All other print copies are sold through Ingrams. This includes the books sold on Amazon.com. I do not sell print copies directly to Amazon.com. Our printer is a subsidiary of Ingrams so I can check my compensation report and see how many copies they have sold but I don’t know who they sold them to. I have no way of knowing how many of those sales are to Amazon.com. Bookstores and libraries also order through Ingrams, as well as other online book retailers. I can sometimes tell when some of you are doing signings because I will see an order in a multiple of 5. This is generally updated on a weekly basis. There is a three month delay on these payments to me. If we’ve had returns, then there may not actually be anything left for them to pay me by the time they get done taking out the money for the returns. Sometimes we end up OWING them money because the cost of the returns in a single month exceeds the amount they owe us for sales.
Electronic
We sell our electronic books through the following:
1. Fictionwise
2. Mobi
3. Kindle
4. Our website
5. Reader’s Eden
We sell most of our ebooks through Fictionwise. I can track our sales from their website. They update it weekly. They pay quarterly.
There are a gazillion other EBook vendors out there who are Mobi retailers and who sell our books through their agreement with Mobi. If you see your ebook on a site other than one of the ones above, don’t worry about it. They have a license with Mobi to sell the book and we get the same amount from them that we do from Mobi. I can track our sales on the Mobi website. We used to sell a lot on Mobi but since we have gone to Fictionwise and since the introduction of Kindle, we sell very little on Mobi. Amazon.com owns Mobi. Mobi pays annually provided the amount hits a minimum level. We haven’t hit their minimum for the last two years (It’s a VERY high minimum.) That’s why some of you have very old Mobi sales on your royalty statements that are still in the payment pending table.
Our Kindle contract is rather convoluted because it is an addendum to our Mobi contract. We don’t actually have a contract with Amazon.com to sell on Kindle—our contract is with Mobi to sell in Kindle format on Amazon.com. There is a 3 month delay on receiving sales figures from Kindle. They send me the statement just before they send payment.
So, I will not be able to tell for 3 months if your ad on Facebook is resulting in sales on Kindle. I can, however, tell you that I have not seen much activity on Fictionwise. I’ve seen 3 copies sell on Ingrams. FWIW, that’s the data I have.
I can also tell all of you that I have google alerts out for every single one of you and the people whose names show up on google alerts the most often have the highest number of sales.
Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Monday, August 24, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
My stories in the Zombie Cookbook!
I just got the contract for The Zombie Cookbook for my two stories:
"Wokking Dead" It's war and love when zombies attack a Korean restaurant.
"My Big Fat Zombie Wedding" So he's undead--doesn't mean he's not the perfect man for a romance that will last 'till death and beyond.
It comes out in September. I'm looking forward to it. I know a lot of the writers through the Writers Chatroom, so I'm expecting some fun and quirky stories, poems and, yes, recipes in this anthology coming from the appropriately named Damnation Books.
(I have a recipe for Intel on Ice. Not for the living. Trust me on this.)
More details as I learn them!
Monday, April 07, 2008
Amazon's New Marketing Fiasco
The latest buzz in the publishing world is Amazon.com's new ploy to insist that all publishers who use Print-On-Demand (POD) technology use their BookSurge POD printer if they want to sell their books on amazon.com. Already several titles, while still showing on their website, have lost the "buy now" button.
POD does not mean vanity publishing or self-publishing, although this is the printing choice most vanity and self-publishers take. However, a lot of small press, traditional publishers use this technology in order to spare themselves warehouse expenses. Also, I believe some of the bigger publishing houses use it for their less popular but still selling titles. This move by Amazon has big consequences.
For Amazon, it makes financial sense--if everyone goes along with it. They now get paid for printing the books as well as selling them. However, as you'll see below, a lot of small press publishers are not going to give in to Amazon's "blackmail."
For small publishers, it's a problem. It's not just the principal of the thing, as I understand it; "retooling" their old titles to match BookSurge's needs and meeting BookSurge's prices is cost-prohibitive for a lot of publishers. They may end up going on their own or going out of business.
For authors like me, it could affect sales. Two of the three fiction publishers I contract with use POD; if Amazon goes through with its plans, my books will not be available for sales on Amazon, which of course is the most common sales venue outside of brick-and-mortar stores. Amazon already demands a big discount in order to have your book on their website, and that eats into royalties; now, they want an even bigger cut.
For readers, it means that if you like unusual books--the kind that don't grace the shelves of B&N--you're going to have a harder time finding them, at least until some other company rises to take Amazon's place. Ditto if you like shopping on-line.
As you can read below, small press publishers are taking action. What can you do? Write to amazon.com and express your displeasure at their new policy.
In the meantime, here's what publishers are doing:
(This from the Authors Guild, forwarded to me from another writing group.)
Last week Amazon announced that it would be requiring that all books
that it sells that are produced through on-demand means be printed by
BookSurge, their in-house on-demand printer/publisher. Amazon pitched
this as a customer service matter, a means for more speedily
delivering print-on-demand books and allowing for the bundling of
shipments with other items purchased at the same time from Amazon. It
also put a bit of an environmental spin on the move -- claiming less
transportation fuel is used (this is unlikely, but that's another
story) when all items are shipped directly from Amazon.
