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The Year Ahead in Publishing - It's Got To Get Better

Musings from around the industry and helpful hints for the year ahead. Plus an interview with Mark Victor Hansen.

"People were just too depressed to shop," said Women & Children First bookstore co-owner Linda Bubon in a Chicago Tribune article. Reporting a 20 percent drop in October sales, Bubon said author appearances and other in-store events that usually boost the store's profits in October had to be canceled because writers didn't want to travel. Luckily, sales have been high since Thanksgiving, running dead even with the same period last year. The Tribune quoted Avin Mark Domnitz of the American Booksellers Association: "Generally, the independents have been pleasantly surprised." He hinted that the trauma of Sept. 11 is helping business at brick-and-mortar stores. "Bookstores are the types of places where people turn for solace and comfort and community." Domnitz explained that books are an inexpensive form of entertainment, bookstores are comfortable places for friends to meet, and that people turned to bookstores to learn more about terrorism, Islam and the Middle East.

Get Real: Dicker & Deal
Even if a sense of normalcy returns to our shopping habits, some industry analysts wonder if the publishing industry is doing enough to stimulate book buying activity. This may be the perfect time to re-evalute the book pricing structure. Michael Cader, who keeps us all in touch with what's happening with his Publishers Lunch newsletter, says "book pricing does not make any sense, and it really never has. There is little about book pricing that encourages and grows audiences, either for a single author or for the business as a whole."

"Long-term trends indicate the consumer book market is stagnant from year to year; growth is very modest at best. Other data indicate a decrease in core book buyers. At the same time, unit prices are increasing -- so fewer books are being sold, more and more books are being published, and more and more books are easily available. We need, as a business, to get more people to really want more books. I don't have the answer here, and I don't think there's a single answer. But I'd love to see 2002 as the year publishers experiment like mad to help stimulate growth in the market and growth in our overall audience, to find new strategies for helping to build books and authors." Cader believes that retailers are willing to work with publishers in this regard.

Another industry pundit, Alan Canton of the Adams-Blake Company agrees that changes are needed and predicts pricing and discounting changes are on the way. He predicts we'll see "discounts going higher, cover prices going lower, more new publishers in niche markets, and more sales via the Net direct to consumers." Canton sees a leaner, meaner publishing machine, one that will leave casualties behind. "We'll see more returns, more distributors going paws-up, more large publishers going paws-up, and fewer books published, fewer people at BEA, and fewer profits to go around." In his most audacious prediction, he foresees "Amazon going paws-up and sold to Ingram or B&N."

Strong Work Ethic
We asked Canton, who also serves as an administrator for the one of the most active online publishing forums, the Publishers Forum, for a New Year's resolution to help independent authors and publishers in the coming year, and he referred us to one of his infamous Saturday Rants written last October and entitled "Five Easy Pieces." An excerpt:

"You need to do FIVE things a day to PROMOTE your list or part of it. Whether it is writing and sending a press release to different media sources, or making some phone calls, or doing radio shows, or a signing, etc. you need to do five things each day, six days a week to promote. They don't have to be 'great ideas.' They can be million-to-one shots. But just do five. If you do 5 things a day, six days a week, for 52 weeks, that is 1560 things. Most will not pay off. But some of them will, and maybe one or two of the will pay off BIG. After you have followed this paradigm for a year and if you are not successful THEN you can cry on my shoulder and I will try to comfort you. But until then, get off your butt and make it happen. Keep your ego out of it. Don't think of success or failure. Just do it. Write the state superintendent of schools with an idea relating to your book. Send a short press piece to the Wall Street Journal relating your book to Harry Potter. Just do stuff. Any stuff. Just do it. Five things a day. And do it everyday." Create Your Own Celebrity
How can an independent, sometimes one-person company, maintain the enthusiasm and will power to keep pushing for an entire year? How will you create your book's buzz and keep it buzzing? Michael Reisig, author of The Fledgling Author's Handbook suggests three tips:

1) Find a person already successful in your genre, and solicit their help with connections and promotion. "Be bold, seek out highly recognized individuals as well as the moderately successful. Tell them you would gladly mention their latest work on your cover in exchange for an endorsement. You'll be surprised how many are receptive to assisting new authors while advertising themselves through the use of quotes. It's the perfect symbiosis."

2) Create an alter-ego to tell wholesalers, reviewers, and others how wonderful you are. You cannot come in with your hat (and your book) in your hand, begging to be accepted. You need someone to sound the trumpet before you enter the room. It won't be long before you and your alter ego become best friends and you start believing your own PR.

3) Find a theme for your book. A one or two line sentence that says -- no, that SHOUTS - what your book is about. This line should stop a browser in his or her tracks, and you should use it in every piece of literature you send out, even your letterhead. Get people used to seeing those theme words and associating the theme with you.

See It, Hear It, Feel It
Judy "The Book Coach" Cullins has a similar attitude about developing a confident, "I'm the Greatest" attitude. She thinks independent authors and publishers need to put themselves back on top of their own to-do lists. "If you put important goals on the back burner, you will not be sharing your unique talent to help others, you will not reap the reward of ongoing, lifelong income, and you will miss one of life's greatest adventures."

