1-13-ibpa-magazine3

j a n u a r y 2 0 1 3 | V o l . 3 1 • n o . 1

Now That I Work for MeWhat’s different, what’s better, what’s worse

Gone Today, Here TomorrowReturns norms and options

Thumbnail TacticsMake your covers effective online

How Much for 10,000 Copies?The nonretail sales alternative

The School MarketHow the AR hurdle hurts

Powerful PublishersFive habits that help them get that way

Selling BacklistWhich marketing moves work best

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Visit the IBPA website at www.ibpa-online.org | 3

In This Issue

4 Five Habits of Powerful Publishers

by Florrie Binford Kichler. How to thrive when today’s rules are likely to land in tomorrow’s recycle bin.

6 Up Against Barriers for Children’s Books

by Linda Salisbury. What’s going on when award-winning books praised by kids, parents, and teachers are locked out of schools?

10 Covers That Work Well Online by Cathi Stevenson. Design do’s and don’ts

for covers that can stimulate sales online.

12 The Own-Your-Own- Business Alternative

by Christopher Robbins. Which is better—growing somebody else’s publishing company to $26 million, or starting one from scratch?

15 Comparing Two Major Marketing Strategies

by Brian Jud. There’s traditional book marketing, and then there’s the kind that lets you sell thousands of copies nonreturnable.

19 How Backlist Makes the Bottom Line Better

by Linda Carlson. Tactics for profiting from titles that aren’t New, New, New!

January 2013 | Vol. 31 • No. 1

IBPA Independent (ISSN 1058-4102, formerly PMA Newsletter ) is published monthly by Independent Book Publishers Association.

Periodicals Postage paid at Manhattan Beach, CA 90266, and at additional mailing offices.

HEADQUARTERSIndependent Book Publishers Association

1020 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Suite 204 Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Phone: 310/546-1818 • Fax: 310/546-3939 Email: [email protected]

Web site: www.ibpa-online.org

OFFICERS and DIRECTORSSteve Mettee, The Write Thought, Board Chair

Davida G. Breier, Johns Hopkins University PressRoy Carlisle, The Independent Institute

Rana DiOrio, Little Pickle PressTom Doherty, Cardinal Publishers Group /

Blue River PressKelly Gallagher, Ingram Content Group

Peter Goodman, Stone Bridge PressDeltina Hay, Dalton Publishing

MaryAnn F. Kohl, Bright Ring Publishing, Inc.Dr. Haki Madhubuti, Third World Press

John Mutter, Shelf AwarenessChristopher Robbins, Familius

Janice Schnell, Ingram Content GroupCarlene Sippola, Whole Person Associates,

Immediate Past Board ChairStephanie Stewart, Academy of Learning

Florrie Binford Kichler, PresidentTerry Nathan, Executive Director/Secretary

Lisa Krebs Magno, Assistant Director

ADVISORSJonathan Kirsch, Law Offices of Jonathan Kirsch,

General CounselLloyd Jassin, Law Offices of Lloyd Jassin, Counsel

Hal Jaffe, Bay Sherman Craig, LLP, Accountant

IBPA INDEPENDENT STAFFJudith Appelbaum, EditorLinda Carlson, ReporterJudith Stein, Copy Editor

Darlene Swanson, Van-garde Imagery, Inc., Design and Production

Chris Kahn, Advertising SalesEditor contact: [email protected]

Published by Independent Book Publishers Association.

Independent Book Publishers Association cannot and does not guarantee any specific results to

participants in IBPA marketing programs. Copyright ©2013 by Independent Book

Publishers Association. No portion of this publication may be reprinted without express

written consent of IBPA. The writings contained within the pages of this publication do not

necessarily reflect opinions of IBPA.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to IBPA Independent, 1020 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Suite 204, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266.

28 IBPA Marketing Opportunities

30 Demystifying Returns by Janice Schnell. Answers to questions

Ingram gets from both seasoned publishers and startups.

33 What Publishers’ Websites Can Do, Part 3

Contributions by Len Barot, Jim Horan, Jacqueline Church Simonds, Georgia McBride, Patricia Fry, Joel Friedlander, Sid Grosvenor, Robert Manni, Tom Doherty, Cathi Bosco, MaryAnn F. Kohl, John Burns, Brett Cohen. The final roundup in our series on Website features and functions.

38 More Help with Workflow by Karen Bellenir. How to handle the

challenges of InDesign updates.

41 Spotlight

45 Classified Mart

46 Advertiser Index

IBPA AFFILIATESAuthor U of Denver, CO, authoru.org

Bay Area Independent Publishers Association, baipa.org

Book Publishers Northwest, bpnw.org

Colorado Independent Publishers Association, cipabooks.com

Connecticut Authors & Publishers Association, aboutcapa.com

Florida Publishers Association, FLbookpub.org

Great Lakes Independent Publishers Association, [email protected]

Greater New York Independent Publishers Association, [email protected]

Hawaii Book Publishers Association, hawaiibooks.org

Independent Publishers of New England, ipne.org

MidAtlantic Book Publishers Association, midatlanticbookpublishers.com

Midwest Independent Publishers Association, mipa.org

Minnesota Book Publishers Roundtable, publishersroundtable.org

New Mexico Book Association, nmbook.org

Northern California Publishers and Authors Association, norcalpa.org

Northwest Association of Book Publishers, nwabp.org

Organization of Book Publishers of Ontario, ontariobooks.ca

Publishers and Writers of San Diego, publisherswriters.org

Publishers Association of Los Angeles, pa-la.org

Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network, spawn.org (online only)

St. Louis Publishers Association, stlouispublishers.org

Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association, uppaa.org

The next “Language of Publishing” installment will appear in our next issue, and installments will keep running every other month until we’re through Z.

4 | IBPA Independent | December 2012

by Florrie Binford Kichler, President, IBPA

President’s Post

If I asked 10 publishers to describe their biggest challenge in the indus-try today, I would bet my last digital file that 10 out of 10 would say it is keeping up with the relentless pace of change. Change is unceasing, and we all want to know what’s going to hap-pen in the future—which nowadays isn’t measured in years but in months, weeks, days, and even hours.

There seem to be as many opinions about the future of publishing as there are people breathing. Print will never go away; print is dead. Bookstores are irrelevant; bookstores are critical to the culture. And I could go on.

So how does a publisher cope in an unstable environment where the only constant is that today’s rules often land in tomorrow’s recycle bin?

From my own experience both as a publisher and as president of IBPA, I’ve learned that five basic habits will help you survive and thrive in this crazy industry no matter what the future brings.

✦ PowErFuL PuBLIShEr hABIT #1: Do whAT You LovEI know each of you has a different story about your publishing journey,

but I bet it would be hard to find any-body who says their primary motive for becoming a publisher was to make lots of money. My guess is that you began publishing because you were passionate about an issue or a topic or a story, and you felt compelled to communicate a message or a narrative that would resonate with readers.

Of course we all need money to fuel our businesses and our lives—that’s a given. But if you don’t love what you do, the money, the message or story, and your own motivation will suffer. Readers are smart—they’ll recognize instantly if your heart’s not in it, which is why your heart needs to be at the core of everything you publish.

A key requirement for success is pas-sion for your product. But passion alone will get you nowhere without . . .

✦ PowErFuL PuBLIShEr hABIT #2: PrEPArEBefore POD, short-run digital print-ing, and e-books came on the scene, the IBPA office often received phone calls that went something like this:

“Good morning, IBPA. How may I help you?”

“I’m a brand-new publisher, and I was wondering if I could ask you a question.”

“Of course, that’s what we’re here for. What’s your question?”

“I have 2,000 books in my garage. Now what do I do?”

Whether it’s 2,000 books in your garage, a POD file at a printer, or an e-book file on your hard drive, waiting to create and implement a marketing plan for a book until it’s available for sale will always mean starting way too late.

Now that so little upfront investment is required to make a book available in print or in digital formats, the temp-tation to worry about that business/marketing plan and budget later is almost irresistible.

Resist it.

Whether you upload a Word file to Smashwords, submit your properly formatted manuscript to Kindle Direct Publishing, choose a digital printer to supply your book via print-on-demand, place a print order for thou-sands of copies, or do some combina-tion of those things, you must have:

Five Habits of Powerful Publishers


President’s Post ■

• a business plan with a road map detailing how you intend to grow and where the money will come from to fund that growth

• a marketing plan that spells out how your targeted readers will discover and purchase your book

✦ PowErFuL PuBLIShEr hABIT #3: MAnAgE METADATA“Metadata” sounds scary and geeky, but it is nothing more than the information that travels with your book wherever it is, online and off—at a minimum, the ISBN, title, author, page count, binding, publisher, and publication date.

Pretty basic facts, but if any of them are incorrect, the conse-quences will be negative both for the discoverability of your title online and for your book’s sales (see “Metadata Really Helps,” April). Check your metadata at the major online retailers at least once a month. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve found errors in the information about my com-pany’s books—incorrect ISBNs, the wrong cover showing up for a title, or no cover showing up at all.

✦ PowErFuL PuBLIShEr hABIT #4: LEArnI don’t mean just go to an occasional IBPA Webinar or attend Publishing University once a year, although Webinars, in-person conferences, and trade shows are invaluable learning opportunities. Given the speed of change, learning has to mean staying up to date on industry trends and happenings, and that means read, read, read.

These are a few of the musts on my Read list:

• IBPA Independent (ibpa-online.org)

• Shelf Awareness (shelfawareness.com)

• Publishers Weekly, print, and PW Daily (publishersweekly.com)

• ForeWord Reviews (forewordreviews.com)

• Publishers Lunch, free and paid editions (lunch.publishersmarketplace.com)

• Bookselling This Week, news from indie bookstores (news.bookweb.org)

• The Shatzkin Files, by Mike Shatzkin (idealog.com)

• Seth’s Blog, by Seth Godin (sethgodin.typepad.com)

• Amazon press release feed (amazon.com; scroll down and click on “Press Releases”)

• LinkedIn groups and Facebook pages about the publish-ing industry (linkedin.com and facebook.com)

• Digital Book World newsletter (digitalbookworld.com)

• Tools of Change newsletter (toc.oreilly.com)

• Publishing Perspectives (publishingperspectives.com)

• Publishing Business Today newsletter (bookbusinessmag.com)

Learning also means looking ahead—and by that I mean con-tinually educating yourself about what’s new and what’s next.

But in looking ahead don’t overlook what you need to be doing now, which is producing the best nonfiction or fiction that you are capable of and getting it out to those readers who are hungry for information and entertainment.

Which brings me to:

✦ PowErFuL PuBLIShEr hABIT #5: rEMEMBEr ThE rEADErWhether or not book industry change continues to accelerate in the years to come is anybody’s guess. But I suggest to you that something will stay constant in the foreseeable future—readers. Regardless of whether they read online or offline, in a book or on a screen, readers will always be looking for a good story, a useful piece of advice, or inspiration to make their lives better and their corners of the world better places.

As you go through your daily tasks, trying to figure out file conversions or your next Twitter post or how to promote your book on Pinterest, never forget that the “market” you’re trying to reach is made up of real people—readers. Reach them successfully and provide them with outstanding con-tent, and you will build an enduring publishing program.

In my opinion, there’s never been a better time to be an inde-pendent publisher. Our strength lies in our creativity, our innovation, and our passion. Add the five Powerful Publisher Habits to the mix, and there will be no stopping you in your publishing journey. ■

Follow Florrie and IBPA on Twitter at twitter.com/ibpa, and on IBPA’s blog at ibpablog.wordpress.com. Join Independent Book Publishers Association–IBPA group on LinkedIn (linkedin.com).


Independent publishers and self-pub-lishers, especially of children’s books, can often be identified by lumpy heads and bruised egos. We’ve been bumping into walls and closed doors for years: newspapers that won’t review books (regardless of quality) that aren’t pro-duced by well-known houses; libraries that purchase through bundled con-tracts rather than at local or regional discretion; school book fairs open only to Scholastic’s products; schools that buy and recommend only books that come through the Renaissance Learning (Accelerated Reader [AR]) program; and even the national chains.

But we learn to take our lumps and doggedly look for ways around the obstacles, especially ways that create interest, build credibility, and gener-ate publicity and sales. For example, at Tabby House, we search out relevant columnists and freelancers to send announcements of our new books, and we present school or library programs.

Readers and buyers look at, touch, and relate to award-winner stickers on my books.

Up Against Barriers for Children's Books

ThE AwArDS APProAchOne of the most fulfilling ways, for me, entails winning meaningful awards, even if these awards so far haven’t unlocked doors to key national mar-kets. Awards sell books. And they show youngsters that medals are not just for athletics. Books win golds too.

I do a lot of hand-selling, so I’m in constant contact with readers and buyers. They look at, touch, and relate to award-winner stickers on my books, and I’m proud to say that each of my 10 children’s titles has been a winner (16 awards so far). Sometimes people impulsively purchase one book rather than another on the basis of which has received the most awards.

