Are big house publishers trying to persuade more readers to invest in physical copies of books rather than ebooks?  We all know they have more invested in paper books, despite the margins being smaller.

Are the big publishers not negotiating digital rights with their authors in a fair manner?  In other words, are they paying their authors the same royalties for ebooks as the author would make for paperback sales, even though we know the publisher stands to earn a bigger commission from e-sales?

Pricing may not be of a big concern to consumers at this point, thanks to Amazon’s discounts no doubt. Ape House is ranked at #424 in Book Sales and #5 in Literay Fiction in the Kindle Store at the time I’m writing this.  But you can’t help but wonder what the publishers are thinking. Amazon makes it very clear that they aren’t at fault, that the publisher sets the actual list price.  Just wave your cursor over the What’s this? next to the price (see photo).

So, while pricing hasn’t affected Gruen’s paycheck, if the e-shopper is looking for a bargain, no wonder indie authors are pricing their books as low as .99 cents to attract readers.  My own Stealing Wishes sells for less than a buck, of which I pocket .70 cents from each sell. On its page, Amazon notes the list price of the paperback is $12.95, reinforcing to the buyer how much they are saving. 

Sure, pricing isn’t the only thing you should be concerned about when you are trying to attract readers, but during a time like this when it is obvious the big publishers are at war with this situation, it’s a good thing to keep in mind.  

True, some people can probably invest very little money in their book and get just as much exposure.  The internet provides us with limitless possibilities when it comes to free marketing. But we shouldn’t depend upon the world wide web solely for those opportunities.  Take advantage of them?  Absolutely!  But you should still invest in physical copies of you own book (That is, if you are publishing it at all in hard copy…the reason for my post) so that you can be armed with the best marketing material there is: a copy of your book.

It’s odd to consider these days that an author can publish completely online and have their book only available as a download and make money.  Chances are, if you are like me or at least half of the POD community, you’ll make more money from E-sales than physical copies.  But if you are like me, you also still like to hold a physical book in your hand.  You like the crisp smell of its pages.  You like the feel of it, of words on paper. Nothing beats a physical book in my hands!  I still buy them.  I still read them.  And I still prefer to review them that way.

I see author blogs or Facebook posts all the time with random pics of your books stacked on your desk or shelved neatly on your book shelf.  Looks good, doesn’t it?  Feels good too.  I have a stack of my own like that.  They are signs of our hard work and we should be proud of them. They make good conversation pieces when company comes over.  Visitors always stop and wonder why you have so many copies of one book on your shelf.  So, good for you for having more than one copy!  But now it’s time to put a few of those copies to work for you.  Chances are not every copy will have a return as far as the investment goes, but in no random order, here’s a list of ways to put those copies to good use when it comes to marketing your book:

