Your Spine Is Your Cover

Here's one of the dirty little secrets in book publishing. Publishers spend countless hours and dollars working on their covers, but they often miss the point.  With the exception of online retailers, your book spine is your cover.

Brick and mortar stores are packed with books. New releases. Backlist books. Series. Gift books.

Walk to any category (perhaps your own) and take a look at how many books are crammed on to the shelves.

What do you see? The spine, if you're lucky.

All to often publishers make the mistake of not focusing at all on the spine of their book, not realizing that this is their number one marketing tool in brick and mortar stores.

What does this mean for you?

Spend some time on your spine.

Spine Size

Think about bulking your page count to make sure that your spine has presence. We're not recommending that you fluff your book with overblown margins or blank pages. But we are recommending that you don't cram in your text so tight to save a few cents on your printing prices.

Push it out a signature or two. It might make all the difference between getting lost on the shelf and standing out because you're 1/8 of an inch bigger. Choose paper that bulks. You might be surprised at how easy it is to snag an extra 1/16 of an inch through paper weight alone.

Spine Color

Spend some time analyzing what the spine colors are in your category. This is extremely important. If every spine in your category is white, choose a vibrant color. Choose something that stands out. Choose something that practically leaps of the shelf and screams "pick me!" This is the time to buck the trends and be a little different. If you're not sure what will work, grab some books that have different spine colors and stick them on the shelf where your book will go. Which colors pop to you? What do you see first?

Spine Text

Make it readable! Make it bold! Make it big! Make sure that the reader sees your spine and your text right away. If you're standing 3 feet away from your spine, you need to be able to read what it says (see above about spine width - the bigger the spine the more room for bold text).

Take it to the Bookstore

Let's keep this next bit between us...

The best way to really know if your spine works is to print out several versions, colors and copies true to size. Cut the spine out, getting rid of excess paper so you're literally holding your book spine in your hands. Put a tiny piece of tape on the end of each option. Take your spine options to the bookstore and visit your category. Stick the various spines on the books that will sit next to you (usually alphabetical by author's last name within category or subcategory). Which one works? Do any? What do you see? Can you read your title? Do you get lost on the shelf because you're too tiny or you blend in too much?

Lack of attention to your spine can kill your book in the marketplace. Once you get in to stores, your spine really is your cover. When you consider the time, money and energy that you spend getting your cover right, promise us, do the same with your book spine.

P.S. Remember, be polite during any bookstore research. Bring your spines with you when you go and don't interfere with bookstore customers!

Profit and Loss

Over the last few weeks, we have been discussing the dollars behind the decisions publishers make. Hardcover vs paperback, cover design, retail pricing... all of these items and many more need to be weighed against the bottom line. In these discussions, we have been tossing around the phrase "P&L".

A reader contacted us off-line to ask about "P&Ls" and how they are set up. Thought I would share some of the more important "Profit and Loss" line items that we believe every publisher should add up before publishing a book.

Author Advance: How much you paid the author against future royalties for the right to publish the book.

Development Edit: The cost of hiring an editor to shape and polish the writing.

Copy Edit: The cost of hiring a separate editor to check for grammar, spelling, inconsistencies, fact check and smooth out awkward sections.

Proofread: The cost of having (preferably two) editors review the finished file right before it goes to print and catch the inevitable errors.

Design: How much you pay the designers to design the cover and interior look of the book.

Layout: How much you pay the designer to layout the text and images within the design template and fix all the errors your proofreader finds.

Art costs: The cost of the photos or illustrations you will purchase for the book.

Marketing and PR: The budgeted amount for promoting the book. Email blasts, on-line optimization, ads in industry newsletters, author tour, getting reviews, in-store display allowances, co-op, book club and library outreach, etc.

Sales and Fulfillment: The costs associated with warehousing, shipping, selling, and billing for your books. (This is often portrayed as a percentage of the billing per unit if you are using a distributor. Sales rep groups, fulfillment houses and distributors often charge a percentage per sale)

Printing and freight: The costs to print and ship your books from the printer to the warehouse.

Once you have added the figures associated with every aspect of your book's production. marketing and sales, divide by the number of books you believe you will sell in the first two years. Be realistic. As we have said before, you are not going to be on Oprah (we promise).

