Out of 4 million books published this year, how will people find yours?
A couple of years ago, my wife called me at work. “Robin,” she said, “what’s with these stacks of books by the bed?”
The way our bedroom was arranged at the time, to get to my side of the bed you had to walk all the way across the room. It wasn’t a big space over there, but it was all my own.
Really I hadn’t been hiding the books. Not exactly. But I have a tendency to buy a lot of books, and I would just slide them onto the TBR pile on the floor by my bed. Discreetly.
There are some books I buy because I want a specific piece of information, which means I have to have a pretty good idea of what’s inside even before I read it. If you’ve ever told me about a great book and I said I’d check it out, there’s a very good chance I bought it almost immediately. The thing is, very few of the books I buy are random finds. And in that way I’m the same as almost every other reader out there.
So many options
Industry estimates say that up to a million new books are launched by publishers every year. With as many as 3 million self-published titles added to the mix, it can be a little deflating to think about yours just floating around out there, waiting to be discovered.
While there’s never a guarantee that your book will be a success (I should probably devote a future newsletter to get into the different ways you could define success as an author) there are some things you can do if you understand what drives book sales.
Over the years I’ve seen multiple studies that look at how readers find the books they buy. With some minor variation, the reasons tend to be ranked like this:
Already know and love the author
A friend recommended it (expand this to colleagues for professionally-oriented books)
Recommendation from an author I like
Recommended via social media/blog
Bookstore placement/promotion
Book reviews
I can’t vouch for the methodology of any sources I’ve seen presenting this information. However, there’s something to be said for the fact that I’ve seen versions of the same results over and over again.
A cheat code for authors?
Do video games still have cheat codes? When I was young, rumors would fly around the school about a hot new game and the secret sequence of buttons you could hit to unlock special abilities. Just press up, down, left, right, A, B, A, B and you’ll get unlimited lives!
There’s really no cheat code for an author, but knowing how people find the books they buy gives you a huge advantage if you use the knowledge to plan ahead.
In the run-up to your publication day, and in the months following that joyous occasion, what can you do to help boost your book’s prospects? Here are a few ideas. I’m going to do these in order of their relevance to the list above
Lean into the audience you already have, or work to create one by writing online, putting a little effort into engaging with people on social media, or taking advantage of talks and media appearances. The idea is that when your book comes out you want people to “already know and love” you (in a context that makes your book relevant).
This is the result of knocking your book out of the park for your chosen readers. If you targeted your audience well, they’ll love the book and they will talk about it. If a recommendation from a friend is the #2 way people find the books they buy, it makes the quality of your book very important.
Blurbs from well-known authors are great if you can get them, though sometimes they’re very hard to get. Nonetheless, it’s worth it to think about who your audience will react to.
Getting some buzz on social media is a lot like getting people to recommend the book to their friends. Combine a well-tailored book with some timely engagement from you via op-eds, interviews, social media, etc, and you may benefit from this.
Getting a bookstore to promote your book requires a few things to come together. A publisher can run pricing promotions to try to boost sales. Sometimes bookstores track what’s getting talked about and tailor recommendations to current events. But the most effective way to get booksellers to hand sell your book is if they love it.
The low-hanging fruit is your local bookstores, or those in an area you write about. I had one author who wrote about Baltimore, and he would drop into local bookstores to hang out, to sign copies, take selfies with customers, and even just to say hi. The shops all loved him and the energy he brought. After a year, his book was the bestselling title in numerous local bookshops. I tend to steer authors away from doing bookstore events–in my experience turnout isn’t great and most of the people only come in the hope that there will be free food. But just dropping in and building relationships can pay off in numerous ways.
Book reviews are an interesting thing. Everybody wants their book to be reviewed in one of the big ones, but the chances are slim. Don’t believe me? The picture at the top of this post is the NYRB office. On top of that, it really looks like there are better places to put your efforts. Nonetheless, your publisher’s publicity team will pitch your book to relevant reviewers.
I recommend you focus your efforts on #1 and #2. Give #3 the old college try, but don’t get hung up on it. Then when your book is published and you don’t know what to do with all of your energy, you can put some effort into #4 and #5, plus loop back to #1 by engaging more with your core audience, giving talks, writing op-eds and articles—you name it.