1. Donate one copy to your local library.
2. Did you write a children’s or teen interest book?  Donate a copy to a local school library or to the school you went to.
3. Send a copy to your local newspaper along with a press release.  Be sure to send it to the attention of the arts and variety editor or local interest section.
4. Send a copy to at least one national newspaper along with a press release.  Again, to the attention of the review editor.
5. Send a copy to a literary magazine or journal.
6. Send a copy to a review site or book review blog (www.llbookreview.com is a good one).
7. Send a copy to a local book club.
8. Send a copy to your local independent bookstore as part of a marketing kit or press release.  Bookstores love to receive advanced free copies and often give them  to their employees to read and suggest to customers.
9. Send a copy to your local chain bookstore.  Most of the time they won’t invest in stock of your book if it is sold non-returnable, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
10. Find a top reviewer of books in your genre on Amazon.com and contact them, asking if they’d like a copy of your book.  I’ve had several authors contact me through Amazon this way because of my previous reviews.
11. Sell copies of your book on Amazon.com or on sites like abebooks.com. Advertise them as “signed by the author.”  This is an excellent way to get a fast return financially!
12. Offer free copies on your blog, on Facebook, or on Twitter as a raffle.  Create fun contests for your readers!
13. Give away free copies on bookmooch.com.  I’m currently doing this, asking readers to only mooch my book if they are willing to review it for me on Amazon.com.  I’m trying to gain more reviews of my book there, and so far I’ve had two people request my book.
14. Give advanced copies away on goodreads.com.  GoodReads will keep track of the entries and let you set your own deadline.  They will also draw random winners for you at the end of the raffle and let you know who they are.  All you have to do is ship the book.  GoodReads also encourages readers to post a review of the book on their site.  Include a nice thank you card with the book and ask them to review it on Amazon for you too.
15. In your car, book bag, or purse.  You never know who you are going to run into and strike up a conversation with.  It could be an excellent bragging opportunity and you could let your book be your business card.
16. In a waiting room.  If you find books in your doctor’s office, dentist office, at the hospital, or any other waiting room you’ve frequented, why not conveniently leave one of your own books there in the mix?  You never know who will pick it up.  This is an excellent opportunity for anyone who wrote a book specific to the field:  nursing biographies, doctor advice, dental, self-help, etc.
17. Hospital Giftshops.  Most hospital gift shops have a small selection of eclectic books.  This is a great chance to get your book front and center.
18. At a literary festival. Check your state for any local book festivals that might be taking place.  Sign up to attend or join a group that might be attending.  Or just go to the festival as a visitor and pass out copies of your book to people you strike up a conversation with.  Our own LK Gardner-Griffie has connected with many readers at festivals in her area.
19. Story-Time!  There’s always a book being read to kids on a Saturday at a bookstore, at a preschool or in a kindergarten class, or at your local library.  If you wrote a kid’s book, why not talk to the director about being a special guest and featuring your book.
20. College Campuses!  Don’t forget your campus bookstore, campus library, campus clubs, writing groups, historical societies, etc.
21. Places frequented by your target audience.  This place plays off #16 a bit, but think about it.  The people who you want to read your book, who you wrote the book for, might not frequent bookstores.  Did you write a story about a coupon clipping queen?  Sell your book on a card table outside the grocery store (Move over girl scouts!) or talk to your grocery manager about an event.  Did you write the next Friday Night Lights?  Peddle your book at the high school concession stand. Are you penning your biography about being a Karate teacher?  Go talk to karate schools and classes one night!  A how-to book on growing rare vegetables?  Stop by the local farmer’s market. The point is go find your audience! Don’t wait for them to find you.
22. Community Centers.  Find out if your local center has a free lending library.  This is also a nice way to connect with grown-ups who loiter around while the kids are in the pool, and a nice way to let your neighbors kindly know there’s an author living next door.
23. Internet Cafes and Coffee Shops.  Again, most have a lending library.  Or stop by on Open Mic night and get up and read from your book.  I once bought a local cookbook that was being promoted next to the cash register in a coffee shop.  The point is most people who frequent these places appreciate local work and artists.
24. Flea markets, rummage sales, and garage sales.  Most people are looking for cheap books here, but if you signed your book and talked them up as “signed limited first editions,” you’re sure to draw some interest.
25. Airports, bus stations, and train stations.  Most of these have a literature kiosk or reading rack.
26. Visitor centers or tourist attractions.  Add a “local author” sticker to the front of your book and display it next to the other local interest books.

So there you have it!  Twenty-six places where you could market your book and put that overstock on your coffee table to some good use.  Take into account that if you are mailing copies of your book to various places there’s postage and packing materials to consider.  Always pack them sufficiently so the book arrives in perfect condition.  Also, don’t approach these places with a chip on your shoulder and don’t lie.  You’re not a bestselling author (yet).  Your a local author whose looking for readers. Don’t expect payment up front either.  You should be willing to donate copies of your book to most local places or work out a deal to sell on consignment. Or if you are dealing with a bookstore or coffee shop, take down their billing information and send them an invoice.

Do you have other odd places where you successfully sold your book?  If so, we want to hear about it.  Post them here as a comment or shoot us an email and we’ll include them in a future post.

Happy marketing!

It took several months for the book to become available on Amazon. Six months in fact.  Having emailed Lulu support several times during that wait period and after getting no help, I decided to give up on the project and I retired the book immediately.  It loaded to Amazon anyway though and while I have never promoted it, I did go ahead and load it to the Kindle where it has been downloaded enough to gain a sales rank in genres such as Writing Skills and Authorship.

Since the project was retired, but live on Amazon, I also expected never to collect any royalties from the sale of hard copies.  My fault for letting my anger get the best of me. But that’s where good ole Lulu didn’t fail me…at least I hope they didn’t fail.  To date, I’ve collected royalties for a total of just 5 copies: 3 in the US and 2 in the UK!

After much inner debate, I’ve decided to “unretire” the book.  With that decision, I’ve lowered the list price of the paperback to just $9.50 on Lulu and the E-Book to just $4.50, cutting most of my royalties. This may or may not affect the current list price at Amazon where the book is $12.50, but can be purchased starting at $9.50 from third party marketplace sellers. I don’t care.  More than anything, I want the book to be available to those who need it most…indie authors who may not have a lot of money to invest in their work, but have a lot of heart already invested in it. And may just need some help in the right direction.

