Blogger: Mary Keeley
You’ve probably heard me stress more than once how important it is to have a fresh, unique hook or fresh angle for your book. That is what editors are looking for in their search for the next big thing that will take the publishing industry by storm. But there is a risk for authors and editors straying too far from status quo. I’m going to address the proverbial elephant in the room and talk about the good and bad of so much sales data.
Data is useful to publishers for catching trends and for making well thought out decisions about contracting a new project and projecting its success. Enthusiastic sales reps can show retailers data supporting a new book’s sales potential in their effort to convince retailers to agree to order copies for their stores.
However, when data is applied too broadly and too quickly, publishers and authors can miss out on a promising success, perhaps even that next big thing every publisher hopes to discover.
The Sales team is the heavyweight in the decision-making whether to offer a 
contract or not. Data is hard evidence for sales departments, and new technologies make it easy for them to collect sales information on books that have been published. It makes the sales reps’ job so much easier. Executives and editors look to them for the thumbs-up or thumbs-down about extending a contract offer. No sales rep wants to be responsible for a bad decision, so the data they collect becomes their authority. Makes business sense, right?
Not so fast.
Data is only as reliable for projecting a future book’s sales potential as the scope of the research to acquire it and as an apples-to-apples comparison, that is, author-to-author, story-to-story, topic-to-topic, publisher-to-publisher, and if reader interests in a fast-pace world never change. This is a practical impossibility.
The sales department’s expertise is in selling. The editors’ expertise is relative to the story, meeting readers’ felt needs, and the quality of the writing. When the sales team advises against contracting a book that the acquisitions team and editors are excited about simply on the basis of data that XYZ book in the same genre by another author at a different publishing house didn’t sell well, the sales team is using the data in a self-defeating way. This happens, unfortunately. How will the next big thing in CBA publishing see the light of day under this type of constraint?
Last week, I blogged about the resilience of the publishing industry. It’s true. Publishers are trying new things to adapt and grow. But the overuse—or misuse—of data may be the elephant in the room that keeps publishers stuck. When sales reps rely on data alone, they diminish their role from enthusiastic sales professional to order-taker.
The takeaway for authors is to provide details, with sources, in your book proposal that show readers will be interested in your story or setting or issue or approach to your topic, or felt need. In other words, arm an interested editor with supporting information specific to sales potential for your book. Do this succinctly for a quick and easy read. Those editors will appreciate your forethought.
What do you think about this? In what ways can you, the author, validate the potential for your book’s success in your proposal? Social media engagement? People group? Your topic?
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Hi Mary,
Would studying the best-seller lists be a good source? Say, if your story involves a deaf hero, and deaf hero stories are big and selling on the NYT list. You could hope your deaf hero will be big in CBA sales. Please feel free to tell me if I’m way off base. I can’t wait to see how the conversation goes today.
Thanks for sharing!
Studying bestseller lists can be a good source for noting a growing reader trend IF your book fits within that trend. But you also need to emphasize how your novel is unique and fresh or your nonfiction book approaches the trending topic from an intriguingly different angle. Offer details, preferably via a bulleted list of short phrases, that your followers, people groups and the setting of your story, whatever is applicable, are engaged with you and your writing. Otherwise editors will see your book as an “also-ran” that can’t compete with the comparable book that already made the list.
Thanks, Mary. You’ve given me a lot to think about. Have a great weekend!
You have a deaf H/H? Me too!
Mary, what an interesting post. I’ve heard the stories of authors whose books are grabbed p by editors, only to be rejected at the pub board level. It seems like it would be wise to make sure all the voices in those meetings are heard and considered, perhaps a little more equally.
*Your last paragraph, especially, got me thinking. You ask good questions at the end. I don’t have answers for them . . . yet.
*How does one go about attaining this information? Would they do a survey on Facebook? Twitter? Glean it in some other way?
*I look forward to reading what others share today.
Jeanne, surveys to social media followers, blog followers, and newsletter subscribers can be a good source depending on the questions you ask and how you word them. The goal in this type of survey would be to accumulate specific feedback from participants that is uniquely relevant to your book. It would be ideal for you to do this survey while you are early into your draft. You might receive valuable feedback that you’ll want to incorporate into your book.
Also, visit publisher websites to see the types of books they have published recently and what’s to come soon. Visit public librarians, church librarians, and church store clerks in your area and/or around the setting of your story. Ask them which books in your genre are growing in popularity, which books have consistent sales, and their thoughts on why. Briefly describe your book and ask these people, especially those in your book’s setting, for their thoughts on what elements or characters would pique their interest enough to purchase your book.
This is hugely helpful, Mary. Thank you for the suggestions!
Sales are not an independent data point; they are the result (and sometimes foregone conclusion) of product packaging and marketing. Do those two right and you can sell a rock. As in, if you remember the 70s, the ‘Pet Rock’.
And for another example, look at Ford’s Edsel. It was a pretty decent car, with a lot of innovations that would become part of our motoring lives, but its name was a marketing disaster, and its packaging – the infamous toilet-seat-grille – was catastrophic.
I like the Edsel grill. It’s distinctive. It has lasting appeal, too. Don’t some people collect Edsels today? However, it does provide a warning against naming a product after a family member, or maybe a warning against poor selection in the name of the son at the beginning.
Yes, Carol, the Edsel’s a collector’s item now! I like the grille, too. I think it was one mean-spirited review that, even back in that day, went viral and laid the commode label on it.
* I think you’re quite right about using family names, and the care needed in naming children. Reminder me of a couple who wanted a name for their new daughter that could NOT be corrupted into something cruel on the playground, in the years to come.
So they called her Amber.
And when they brought her home from the hospital, her three-year-old brother, on being introduced to his new sister, said, “Hi, Amberger.”
“Sales are not an independent data point.” Absolutely right, Andrew. But sales departments carry a burden of responsibility in the decision to offer a contract or not, and no one wants to make a big mistake. So they rely a great deal on sales figures for a same genre book sold in the past to project sales potential for a book being considered for contract. Too often, in my opinion, it isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison.
Having to sort of break up comment today. Having a bit of trouble, and only one working eye. Typing’s a bit hard.
* To my mind the key one has to place into an editor’s hand is “why will someone read this?” The only reason anyone reads anything boils down to a search for the possibilities in a reader’s own life.
* Look at the two ‘death books’ of recent years, Albom’s “Tuesdays With Morrie” and Pausch’s “The Last Lecture”. They were not given elegiac marketing and packaging; they were touted as ‘carpe diem’ excuses (which they are, though both are pretty depressing). If either had been presented as ‘reflections at the end of life’ they would have sunk without trace, but the concentration on highlighting the potential in the READER’S life – and the call to action to grab life with both hands – made them stratospheric successes.
* To use myself as another example (ah, hubris!)…when I described BPH as a story about recovering from PTSD combined with a romance, it got a lot of well-deserved yawns. But when readers figured out that it was a story about God sending ghosts to shake up someone’s life, it got wings. Nothing is more boring than the former, and what could be a cooler possibility than the latter?
Numbers scare me. Because I’m a) bad at math and b) each number is a person I have to impress. But for me, I think the potential that I’ll receive the support of Indigenous/Native leaders will be a huge marketing point.
Native issues are coming more into the forefront, but I don’t want to get to broad about them. I want to focus on one period in one culture’s history, that way, my research will pay off in the story details and hopefully the big picture will sell books..