Here is a sample breakdown of how a P&L works for a book. I'll call the book "Blown: My Life and Fortune as a New Author"

Blown (at 336 pages, paperback) retails at $16.95

This book's entire budget totals $30,000 for the items listed above.

After careful research, you expect to sell 5000 copies in the first two years.

The cost per unit is $6 a book.

Let's say you sell the book through traditional channels which means that you sell the book at a 55% discount off of the retail price of the book.

Your gross income from each sale is $7.63

You will net $1.63 per unit sold. (This is a healthy profit margin on a P&L)

But what if you only sell 2500?

The cost per unit will be $12 a book and you will never make your money back.

The solution many new publishers reach for is to raise the retail price of the book, but that is usually not a great idea. As we have said before, set your price to match what the marketing is asking for. It is better to adjust your expenses than raise the price of your book beyond what a consumer will pay for it.

Be very careful about your expectations and sales projections. The more accurate they are, the better you can work your profit and loss and keep your budget in line with potential sales.

Let's Make a Deal - Setting Your Price

Just recently, we blogged about the importance of category research when choosing the right cover for your book.

Category research might be a theme for several posts from us moving forward. All to often, clients, potential clients, publishing friends and colleagues come to us with finished books (or book ideas). All to often, we come back to them with a myriad of questions - including, how did you come to that price, trim size, title, subtitle, cover, etc.?

For us, each of these "packaging" details must be dictated by the market into which we publish. While we always have an opinion, our number one goal is to ensure that our clients and colleagues are getting real-time feedback from the retail marketplace. In this case, our opinion doesn't matter. The marketplace, however, does.

Which, for today's post, brings us to price.

How do you choose the appropriate price for your book?

The first place to start is, of course, your P&L. Once you factor in your advance (for our publisher friends), your editing fees, copyediting fees, layout, design, printing prices and marketing budget, what is your profit margin?

As you know, a P&L is only as good as the person that creates it. For example, if I price a 196 page trade-paperback business book at $24.95, I'm most likely going to see a healthy profit margin in the end. The cost for editing, printing and producing such a book is often dictated at a per-word or per-page rate. Tiny book, tiny costs, big profit margin. That all sounds good, right?

The only problem with this particular analogy is that selling-in and selling-through a 196 page business book for $24.95 is going to be really difficult. People don't have the disposable incomes that they used to. And, more importantly, this particular lightweight book may not scream "value" to your end customer. Especially if they can get a similar book on the same topic for $12.95.

So how should you really set a price?

Let's work backwards.

Let's say you're publishing a book in Category X. Get on Amazon, go to the bookstore, peruse your bookshelf. Pull out all of the bestselling books in Category X. What's their price point? What does the consumer get for their money? Is your category driven by a 336 page trade paperback for $14.95? Do "unknown" authors charge a dollar or two less for for their book? Does the price point reflect a big author's name? A page-heavy book? Do some publishers actually charge less because price-point is their value proposition?

Here's what you'll discover through this simple exercise. The consumer is actually telling you, through book sales, the price they'll pay for a book on your topic in Category X.

If, for example, it's $9.95, $12.95, $14.95 or $19.95, then that's the price you need to get to. It doesn't matter that you're convinced that your book is so extra special that you're sure the consumer will pay an extra $10.00 for it. Research will show that's most likely not the case.

Everybody's on a budget these days. If your P&L shows that you have to sell 15,000 copies of your $5.95 book to make your money back, than that's what you have to sell. Charging $15.95 for that same book just to make your money back, in a category that can't sustain it, just means you won't sell very many copies of your book.

What you need to do is go back to your P&L and take a look at real costs compared to a researched price point. Figure out how many books you need to sell and develop a sales and marketing plan to make it happen.

Like so many things in our business, strong market research can prevent you from making some of the simple mistakes that can have long term, adverse affects on your publishing program. Setting your price is just one area.

So, let's make a deal. Next time you decide you need to charge $24.95 for that 196 page book to make your money back, rethink how - and why - you've gotten in to this business to begin with.