The information presented in this book has not been changed.  In fact, I have reviewed it against Amazon and the information is still as current today as it was a year ago when I compiled it.  While I’m sure I could build upon the material, the purpose of the book was always to be a “quick” reference for indie authors.  I do not feel the need to broaden it, and I believe it can be a very important “go to” book for authors who are out of money and looking for quick ways to market their own book on Amazon.com, the world’s largest online book seller.

So, to kick off the “rebirth” of my POD Pocket Guide, I’m offering ten free copies!  That’s right!  Ten free copies!  To be eligible, just leave a comment with your email address on this post. On June 30th, I’ll pick ten winners at random. Yes, there’s a catch.  First, you must live in the United States.  Second, you must commit to leaving a review of the POD Pocket Guide on Amazon.com once you’ve read or used it.  If you can meet these two requirements, then leave a comment on this post to enter the raffle.

Can’t wait till June 30th for a free copy?  Buy or download it right now at Lulu.com!

Here’s a bit from the article at Today at MSNBC:

And the price war is not the only challenge the publishing industry faces nowadays. E-books sold for the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader have eaten into profits of publishers and booksellers — and Grisham says the future looks bleak.

Regarding reading books electronically, he told Lauer: “If half of us are going to be doing it, then you’re going to wipe out tons of bookstores and publishers and we’re going to buy it all online.

“I’m probably going to be all right — but the aspiring writers are going to have a very hard time getting published,” he added.

I couldn’t agree more with Grisham.  While working in the wholesale book industry, I’ve heard personal testimony time and time again (and again just yesterday even) that Amazon.com is killing the brick and mortar bookstore. But guilty of it myself, I’m quick to avoid a trip to my local book chain – saving time, gas, and money, and not having to deal with unhelpful retail workers – by buying online at home instead.

Grisham’s most recent book lists for $24.00.  It’s 50% off at Amazon, making it just $11.99 to the consumer for the hardcover edition!  It should be noted that most indie bookstores buy their stock from Ingram Book Distributing and expect at least a 40 to 50% discount off the cover price, currently the same price their customers can get it for themselves online. Most chains and some indies discount new releases by at least 10 to 20%, if not more, making their profit margins even smaller, but by doing so they hope to pull in a larger customer base and rely on those customers hopefully buying at least one regular priced item from a large latte to a book light. The non-book items are where their real profit lies!

How does Amazon get away with it, you ask?  Well, it is possible that they probably receive a larger bulk discount thanks to lucrative contracts Jeff Bezos has probably worked out with distributors.  Even a 60% discount from the vendor would give Amazon a 10% margin at the current price for Grisham’s new release.  But that’s just hearsay.  Instead, it’s safer to assume that Amazon is just like the regular brick and mortar.  They can afford a loss on books as long as their customers are buying other non-book items.  And face it, you know they are!  With online shopping at its all time highest in popularity, Amazon is probably making a killing on CDs, DVDs, clothes, electronics, and more.  Although books were first to fill up Bezo’s pocketbook with millions when he got started, they are probably last on his priority list today.

And we haven’t even scratched the service of the great E-Book debate.  Currently, none of Grisham’s books are available on Kindle.  But if they list for $9.00 to $10.00 on Kindle, after his agent and publishing company and whoever else get their share of the commission, Grisham stands to make only pennies from each Ebook sale which is probably what’s got him in a tizzy.

In the quote above, Grisham mentions aspiring writers having trouble getting published in the future.  I think this is just another reason why self-publishing will continue to grow, even in E-publishing.  Recently, LLBR opened it’s review gates to include all POD companies.  We immediately got queries from authors who are only published on Smashwords and Kindle.  That’s right!  No physical print book is even available of their work!  My most recent book, Stealing Wishes, sells for just $2.99 on the Kindle.  I earn $1.05 in commission from each sale, and have no agent or editor that I have to share that with, unlike Grisham.