Three of the books in my Bailey Fish Adventure series received top honors (silver or bronze) from the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards; two received the gold in juvenile fiction from the President’s Book Awards sponsored by the Florida Publishers Association. One, a multiple award-winner, also placed first in the Virginia Press Wom-en’s Association contest (that one doesn’t offer stickers, so we made our own). And still others have received finalist awards from Eric Hoffer and ForeWord, or silver medals from FPA.

Each time a book wins or is honored, I, and usually the contest organiz-ers, generate press releases; I post to

by Linda Salisbury


Children’s Books ■

my Web site (lindasalisburyauthor.com) and my Facebook author page; I tweet (not my strong suit); and I affix stickers to covers (even if cover designers don’t want their art plas-tered over). Independent bookstores, gift shops, and other retail outlets value the stickers and ask that they be added to books in stock. And at festivals, shows, farmers’ markets—anywhere we can hand-sell books for a greater profit—Tabby House has a table many weekends, and the award stickers sell books there too.

Award-winning children’s books praised by kids, parents, and teachers may not be allowed on the shelves of school libraries.

Award mentions also let the public know that a book has been recognized by independent judges—who are often otherwise hard-to-reach librarians or booksellers. In short, awards build credibility for books and their authors that directly translates to sales.

ThE Ar oBSTAcLEAs word of an award reaches the public, it may help you get the attention of schools and, occasionally, librarians, but awards are not likely to help you deal with the closed doors of organizations, such as Renaissance Learning (purveyor of the Accelerated Reader system), that have a tight grip on many school systems.

So, here’s a quiz, and depending on how well you answer, you may get a prize.

You’ve written or published award-winning children’s books praised by kids, parents, and teachers, but they are not read in schools, including schools in districts where you are invited to present programs. In fact, your books may not even be allowed on the shelves of school libraries.

Question #1: Why?

A. Your books are too controversial.

B. You publish paperbacks.

C. You haven’t dumbed-down vocabulary.

D. Your titles aren’t included in AR reading-management programs.

If you picked D, you were correct, and your AR candy is in the mail.

On the surface, programs such as Renaissance Learning (founded in 1986) appear to be a great way to motivate chil-dren to read more and to let teachers easily ascertain whether a student has actually read a particular book.

About 40,000 school districts (including some overseas) are involved with the Renaissance Learning Accelerated Reader Enterprise program for grades K–12, purchasing software and quizzes designed to “determine reading level,” “set prac-tice goals,” “personalize practice,” assess achievement, and provide “instant feedback.”

The award winning Treasure in Sugar’s Book Barn includes this drawing of a small building that Sugar got permission to fix up as a used bookstore.

Obviously, if your book is not part of the program, a district that has invested heavily in the Renaissance Learning soft-ware may be reluctant to buy the book for library or class-room use. And acceptance is where the difficulties begin for small presses.

Look at some of the criteria:

✓ multiple positive reviews from national publications such as School Library Journal, Horn Book, Library Media Connection, YOYA, and Booklist

✓ national awards

✓ inclusion on state recommended reading lists, among others

✓ popular authors

✓ inclusion in continuing popular series such as Magic Tree House or Harry Potter


■ Children’s Books

✓ recommendations from a number of different schools across the nation

I think most independent book publishers would agree that it would be tough to meet those criteria—enough of them, at least, to add up to AR acceptance—regardless of how worthy the book.

Question #2: Why does this matter? Because of:

• reaching your market



• your bottom line

If you answered “All the above,” you are correct.

The school market is potentially huge for publishers of chil-dren’s books. We would like our biographies, fiction, histo-ries, animal stories, picture books, and more to be available to schoolchildren everywhere. But numerous schools and districts have tied into the reading-management programs that essentially exclude anything the programs haven’t accepted. As a result, students may not read anything but the AR-accepted books that they get points for reading.

Holly Moulder, a White Pelican Press award-winning author, is a former teacher. She told me she used AR in the classroom to get an idea of comprehension and for book reports, and she said it did help motivate some kids to read. But she also said: “I did see teachers demand that students read only AR books, which to me was ridiculous. Worse still was that some teachers demanded that the students read only those books in their predetermined AR range.”

Unfortunately, that isn’t unusual. Several years ago I was invited to a southwest Florida school to talk about my award-wining Bailey Fish Adventure series with its tar-get age group. Tabby House had prepared AR quizzes and developed reading levels for these books, almost all of which have references to that area.

At the end of the first session of lively discussion, a student asked the librarian where the books were shelved. The librar-ian pointed to a shelf, but then said that the books (reading level, grade five) were too difficult for this child, a bright third-grader. What? I was astonished. I know that my books have been read and discussed elsewhere in classrooms from second to sixth grades Even six-year-olds have been hooked on the series.

AR doesn’t cultivate a love of reading; it focuses kids on points and rewards. Does that bother you?

I confronted the librarian after she made similar remarks in my next session and her response was, Well, kids would ask about the AR levels when they asked whether they should read the books. I said it would be better if kids were encour-aged to read what interested them instead of being arbitrarily limited. I’m sure I did not change her views.

Another school librarian once emailed me because her school’s IT department couldn’t locate the AR questions Tabby House had provided. “I need to input the tests in our system for our students so they will continue to read the series. If they can’t take the tests, I’m afraid they will not be motivated to continue to read the series,” said the librarian.

AR obviously doesn’t work to cultivate a love of reading; it works to focus kids on points and rewards.

Another award winner, The Thief at Keswick Inn features a surprise bequest, pictured here, from an elderly woman encountered earlier in the Bailey Fish Adventure series.


Children’s Books ■

Does that bother you? It troubles me as a reader and an author as well as a publisher.

Theoretically, teachers and media specialists and other pub-lishers can create their own Accelerated Reader tests for books that are not part of the Renaissance Learning program, just as we did. Developing multiple-choice questions is the simple part. Determining the reading level requires using a formula that involves counting words, sentences, and syl-lables to come up with numbers and establishing grade levels from intersections on a graph.

But developing the questions is not always sufficient. We’ve discovered that some schools don’t know how to integrate these questions into the software purchased from Renais-sance Learning, or they are suspicious of books not listed by the giant reading-management program.

Recently, an American child living in China contacted me about my books. She loves the series, and relates to the char-acters and their family situations. Coincidentally, her par-ents are teaching in an international school that uses AR, so I asked her mother about how the program works there. She replied that students are given the Renaissance Learning STAR test; their points goals are set for a year; they do most reading of books in the program at home; tests are given dur-ing free time; and a child gets rewards such as a hat or a pin for reaching a certain percentage of the goals.

“So what has happened for three years now,” the teacher-mother added, “is that after the AR testing and recording start, students only want to read books that we have put an AR sticker on because they want to get points for almost every book they read.”

She strongly urged that I try to get my books on the Accel-erated Reader list. But despite awards and much success, my books don’t cross the Renaissance Learning acceptance threshold. I’ve tried.

Some schools are suspicious of books not listed by the giant reading-management program.

Some authors have told me that districts are currently shift-ing to Scholastic’s Reading Counts! program and lexile scor-ing, which, according to Scholastic, comes up with points

for each book determined by word count and interest level. I haven’t tried to work with these programs yet because schools so far have only inquired about AR. But reliance on either AR or Scholastic programs instead of encouragement of reading whatever captures children’s interest makes me weary and discouraged about the state of education and reading.

There’s no easy answer. Thankfully, I know kids drag parents to our booth to buy another book and another; and I hear from parents and grandparents about what my books have meant to particular children and families. That’s my bottom line.

Of course, I applaud programs that stimulate youngsters to read. My argument is with the stranglehold reading-manage-ment companies have on school districts, which makes it so hard to get books from independent publishers accepted on their merits and into the lives of more children who would love reading them. ■

Linda Salisbury is the author of 16 books, including 10 for children, and senior editor at Tabby House in central Virginia. A retired journalist who freelances, she can be reached through lindasalisburyauthor.com or at [email protected].

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Some color combinations create visual vibration, making it difficult to look at the image. Other colors don’t offer enough contrast, so it’s difficult to discern words.

A book cover that focuses on the title and is designed with high contrast and a clear font will create an optimal thumbnail.

Don’t use your title to frame a big picture of nothing. This image offers nothing to the reader, and the title is too small to read.

Script fonts should be used care-fully or not at all if you want on-line sales and need your thumb-nail cover to stand out. Never use all uppercase script fonts; they’re nearly impossible to read.

According to BookStats—the sta-tistical survey published jointly by the Association of American Pub-lishers and the Book Industry Study Group—two noteworthy things hap-pened within the book industry during 2011: e-books became the top-selling format for adult fiction, and revenue from online sales of both electronic and print books nearly doubled.

It’s probably not news to publishers that more people are buying books online. Add the fact that many people look for books and read reviews on the Internet before heading out to brick-and-mortar stores to make purchases, and it becomes obvious that a book’s online presence is very important.

Arguably, few groups are as dependent

Covers That Work Well Online

on Internet sales as smaller publishers and self-publishers. Printing books is expensive, and so are storing, ship-ping, and accepting returned books. It makes perfect sense for smaller businesses to make use of print-on-demand technology and sell their products in electronic formats.

Unfortunately, that interferes with the power of a cover to sell a book in the traditional way. Online, covers offer no chance for customers to handle and experience raised lettering, varnished images, and textured paper. And since some sites display covers as thumb-nails that are 0.75 inches wide or even smaller, images and wording can be difficult to discern.

If your name is Stephen King, that

might not mean much to your bottom line. Otherwise, you would be reckless to ignore the necessity for a cover that reproduces well enough at thumbnail size to have a positive impact on sales.

DESIgn Do’S AnD Don’TSMany things can be done to ensure that a thumbnail will work to promote a book. Clear text and strong use of color and contrast can help. So can avoiding covers with small graphic details that no one will be able to see online.

Covers that are mostly image should be considered cautiously or, for some genres, avoided altogether. For instance, a particular image may not tell prospective readers a significant amount about the content of a busi-ness book. And many self-help books

by Cathi Stevenson


Thumbnail Covers ■

You can still have a bit of fun with design even when you’re keeping a cover simple and focusing on the title. A minimalist cover such as this depends on the online description to tell readers what the book is about.

It’s possible to find a balance between easy readability and graphic impact. For some genres, including children’s books, eye-catching graphics are important.

work well with covers that use only text and color or text and a generic background image that doesn’t stand on its own but does enhance the text.

Make sure you test your cover design as a thumbnail before you commit to it.

A big starry sky, with the title crammed up at the top and the author’s name crammed down at the bottom, isn’t likely to capture readers’ interest when it’s minimized. Neither is a cover cluttered with graphics that form no cohesive message.

When creating covers for books available online, it’s often a good idea to focus on the title and make that the dominant part of the cover design, particularly for nonfiction. This doesn’t mean the cover can’t still be fun and interesting; it just means you have to use the graphic elements wisely.

Simple things, like contrast, can be used to advantage, but keep the intended audience in mind. For example, if you’re hoping to engage baby-boomers, you need to remember that as peo-ple age, it gets more difficult for them to discern color. This is probably not a factor if you’re publishing books for a teenaged audience, but of course that audience has its own preferences.

Visual vibration is another design issue to be aware of; it’s the

result of combining colors that make it difficult, if not impos-sible, for a reader to keep looking at an image. Many articles on the Internet explain this phenomenon and offer examples that will help you avoid it.

Font choice is an important consideration, too. The cleaner and crisper the font, the easier it will be to read. Avoid ornate script fonts, unless you’re using them for just one word or letter. A common amateur mistake is using script fonts in all uppercase. These are rarely readable.

Whatever cover design you’re considering, make sure you test it as a thumbnail before you commit to it.

Online shoppers don’t necessarily need to be able to read the subtitle and strapline (often just a line or two of text from the book, or a brief review) on a thumbnail, but some-thing—the title, a single word, a color—should grab their attention so that they will click on the image and read more about the book. ■

Cathi Stevenson is a writer and book cover designer with more than three decades of experience. To learn more: bookcoverexpress.com and ebookcoverexpress.com.

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After 17 years running someone else’s publishing business, I resigned my position as CEO, threw caution to the wind, and launched my own publish-ing house, where I’ve been working day in and day out for almost a year. Now I’ve been giving some thought to the question of which is better—working for someone else or being on my own as a publisher.

STArTIng wITh SquAShI had the nerve to go out on my own partly because I’m no stranger to entrepreneurship. By pulling my red wagon around our suburban Utah neighborhood when I was a kid, I sold more zucchini from our family garden than the local grocery store sold from its bins. My pitch was, “How do you know if you don’t have any friends? You have to buy your own zucchini.” I sold by the baker’s dozen and my customers liked having a young boy named Christopher Robbins as their friend (being named after a storybook character had its advantages).

As an adult in the 1990s, I launched two publishing businesses, both unsuccessful. The first one died when my partner died.

by Christopher Robbins

The second was a brilliant digital-only publishing company that provided fic-tion via serial email deliveries. We called it Novelocity and our tagline was Your Daily Serial. It died after I focused 100 percent of my energy on getting venture capital (remember, this was the ’90s), fly-ing in Lear Jets to New York where young Internet firms competed to build us a Web site for $5 million, on average. While they were offering us plates of exotic cheeses, we were dreaming of being millionaires.