"But how many books will I SELL?" - Author Events Part Two

One of the first things a publisher or author will ask of any marketing plan is "what is the return on my investment going to be?" The person with the checkbook wants to know that if they write out the zeros, they can plan on a significant return on their investment.

I hate to tell give them the only answer that anyone can give... "It depends."

Carol Zelaya, author of the Emily the Chickadee series, published by Richlee Publishing, launched her first children’s book in April 2008. She hired a fantastic PR firm to set up the launch, complete with a book signing tour covering four states that she expected would stimulate sales. Her expectations were quickly dashed.

“I mistakenly thought that once you were invited to do a book signing, you had really made it." says Zelaya "I was so wrong. Even when the stores did tons of publicity and put up big posters, no one came.”

But are sales the only purpose of an author tour? What results and returns can authors expect when the people don't show up at the event? Why do an author event if no one can guarantee sales?

“The thing you have to remember is the benefits outside of the event.” Says David Brody, author of several novels, including Cabal of the Westford Knight, published last February by Martin & Lawrence.

If you go into a tour looking at it strictly in terms of sales during events, it will not work, Brody says. “I may sell only 5 or 10 books at an event, but that is not the point. I have to take into consideration that the store orders the books a few weeks ahead of time, makes a display, puts up a poster; plus, the manager and employees get to know my book. At the event, who knows who will hear me and what they might tell other people? And after the signing, I will leave a few signed copies and those might get displayed for a few weeks. I can often attribute 50 or 60 sales to an event that drew only 10 sales that day. If you look at it that way, the economics make sense.”

So the question I put out there is this... "What is the REAL return on your author tour investment?" I'd love to hear from authors who have recently toured to see if they think touring is worth their time and money.

Bookstore Feedback - Part One

A couple of weeks ago, we blogged about our research in to bookstore events. We also indicated that the results would be coming soon. We'll most likely separate our many findings in to several posts.

First is the results of an extensive telemarketing campaign that our team put together. I think you might be as surprised as we were....

Over the past six months, The Cadence Group called 1034 bookstores and asked following question:

“Do you host author events?”

We called a wide range of stores. We called independent bookstores. We called chain bookstore. We called gift shops. We called institutional bookstores. The answers we received were varied and surprising.

“I don’t do events anymore.” “I can’t afford the extra staff, time and effort that book signings entail.” “Will the author bring their own books?” “We don’t do well with author signings.” “We only book events from large publishers.” “We’re too small for events.” “We only book local authors for signings.” “Our customers don’t come out for events.”

This small sampling drove home how deeply the struggling economy is affecting retailers everywhere. It also highlighted the many ways that the face of event marketing in the publishing industry is changing.

When our marketing team started our calls, we expected an enthusiastic and positive response from retailers. We thought we knew that bookstores were ready, able, and excited to host local and regional authors. We thought we knew that retailers were looking for ways to draw people to their stores and that author events would be near the top of the list of how to do so.

We thought wrong. We'll let the numbers tell the tale...

Out of the 1034 stores we contacted:

• 825 were Chain or Institutional Stores
• 209 were Independents and Gift Stores
• 254 stores told us that they did not do events because they were too small or did not have the staff
• 117 stores told us that they did not do signings because no one came
• 21 stores told us that they were not booking events because they were not sure if they were going out of business or had recently closed their store fronts.
• 18 hung up on us
• 4 yelled and then hung up on us
• 620 stores did events and booked authors for readings, signings, story times or workshops

Out of 1034 stores, only 620 indicated that they do events. That's roughly 60% (according to my trusty calculator).

While that may seem like a high percentage, you then need to factor in location, region and genre. How many were children's bookstores? How many were category-specific? How many were located in smaller regions around the country?

When you start asking these questions and reviewing the results, you realize that 60% is not that high of a percentage at all.

So now the question is.....if fewer and fewer bookstores are hosting author events, what's the next "big thing" for marketing a new book?

And, if authors and events don't draw people to bookstores, than what, if anything, does?

Don't Judge A Book By It's Color

Just yesterday, someone posted an interesting question to one of the discussion groups that we follow.

Basically, the question was "Does anyone have any idea what the "ideal color" for a business book should be?"