So, while I agree with Grisham’s argument,  unlike him, I didn’t start my writing career before E-publishing was probably even heard of.  I don’t have millions in the bank thanks to mass market paperback sales and 23 bestselling novels. Grisham published his first book in 1989, almost a decade before Amazon.com or Jeff Bezos was even heard of. Technology (for readers and writers) has changed, and I believe that as a society we have to change with it – like it or not.  If Grisham self-published just one book all by himself on the Kindle, he’d still stand to make gobs of money, although the people depending on him for a paycheck might not like it.  So, I applaud him for embracing the demise of the bookstore, but like rotary dial telephones and wholesome comedic sitcoms, I’m afraid it’s still going to become a thing of the past and disappear whether authors like Grisham bow out or not.

We’ve talked about using Facebook to promote your book before.  I created a Facebook page to promote my own book, Stealing Wishes, a while back.  Since I was already on Facebook at the end of the day, I took the time to make a few updates to my book’s page and last week I came across an interesting ad in the right sidebar.  The ad said GET MORE FANS. “Advertise your page and pay only for new fans and clicks. Preview below.” (see image to the right)

Always looking for a new marketing opp, I decided to click on it to see what this was all about.  I was immediately redirected to a simplistic screen wanting me to design my own ad.  This consisted of choosing a title (the title of your book’s page) and writing a brief description, then uploading a new image if you want.  I chose to leave the image as it is, but changed the body of text to say, “Love and Good Coffee.  Why can’t we have both?”

After clicking Continue, Step 2 opened up where I basically had to fill out information about my target audience:

• Location
• Age
• Sex
• Keywords
• Education
• Relationship Status
• Sexual Preference
• Languages
• Connections
• Workplaces

I spent a good 30 minutes selecting different options and playing around with this feature because as you make changes Facebook gives you an estimate of how big your target audience is based on the number of users and the preferences they have set in their profiles.  For instance, not making any changes gave me a target audience of over 74 million, but changing the Relationship Status to Single immediately dropped the estimate to 14 million.

I also noticed you should be very aware of the keywords you choose (if any).  I entered several keywords related to my book from “comedy” to “romance” to even “gay” and “coffee,” but all of them decreased my target audience considerably. I decided to not list any keywords for this reason.

Another interesting fact is that since the main character of my book is gay, I decided to try targeting only men who were interested in men.  This dropped my target estimate to only 264,000.  So, the lesson learned here is to definitely NOT limit your audience.

My final target audience estimate after all my selections? 19,868,760.  Not bad.

Step 3, the final step in the ad process involves how much money you are willing to invest in your ad.  The first important selection is your daily budget and how much you are willing to spend per day. The minimum is one dollar, so that’s what I decided on since this is a test run for me. Then, you have to choose a schedule.  Do you want your ad to run continuously or for a set amount of time?  I decided on 30 days.  If I reach my maximum daily budget each day then that’s only 30 dollars. And yes, you can even choose a specific live date and end date for your ad. Then, you have to choose how much you are willing to pay per click.  The minimum is a penny, but Facebook estimates that you will only receive 2 clicks per day if you choose the minimum.

It is important to note that you will never pay more than your daily budget, but that you may actually pay less depending on how much traffic you get per day.  You can also choose to pay per click or pay per impression.  So, you can choose to pay each time someone actually clicks on your ad or you can pay for how many times your ad actually just appears on someone’s Facebook session.  Obviously, the impressions get your ad seen more, but can become much more costly. And it appears that those willing to pay more are the ads that get more Facetime on Facebook.

After making selections to my budget, I got to review my information and enter my credit card number.

After entering my payment information, I was redirected to a screen called My Ads where I’ll actually be able to track the progress of the ad on a daily basis.

So, will the ad work?  Who knows??  That’s the joy of advertising!  I like the fact that I’ll be able to track the clicks per day to see if my investment was worth it.  Obviously, if I had a budget of say $100 it would probably be much more worthwhile to invest more money in this, but we’ll see how it goes at first.  I’m more interested in seeing if people actually become fans of the page.  To me, that’s my true way of attracting an audience.

Some interesting figures…

• If the ad only costs me $30 in the end, I will need to sell at least 47 hard copies of the book to pay for the ad because I only make 64 cents per sale through Lulu.  64 cents X 47 = $30.08
• The book lists for $14.00 and is on sale on Amazon for $12.60.  That’s $562.12 profit for Amazon and/or Lulu after my royalty.
• I make $1.05 per sale of the book on the Amazon Kindle.  It would take only 29 Kindle sales to make back the $30 dollar investment. $1.05 x 29 = $30.45
• Earning at least 30 fans from this experiment on my book’s page, 1 per day?  Priceless.

So, if you see my ad out there over the next 30 days or if you decide to give it a try yourself, tell us about it by posting a comment here.