In any venture, you need to see a destination out on the horizon that has form and structure and color.

In March of 2000, as my partner and I were sitting in our chief investor’s boardroom, about to pick up a check for the first major investment, the CEO got a call. The market was crashing. Our check came off the table, literally.

We flew home watching the Dow Jones and NASDAQ plummet, wiping out fortunes. And we were left own-ing a company with no content and no money. Stupid.

Having been disappointed twice as an entrepreneur and having a young fam-ily, I decided to focus all my energy on building someone else’s publishing business. With colleagues at the com-pany that I joined, I worked, strate-gized, worked, strategized, worked and got lucky every year through 2008. We grew 20 to 35 percent a year, paid off loans, built backlist, added infrastruc-ture, warehouses, and office space, had bestsellers, and believed we were smart.

It was fantastic. We made serious money, growing from under $2 mil-lion to $26 million by betting on the housing and textbook markets. Then the housing bubble of 2008 killed both markets. I had left the company vulnerable, and that decision was a job killer, a spirit killer, and a mission killer. While the company could and did go on, decisions that I had made or helped to make took a tremendous toll, and it was time for me to go.

Own-Your-Own- Business Alternative

The


Owning Your Business ■

oBSErvATIonS FroM ExPErIEncEMy experiences so far lead me to believe that running your own company isn’t necessarily better than working for some-body else’s. Each has its pros and cons. But there are sig-nificant differences, and I do have some observations about vision, workload, risk vs. rewards, education, immediacy, and impact on family life.

Starting with something is better than starting with nothing.

✦ Vision. I believe that any venture requires a vision. And I really do mean a vision—you need to see a destination some-where out on the horizon. And it has to have form and struc-ture and color so you can see it clearly and want to get there regardless of the obstacles.

When I was CEO of somebody else’s company, I had a vision of what I wanted the company to be. I saw it clearly, and, while I didn’t know how to make it come true, I knew we would if we kept moving forward. What I didn’t anticipate was that as I got closer and closer to my vision, we were get-ting farther and farther from the founder’s vision.

That’s a big problem. And while we worked to adapt and find commonality, eventually vision became a point of friction.

Owning your own company gives you control over your vision. But it can also lead you to delude yourself into believ-ing that you are otherwise in control. The customer is in con-trol, and the customer can decide to fire you at any time by simply not purchasing your product. This means that your vision must agree with and deliver on the needs and wants of your market.

✦ Workload. I’ve never been a nine-to-five guy, and of course I’m not going to be one in my current startup mode. Further, my eyes are always bigger than my stomach. The company I’ve been creating from scratch went from having no titles to having 70 under contract and 20 published, plus full interactive crowd sourcing and a social media–enriched Web site in six months. It’s crazy.

I spend 12 to 14 hours a day working on this new company. I hear about people spending 18 hours a day on ventures, and I’m not sure how that’s possible, since you have to eat some-thing, take a shower, use the restroom, sleep, get dressed,

and, if you are married (as I am) and have kids (as I do, nine of them), you have to have time to talk to them, at the very least, or you can work your way out of the family pretty quick. And—forgive the preaching—I believe that no success can compensate for failure in the home.

When I was running someone else’s company, I often put in the same number of hours, taking redeyes to New York to work all day and catching a flight back that night, only to start again the next day somewhere else. The objective was the same: ensuring cash flow. As in my entrepreneurial startup, I had sales to manage, accounting to get done, vendors to pacify, reps to inspire, personnel to manage.

But there was a major difference. An established company has existing cash flow and a basic infrastructure. Starting with something is better than starting with nothing.

Some people believe that working for someone else involves little risk. I think that is a delusion.

✦ Risk vs. reward. Some people believe that working for someone else involves little risk. I think that is another delu-sion. There is always risk. You can be fired, laid off, out-sourced; the company can intend to keep up with changing conditions but fail to do that, or it can be sold, or the market can shift . . . Risk is inherent in life.

And working for someone else can provide tremendous rewards. You can focus on a specific job, believing that your colleagues are focusing on their jobs so that the entire orga-nization is functional. My definition of teamwork is individu-als executing assigned responsibility, which can deliver many benefits beyond a paycheck, including less stress and more peace of mind.

Working for myself has forced me to be much more appre-ciative of all those people I used to work with, who helped my employer’s company succeed. I appreciate the editors for their skill with words, the publicity department for their phone calls and emails, the receptionist who screened calls and kept paper in the copier. You get the idea. Working for yourself wakes you up to the realization that a company is dependent on the skills of many.

✦ Education. This was unexpected, but I have learned


■ Owning Your Business

more about publishing, technology, my own capacity, and business this year than I learned in the previous five years, and I’ve rediscovered my love of learning. Having knowledge and growth as unintended consequences of entrepreneur-ship is a fantastic benefit.

The first time I figured out how to grab a script and import it into InDesign so that I could create an automatic index based on some key words, I was as excited as a little kid. And when I figured out how to create wireframes for Web sites I thought I was the cat’s meow.

Having knowledge and growth as unintended consequences of entrepreneurship is fantastic.

✦ Immediacy. Entrepreneurs, business managers, CEOs, and the like are not patient people. We want it yesterday. One of the most interesting aspects of running my own company is how fast I can create positive change. If I want a contract written, I write it. If I want a book acquired, I acquire it. If I want a new Web page created, I create it. If I want a book edited differently, I edit it. If I want a distribution partner, I pick up the phone. If I want a different printer, I call one. The only roadblock is managing all the things I want to get done in one day.

When I was somebody else’s CEO, we focused on multiply-ing the effects of individuals’ efforts by setting objectives and delegating. This works really well when everyone is tuned to the same notes, everyone is reading the same score, everyone is playing in tune, and what everyone is playing sells tickets. But managing that symphony can often lead to concordia dis-cors so that nothing gets done or things take way too long.

I am convinced that most companies run way too fat and that, instead of becoming more organized, they allow entropy to enter and slow things down. Having a very young and nimble company lets me pivot quickly and get it done now rather than wait for the meeting, discussion, or handwringing to end.

At some point, I’m either going to burn out or get more help. Then, the objective will be to maintain the entrepreneurial, full-speed mentality, but with better systems to protect the organization. I’ve seen it done.

✦ Impact on family life. I came to my new venture believing

that I’d be able to manage my business and family responsi-bilities without letting either get in the way of the other. I was wrong.

Entrepreneurship can be overwhelming at times, as a book must get to the printer on that day or that file must be uploaded then or that partner must hear back from us imme-diately. This has an impact on family. My wife, after spend-ing the last 20 years raising children, is involved, which is exciting for both of us (working with your spouse has its own advantages and disadvantages, but that’s for a different article). Recently, though, one of my sons said that I should find some more money so “Mom wouldn’t have to be at the computer.” Ouch!

Each day, I have to make choices about what is more impor-tant—the business or the family. Our entire family has had to counsel together about how to manage competing claims on time. In the end, the family has to win, because the enterprise is a means, not an end.

Each day, I have to make choices about what is more important—the business or the family.

Understanding that no solution can be perfect and that the family is the first priority is helpful. I know I have to temper my enthusiasm and not believe that I’m championing some all-important cause with the company. It’s a means. It’s a means. It’s a means . . .

MY guIDIng PrIncIPLES nowSo, is it better to be an entrepreneur or an intrepreneur? Having had both experiences, I think both are great, with different benefits. In addition, I’m more appreciative of and inspired by people who launch companies and succeed, and I’m more appreciative of people who make existing compa-nies succeed.

What I’ve learned through both kinds of roles is that action is better than inaction. Decide and move forward. Put one foot in front of another, and don’t fear taking that next step. While the vision is there and is a destination, the journey is the destination too. ■

Christopher Robbins is the founder of Familius.com, a company focused on helping families be happy. He can be reached at [email protected].


Did you ever wonder why our business is described as the book-publishing industry and not the book-selling industry?

In 2011 Bowker issued new ISBNs at the rate of more than 1,400 per day, reflecting the industry focus on publishing more books as the strategy for increasing sales. However, you may find that it is more lucrative to publish fewer books and sell more copies of them.

One way to implement this strategy is to sell your books to people where they spend their working days instead of wait-ing for them to decide to visit physical or online retail outlets. This means selling in large, nonreturnable quantities to pro-fessional buyers in companies, associations, schools, and the armed services.

The dissimilarities between traditional retail book market-ing and nonretail marketing are defined in the accompanying chart so you can use the information to craft new sales efforts, sell more books, and increase your revenue and profits. ■

Brian Jud, the author of How to Make Real Money Selling Books, now offers commission-based sales of nonfiction, fiction, and children’s titles to buyers in special markets. For more information: P. O. Box 715, Avon, CT 06001-0715; 860/675-1344; fax 860/ 673-7650; [email protected]; premiumbookcompany.com; twitter.com/bookmarketing.

For More Profitable Publishing, Compare Two Major Marketing Strategies

Traditional Retail Marketing Nonretail Marketing

Overview

Books are sold to retail-ers, often via distributors and wholesalers, to resell off the shelves in chain, niche, or independent bookstores in physical locations and/or online.

Buyers in corporations, associations, the armed services, and/or schools purchase books from publishers in large, non-returnable quantities. The books are used or given away, not resold.

Publishers’ Selling Strategy

Publishers rely on dis-tribution companies to move product to book-stores, and then promote books so readers will go to the stores to buy (achieving sell-through).

There are no intermediar-ies; publishers sell directly to prospective buyers (achieving sell-to).

Title Churn

Publishers’ emphasis is on publishing books. A stream of frontlist titles is deemed necessary for new revenue. Production may be hurried to meet trading partners’ imposed deadlines, or to reach a self-imposed goal of titles to be published annually.

Publishers’ emphasis is on selling books. The main criterion is relevance of the content to the needs of the buyer. The concepts of frontlist and backlist are irrelevant as long as the content is current and applicable.

Buyers’ Purchasing Criteria

Bookstore buyers seek increased store traffic, inventory turns, and profit per square foot. They choose books primarily because the books meet marketing, rather than literary, criteria.

Professional buyers seek books to use for education and training and as promo-tional items, with a view toward increasing sales, revenue, and profits.

by Brian Jud


■ Marketing Strategies


Buyers’ Goals

Retailers depend on indi-vidual readers, who purchase nonfiction to satisfy their needs for information and fiction according to their individ-ual tastes, and who may also buy books as gifts.

Professional buyers purchase books because they can use the books to reach their goals (increase sales, motivate and train employees, increase mem-bership, educate students).

Concentration ofBuyers

End-user buyers are con-sumers who are generally widely dispersed and differentiated by a num-ber of sketchily defined factors.

Buyers are professionals in well-defined industry, geo-graphic, or demographic segments.

Publishers’ Acquisi-tion Decisions

Decisions about which books to publish are often based largely on the quality of manuscript.

Decisions about which books to publish are mar-keting decisions, based upon the need for the content among buyers in a target market.

Buyers’ Acquisition Decisions

Retailers’ acquisition costs are higher because of distribution and setup fees as well as costs re-lated to displaying books and periodically rotating product assortment. Returns further increase costs.

Acquisition unit costs are lower because of dis-counts on large-quantity purchases. Costs are also lower because there is no need for shelf space, books are not returned, and bulk-shipping discounts lower transportation expenses.

Purchasing Quantities

To sell 10,000 books you need to sell one book to each of 10,000 people.

To sell 10,000 books, you need to sell those 10,000 books to one person.

Product Forms

Content is provided in standard print and elec-tronic book formats.

Content is formatted in customized ways to meet the needs of buyers. For-mats can include booklet, DVD, or audiobook as well as traditional print and e-book.

Availability of Books

Books are broadly avail-able, particularly through Internet retailers.

Availability is controlled since buyers give books to employees, customers, students, or members.

Publisher’s Selling Costs

Costs are high because of the need to sell small quantities of books to many different custom-ers. Publishers pay the shipping charges; spend money and time on returned books which must be restocked or discarded; and must pay for promotion, which can be expensive.

Costs of sales are lower because larger quantities are sold to fewer custom-ers; promotion is more targeted and efficient; and there are no upfront distri-bution fees (except per-haps for sales groups, and they can represent books on a commission basis).

Sales Opportunities

Sales are dependent on uncontrollable factors, such as the skills of dis-tributors’ salespeople, the position of books on a shelf, and the existence of positive publicity.

Sales follow from one-on-one meetings with prospective buyers where publishers can person-ally deliver intended sales messages consistently, and close sales directly.


Pricing Flexibility

Prices must be competi-tive because consumers can compare them on physical and virtual shelves. The wide variety of books available on a specific topic often creates a price ceiling. Distribu-tion fees and the high unit costs of small print runs may force prices to a point where they are not com-petitive.

The selling price is negoti-ated and is typically based on the quantity purchased. With no direct com-parison of prices of com-petitive titles nearby on a shelf, more value-based pricing is possible.