"When you see, hear, and feel your book project already manifested through specific outcomes, you'll be in the 86% success group because it's far easier to claim it as true now in specific outcomes. This outcome, 'I see myself signing autographed copies' is far more powerful than 'I will autograph copies when my book is done.' Last January I applied this system to write Write Your eBook or Other Short Book-Fast! and Ten Non-Techie Ways to Market Your Book Online. In six months I had two salable books that are helping thousands realize their publishing dreams, and I've also created several new e-books and reports on publishing and marketing.

Now that they are finished:

1. I SEE my Web sales continue to grow from $500 a month (last year's goal-which grew to over $2260 in Dec) to $3000 a month or more (I don't want to limit myself).

2. I HEAR seminar and teleclass participants' applause and testimonials praising my coaching and products.

3. I FEEL grateful and exhilarated I get to have this adventure.

You can create your own Writing Dream Mental Rehearsal For 2002:

1. Name your specific dream as though it is already complete.

2. Put your 3-part dream rehearsal on a 3 by 5 card! Include I see, hear, and feel followed by appropriate specific outcomes to help your dream manifest fast. Carry it around with you. Put it on your car visor, above your light switches, on your mirrors or refrigerator.

Claim your dream, then let go of it-each day in the AM upon awakening and in the evening before sleep. Broadcast your desire to help attract the help you need--support, contacts, skills--even money!

3. Intend to manifest your book dream with all your heart, passion, energy, and focus. Know it can be yours. Start a special savings account for your book today, perhaps for publishing help, design help, writing and promotion help. Intention attracts action. Saving $100 a month for 7 months I had more than I needed to complete one large project.

4. Attend to your project. Put time, energy, money, research, and practice into your task. Get up two hours earlier three days a week, join a writers workshop to get ongoing feedback and support. If you don't want to attend in person, join a teleclass. To reduce your learning curve, look like a pro and finish faster, hire a book coach. Any effort you put into your project will pay off many times.

5. Let go of less important activities. Ask yourself "If I want to write or market this book or article, what must I say 'no' to?" Notice whenever you say 'yes' to one thing, you are saying 'no' to another. Make your writing practice a top priority, or it will waste away. Finally, we asked for a New Year's pep talk from the man behind one of the biggest publishing success stories in human history, Chicken Soup for the Soul. Mark Victor Hansen has always operated with a supreme confidence and faith in human nature, and people have responded positively, by purchasing over 50 million Chicken Soup books.

IP: What is different about the publishing outlook this year as compared to last year?

MVH: The future of publishing is brighter and more profitable than ever for those who are thinking in new, innovative, and creative ways. This includes both published and self-published authors. One of the main reasons is this: after the 911 tragedies, individuals are desperately interested in setting in order the new facts of experience. America's has never suffered from such a fundamental structural change before. It puts us into a brand new learning curve where, without compelling insightful information, people become stifled, stopped and stymied.

As one example, I quickly wrote and recorded a CD titled Let's Keep America Going and Beat Terrorism! along with motivational super-star Debra Jones. She found a banker to immediately invest in ten thousand copies by having them funded by the biggest businesses in Oklahoma, and they will be sold by students at $5 each as a fundraiser, raising $50,000. These funds will be placed in escrow for teachers to apply for grants to teach patriotism, free enterprise capitalism, leadership, etc. We expect to sell hundreds of thousands more now that we have found a sales model.

IP: As people's shopping and information gathering habits evolve, how must publishers' marketing methods evolve?

MVH: Publishers must understand that they need to embrace, support and encourage the talented marketing savvy of the writers, finding a way to leverage their sales through the efforts of the authors. I'm currently reading the biography of Mark Twain. When he wrote Huckleberry Finn he created a subscriber-based system where he had people sell his book door to door. Yes, Twain was a phenomenal writer, but his sales and marketing brilliance made him a household name when no one had even heard of him before.

Robert Allen and I have just finished a book in a brand new series entitled The One Minute Millionaire, to be published by a division of Random House October 2002. It will be the world's first info-novel, a book of 1/2 fiction and 1/2 non-fiction. Our intent is to become #1 on both fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists simultaneously! We have also come up with an innovative way to pre-sell one million copies of the book, similar to Twain's method, to find 100 people in 100 cities to buy 100 books each. This equals 1 million books. This kind of thinking scared 13 New York publishers into saying no to Robert and I. Only Random House had the courage to back this concept.

IP: How can an author make his or her work stand out from the rest?

MVH: Authors and publishers need to be creative in concept, cover, content, marketing and selling. The problem is that most people don't have big enough goals to wake up their sub-conscious of 18 billion brain cells to really deliver the goods. Your goals should both thrill and scare you at the same time.

IP: What should they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning and say?

MVH: Their ultimate sales goal should be in writing, decoratively colored and placed on the mirror, so they can view it - and repeat it - twice a day. Here is what mine says: I am so happy I am actively selling one million Copies of my new book By December 25, 2002.

IP: Can books change the world?

MVH: YES. Books have always changed the world because they change the mind of those living in it. Books change the concepts of their mind, which change their beliefs, which changes their results.

Obviously The Bible has been read and used as a spiritual resource to one billion people on the planet. Think and Grow Rich, in business, has created more millionaires than any other book in history. And I know that Chicken Soup for the Soul has positively impacted over 80 million readers with heart-touching, soul-penetrating stories that demonstrate hope, love, courage and a change of perspective.

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Well folks, there you have it. Words of encouragement, words of warning, and words of advice for taking advantage of the clean slate that is 2002. Make the best of it!