Today I came across a blog post from author Sarah R. Suleski, who also received the zombie-like email saying her book had been picked to be in the Amazon Marketplace program as well.  The title of her post is “Alisiyad on Amazon,” followed by the words “Sort of.”  I clicked on these words only to be redirected to the Amazon listing of her book.

I immediatly noticed that Sarah’s book has no ISBN, and has instead been assigned an ASIN number.  This stands for Amazon Standard Identification Number. Also, there was only one copy available for purchase, and you guessed it!  It’s from the third party seller, LuluPress.  It’s listed for $20.75 before shipping. With no ISBN, I decided to check out Sarah’s book on Lulu.com.  On Lulu, it indeed has no ISBN and it retails for $15.96.  The LuluPress copy on Amazon does reflect a 30% mark-up just as their email said it would.

PodPeep posted about this today and thanks to Emily Veinglory, I was led to a Lulu.com Forum where this issue is currently being discussed. Here is some information from the forum which actually provides more details than their email blast did…

Here are the details of this initiative as it stands. Keep in mind we’ll be tweaking this until it makes financial sense for the author and for Lulu. It’s a work in progress:

1. It’s free to join (or… stay, in this case!)
2. You can opt-out at any time by sending your Project ID to amazon-opt-out@lulu.com
3. If your books sell though the LuluPress Amazon Marketplace channel, you’ll be paid your “print” or “lulu” royalty (if you’ve got distribution, that’s the higher of the two royalties) and your sales will show up in your account the following day. They won’t be labeled anything different; it’ll just look like a lulu marketplace sale.
4. You’ll be paid according to your remission settings.

Pricing on Amazon Marketplace:

1. if you’ve bought the 1-year eBay/Amazon listing service, your price will be the same as your Lulu price. (please be patient if it’s not, we’ll be updating all of them in the next few days, and will continue to update them frequently for the highest accuracy possible)
2. if your book doesn’t have distribution on Lulu (PBY/PBL), your retail price on Amazon will be marked up 30% to cover the cost of selling/listing on Amazon marketplace.
3. if your book has distribution, the list price on Amazon Marketplace will be 5% LESS than your retail price on Lulu and the other retail channels to which distribution has given you access.

We are getting some complaints about private access books being made available for sale on Amazon Marketplace, and we’ll be removing them today or tomorrow. Pleases send the CIDs of any books that need to be removed at amazon-opt-out@lulu.com. We’ve gotten a few orders for private books and we’ve just been refunding the amazon customers. Our ordering system actually prevents Private books from printing, so your confidential/private projects are safe whether the Amazon listing is live or not. We sincerely apologize for the mistake!!

If this was a “work in progress,” then I don’t think Lulu should have rolled out an email notification in the manner they did.  That manner being that the email didn’t even tell me which of my books had been chosen to be in the program, and it also gave no specifics as to what the program is about.  I guess Lulu assumes every author out there should already know.

Many people are probably asking how can Lulu list books on Amazon without an ISBN.  That’s easy!  They’ve joined the many on Amazon who are operating what’s called a Z-Store.  For a monthly fee, businesses can upload their entire unique inventory to Amazon, everything from clothes and gift baskets to books and movies.  You can assign each product your own SKU (stock keeping unit) but it will also be assigned an ASIN.  If it is a book that has an ISBN, the ASIN is the same. Amazon loads your products to their site, they email you when someone buys it, they charge the customer’s credit card, you pack and ship the product, and Amazon pays you a lump sum from all sales (minus their15% commission) at the end of the month.

Advantages for Lulu:

• They stand to make a few extra bucks from the mark-ups if they can keep their shipping expenses low.
• Double exposure for books with no ISBN.  They’re now selling in two places!
• Added perk they can add to their products and services!  “No ISBN needed to sell your book on Amazon!”
• Marketplace orders are fulfilled from the seller, which means Lulu isn’t forced to use Booksurge to fulfill these orders.  No printing and set-up fees from Booksurge!

Now the Disadvantages:

• Obviously from the forum and from the lackluster email, Lulu didn’t do their homework and rolled this out too quickly and with too many kinks.
• They had books up on Amazon before the email went out!
• Private projects were accidentally listed on Amazon, although Lulu states they took them down and refunded buyers.
• Authors are still getting paid the same royalty even though Lulu is making more.
• If the Marketplace turns out to be a good investment, Lulu will probably charge new authors a fee for it in the future.

