An Author Must Make Appearances

Part 8 of An Author’s Guide to Hand Selling Books
by David A. Rozansky, Publisher, Flying Pen Press
Readers, Writers & Royalties columnist
October 18, 2007
Copyright 2007 David A. Rozansky

 
[This is the eight article in a nine-part series.]

 
In the first article in this series, I gave a general overview of why authors should sell their own books. In that article, I gave a list of the seven rules we teach authors about how they can hand-sell their own books.

To quickly review, these seven rules are:

1. The Rule of Use. Authors must use books to sell books. (Discussed in a previous installment).

2. The Rule of Sales. Authors must be mentally and logistically prepared to sell their books. (Discussed in a previous installment).

3. The Rule of 3 Feet. Authors must tell everyone that comes within 3 feet about their books. (Discussed in a previous installment).

4. The Rule of 200. Authors must prepare a list of 200 contacts and work those contacts as their core fan base. (Discussed in a previous installment).

5. The Rule of 5x5. Authors must make five separate contacts each day, five days a week, and try to sell their books. (Discussed in a previous installment).

6. The Rule of Writing. Authors must keep writing new books. (Discussed in a previous installment).

7. The Rule of Crowds. Authors must sell their books before large crowds, preferably on the Internet.

This article will discuss the seventh rule, the Rule of Crowds, in detail.

 
The Rule of Crowds states: “To sell a product, the seller must make a sale pitch before large crowds.” I often call the Rule of Crowds, the Rule of Blogging, when discussing it with authors.

The Rule of Crowds is simple enough. The idea is that if an author makes a sales pitch to a single person, there is a single chance for a book sale. If the same pitch is made to two potential readers, there is double the chance for a book sale.

It would make sense that the more people who hear the same single sales pitch from the author, the more chances there are to make a book sale. But it is not a straightforward equation. It tends to have a logarithmic curve, that is, if the same pitch is made to ten people at the same time, the chances are not just ten times that of a pitch to a single person. People are funny, they tend to think in a herd mentality. The chances of a book sale are actually about 15 times greater (I don’t have any statistics or research to back this up, it’s my general observation and off-the-cuff math, so if anyone has numbers that are confirmed by a study, please let me know).

This is the reverse application of the tendency of people to avoid buying books by authors they don’t know. At the same time they avoid the unknown, they also want to be included in something that other people are doing. If one person in a crowd buys a book, others will become curious and feel that the book must have some merit, as someone else has taken the chance first.

It gets even better. If an author can get the crowd to talk about the book amongst themselves, then the single sales pitch the author makes is repeated many times over, in a variety of ways. This reverberation of the sales message has greater appeal coming from strangers in a crowd who have no bias than it does coming from the author who is obviously out to make a profit.

Authors have always preferred to work in crowds. The idea of the book signing at bookstores is a direct application of this rule. The author need only get up in front of people, talk about the book, or read from the book, or sign the book, and people who may not have thought of buying the book decide to give the book a try.

Unfortunately, this form of working a crowd is no longer valid. Travel is so expensive, and book signings are so commonplace, that a book-signing no longer draws a crowd except for the biggest names in publishing. Bookstores are more interested in how large a crowd the author will draw, rather than letting the author work the crowd that frequents their store.

Authors of non-fiction, especially in the fields of self-help, scholastic research and personal finance, have made a living at seminars and workshops. The books are sold in the back of the room (called, unoriginally enough, “back-of-the-room sales.”). This is a terrific way for an author to work a crowd. However, novelists and many other non-fiction authors will not be able to offer a seminar.

There are other venues for novelists. Genre novelists, especially in the field of science fiction and fantasy, can attend genre-specific fan conventions. Science fiction conventions often hold panels where authors can talk about their titles and usually put them on display.

However, even in a large auditorium, a crowd will only buy a carton or two of books. For authors willing to work the seminar circuit, this can be quite stimulating. For those who cannot create large events on a daily basis, this can be disappointing.

The answer is in the Internet. By blogging on a regular basis, an author can easily appear before thousands, even millions, of potential readers. This costs next to nothing, and only requires a few minutes each day. The reach can be fabulous.

I can offer an example. Gaddy Bergmann is a Flying Pen Press author. He wrote Migration of the Kamishi, a “post-apocalyptic-lit” novel in the Feral World series about life in America 3,000 years after an asteroid has struck the planet and wiped out civilization. The book is an interesting look at how the Earth heals from all the awful things we have done to it over the last millennium, and how mankind has come to treat the Earth with respect. What appeals to me the most about novel is that Bergmann presents our lives of the 20th and 21st Centuries as apocryphal stories in books that have been added to the bible.

It’s an interesting book, offered up as literature instead of science fiction. Thus, it appeals to a very small market.

Migration of the Kamishi is one of the first three books published by Flying Pen Press. It quickly became our bestseller, because the author was out there working the Rule of 200. He was in touch with a large number of friends and family, who were all interested in buying the book. They talked to others, and so on.

What Bergmann did not do is work the Rule of Blogging. He never made the effort to create a blog. He claimed he was too busy. His website, www.GaddyBergmann.com, is a static place to describe the book and list news items.

It did not take long for the Rule of 200 to peter out on Bergmann, and sales dwindled. He is beginning to come around to my way of seeing things, more because of what he has read in Writer’s Digest than in anything I have said. Bergmann will be starting up a blog of his own very soon, and I have no doubt that his book sales from his blog will take off.

Bergmann is a research microbiologist and a zoologist, working for a biotech company. He has much to say about matters affecting the biosphere, from global warming to species on the brink of extinction. He has taken to studying the various dangers to the biosphere as a whole, and anyone who listens to what he has to say is drawn in to his style of talking and his important messages.

These are important topics that will often reach search engines, and Bergmann is poised to be one of the world’s leading experts once he gets the blog up and running. I imagine that he might even get some speaking engagements, where there can be more crowds to hear about his book.

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In the final installment of this series, I will discuss how the Seven Author’s Rules of Hand Selling Books can be used together, and I will also present some standard techniques used by booksellers to sell books to readers in their bookstores.

To subscribe to the entire series of articles on the topic of An Author’s Guide to Hand Selling Books, please click on the “Subscribe to this Group” button at www.ReadWriteRoyalty.Gather.com. To receive all of Mr. Rozansky’s articles, subscribe at www.FlyingPenPress.Gather.com.

David A. Rozansky is the publisher of Flying Pen Press. He has been in publishing since 1987, and has more than one million published words under his byline. Flying Pen Press is at http://www.FlyingPenPress.com.

Flying Pen Press is the publisher of the novel named in this article: Migration of the Kamishi by Gaddy Bergmann (ISN 978-0-9795889-1-4). Migration of the Kamishi is available from the publisher, Amazon, or wherever great books are sold. Readers can connect with Gaddy Bergmann at Gaddy.Gather.com.