Promotion

Publishers must rely in part on uncontrollable reviews and publicity to deliver their messages. Blogging and social net-working can communi-cate to large segments of consumers. Advertising is usually cost-prohibitive.

The concentration of buyers permits pinpoint accuracy in targeted direct marketing. Communica-tion is controlled through two-way interaction with interested buyers at trade shows and other locations.

Authors’ Impact on Sales

An author’s name recog-nition is important for sales, and it is difficult for an “unknown” author to penetrate the system. The author’s involvement with promotion is also important for sales.

The author’s topic cred-ibility is more important than name recognition, since books are purchased because of what their content can accomplish.

Time Frames and Lifespans

Retailers and distribu-tors focus on the short term since they need to show sales results quickly. Books have short lives because retailers want title churn, and publishers cede control to retailers, who get to decide wheth-er sales are sufficient to maintain market presence.

Publishers must focus on long-term results because projects using books can take a year or more to plan and implement. Titles have longer lives because copyright dates are much less important than ap-plicability of content to buyers’ needs. Publishers have more control and can extend a title’s growth stage by selling to new markets and buyers and finding new uses for the content.

Seasonality

Book sales decrease dur-ing slow economic peri-ods and increase during holiday and gift-giving periods.

Book sales are stable or increase during economic downturns because com-panies use books to in-crease their revenue. There are fewer seasonal varia-tions, which helps level publishers’ income.

nExT STEPS For nonrETAIL SALESIf nonretail sales as outlined here appeal to you and you’d like guidance on pur-suing them, search Brian Jud at ibpa-online.org for earlier articles about targeting, approaching, and dealing with specific prospects. Advice from Jud on negotiat-ing large-quantity nonretail sales will appear in the next issue of the Independent.


Marketing Strategies ■


Cash Flow

Payment for books sold may be received 90 to 120 days from the ship-ping date, or later. Money due to a publisher may be held in escrow by the distributor to cover po-tential returns.

Payment (including ship-ping charges) is typically made in full to the pub-lisher within 30 days of the receipt of books. Other terms may be negotiated.

Returns

Unsold books can be and routinely are returned, in any condition. The return rate can exceed 30 percent of sales.

Sales to buyers are usually nonreturnable.

Potential for Profitability

Profits may be reduced because of distribution discounts ranging from 55 to 70 percent of list price, because of the costs of shipping small quanti-ties of books to many different locations, and because printing books in small quantities can result in high unit costs.

There are no distribution discounts, since books are sold directly to buyers. Buyers usually pay ship-ping charges. Large quan-tities may be printed eco-nomically via offset. And promotional expenses may be minimized because of the concentration of tar-geted prospects.

Relationships

Personal relationships are with people in the distri-bution channel (suppliers, distributors, retailers), not with the consumer who will—or won’t—be the ultimate buyer.

Personal relationships are with the people who make or influence ultimate purchasing decisions.

Duration of Rela-tionships

Personal relationships are short-term, limited by the lifespan of a book as traditional channels view it.

Personal relationships are longer-term, lasting for as long as a publisher can continue providing quality content that meets buyers’ needs, and creating opportu-nities for recurring revenue.

The Law Offices OfJOnaThan Kirsch

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People still want books; I’ve got the numbers to prove it. . . . They are lined up outside most mornings when we open our doors, because, I think, they have learned through this journey we’ve all been on that the lowest price does not always represent the best value. Parnassus Books creates jobs in our community and contributes to the tax base. We’ve made a place where children can learn and play, where they can think those two things are one and the same. We have a piano. We have two part-time store dogs. We have authors who come and read; you can ask them questions, and they will sign your book. The business model may be antiquated, but it’s the one I like, and so far it’s the one that’s working.

— from “The Bookstore Strikes Back” by Ann Patchett, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine

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How Backlist Makes the Bottom Line Better

Still thinking about New Year’s reso-lutions? Think backlist promotion. Backlist is the backbone of a publish-er’s business, as one IBPA member emphasized, and much can be done to generate sales from last year’s—and last decade’s—titles.

When I polled publishers recently, I learned that those most success-ful with backlist sales promote them using almost all the same techniques they use for frontlist:

• author appearances

• exhibits and conferences

• email

• traditional media

• Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and other social media

• niche market promotion

Other strategies include taking advan-tage of new editions and new titles in a series to promote backlist, and using giveaways and big price discounts.

In general, what backlist promotion requires is time, and small publish-ers can often supply more of that than people in large companies. “The advantage of independent publishing

is that you can continue to promote your books when major publishers are too busy with their new books,” Award Press founder Elliott Katz reminds us.

Before we talk how-to’s for backlist promotion, let’s define backlist suc-cess. At White Cloud Press, two back-list titles—one issued in 1999 and the other in 2002—have each sold nearly 100,000 copies. At Chelsea Green, 8 of the 20 top-selling titles in terms of unit sales are backlist; if you’re count-ing gross revenue, it’s 11 of the top 20. At Parenting Press, a 2000 hardback picture book has been the top-selling title every year since 2002, with sales far exceeding 100,000 in 2004 alone. The board book edition of the same title has been the #2 seller every year since it was introduced in 2005.

BuILDIng BLockS For BAckLIST SuccESSAuthor appearances. At White Cloud, Yin Yoga: Principles and Prac-tices is in its 10th anniversary edition and nearing 100,000 copies sold since 2002, mostly thanks to author Paul Grilley, who tours giving workshops 150–180 days each year. Steve Scholl, publisher at this Ashland, OR, pub-lisher, also credits Grilley and his part-

ner, Suzee Grilley, for their vigorous social media marketing.

White Cloud supports Grilley’s appearances with what Scholl calls “old- fashioned media blitzing: press releases to our list of writers and yoga teach-ers, studios, mag-azines, and Websites to inform every-body about his schedule and provide information on yin yoga topics.”

Another White Cloud title that has nearly 100,000 in sales is Approach-ing the Qur’an: The Early Revelations, published in 1999 and acclaimed as an excellent introduction to and trans-lation of the Qur’an. Its sales gather momentum with every controversy about Islam.

The title became widely known in 2002, when the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill made it required reading for incoming fresh-men and a conservative Christian group filed suit, claiming a public uni-versity was encouraging students

by Linda Carlson


■ Backlist

to convert to Islam. “The case was thrown out as without merit, but it led to a national debate on teaching religion and especially on the teaching of Islam in public schools,” Scholl recalls. “The book was featured on the front page of every major newspaper in the country and on network and cable news. Our favorite story was the Daily Show’s coverage.

“Since 2002 we have kept the book active through promo-tion during every public debate on Islam in America, and today especially with the rise of the Islamophobia industry.”

acquired the rights to from W.W. Norton in 1996. In 2002 we updated and expanded the book, and reissued it at $49.”

Although this title sells only about 500 copies a year, the profit margin is what Pardey calls “nice.”

Pardey also says her company keeps awareness of its titles high with a Website and blog that provides dozens of sail-ing tips, their speaking schedule, and posts from readers. And she’s right: When I typed “Pardey Books” into Google, I saw 50 pages of references to its books and newsletters before I quit searching.

Martingale, a Bothell, WA, quilt and craft book publisher, has always encour-aged its authors to make appearances, and because many of those authors teach quilting, knitting, or other crafts, 80 percent of them do visit retail out-lets, often fabric and yarn shops, for signings and often presentations.

The company, founded in 1976 as That Patchwork Place, also has a huge exhibit at the twice-annual International Quilt Market in Houston, where two thirds of the titles on display are backlist. Martingale authors who present at this national show are invited to the publisher’s booth to meet shop own-ers and industry editors and sign complimentary copies of their books for them.

Many Martingale authors tour extensively—some with sched-ules approaching that of White Cloud’s Paul Grilley—doing demonstrations and conducting classes at shops, quilt shows, and sewing expos. When they keep Martingale marketing director Karen Johnson updated on their schedules, she tries to arrange book signings for them at the show bookstores and publicizes their appearances via Twitter and Facebook.

Some Martingale authors are teach-ing through Craftsy (craftsy.com), a division of Denver startup Sym-poz, which offers more than 100 online seminars and “enrolled” more than half a million “attendees” in its first two years. Some of its quilt-ing programs have attracted more than 1,000 participants, Martingale

authors report. Although Craftsy was not selling books as this was written, it does sell fabric and yarn, and authors are

Unlike White Cloud, which has more than 100 titles in print, Fun Adventure Wildlife Books is a one-person company operated by Dallas-area wildlife photographer Tim Ostermeyer, who uses images from his 25 years of shooting around the world for children’s books. He makes about 40 appearances a year at home-school and early child-hood education conventions, balloon festivals, and library conferences, and that pays off. He has direct-sold more than 3,500 copies of his 2010 title, Snowball’s Antarctic Adventures. Like all of his other books, it’s priced at $18.95.

Another small publisher, Pardey Books in Arcata, CA, also relies on personal appearances for most of its sales.

“Our backlist definitely is the backbone of our publishing income,” says Lin Pardey, who with husband Larry does an extensive promotional tour every other year, appearing at boat shows, yacht clubs, and adventure clubs. “Six of our eleven titles earn at least $6,000 a year,” she reports.

Pardey’s bestseller, Storm Tactics Handbook, was first issued in 1996 as a $19.95 paperback. It was updated twice before being redesigned in 2006, and repriced at $22.95. “The book continues to sell approximately 2,400 print copies and 1,000 e-book copies a year,” Pardey says, adding, “A second title that stands out is Details of Classic Boat Construction, which we


Backlist ■

free to promote their books through their online bios and their sessions.

Johnson also encourages the company’s authors, most of them quilters, to lend the projects featured in their books for quilt store “trunk shows.” These shows involve trunks shipped to between 50 and 100 stores for three weeks of dis-play at each retailer, sometimes with tie-in presentations and author appearances. Although they focus on projects in new books, Johnson points out that by the time they get to their last stops, the featured titles are backlist. Depending on local promotion, each trunk show stop can increase a title’s sales in the host store by as much as 50 copies in a month.

At Chelsea Green, a third of the six-member communications team focuses on author events.

At Chelsea Green Publishing, headquartered in tiny White River Junction, VT, author appearances are considered so important that a third of the six-member communications team focuses on author events, alerting authors to profes-sional association calls for conference proposals and helping some authors write their proposals for keynotes and breakout session presentations. Occasionally, either in person or via a conference call, a Chelsea Green staffer will work through a presentation with an author.

“We know conference organizers well, and we know what associations want from speakers,” explains Shay Totten, com-munications director.

Chelsea Green also helps authors arrange other speeches and events and helps negotiate fees and honorariums when that’s appropriate. Also, the house often covers authors’ travel costs for presentations.

Increased support for appearances is one of the changes Tot-ten has seen in publishing recently. When he returned to Chelsea Green a year ago after a five-year stint in the media, he found a far greater focus on author appearances—and it shows in the numbers. In 2011, 110 “active” Chelsea Green authors made a total of 650 appearances; in 2012, the figure was nearly 800.

At the much smaller Miami-based Piggy Press, publisher Pat Alvarado must depend on authors to do more. And


■ Backlist

some do: “We have four or five authors who move mountains to sell their titles, and then there are a few who sit back and expect sales to appear as if by magic.”

One who doesn’t wait for magic to create sales is Todd-Michael St. Pierre, whom Alvarado describes as “a mover and a shaker when it comes to promoting.”

Piggy Press has published 16 of his children’s books over the past four years, and he has outsold all its other authors combined, she says. Besides his own Website, Facebook and Twitter accounts, and Amazon author page, he makes hundreds of appearances each year. Between

Halloween and Christmas alone, he did 14 signings.

Email. Chelsea Green uses its own 35,000-name contact list for its emails, which go out twice a month, each featuring books on a different topic—food and health, simple living, and green building, for example. Both frontlist and backlist titles are included.

Parenting Press emails often feature a new title along with several older titles for a certain market.

A similar approach is common at Seattle-based Parenting Press, whose emails often feature a new title along with several older titles appropriate for a certain market, such as special education teach-ers or bilingual school programs. When the California Department of Education approved Asi me

siento yo, the Spanish edition of top-selling The Way I Feel, sales for the backlist picture book spiked as the press con-tacted Southern California bilingual and migrant program educators, reports Homer Henderson, operations manager.

Last March, Martingale introduced a daily consumer email newsletter, Stitch This. A second newsletter, Shop Talk, is sent two or three times a week to specialty store owners. Chatty and informative, both include backlist titles.

These email offerings also promote PDFs of patterns excerpted from books that are at least a year old, which sell for $4.99 apiece. Johnson, who was hired in mid-2011 with a mandate to increase direct-to-consumer business, says the e-pattern sales are attracting many customers new to the company.

Media relations. Media relations is “Common Sense 101,” exclaims Totten, who believes too many publishers neglect their backlist because “they’re busy chasing the next trend.” By contrast, the Chelsea Green staff “never takes its eyes off the backlist” despite the work involved in promoting 35 new titles a year, all of them in both print and digital formats.