Now, how can you as a Lulu author (or any self-published author for that matter) take advantage of the Amazon Marketplace and use it to your own full potential? I know I said this in the post yesterday, but here it is again…

1. Use your author or bulk discount and invest in copies of your book.
2. List the books for sale on Amazon in the Marketplace feature by clicking on the Sell Yours Here button on your book’s page.  It’s free to list single copies.  You do NOT have to open a Z-Store.
3. Beat the list price of your book!  The lower the price you can afford, the closer your book will appear at the top of the Marketplace listings.
4. In the product description, state that the seller is getting a “Signed, 1st Edition” of your book!
5. Sign the books and include a bookmark or other “freebie.”  Also include a thank you note with your author website/blog address.
6. Email the buyer a tracking number for their purchase.  Include a blurb about your other books, your author blog, or an invitation to sign up for your newsletter.  Make the buyer feel special and let them know they are getting the book right from the author!

By the way, for those Lulu authors with no ISBN, but Lulu is selling your book on Amazon with an ASIN, you too can list stock for sale right on that page and beat that LuluPress price!  Don’t believe me?  Check out Sarah’s Amazon listing again and you’ll see the Sell Yours Here button on the right hand side.  Click on that button and you’ll be redirected to the page where you enter your price and description.  It literally takes only 60 seconds and there are no upfront fees to pay.

For those that don’t know, the Amazon Marketplace is where Amazon allows third parties (you, me, or indie bookshops out there, anyone really) to sell “used” or “new” copies of a book right on the same product page where Amazon is selling it.  They received a lot of flak for it in the beginning because publishers couldn’t believe Amazon would allow used copies of books to be sold right along side brand new copies.  But Amazon didn’t care.

They practically stole the book business from Ebay because they allowed sellers to list books without charging them any fees, they let listings stay live for up to 60 days, and they don’t charge you a fee if the book doesn’t sell.  They make money by taking a commission when your book actually sells. Read more about my own Marketplace business adventure  in the POD Diary. Marketplace business now makes up about 45% of their total book sales per year.  It’s easy money for them too.  No stock. No shipping fees.  They just run the automated email and listing system and charge the credit cards when books sell!

So, back to Lulu.  Today I get the following email from them…

Dear Lulu Author,

Congratulations, your book has been selected for listing on Amazon.com’s Marketplace! As a result, your book will now be easily found on the world’s largest online bookseller. There will be some differences between your listing on Lulu and your listing on Amazon. Amazon charges a fee to list your book, and in order to cover that cost your book will be listed with a 30% markup; however your royalty will remain the same, and your book’s price on Lulu will not change. Furthermore, your book sales on Amazon will reflect in your Lulu account immediately. Lulu is committed to helping you increase your book’s sales and we hope you enjoy the benefits of listing your book on Amazon.com.

Kind regards,
Lulu

You are free to opt out of the program if you are not interested in the benefits associated with having your book listed on Amazon. To do so, please reply to this email with the Project ID of the book you wish removed.

Now, I have a few problems with this email.  First, they don’t even tell me which of my three books was chosen for Marketplace.  Second, they don’t even tell you what Marketplace is or how it works or what its advantages are.  Third, their going to mark the book up 30% but still only give me my same commission.

Let’s do some math!

My book, Stealing Wishes, lists for $14.oo.  I make a 67 cent commission from Amazon sales fulfilled through Lulu right now.  A 30% mark-up is $4.20 making their Marketplace listing $18.20.  So, I listed a copy of my book at this price just to see what Amazon’s commission would be.  It’s $5.07.  So, Amazon’s cut automatically eats up the $3.99 standard shipping credit leaving Lulu with a profit of $17.12.  If a buyer chooses expedited shipping, it’s $6.99.  That leaves Lulu with a sale of $20.12 (Only $1.92 leftover for shipping but they still make the full $18.20 they listed the book for).

So, after Lulu actually prints and ships the book and pays me 67 cents, their probably still making a few bucks at this if they generate any sales at all.  Buying direct from Lulu, they charge me $9.12 per copy of my own book (at no quantity discount) and their cheapest shipping method is $5.85 media mail, but you know this is marked up too.

And at an $18.20 listing before shipping, who is going to buy a copy from them anyway?  I currently have it listed myself for $11.50!  The only thing that would remotely make anyone consider buying it from LuluPress at $18.20 is their feedback rating.  Buyers are given the chance to rate their buying experience with a seller and leave a comment, and believe me, these ratings can make or break you.  I, myself, will not buy from a seller who has three stars or less no matter what the price.  LuluPress currently has a rating of 4 1/2 stars out of 5.  You can even check out their current rating and feedback they’ve received on their profile page.

