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Just yesterday, I received this gem, of which I'll explain the back-story: "Hi Gary, I got your message.
Book sounds interesting but our sales reps (and the chain buyers) don't go for books like this.
Also, when they see that an author has as many books as you do they don't take many copies - they think that the author is just pumping books out and not vested in whether they sell or not.
best, M Let me tell you what this note is REALLY about.
Major book publishers don't know how to promote or sell books.
Increasingly, they rely on their authors to do that for them, posturing that this reverse-delegation is normal and even desirable.
Wrong.
One of the few reasons you would want or need a large publisher is its purported ability to distribute.
If it cannot do that, which the email above implies, then what good are they? Yes, they PRINT books, but so can you.
Even Kinko's can do a decent job, and of course there are hundreds, if not thousands of small presses around the world that will be delighted to "typeset" and bind your volumes, even in relatively small quantities of 500 or 1,000, to start..
In fact, if you teach or speak widely, why not come up with your own imprint? One successful sales speaker, for instance, established his own publishing company, gave it a snazzy name, and for years it put out a very attractive and solid hardcover book that bore his smiling face.
He sold tens of thousands of copies before turning the book over to a well known New York publisher for reissue.
If you are personally selling your books, why not keep all of the profits, after pricing to your specific market? You might be able to fetch $39 easily, for a book that a conventional publisher would only price at $16.
95.
If your cost is $5.
00 per volume, you'll keep $34.
If you bought your own book from conventional publishers at 50% off retail, a standard discount, you'd have to sell about five books to earn what you'd make from selling a single, self-published volume.
By the way, don't you love that jab about publishing too many books? These lazy publishers want you to dedicate your life to one product--theirs.
The deal they're offering? We'll publish you if you promise not to write a second book, if you personally commit to buying enough copies of your book from us that we'll be guaranteed a profit, and if you expect NOTHING from us with respect to promotional push.
Now, fellow authors, does this sound like a professional partnership, or literary slavery?
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