“We recognize that a book may take two or three years to get a foothold,” Totten says, explaining that many of the company’s books become authoritative references that gain momentum in sales through word-of-mouth promotion. Besides turning older titles into top sellers, this can create a following for the author, and pent-up demand for the author’s next title.

As an example, Totten cites fermentation expert Sandor Katz, whose first book for Chelsea Green was published in 2003. By the time his next book came out in 2012, Katz’s reputation was such that his Art of Fermentation made the New York Times bestseller list despite a $40 cover price, and got extensive coverage in feature sec-

tions too. “Say this about Sandor Ellix Katz: the man knows how to get you revved up to eat bacteria,” wrote a Times food critic in a 1,500-word story in September. The same month, Katz was described as “one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene” by the paper when he did an online Q&A that attracted 86 comments.

Totten believes that most marketing involves relationship building, and his team works hard on that with the media. “It’s pretty simple, but it takes time,” he says.

To supplement the company’s existing media database, the staff asks each newly contracted author what publications the author reads, and what publications the author would like to be published in.

“We have a greater emphasis on community and regional media than we did several years ago,” Totten says, “and some-times it’s more effective in terms of publicity.” Like many marketing managers, Totten reads the thrice-daily HARO newsletter (free at helpareporter.com) for leads on generating


Backlist ■

interviews with authors and reviews of books, and he often follows up on news articles by offering a relevant review copy to a reporter. Whenever possible, a handwritten note to the particular media person goes out with the review copy.

Martingale’s Johnson also works to establish relationships with the media, although her focus is national. New titles are what she emphasizes when she meets with quilt and craft magazine editors twice yearly at Quilt Market. “They’re hun-gry for material,” she says, “and often what we’re launching can help determine a magazine theme in the next six or eight months.” Sometimes, however, a backlist title will fit into a theme already on a publication’s editorial calendar, or a title will be backlist by the time it’s featured. When a story runs about an author’s project, the brief accompanying bio may mention the designer’s most recent book for Martingale.

Toronto publisher Elliott Katz, founder of Award Press, contacts media to remind editors and producers that the need for his books’ content “didn’t stop after the books’ launches.” This, he says, is espe-cially true for his Being the Strong Man a Woman Wants, which discusses how many men today are unsure of their roles in relationships.

In the spring, when good weather invites people outdoors, and in the fall, when foliage turns vibrant, Katz promotes Great Country Walks Around Toronto and The Great Toronto Bicycling Guide. He also takes advantage of milestones: “A few years ago it was the 25th anniversary of the publication of Great Country Walks Around Toronto, and my news release got the book covered in the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest-circulation daily, and on the top two morning radio shows in Toronto,” Katz remembers.

For IBPA members who publish many authors, good media relations also involve frequent author-publisher discussions of publicity opportunities and possible promotions. At Chel-sea Green, Totten says he usually supplements authors’ con-tacts with the events staff by touching base twice a week with authors such as Matthew Stein, whose When Technology Fails is in the top 10 in unit sales for the publisher.

Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and the like. Of course, social media matters in marketing of almost any kind today, and book publishers agree it’s a valuable tool. But it’s not a slam-dunk. As Karen Anderson, publisher at

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■ Backlist

Mbedzi Publishing in Dallas, says, “Social networking takes a lot of time, and it is something that I definitely think works if you can garner enough likes and keep the interaction going on a daily basis. But you have to engage readers, and you have to engage them a lot, to produce results.”

A 140-character press release: that may be the easiest way to think about a tweet. At Chelsea Green, which has close to 20,000 followers on Twitter, staff members tweet as often as five times a day, with information about author appearances and promotional messages such as “Don’t let winter stop your #locavore mission. Learn #HowTo Grow Oyster Mush-rooms Indoors: http://ow.ly/eJLOW.”

Chicago-based Sourcebooks has several staff members who post to Twitter, so it may provide as many as a half-dozen tweets a day for its 6,600 followers, announcing reviews, author appearances, and blog tours or commenting on pub-lishing industry news.

Publishers overwhelmed by the prospect of tweeting a cou-ple of times a day, or even once a week, can use free tweet-scheduling Websites such as Social Oomph (socialoomph.com), which allow you to write dozens of tweets at one time and schedule each one for delivery at a different date and hour. This means you can write the promotional messages for an author appearance as soon as it’s confirmed, confident that tweets will be posted at appropriate moments.

Award Press reminds media that the need for its books’ content “didn’t stop after the books’ launches.”

Another way to save time involves tying your Facebook and Twitter accounts together. Cynthia Reeser, the publisher at Aqueous Books in New Orleans, explains: “I never use Twit-ter directly, but everything I post to the Aqueous Books Face-book page feeds directly to the Twitter account. I normally post to the page one to three times per week—announce-ments of books available for preorder; praise in the form of blurbs, reviews, interviews, or reviews; new cover art, author events, and so on.”

Martingale is among the publishers using messages that are both promotional and informational on Facebook pages. Right before the International Quilt Market last fall, for example, the company had posts such as “We’ll be at Quilt

Market—with Eva A. Larkin-Hawkins, author of Easy and Fun Free-Motion Quilting. Not going to the show? Don’t miss our Quilt Market Recap on November 6 at Stitch This!” Each post had a photo of a different author and her featured title, and each told when the online recap would be available.

By last fall, Martingale had 33 Pinterest “boards” (i.e., top-ics), some with as many as 77 images.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson of HowToDoItFrugally Publish-ing, Glendale, CA, is also active on Pinterest, and she tells other publishers and authors that if they pin one of her book covers, she’ll pin one of theirs.

At Sylvan Dell, “Pinterest has definitely helped our backlist titles.”

“My special bulletin board for this, Books by Friends, is sepa-rate from my Recommended Books board,” she explains. “That way I can pin at will—and ethically—without neces-sarily recommending a book. And I often suggest to those who subscribe to my blog and my newsletter that they use the same method to help out their fellow authors.”

“Pinterest has definitely helped our backlist titles, and we have seen an increase in single title online orders,” reports Heather Williams, who handles public relations for the Mount Pleasant, SC, publisher Sylvan Dell. After checking with company accountants for sales figures attributable to this social media channel, Williams expressed both surprise and enthusiasm.

Williams created Pinterest boards for Newton and Me, a title published in early 2010, in September 2012. Between September 15 and October 30 of that year, she reports, “sales of Newton and Me increased 64 percent over the average of previous months’ sales, and by Halloween we were sold out of the paperback. I don’t know if there are any other factors in these numbers, but I will be paying much more attention to our Pinterest boards.”

Williams’s emphasis on providing creative classroom ideas on Pinterest may have helped boost sales of this backlist title. “Teachers have definitely taken note of the Sylvan Dell board,”


Backlist ■

she says, explaining that her account page shows who is repin-ning and what boards people have pinned an item to. “Many of our repins and new followers are using teaching boards: physics unit, science ideas, classroom ideas, and so on,” Williams notes.

At Bamboo Forest Publishing in Orlando, Leonard Kinsey posts to YouTube each week to promote a 2011 publica-tion, The Dark Side of Disney (youtube.com/darksidedisney). “Google Analytics data shows that these videos drive a sig-nificant amount of traffic to my site, and they also seem to drive sales,” says Kinsey, who sold more than 30,000 copies (print and digital) in the book’s first 15 months.

During the first month of the book’s second year, there were more than 20,500 views of the videos, and YouTube sent 310 viewers directly to darksideofdisney.com. That represented more than a third of the direct referrals to Bamboo Forest’s Website for the book, higher than the six-month average. In total that month, Kinsey sold 900 e-books and 136 paperbacks.

For gift stores, craft shops, schools, and catalogs, backlist is a meaningless term.

Specialty markets. Gift stores, craft shops, schools, and catalogs are all good examples of channels where backlist is a meaningless term. These retailers don’t care about pub date. They focus on whether a book will sell to their customers.

White Cloud’s Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revela-tions has been used in 300,000 colleges, and Parenting Press is among the many publishers pursuing special education teachers, who constitute a market for its Self-Calming Cards, created in 2004.

At Martingale, there’s a national sales manager who works with Ingram and other major wholesalers as well as with JoAnn Fabrics, Michaels Stores, and other specialty retail-ers for both new and backlist titles. The dump bin in-store displays that the company makes available to specialty retail outlets include a cross-section of titles.

And some special market promotions include extra dis-counts. For example, Martingale’s twice-annual Stock Up Sale offers independent retailers as much as 55 percent off cover price on backlist titles vs. the 40 or 45 percent more typical in that market.

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■ Backlist

Co-op style promotion. Publishers also encourage independent bookstores and specialty retailers to promote backlist with rewards for displays and events. For instance, Martingale’s Samples Sell program offers retailers a free copy of a book that is featured in a display with a sample from the book. And Parenting Press offers a free copy of the picture book The Way I Feel to any store or library that displays the book and promotes the Fish Lips Face Photo Contest, which asks kids to imitate the face on the book cover.

Describing backlist titles in promotion for new titles is a tactic that costs nothing.

Giveaways and discounts. Publishers are holding sales for backlist titles, sometimes using newer options such as the Kindle Select Program through Amazon.com, as well as give-aways and discounts. Will Aebi of Ibea Publishing in Salem, SC, released A Pius Wake in 2006 and reports: “Now that I have it on Amazon as a paperback and for the Kindle, I’m using the Kindle edition to reintroduce the title to the marketplace with a five-day giveaway. Then I use Amazon Author Central to show the cover of the book and the first few pages, to further encourage people to get the book or buy other titles.”

In the first four days of an autumn promotion on Kindle, 79 U.S. readers requested copies of A Pius Wake (compared to none in the previous six months); in the United Kingdom the giveaway count for the promotion was 70.

With more than 140 backlist titles, Bitingduck Press in Pasa-dena, CA, uses Facebook and Twitter to advertise such spe-cials as the 99-cent deal on the e-book Writing Fiction and Poetry, which editor in chief Jay Nadeau says raised the sales from nothing to about 30 per month. Another promotion, for The Classic Star Trek Trivia Book, involved reissuing the backlist title in print in time for last summer’s Shore Leave 34 sci-fi convention, which resulted in more than 100 sales.

Promoting backlist through frontlist. Seattle self-publisher Trish Weenolsen, hard at work on the fourth in her Rubythroat Press series of American historical novels, which launched in 2009, notes the value of describing backlist titles in promotion for new titles, a tactic that costs nothing. “Every time I publish a new novel, all the others get featured in press releases, on the Website, and in the occasional book

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Backlist ■

review,” she says, adding: “That’s one way to keep the backlist alive, publish another in the series!”

New editions of old titles also provide a PR opp. Parenting Press has used the publication of the board and Spanish edi-tions of The Way I Feel to promote the 2000 original, and when a companion title, The Way I Act, was issued in 2011, the two hardbacks were offered as a package at a discount.

At Pardey Books, promotion of the new digital edition of Details of Classic Boat Construction clearly sparked new inter-est in the hardcover edition. “Interest-ingly, when we made this large-format title with more than 600 diagrams and photos available as an e-book, sales of the hardcover edition increased about

15 percent,” says Lin Pardey. ■

Linda Carlson ([email protected]) writes for the Independent from Seattle, where she continues to promote her 2003 history from University of Washington Press, Company Towns of the Pacific Northwest.

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Check programs you wish to participate in, include registration form and appropriate fee(s). It is possible that a mailing you register for may be changed or rescheduled. Send or fax to IBPA • 1020 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Suite 204, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266 • 310/546-1818 • Fax 310/546-3939 • Email [email protected]

IBPA DIRECT MAIL PROGRAMSFOR IBPA MEMBERS ONLY • REGISTER ONLINE AT www.ibpa-online.org, USE FORM BELOW OR CALL 310/546-1818

See www.ibpa-online.org for more information. After registering for the library mailing program, you will receive mailing instruction for your flyers.

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LIBRARY MAILINGSPublic Library Deadlines

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Target Market Mailing Deadlines❏ Autobiography/Biography/Memoirs . . . . . . . . . . . . . .January 15❏ Health/Wellness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . January 30❏ Crafts/Hobby/How-To . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . February 15❏ Travel/Adventure & Sports/Recreation . . . . . . . . . . . February 28❏ New Age/Metaphysical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . March 15❏ Parenting/Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . March 30❏ Psychology/Self-Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . April 30❏ Fiction/Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . April 30

ABOUT THE LIBRARY FLYER MAILINGS The Library Mailings are separated into 3 categories: Public Libraries mailed bi-monthly to 3,900 libraries; K–12 Libraries (Kindergarten–12th Grade) mailed twice a year to 4,000 libraries; College & University Libraries mailed quarterly to 3,200 libraries. The library mailings contain flyers which publishers provide and are grouped with other flyers and mailed in a large envelope with a cover letter from IBPA. The flyers must be a standard 8½” x 11” unfolded sheet. Participants are included and will receive a complete copy to track deliverability time. It is suggested that publishers avoid offers that are “time-sensitive.” Programs mail 3rd Class Bulk mail. Approximate delivery time of program is 30–45 days after deadline date.