We, and many others, think something else is afoot. Ingram Industries'
Lightning Source is currently the dominant printer for on-demand
titles, and they appear to be quite efficient at their task. They ship
on-demand titles shortly after they are ordered through Amazon
directly to the customer. It's a nice business for Ingram, since they
get a percentage of the sales and a printing fee for every on-demand
book they ship. Amazon would be foolish not to covet that business.
What's the rub? Once Amazon owns the supply chain, it has effective
control of much of the "long tail" of publishing -- the enormous
number of titles that sell in low volumes but which, in aggregate,
make a lot of money for the aggregator. Since Amazon has a firm grip
on the retailing of these books (it's uneconomic for physical book
stores to stock many of these titles), owning the supply chain would
allow it to easily increase its profit margins on these books: it need
only insist on buying at a deeper discount -- or it can choose to
charge more for its printing of the books -- to increase its profits.
Most publishers could do little but grumble and comply.
We suspect this maneuver by Amazon is far more about profit margin
than it is about customer service or fossil fuels. The potential big
losers (other than Ingram) if Amazon does impose greater discounts on
the industry, are authors -- since many are paid for on-demand sales
based on the publisher's gross revenues -- and publishers.
We're reviewing the antitrust and other legal implications of Amazon's
bold move. If you have any information on this matter that you think
could be helpful to us, please call us at (212) 563-5904 and ask for
the legal services department, or send an e-mail to
staff@authorsguild.org.
Feel free to post or forward this message in its entirety.
-----------------------
Copyright 2008, The Authors Guild. The Authors Guild
(www.authorsguild.org) is the nation's largest society of published
book authors.
POD does not mean vanity publishing or self-publishing, although this is the printing choice most vanity and self-publishers take. However, a lot of small press, traditional publishers use this technology in order to spare themselves warehouse expenses. Also, I believe some of the bigger publishing houses use it for their less popular but still selling titles. This move by Amazon has big consequences.
For Amazon, it makes financial sense--if everyone goes along with it. They now get paid for printing the books as well as selling them. However, as you'll see below, a lot of small press publishers are not going to give in to Amazon's "blackmail."
For small publishers, it's a problem. It's not just the principal of the thing, as I understand it; "retooling" their old titles to match BookSurge's needs and meeting BookSurge's prices is cost-prohibitive for a lot of publishers. They may end up going on their own or going out of business.
For authors like me, it could affect sales. Two of the three fiction publishers I contract with use POD; if Amazon goes through with its plans, my books will not be available for sales on Amazon, which of course is the most common sales venue outside of brick-and-mortar stores. Amazon already demands a big discount in order to have your book on their website, and that eats into royalties; now, they want an even bigger cut.
For readers, it means that if you like unusual books--the kind that don't grace the shelves of B&N--you're going to have a harder time finding them, at least until some other company rises to take Amazon's place. Ditto if you like shopping on-line.
As you can read below, small press publishers are taking action. What can you do? Write to amazon.com and express your displeasure at their new policy.
In the meantime, here's what publishers are doing:
(This from the Authors Guild, forwarded to me from another writing group.)
Last week Amazon announced that it would be requiring that all books
that it sells that are produced through on-demand means be printed by
BookSurge, their in-house on-demand printer/publisher. Amazon pitched
this as a customer service matter, a means for more speedily
delivering print-on-demand books and allowing for the bundling of
shipments with other items purchased at the same time from Amazon. It
also put a bit of an environmental spin on the move -- claiming less
transportation fuel is used (this is unlikely, but that's another
story) when all items are shipped directly from Amazon.
We, and many others, think something else is afoot. Ingram Industries'
Lightning Source is currently the dominant printer for on-demand
titles, and they appear to be quite efficient at their task. They ship
on-demand titles shortly after they are ordered through Amazon
directly to the customer. It's a nice business for Ingram, since they
get a percentage of the sales and a printing fee for every on-demand
book they ship. Amazon would be foolish not to covet that business.
What's the rub? Once Amazon owns the supply chain, it has effective
control of much of the "long tail" of publishing -- the enormous
number of titles that sell in low volumes but which, in aggregate,
make a lot of money for the aggregator. Since Amazon has a firm grip
on the retailing of these books (it's uneconomic for physical book
stores to stock many of these titles), owning the supply chain would
allow it to easily increase its profit margins on these books: it need
only insist on buying at a deeper discount -- or it can choose to
charge more for its printing of the books -- to increase its profits.
Most publishers could do little but grumble and comply.
We suspect this maneuver by Amazon is far more about profit margin
than it is about customer service or fossil fuels. The potential big
losers (other than Ingram) if Amazon does impose greater discounts on
the industry, are authors -- since many are paid for on-demand sales
based on the publisher's gross revenues -- and publishers.
We're reviewing the antitrust and other legal implications of Amazon's
bold move. If you have any information on this matter that you think
could be helpful to us, please call us at (212) 563-5904 and ask for
the legal services department, or send an e-mail to
staff@authorsguild.org.
Feel free to post or forward this message in its entirety.
-----------------------
Copyright 2008, The Authors Guild. The Authors Guild
(www.authorsguild.org) is the nation's largest society of published
book authors.
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