My only guess about Lulu joining in this venture is that it is a sure fire way for them to go around the Booksurge umbrella Amazon put over them last year. They stand to  make better money doing it because Marketplace stock is printed from Lulu’s suppliers which means no Booksurge printing and shipping fees for Lulu.

In checking the current 3rd party Marketplace listings for Stealing Wishes, LuluPress is not listed at the time I’m writing this.  And I will not be opting out of the Marketplace program despite the lack of information given in the email blast.  But I do advise all authors to invest in copies of you book and list them yourselves in the Amazon Marketplace.  It’s free to list there! Beat the list price or Amazon sale price of the book, and in the comments section state that the seller is getting a “signed first edition direct from the author.”  The lower the price will get you closer to the top of the listings. And include a free bookmark or other “freebie” with each sale and maybe a nice thank you note.  Amazon Marketplace sales do affect your book’s Amazon ranking, so every sale counts!

Occasionally, I’ll check my sales rank over at Aaron Shepard’s Sales Rank Express.  This site only presents the basic information you can already find on Amazon’s product page, but it’s quicker sometimes than navigating through Amazon, finding your book, and scrolling down to the product description, and also not getting distracted by ads or by surfing for things you want to buy like I usually do when I go to Amazon.

Rankforest is a free site that will track your book over time if you want to see how the numbers fluctuate.  The free service part will update every 4 hours for you.

RankTracer is also another that has come highly recommended to me, but a three month track of your book will cost you $6.00 here. Books & Writers will do the same thing for two books for just $10 a year.

If you aren’t concerned with how much your sales rank changes by hour, then I suggest checking your book’s page once a day either in the morning or the evening and write down that number on a calendar every day.  Note when there’s a big spike in the number.  Did someone review your book around that time?  Did you post a comment on a blog or website the day before? Note the spikes in sales over time and what might have caused them.

Some authors have tried to affect their sales rank by holding a buying promotion.  Whether it works or not, I don’t know but this is where you email or contact as many people as you can and request them to buy your book from Amazon on a certain date and at a certain time.  The spike in sales will definitely affect the sales rank, but you have to consider that not everyone might purchase your book at that specific date and time.  If you ask everyone who did participate to email you back and let you know they bought your book, you might be able to better obtain an exact number as to how many copies sold during your promotion and helped you achieve whatever rank you earned that day.

Check out these numbers from Rampant Techpress.  Supposedly, a major publisher tracked 25 of their books over a six month period and compared Amazon sales rank to the number of books they sold.

Amazon        Actual
Sale Rank     Books Sold per week
———     —————–
75-100         250-275/wk
100-200        225-249/wk
200-300        150-200/wk
450-750         75-100/wk
750-3,000        40-75/wk
3,000-9,000      15-20/wk
10,000+            1-5/wk

Morris Rosenthal, author of Print-on-Demand Book Publishing, has a slightly different opinion and reports the following figures…

So, why are we obsessed with our Amazon Sales Rank?  Well, no matter what the number may be, if the number is rising it means a sale, which means a royalty payment in the end.  It might not be much of a payment, but keeping your book at a higher sales rank definitely increases exposure, which hopefully increases sales and increases money in your pocket.

16 of the 30 voters sold less than 100 copies.  That’s 53% of all voters.

8 of the 30 sold 100 to 200 copies.  27% of all votes.

6 of the 30 sold over 200 copies.  20% of the total votes.

Most blogs out there say the majority of self-published books sell less than 200 copies, including the sales statistics information at Writer’s Beware. The sales are mostly to friends,  family, community bookstores, and the author, what WB calls “pocket markets.”

POD services’ own statistics support these low sales figures. AuthorHouse’s online Fact Sheet, updated in September 2008, reported 36,823 authors and 45,993 titles. According to the New York Times, AuthorHouse reports selling more than 2.5 million books in 2008, which sounds like a lot, but averages out to around 54 sales per title.

The same can be said for information available at writing-world.com who reports the following:

In 2003, for example, Xlibris circulated a promo declaring that it had published 9000 books since 1997, and sold 300,000 copies. Punch those numbers into your calculator, and you’ll find that this gives an average of 33 sales per title. But that’s just the average. If just 20 percent of those titles sell 100 copies apiece, the remaining 80 percent are left with an average sale of 16 copies per title. In reality, a few books actually sell far more than 100 copies — which means that a great many titles must sell less than ten copies apiece.