ABOUT THE COOPERATIVE CATALOG MAILINGS IBPA designs this newsletter-type, full color catalog, featuring your front cover, along with a 100-word description of your book. All members will receive a copy of the program as soon as it mails. Programs mail 3rd Class Bulk. Approximate delivery time is 30–45 days after deadline date.

BOOKS FOR REVIEW mails quarterly to approximately 3,000 book reviewers at newspapers, magazines, Web sites, blogs, radio and television shows.

BOOKSTORE MAILING mails every quarter to 3,400 independent bookstore and chain buyers across the U.S.

TARGET MARKET MAILING mails to 3,000 genre-specific reviewers; 3,400 genre-specific book-buyers; and 3,900 genre-specific acquisition librarians. Total print run is 10,300.

LIBRARY MAILINGS: Check month(s) above❏ Public Library – Amount Due . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $

$ 215 general program; 3,900 unfolded flyers required❏ K-12 Library – Amount Due. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ $215 per program; 4,000 unfolded flyers required❏ College, Jr. College & Univ. – Amount Due . . $ $215 per program; 3,200 unfolded flyers required

COOPERATIVE CATALOGS: Check month(s) above❏ Books for Review – Amount Due . . . . . . . . . . $ $210 per title per program • I wish to display titles. ❏ Bookstore Mailing – Amount Due . . . . . . . . . $ $230 per title per program • I wish to display titles. ❏ Target Market Mailing – Amount Due . . . . $ $350 per title per program I wish to display titles

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MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES

BookExpo (BEA) 20135/30/2013 - 6/1/2013Jacob Javitz Center, New York, NYBookExpo has moved into the weekend for 2013: Thurs - Sat. IBPA has again secured a good location on the show floor. If you want to get your title in front of bookstore buyers, a select library crowd, radio and television show producers, magazine editors, catalogers and other premium buyers, AND a select grouping of foreign rights licensing agents, this is the show where you should display your book.

If you are interested in having your individual title(s) displayed at the IBPA booth and represented by IBPA staff, you can sign up at this time. We will need one copy of your title for this show.

As always, if possible, it’s a good idea to attend the shows at which your title is displayed. IBPA can secure a discounted or FREE (Displaying Author) ticket to this show if you decide to attend. That information will be sent with your title registration.

Reservations are being taken for multiple booths, a full booth, or a shared booth within the IBPA complex of booths on the floor.

Full booth (10’ x 10’): $3,950 (Deposit at reservation: $1,975); Shared booth (5’ x 10’): $1,975 (Deposit at reservation: $987.50); Individual title: $125

DEADLINE for booths: First come, first served; DEADLINE Individual titles: April 15, 2013

American Library Association Annual Conference 20136/28/2013 - 7/1/2013 • McCormick Place, Chicago, ILThis annual ALA show attracts all types of librarians...from the public, private and school sector across the country and throughout the world. IBPA has a small block of booths re-served for this show, and if you would prefer to have a full booth or share a booth with another IBPA member, now is the time you should sign up for this event.

If you would prefer to display your title or titles within the IBPA staffed complex, where titles are displayed face-out in specific genre with a special catalog developed for this show for the librarians, the cost per title is $125.00.

It’s always a good idea to attend a book show if you can and IBPA can arrange for badges for those who request them in advance of the show. There will also be an opportunity to do a book signing or demonstration at this show.

If your book does well at libraries, this is one show you will not want to miss. This is a great show for most IBPA members’ titles. Public, academic, foreign and corporate librarians at-tend this show annually and it’s the largest librarian show in the nation. We will need one copy of your title for this show.

Cost for Full booth $2,500.00 (1⁄2 payment – $1,250.00); Cost for Shared booth: $1,250.00 (1⁄2 payment – $625.00); Cost for individual title: $125.00.

We will need a 1⁄2 payment for booths at this time.

DEADLINE for Booths: First come, first served.DEADLINE for Individual titles: April 15, 2013

Check programs you wish to participate in, include registration form and appropriate fee(s). Send or fax to IBPA • 1020 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Suite 204, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266 310/546-1818 • Fax 310/546-3939 • Email: [email protected]

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NEW! IBPA/INGRAM PROGRAMIBPA partners with Ingram to offer you TWO opportunities to help sell more books and gain access to Ingram’s wholesale system for single-book (or more) publishers.

1. THE INDEPENDENT VOICE *Deadlines: 30 days in advance of the mailing (e.g. the deadline for the March/April 2012 mailing would be February 1).

2. ADVANCE MAGAZINE*Deadlines: 90 days in advance of publication (e.g. deadline for the June issue is March 1st. June issue mails in late April.)

*Your title(s) must be listed with Ingram and in the iPage system in order to participate in this program. For more information about these programs and how to join the Ingram Wholesale Distri-bution program, please see https://www.ibpa-online.org/programs/ingramprogram.aspx.

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Demystifying Returns

Publishers are artists. It might sound odd to use that term, but every day publishers bring new ideas and expe-riences to the world through writ-ten words. This is a true art form. Of course, in addition to being artists, publishers must be savvy business people. As a publisher, you have to be informed about the business aspects of your trade.

Some of the business questions I receive from both seasoned and nov-ice publishers involve returns. Not a glamorous topic, but one that it’s very important to understand when you want to succeed in the world of publishing. I hope what follows will inform and clear away some of the haze surrounding the practice of returns.

whAT rETurnS DoBasically, the return provision allows booksellers to purchase inventory and, after a period of time, return it to the publisher if the inventory has not sold and they feel it will not sell.

Retailers are not required to return books to the vendor they purchased them from.

Return options give stores flexibility so they can keep inventory current, maximize value from shelf space, and have the books their customers want. In a world where consumers want

everything now, booksellers need agility in terms of stocking strategy to remain relevant. In other words, when book retailers have the option to send books back, they free up room; they free up money for something new; and they keep the doors open.

Most booksellers rely on a talented buying team whose job it is to balance anticipated demand with available funds to get the most bang for their buck when ordering, but this is not a perfect science.

whErE rETurnS goBooksellers return books to the “vendor of record,” which means any supplier that a retailer has an order-ing relationship with, whether it’s a pub-lisher or a distributor or a wholesaler. A publisher whose books are available to a retailer through any of these relation-ships could see returns come through any of these channels, since retailers are not required to return books to the ven-dor they purchased them from.

For example, a retailer might buy 50 copies of a title from a publisher. After six months the retailer might have 25 copies left and decide to return them. When the title is also available to the retailer from a wholesaler, the retailer might find it easier to return it through the wholesaler in a larger shipment containing other returns.

The wholesaler would then either return the books to its inventory or

by Janice Schnell


Board Member’s Memo ■

return them to the publisher, depending on its sell-through and inventory policies.

how ThE FInAncIALS workWhen returns go to the publisher, regardless of whether retailers or wholesalers send them, the publisher must reim-burse its trading partner for the inventory. Because the risk is evident when selling a title as returnable, publishers typically set up reserve accounts for returns.

A reserve account for a title, consisting of a designated per-centage of the funds from its sales, is put aside exclusively to pay for any future returns. The most important takeaway from my advice is probably this: If you are selling your books as returnable, it is wise to have a reserve account in place.

Returned books are often damaged so that you probably can’t put them back into inventory.

rESELLIng rETurnSReturned books have usually been touched by a lot of hands, having started out in a box from the printer headed to a ware-house, gone on to a retailer directly or through a wholesaler, and then gone back to a warehouse or wholesaler.

Throughout those journeys, books are often damaged. Dam-age does not always mean you cannot sell the books, but you probably won’t be able to put them back into inventory. You can work with a remainders company to sell the “hurts” at a discount, or you can sell them yourself through your Web-site. And you can also donate gently damaged books to lit-eracy groups or other charitable organizations.

SELLIng BookS nonrETurnABLEYou can sell a title as nonreturnable. That said, if you are count-ing on sales through brick-and-mortar stores, you will likely encounter resistance. Most physical bookstores require a stan-dard trade discount and buy only titles that are returnable. As a result, most wholesalers and distributors require that titles be returnable; otherwise they will not purchase inventory.

Sometimes publishers decide to make a title nonreturnable at some point after publication. This entails notifying retail-ers as well as notifying wholesalers and distributors, who are required to notify their retail partners, and giving the retailers a window of time to return their inventory. As a result, it is

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■ Board Member’s Memo

possible that returns will continue even after a title goes out of print or becomes nonreturnable for any other reason.

MInIMIzIng rETurnSA primary factor in the success of a new title is marketing. Putting a title into retail space is not going to generate sales if its likely readers are not aware of the book.

By taking advantage of relatively new technology, some pub-lishers now launch books using print-on-demand for hun-dreds or perhaps dozens of copies instead of ordering thou-sands of copies printed by offset.

It is possible that returns will continue even after a title goes out of print.

Potential partners for print-on-demand include CreateSpace, which has a print-on-demand program that makes books available on Amazon sites domestically and internationally with no physical inventory on hand, and Ingram’s Lightning Source, which has a print-on-demand wholesale distribu-tion program that lets publishers make their titles available

to Ingram and Baker & Taylor, the two largest U.S. whole-salers, as well as to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Lightning Source also has wholesale distribution programs that reach the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Brazil.

If you are focused only on generating online sales, and not planning to sell through physical stores, you can set titles up at Lightning Source as nonreturnable.

Both Lightning Source and CreateSpace offer options for color, black-and-white, softcover, and hardcover manufacturing.

Print-on-demand helps Amazon and Lightning Source because it lets them show titles as available without the neces-sity for investing in physical inventory and warehouse space. And the technology helps publishers, both because returns from online sales are typically lower, and because startup costs are lower too, with no investment in speculative printing.

There are other ways of minimizing returns (for specifics, see the three-part IBPA Roundtable that began with “Control-ling Returns: Yes, We Can” in our May 2010 issue and con-tinued in the June and July issues).

And pursuing three of the broad goals you probably always pursue will help: get outstanding content; process it profes-sionally; and market it well. ■

Janice Schnell is a content acquisition account executive for Ingram Content Group whose book publishing expertise includes knowledge of offset and print-on-demand book manufacturing and distribution and digital content solutions for publishers. A member of the IBPA board, she can be reached at [email protected].

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DoIng TrIPLE DuTYOur site is an information center, a marketing tool, and a sales venue. We consider it our first line of contact with readers and potential new authors, and it’s definitely an essential market-ing tool, since most of our readership accesses content online.

To supply information—and cus-tomer service—we offer contact infor-mation, an e-book FAQ designed to

help readers who are new to digital content choose what formats to order for their devices, material about local bookstores that carry our titles, and tip sheets, plus guidelines and FAQs for authors who want to submit their work to us.

To use the site for marketing, we pro-vide links to a free monthly electronic newsletter that features author inter-views and updates on new releases,

What Publishers’ Websites Can Do, Part 3

links to our blog and to individual author blogs and Facebook pages, and a calendar of events.

To generate sales, we provide reviews and author bios, give visitors ways to find content similar to content they previously purchased, and make our entire list of 350 titles accessible. Our readers find out about new content via digital networking that starts with our site. Some 20 percent of our print and digital sales are direct to readers via our integrated Web store.

Len Barot • Bold Strokes Books, Inc boldstrokesbooks.com

SEvEn LESSonS LEArnEDWebsites . . . can’t live with them, or without them. Briefly, here is what I have learned over the last 15 years or so:

1. Have to have one! Has to capture the attention of the visitor in less than 10 seconds or they will leave!

2. A poorly done Website will kill

In this final installment of our series on Websites’ many uses, two leitmotifs seem especially clear—one that might be summed up as Set Smart Goals, and one that amounts to Link Lots of Ways.

It’s useful, of course, to know what cool things you can make a site do and what pages are standard on publishers’ sites. But IBPA members testify that it’s even more useful to know what you want your site to accomplish.

As members’ reports show, defin-ing those goals means focusing on the same questions that other aspects of marketing raise: Who is this for? What do they want and need? What do I want them to do? How does what I want relate

to what they want, and how can I make sure they understand that what I’m offering is what they’re eager to have?

As for linking lots of ways, see below and the earlier install-ments of this series (which ran in November and December). Like goals that members set, links that they devise, use, and recommend are designed to provide value for particular populations, and they come in a wide variety, includ-ing internal, social media, and subject-based.

Many thanks to everybody who shared hard-won Website wisdom on these themes and others.

—Judith Appelbaum


■ IBPA Roundtable

business; the site is an instant reflec-tion of the business, owner, man-agement team, entrepreneur. So many entrepreneurs’ sites are done poorly, and yet the owners of the sites are proud of them (and don’t know why they don’t get business).

3. At best, a well-done site confirms for prospects that your company is worth pursuing further.

4. You can sell books on your site, but sales on our site amount to only 5 percent of what we sell on Amazon and through our direct marketing and selling efforts. (public speaking, workshops, associations, universities, etc.).

5. A Website is just one aspect of marketing, and not the primary one. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

6. People will come to a Website to learn your products and services, might buy if the price point is less than $50 . . . otherwise they will want to talk to someone.