I was surprised by the number of responses that actually suggested a color! Blue, it seems, is the color people associate with business books. Apparently, content and subcategory doesn't matter. It should just be blue.

To me, responses such as these are dangerously irresponsible. How can a group of people suggest a "sellable" color without doing the extensive research needed to choose a book's packaging?

How can something as vitally important as a book's cover be reduced to the simple question of: "What color should a [insert your own category here] book be?"

Below are some highlights from my response to the "color" discussion. I hope you find them useful:

Asking about the color of a business book doesn't take in to account so many important variables. To come up with a thoroughly competitive cover design, you should do the following:

1. Research the subcategory - leadership, time management, ethics, human resources, business management, management, how-to business, marketing, etc.

2. Purchase (or at least go to the bookstore and look at) the top sellers in your subcategory. Identify the colors, fonts and images used.

3. Find out what's working and why. Are they all the same color, same title treatment, same image pattern? I'm guessing not. Why not? Which of the books "popped" off the shelf most. Why? (the color could be why)

4. Pull out books in colors that you and your client like that are in your cover design. Put them in the shelf within your category. Can you see them? Why? Why not? Which colors will stand out on the shelf.

It's important to keep in mind that cover design is ultimately driven by the consumer. We teach people what to expect when they go in to the business category in terms of look, feel, trim size and even price. So, you want to be sure that you're what they expect. At the same time, it's important to stand out. If every book in your subcategory is blue, you might want to try red, or green or muted purple. You might want to try something very bright that practically leaps off the shelf.

Most importantly, there is no set formula for choosing "a color" for any category of books. you need to thoroughly research the subcategory and find out how you can match up against the competition and get noticed on the shelf.

Bookstore Events - Your Thoughts?

The Cadence Group is doing some research in to bookstore events and we'd love your thoughts!

As we know, the landscape of book marketing is changing on a daily basis. Budgets are being slashed at all ends of the publishing process from advances to marketing to promotional placements to author tours. Publishers and authors are trying to figure out how to best reach their readers.

The avenue that we're currently exploring is the author tour, book signings, and/or bookstore events.

Do they work? The Cadence Group has interviewed a number of authors, independent retailers, publishers and chain bookstores. We'd love to get your thoughts and feedback as well.

What's your experience?

Results coming soon....

Old Friends, New Faces

The Cadence Group, like several of our friends, is preparing for next week's book extravaganza in New York at BEA. 

This year, the face of the show may look a little different. Many of our old friends will not be attending. Some won't go at all, others will be sending a limited staff. The show is expected to be a little smaller and a little less attended than years past.

We do believe, however, that getting together with a great group of book lovers will be a time of excitement for our industry. We're looking forward to perusing some of the new technologies, new titles, and "out of the box" concepts--those that have been announced and those that will surprise us on the show floor.

While we will miss some of our old friends, we're excited to "meet" several of our new friends and clients.  And most importantly, we're looking forward to seeing what great things the book industry has planned for the future.

Are things turning around for Borders?

Three months ago, it was announced that Borders was seeking to combine existing stocks in an attempt to bolster their stock prices to above a dollar. Three weeks ago, they announced that their stocks had risen above a dollar all on their own. The cost cutting and new management policies put into place by Ron Marshall seemed to be working. Investors were impressed and the stock has been rising ever since. Last closing, BGI was traded at $2.62.

Business journals that had recently written off the book retailer are now pointing to BGI's possible rejuvenation. Reporters, who in February named Borders as one of the top 10 companies guaranteed to fail in 2009, are now heralding a new day at BGI.

Will Marshall's changes be good for the company? What do you think of Borders' "turn-around"?

Do You Go To Author Events?

One of the things we do here at the Cadence Group is set up author tours.

It is getting harder and harder to convince stores to agree to host our touring authors. It's not that they don't want to offer their customers an event, it's just that they cannot afford to.

Staff at bookstores nation-wide has been cut very deeply and stores do not have the staff to work an author event.

It is hard to convince a cash-strapped bookstore owner to staff up for an event when there is a good chance no one will show up. The extra staffing costs for even one disappointing evening can kill a store's profit.

So... my question for you is.... do you go to events at bookstores?