Back to WB, Xlibris sales actually improved just 4 years later…

Things looked up in 2007: according to Xlibris’s own internal reports, recently obtained by Writer Beware, 4% of its titles had sold more than 1,000 copies. However, the averages still aren’t good. As of mid-2007, Xlibris had 23,000 authors and had published 23,500 titles, with total sales of over 3 million–around 127 sales per title.

The WB article ends with the following (opinionated) information about Lulu:

Lulu.com, one of the most popular and cost-effective of the POD services and still independent despite the apparent trend toward consolidation among POD services, is explicit about its long tail business model. In a 2006 article in the Times UK, its founder identified the company’s goal: “…to have a million authors selling 100 copies each, rather than 100 authors selling a million copies each.” A Lulu bestseller is a book that sells 500 copies. There haven’t been many of them.

Taking a closer look at Lulu, the following sales statistics were reported in the Lulu  Corporate Profile 2009 Update :

Lulu creations: more than 1.1 million
o Paperback books: 716,191
o Hardback books: 98,770
o E-books: 52,343
o Photo Books: 34,006
o Calendars: 54,862
o Brochures: 7,085
o Digital Content: 176,824

Exact Lulu $$$ sales figures are hard to come by since the company is private. Most information I found on the web was posted by authors on their blogs or in the Lulu forums about individual sales results.  However, I did come across this interview with Lulu CEO Bob Young at ABCtales giving a pretty broad spectrum of one title that has sold over 40,000 copies, then stating the average print run of a Lulu book is less than 2. When LLBR was created, I remember reading on another blog that the average sale of a Lulu book was 1.8, meaning most authors probably bought 1 copy for themselves. The End.

Sales figures continue to be skewed by the fact that the “Published by You” option on Lulu allows you to pick your own name for your publisher, and people can also just publish their book on Lulu and never have to invest in an ISBN to get circulation outside of Lulu.  This is important only because I decided to do some investigating using Amazon.com’s Advanced Search engine.  Doing a search for all paperback books, in all subjects, with Lulu.com listed as the publisher returns a number of 3,383.  Hardcover titles are only 47.  And note this may not include some foreign published titles, and would only include Lulu titles that purchased an ISBN for global distribution.   For what it’s worth, the average cost of the paperback (averaging the top 10) titles is $29.17 and the average list price of the hardcover (top 10) titles is $34.83.

For fun, I decided to find the “bestselling” Lulu.com paperback book on Amazon and compare its sales rank on Amazon to its rank on Lulu.  As of April 28th at 6:47pm CST when I’m writing this article, the #1 book on this Amazon search is Permanent Passenger by Micha Berman.  This book has a sales rank of 203, 489 on Amazon.  On Lulu.com, it’s #214.  Not bad.  I decided to email Micha Berman, the author, and ask him a few questions about the number of books he’s sold to date and how he did it.

At this point in time I am nearing 1550 or so in sales, and that includes books I have sold on my own.
In my first year I sold close to 1300 books, the breakdown was something like this:

786 sold on US Amazon
62 sold on British Amazon
178 print Lulu
132 download Lulu

I should point out more and more of my books have been bought on Amazon Kindle in the past 6 months, in the first year probably 50 or so sold on Kindle.

I sold the rest myself at book talks around the country. I try to direct many folks to Lulu but many people are used to buying books on Amazon so that seems to be where most people buy my book.

So how did he do it, you ask?

Don’t follow the rules, I get the word out everywhere and am constantly telling folks about my book from people on the elevator to the grocery clerk. Second, get the word out to radio stations, tv stations, alumni magazine, special interest magazines, in my case cruise magazines and websites.

One funny story, that gives you a feel for what I am doing, I wrote emails to every radio station in San Francisco/Bay Area, it took time, guts and lo and behold in resulted in me getting on the biggest talk radio station several times. Also the San Francisco Chronicle reviewed my book, unheard of for self published books, but I wrote to reviewers for 8 months talking about their reviews and finally got a response.

So there you have it!  Throw out the fact that the 30 people who voted in our poll might not have an ISBN and that their book might not be available on Amazon, and I still think we have a pretty fair snapshot of how well self-published books do their first year.  We all know that getting your book on Amazon is not enough.  It takes determination and hard work to market your book and to do it well.  And marketing is a must if you want to beat the odds!