7. For most small businesses, less is more. Most Websites have far too much blah blah blah.

Jim Horan The One Page Business Plan Company

onepagebusinessplan.com

how connEcTIonS hELPWe discovered that we could add value to our Website by connecting information pages with our books.

For instance, a book about abuse has a Website that lists dozens of help orga-nizations. A book about pirates was linked to the author’s evaluation of pirate films throughout history (she is a film reviewer by day). She also linked those movies available on Amazon to our site and got associate commis-sions from the sales.

Our information pages became their own draws for Google searches, attracting people who hadn’t known about the related books (at each site, the book is always at the top of the page and/or featured as a resource in the body of information).

For nonfiction especially, we’ve found this a handy tool.

Jacqueline Church Simonds Beagle Bay, Inc. • beaglebay.com

onE For EAch IMPorTAnT AuDIEncEMonth9Books, which publishes spec-ulative fiction for teens and tweens, uses two separate Websites that link to each other.

Our trade site is designed to help partners and potential partners learn about our titles, view our rights guide, and contact the appropriate people about sales, permissions, and so on. It also lets reviewers and bloggers sign up to be added to our database. And it includes information about our mis-sion statement and beliefs, company news, and our publication calendar.

Our consumer site features strong calls to action, especially calls to buy. Con-tent about our titles has links to Ama-zon, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound. Visitors can watch book trailers, read interviews with our authors and staff, and even read first-chapter previews from titles not yet released. Bloggers and reviewers can access Blogger Cen-tral to find everything they need to conduct an interview, participate in a blog tour, and so on, from files only they can download and information available only to them. This site also has a list of staff with job descriptions, an events page with flyers that readers can print and hand out or bring to an event for autographing, and a link to the Month9Book merchandise store.

Serving different populations, both sites help us build our mailing list and drive product awareness, and we aim to keep both up and running with continually fresh content and cross-promotion.

Georgia McBride • Month9Books Month9books.com

Month9Booksblog.com

FrEEBIES PAY oFFBecause I believe that the old adage “You must give in order to receive” applies to authors’ and publishers’ Websites, I offer a free e-booklet on my site as a way to collect names and email addresses of potential customers and clients.

I also use my Websites as resource


IBPA Roundtable ■

centers. Once I have attracted a client or customer to one of my sites, that person has the oppor-tunity to learn about me, my ser-vices, and the books I offer. They can find out where I am speaking next, as well.

And I offer a daily blog for authors, a large resource list, and tons of articles on publishing and book promotion.

Statistics show that I am drawing more traffic since I began offering the free e-booklets. And my mailing list has grown tremendously.

Patricia Fry • Matilija Press matilijapress.com, patriciafry.com

gETTIng (AnD gIvIng) InForMATIonReaders’ comments on my blog are an outstanding source of infor-mation about my market, and we also use reader surveys with inexpensive tools like surveymon-key.com to get actionable mar-ket information direct from the

source. Virtually all “complaints” come through comments, so we can address them transparently, in full view of the com-munity, and I think that adds quite a bit to the trust readers have in what they read at the site.

Offering free information products online has let me grow a sizable email list quickly. My blog is a perfect tool for gener-ating prepublication “buzz” for books (and other products). And just this month we added what amounts to a “store” for books, guides, and training programs to the site.

Joel Friedlander • Marin Bookworks TheBookDesigner.com

FrIEnDS BEYonD FAcEBookI’ve had a Website for many years that helped me sell many thousands of dollars’ worth of homes and lots, and I have writ-ten hundreds of articles for it. As a new indie author/publisher working on my first major book, I’m excited to have a way to give back by sharing the ways my site has helped my business.

We all want customers, so how do we get them? Just like we

get new friends. Be available, be respectful, be helpful, be forthcoming, and most of all, just be friendly.

Easy to say, but how do we do this via a Website? Offer some-thing of value in exchange for visitors’ contact information and tell them you respect their privacy. Be easy to contact (toll-free numbers, email addresses, forums for questions and comments). Be sure to reply to everyone promptly and politely. Stay in touch on a predictable basis that people can count on (say, once a week with something of value to them).

Be interesting, be topical. Tie your content to news items, holidays, celebrity events. Entice people to access your site’s content with intriguing headlines. Then deliver the goods in each article, tidbit, audio, or video.

Soon, you’ll develop a following of friends who know, like, and trust you. Guess what? Friends buy stuff from friends they know, like, and trust. Remember the Tupperware parties?

Using the Word Press Platform (which even a novice can handle), I’ve built a list of over 700 devoted client friends who love me, but tell me when they don’t, so I can do better. Many of them have become in-person friends and clients to our mutual advantage. More and more of my sales are the result of referrals. Friends help friends.

In closing I want to thank IBPA for its wonderful site. I truly feel like a kid who has found a new candy store to explore.

Sid Grosvenor • Chapala Club ChapalaClub.com

To BuILD A BrAnDMy Website is built around my blog, Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happi-ness, in support of my novel, The Guys’ Guy’s Guide to Love. Our goal is to build the Guy’s Guy brand, starting with this first book in a trilogy.

The site features a synopsis of the novel, author info, media coverage including interviews and reviews, promotional videos and our YouTube channel (with each video crafted to drive home specific information about our brand), our Facebook pages, contests, TV appearances, signings,


■ IBPA Roundtable

book clubs, photos, reviews, Guy’s Guy favorite sites, a link to our Blog Talk Radio/Guy’s Guy radio broadcasts, ongoing contributions to ABC Radio on Slacker.com, more than 70 weekly blog posts and guest posts on other sites on all things Guy’s Guy, links to our Twitter feed, and more.

We will begin selling new Guy’s Guy products very soon, including Amazon singles and a nonfiction Guys’ Guy’s Guide.

Robert Manni• Author of The Guys’ Guy’s Guide to Love RobertManni.com

PLAYIng A SMALL PArTAlthough we don’t gener-ally discount books sold through our site so that we don’t compete with our customers, and although all our books sell for less else-where through our trading partners, we still get a few orders a week.

When we discount on the site, it is usually for a special pro-motion to the member base and an organization that some-how relates to a book. The customer is contacted by the orga-nization and directed to our site for the special offer, like a member discount, or a free book with purchase.

Overall, sales through our site represent about 1 percent of our billing.

Tom Doherty • Cardinal Publishers Group Cardinalpub.com

InTErrELATED AcTIonSAs a professional illustra-tor, I wanted to be able to manage an online portfolio myself. I did not have the budget to hire program-mers and designers to cre-ate and update my site, so I used WordPress (which is “open source,” meaning

owned by the citizens of the world and constantly improved and developed by all of us). A mentor (technology guru and generous teacher Jerry Turk) helped me become an expert WordPress Web designer. Now, a few years later we build,

teach, and design sites for others and share developing resources as they become available.

Exciting stuff! Technology is fluid and publishing to the Web is also fluid, especially with blog-based content-management systems. Of course, it’s important to create and manage Web-sites so that they will engage audiences and draw them to your books, images, products, videos, and expertise. But cre-ating and managing Websites should also involve evaluation of business objectives, plans, and development.

Our slogan is, “It’s how the world sees you!” We favor effortless interaction with social media; for example, as new content is added to our sites, it is automatically shared as images and links on Facebook pages, profiles, Google+, LinkedIn—you name it. Also, we favor blogging; adding an email newsletter like MailChimp or Constant Con-tact; synchronizing everything on the site with social media, e-commerce, and beautiful dynamic image presentation; and using Google Analytics and other free site-traffic monitors to understand traffic, clicks, geographical locations, and so much more about who is looking at what (without getting swamped by the details).

Cathi Bosco • C and D Studios CandDStudios.com, CBCmascots.com, bethekite.com

MuLTIPurPoSE now AnD STILL ExPAnDIngMy Website is the way peo-ple find me, my books, and the services I offer. Accord-ing to Google Analytics, the parts of the site that are clicked on most often and responsible for the longest visits are, in order, the parts that feature:

• free art ideas from my more than 20 books

• book sales and e-book sales

• connections for hiring me to do keynotes, presentations, workshops, and articles, and for arranging interviews

• sign-up for my mailing list, which offers a free monthly


IBPA Roundtable ■

newsletter full of art ideas, and always a free book give-away to list members

I use my site is to announce new books and special events, to share handouts for my workshops, to allow downloads of articles I have written, and for just about anything else you can think of. Selling books is a primary function, and e-book sales have taken off for me through the site. I will soon be adding a section offering my services as an agent to authors in my area of expertise.

MaryAnn F. Kohl • Bright Ring Publishing , Inc. brightring.com

ThE hAPPY BIrThDAY BEnEFIT (AMong oThErS)

I sell one series of read-aloud novels for kids aged 5 to 10, and I use my Web-site to get information about people in my mar-ket directly from them, to sell my books, to build my mailing list, and more.

We use PayPal to process the credit card sales. It’s inexpensive, and the impeccable records are accessible 24 hours a day.

I see many advantages to having my customers deal directly with me instead of channeling sales through a distributor or online booksellers. Because I create the shipping labels, physi-cal addresses as well as e-mail address become part of our databank (and phone numbers are easy to get if I need them).

Also, I have a way to collect information about birthdays, so when a child with one of my books has a birthday, the main character, Pengey Penguin, sends the child an e-birthday card with a reminder about Pengey’s Fan Club and the like. This type of correspondence generates sales, but it’s just as important because it endears Pengey and the life lessons his adventures teach.

Along with our books, we sell T-shirts, badge buttons, and colorized reproductions of the illustrations in the books. It’s nice for parents and grandparents to have those extra items, especially when there are several kids in the house. And after they read about Pengey and his pals and his adventures, many of our customers can’t resist getting the T-shirts. They help our bottom line a lot.

In the six years we’ve been in business, we have had precisely two complaints (we responded quickly) and many little let-ters of thanks. We are proud of our customer service and proud that our customers talk to their friends about is. That, plus the fact that we have a genuinely good first novel for kids, tends to perpetuate sales.

John Burns • San Francisco Story Works pengey.com

DEFInED goALS BrIng DEFInITE rEwArDSWhen we relaunched Quirk-Books.com in 2011, we had a few goals in mind:.

➤ Create an entertain-ing and informational content experience that matches what our books offer. We have done this through original blog posts (“A Guide to Pairing Your Comics & Beer”), original videos, book-derived content, bonus content not found in the books, author Q&As, and more.

➤ Aggregate and communicate with our fans. Quirk pub-lishes across many categories. While the people in our markets have some similar characteristics, they may also have diverse interests. With the site’s launch, we introduced communities for our pop-culture audience (Planet Quirk), cooking/crafting audience (Homemade Quirk), and parent audience (Raising Quirk). These communities offer a more narrow focus while still draw-ing from the full range of Quirk’s content base.

➤ Showcase our books and drive consumers to retail stores. We do not sell books directly on our site. We are in the business of creating and delivering strikingly unconven-tional books and content. That’s what we do well. We choose to stay away from the logistics of sales, fulfillment, and distribution. Also, we want consumers to choose where they buy, so we and offer links to all the major retailers, including Indiebound, via our Buy Local button.

Measurements show increases in social media activity, traffic to our site, and click-throughs to retailers.

Brett Cohen • Quirk Books quirkbooks.com ■


FEEDBACKMorE hELP wITh workFLow“Creating a Workable Book-Publishing Workflow,” by Susan Daffron (November), included some excellent advice about how to use styles to efficiently format text for multiple plat-forms, and it talked about importing Word styles into InDe-sign. The author mentioned that her company uses InDesign from Adobe’s CS3 software bundle.

Our company provides editorial, production, and project management services to publishers, and when we “upgraded” to CS6—the current version of this software, which includes some changes in functionality that have a dramatic effect on how styles are imported—we experienced significantly reduced productivity and increased frustration. For oth-ers who might be using the newer software, here’s what we learned about the challenge and how to work around it.

As the article mentioned, when using CS3 it is possible to use bold and italics in Word files, and these text attributes (known as local formatting) will be retained when styles are

imported and mapped to styles in InDesign. When Word styles are mapped to their appropriate InDesign counter-parts by the same process in CS6 (and CS5), all features of the Word style are retained as local formatting.

This includes items such as font, font size, paragraph spac-ing, and even hyphenation and justification. Unless styles are initially designed differently from what was required in CS3, the newer versions of InDesign will apply all these elements as local overrides to the InDesign style.

Here’s an example: Suppose your author produces a manu-script in Word using a style “Regular,” where “Regular” appears in the font Times New Roman, is not justified, and has hyphenation turned off. In addition, let’s suppose your author uses italics to introduce key terms.

In CS3, you could import this text into InDesign and have the “Regular” style appear in the font Palatino, with justified


Feedback ■

text, and with hyphenation turned on. The italics that had been applied within the text would be retained as local over-rides, with the result that the words would still be italicized.

In CS5 and CS6, when this same text is imported and mapped to the style “Regular,” everything is retained as a local over-ride: the wrong font, the incorrect justification, the lack of hyphenation, and the application of italics. These local over-rides can be turned off (so that you get the correct font, etc.), but this is an all-or-nothing proposition. Turning the over-rides off means that any applied text attributes (bold, italic, superscript, etc.) will disappear too. These types of items then have to be manually reapplied on an individual basis throughout the entire manuscript.

After spending a considerable amount of time reading online forums where others discussed this problem and after doing some experimenting with our files, we learned that this can be fixed by changing the way styles are built and defined. In the past, it was possible to use a basic style and create other styles based on it. For example, you could have a style called “Regular” that would define the way regular text would appear. If you had another style for indented text, you could call it “Indented” and base it on “Regular” with just the indent being different.

The advantage to using styles that are built on one another is that you can make global changes to common elements simply by adjusting the underlying style. For example, if you want to change the text of a book from Palatino to Bookman, all you have to do is change the base style and the adjustment flows through to other styles built on it.

But when styles are created by building on and modifying other styles, the newer versions of InDesign are unable to distinguish true local formatting (such as bold, italic, and

superscript) from changes that are intended to differenti-ate one style from another (such as font size, indenting, and paragraph spacing).

The solution is to modify or build all styles so that they are based on “No Style” in Word and “No Paragraph Style” in InDesign. Although this solution means that universal changes cannot later be made to a single base style (each style has to be changed individually if such alterations are needed), it does solve the problem of retaining only intended, true local formatting.

In our experience, the process of applying global changes to mul-tiple style definitions is much more manageable than the process of trying to identify each instance of a missing text attribute.

Additionally, we have discovered that the importing pro-cess works best if Word files are created in the .docx format (rather than the older .doc format). ■

Karen Bellenir, Editorial Director Wordwright, LLC wordwrightllc.com

Where Books Are

Bound For Greatness


Contact Chris Kahn760-733-9555 [email protected]

When Customers Rage OnlineEight principles for protecting (and possibly improving) your reputation

Books on TapWho’s buying?

m ay 2 0 1 2 | V o l . 3 0 • N o . 5

Money from Mobile CommerceTo get your share, modernize your Web site and try new tools

How well is that platform working?

Format FindingsA roundup of ways to adjust the e- and p- mix

E-book DesignWhat you can control

Maximize Permissions Revenue

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M a r c h 2 0 1 2 | V o l . 3 0 • N o . 3

Getting Reviews

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SPoTLIghTShowcASIng ThE STInkY SErIES

Two segments of a new CNN Headline News show, Making It in America, featured Britt Men-zies, author of the Raven Tree Press StinkyKids series, when its third title, StinkyKids Have a Heart, launched in the fall. Intro-duced in 2011, the hardbound picture books use characters created by Menzies in 2006 for

T-shirts, which led to dolls in 2009. Last spring StinkyKids: The Musical, using plots from the books, debuted to sellout crowds in New York City and was recognized as Best Family Show by the Off Broadway Alliance.

A Raven Tree newsletter report on the CNN show said in part: “Host Vinnie Politan shares what it takes to be a suc-cessful mompreneur and [how] creator, Menzies, fits into all four categories of success.” Show segments—one 3:38 minutes long and the other 3:29 long—are on YouTube (youtu.be/83-gy-swaX0 and youtu.be/9-nUQDMQBvw).

MAjor MEDIA covEr cookBookGot allergies? Get to the Square One Website and take a look at its cookbook by a duo who call themselves the Double Energy Twins and were featured in the Los Angeles Times in October. Characterizing Shari and Judi Zucker as “the dynamo twins,” the paper noted that their latest book, The Ultimate Allergy-Free

Snack Cookbook, is designed to help kids eat right.

The month before, the twins had appeared on the Today show, where they showed hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb how to make an allergy-free pizza. And, if you don’t mind us punning, there was nothing cheesy about the

orders that wholesalers immedi-ately placed: 3,500! The book’s Amazon ranking shot up from around 35,000 to as high as 900 that week in the All Books cat-egory, and into the top 10 in the Food Allergies category. Plus, the authors’ Website received nearly 1,000 clicks within hours of the television appearance.

The same month, back-to-school features in regional and niche publications such as the Stroudsburg, PA, Pocono Record and Better Nutrition Magazine featured recipes from the book and reminders of the high percentage of children who have food allergies. Earlier in the year, a brief summary of the book in Newsday explained, “The Zucker twins, Californians trained in physiology and nutrition, published their first book about snacks in 1984, at age 16. Their guide is useful for parents who want to protect their kids from allergic reactions—and avoid junk food, too.” Publishers Weekly called “the Zuckers’ insight into dealing with allergies . . . a welcome resource.”

nonSMokIng SAnTA STorIESIf Pamela McColl at Grafton and Scratch Publishers has her way, Santa Claus may or may not still be snacking as he recovers from the holidays, but he’ll toss the pipe. She got lots of media attention in the autumn and holiday season (225 Web site mentions from just the first press release) for her revi-

sion of the Clement Moore classic, A Visit from St. Nicholas.

Antismoking advocate McColl edited out the references to Claus smoking in her “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” which led to comments from media including the Dallas News health blog (which noted that “her Santa also shows he cares about the arctic polar bears by wearing fake, not


■ Spotlight

real fur”) and the entertainment editor of the Vancouver, BC, Star, who quoted “an email to McColl signed by The Chief Elf, Snowman Factory” (“The pipe goes with Santa—it’s a tradition and I’m tired of traditions being changed. So, for the record—you can put that in your pipe and smoke it”).

McColl credits IBPA with contributing to her success, explain-ing, “I started by getting advice from IBPA and I did what they recommended and—bingo—here we are.” And where is she? She sold out her first and second print runs in English and was into a third printing by Halloween, and she now has 50,000 hardcover copies and 15,000 paperback copies in print, plus 7,500 hardcover copies in Spanish and 3,000 in French.

TYIng In wITh A TIMELY ToPIcOctober is Bullying Prevention Awareness Month, and this past autumn that meant major media and teen retail visibility for Wild Onion Press, which specializes in books about chil-dren with physical differences.

Wild Onion published The First Day Speech by Isabelle Hadala in August. Now 14, the author was born with ectodermal dysplasia, a genetic condition that keeps hands and toes from forming properly. Her picture book is based on the speech she made the first day of each academic

year in elementary school, when she explained her condition and told classmates to look her over and then “get over it.”

On Labor Day, NBC’s Today show featured Hadala in a three-minute story that was later picked up by television sta-tions in Florida, where she lives (video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/48884764#48884764). In October, she was invited to New York’s WPIX to be the guest weather forecaster (wpix.com/news/morningnews/wpix-friday-forecaster-izzy-hadala,0,4936464.story) in conjunction with appearances she was making for teen fashion company Aeropostale about the costs of bullying. Aeropostale had contacted Wild Onion to invite Hadala to serve as one of its Teen Ambassadors in the STOMP OUT Bullying program. The company has sent the eighth grader to speak in several middle schools.

Wild Onion publisher Shelley Mickle reports that 200 copies of The First Day Speech were sold in the week following the Today show publicity.

MoThEr MAkES nEwSBitingduck Press has been in the headlines in print and online with two features in national publications. “Would you hire your mom? These entrepreneurs did” is how USA Today started a story in August that included coverage of Jay Nadeau, editor-in-chief at the Altadena, CA, press.

Nadeau “employed her mom, Marie, a few months after launching the publishing company,” the story says. “Marie founded a skin-care-focused firm, so Jay thought she could help in areas such as marketing and public relations. But as a crush of books came in, Jay asked her mom to take a stab at reviewing and editing—and was surprised to learn that she was talented. ‘You think you know everything about your mom, but you don’t,’ Jay says. ‘I always knew that she read a lot, but I didn’t know she was so skilled as an editor.’”

ABC News picked up the story, now archived at abc-n e w s . g o . c o m / B u s i n e s s / h i r e - m o m - e n t r e p r e n e u r s /story?id=17038613#.UJPo_YbheMo.

The same month, “Questions and Answers with Jay Nadeau” ran in PhysicsToday.com, a print and online publication of the American Institute of Physics, which introduced the pub-lisher as “the biologist turned theoretical physicist, turned experimental neuroscientist, turned biophysicist” who is “now moonlighting as an independent book publisher.”

Bitingduck, which describes its pub-lications as about science, mathe-matics, and the lives of scientists, will launch such titles as Hedwig Kohn: A Passion for Physics this spring. Its fall releases included the second edition of a title long out of print, The Yoga Facelift.

wInnIng worDSOwl Press’s Albert Flynn DeSilver reports several recent reviews for his Beamish Boy. The Memoir Journal blogged, “It is harsh while at the same time poetic. It breaks your heart one moment and then sends your spirit soaring the next. It is one of the rare books that when finished I believe I will feel I am a better person for hav-ing read it. And, it has made me laugh out loud.” Kirkus had earlier described


Spotlight ■

Spotlight is compiled by Linda Carlson (lindacarl-son.com), who welcomes members’ news of unusual special sales, licensing deals, significant media coups in the last month, movie and television options, and other achievements at [email protected].

The focus of this column is as much on how you accomplish something as on what you accomplish, so specific how-to’s are important.

For her other monthly articles in the Independent, Linda often emails members to ask about their expe-riences. To ensure you receive these messages, check that you have her email address in your address book.

Please submit your news for Spotlight in the text of your email (no attachments) and remember to include:

• your name and title

• the name of your press as it appears in the IBPA membership directory

• your email address

• URLs for the archived editions of any media stories you’re telling us about

Since information for this column is needed about eight weeks in advance of an issue’s publication date, news you submit by January 10 can be considered for the March 2013 and later issues. News that is time-sensitive should be directed to [email protected] for consideration for the IBPA e-newsletter.

the book as “A beautifully written memoir of awakening and self-acceptance.” And Publishers Weekly wrote, “DeSilver’s see-sawing journey from drug and alcohol addiction to recovery—all filled with epiphanies and backsliding, clarity and bewilder-ment—will keep readers committed to his story.”

Allen A. Knoll’s The Ice Maiden Cometh Not was reviewed by Pub-lishers Weekly, which wrote, “Noir by way of Wodehouse, Boyle’s light concoction will most appeal to readers looking for whimsy rather than mystery.” Booklist’s starred review commented, “There’s a real mystery to be solved here, but the greater pleasure for readers is listening to [hero] Gil’s quirky voice and meeting [author] Boyle’s cast of weird and wonderful characters.”

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■ Spotlight

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CALL FOR ENTRIES 2013 NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS

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rx For rEAL rEvIEwSPW recently published an opinion piece by Penny C. Sanse-vieri on its “Soapbox” page—“Keeping It Real: The Danger in Fake Reviews”—in which the online marketing consultant offers six recommendations for authors who want exposure that may lead to legitimate reviews.

AcTIon rE A FIrST novELAllworth Press founder and publisher Tad Crawford has a debut novel published by Arcade Publishing, A Floating Life, which Kirkus called “odd, offbeat and strangely shimmer-ing” in its print and online reviews. Other publicity includes an online review in Booklist; Crawford’s guest blog in Shelf Awareness for Readers on what inspired him; and an excerpt posted by 2paragraphs.com, which, Crawford notes, is “a site devoted to pithy presentations of current topics.” Arcade—which also published five novels by Mo Yan, winner of a 2012 Nobel Prize—has sold translation rights in A Floating Life to Bertrand Brasilia for a Portuguese edition in Brazil. ■

• Sourcebooks’s The Officer Breaks the Rules, about a “feisty Navy nurse’s feminine wiles.”

• Sourcebooks Casablanca’s The Wicked Wedding of Miss Ellie Vyne, a romantic farce, and Waking Up with a Rake, “an alluring read complete with an outspoken female protagonist and a hint of mystery.”

• Chicago Review Press’s Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar, called an “excellent and fas-cinating behind-the-scenes look at the artists who made Motown Records a massive success.”

• Berrett-Koehler’s Hungry Start-up Strategy: Creating New Ventures with Limited Resources and Unlimited Vision, praised for avoiding buzzwords and for providing “guid-ance on gaining the edge necessary to compete and thrive in business.”

• C & T Publishing’s Barbara Brackman’s Civil War Sam-pler: 50 Quilt Blocks with Stories from History, described as “gloriously honoring the Civil War without bellicos-ity” and offering vignettes of American women’s history.


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CLASSIFIEDS

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CLASSIFIEDS (continued)

You’re Invited to Write for the IndependentOur monthly publication is a great place to share the wealth of experience. If you have a how-to or a how-I story to tell that would help other members, please contact Judith Appelbaum, editor, at [email protected].

FYI: Independent articles generally run 800 to 1,500 words (if you have more to say, we might do a series). Artwork is welcome if it enhances some point or points that the article makes. And the pieces that work best for us are those with lots of usable information, supported by specifics.

IBPA INDEPENDENT1020 MANHATTAN BEACH BLVD., SUITE 204MANHATTAN BEACH, CALIFORNIA 90266www.ibpa-online.org

SHINE: book awards & reviews

REACH: librarians, booksellers, agents, readers

PROSPER: subscribe, advertise

reviews of good books, independently published www.forewordreviews.com

dare.

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