pawprintspod.com

I had hoped to do a lot of posting on this blog … tidbits of information that would give Publishers and self-published authors aspects they could keep in mind when they worked to get their books published. Authors need to know that when a book is finally in print, the real work will begin. Writing a book is a hard job. Marketing can be a bigger challenge because the muse isn’t there to lead the way. Writing is something you can ‘feel’. Marketing is the practical aspect of getting your book out there so that readers can enjoy it. To be a successful author you need to be a good business person (or know someone who understands the market and how it works).

I found that no matter how hard I tried to find the time to write, the practical part of publishing … the print process … wouldn’t allow me the time to share so I have asked for help from friends who really know how the business works.

The first person I went to was Carolyn Lampman. I have had the privilege of knowing Carolyn for quite a while. I interviewed her years ago and she had so much good information to offer on what it means to be an author. She was an author for Harper Collins before she ventured into on-line publishing. We share a vision that PODs (Print on Demand books) and e-books (Electronic books) will, eventually, be the normal way to get a book published. I have never considered myself a ‘tree hugging guerilla’ but I do feel each of us has a responsibility to clean up our own messes. For years, the book publishing industry has created a mess too big to clean up efficiently. Carolyn has agreed to post some information to the blog on how the system works.

Carolyn comes to us with great credentials. Please take the time to visit her site, check out her titles and her bio. You can find her at www.carolynlampman.com

POD A BETTER ALTERNATIVE

Like, Linda I’m not an eco-guerilla and have even been called a stump-hugger by one rabid environmentalist because I was raised on a Wyoming ranch. To be honest, my ranching background does give me a somewhat different perspective on the environment. My family considered themselves stewards of the land, as many ranchers do, so I grew up with the notion that I was responsible for taking care of the rangelands and federal forests we used. I learned at an early age that you have to put back what you take out because the balance is fragile. If you take too much the environment will change irrevocably. In other words, I was taught to look at the whole picture.

Linda asked me to post to her BLOG after we participated in a discussion on a writer’s list. The conversation dealt with the high cost of book returns to the author, the publisher and the environment. I guess my rancher roots are showing here, but the waste in the publishing industry has always bothered me. It is a system that was started decades ago to enable a fledgling book store industry to show a profit. In a nutshell, publishers made it possible for book stores to return unsold books for full refund. Because shipping books was expensive, the actually book was not returned, only the cover. It worked well back when raw materials were in abundance, but is fast becoming an antiquated dinosaur that we can no longer afford.

When publishers talk about returns, they don’t mean returns from reader. They’re talking about books a store ordered and didn’t sell. Say they buy 25 copies of Audi Author’s book, but only manage to sell 12 copies. They strip the covers off the other 13 which they then send back the publisher for full refund. The book goes in the trash bin, or if Audi is lucky, gets shredded and sold to feed lots to use as bedding for cattle- if Audi isn’t lucky it winds up being sold without a cover for which Audi and his/her publisher get nothing. (Which is why you should NEVER buy a paperback without a cover-they’re essentially stolen merchandise)

In NY publishing a 50% sell-through is considered good- that’s the point at which everybody make money. A 75% sell-through is phenomenal. That’s when they break out the champagne (ok I’m guessing here- maybe they break out the designer bottled water- this is NY after all) Sell-through refers to the number of books that are NOT returned. So if they sell HALF the books they print, they make money or at least break even. That means out of a 100,000 print run they are expecting 50,000 to be stripped and returned. (Remember the books themselves are trashed) If only 25,000 wind up in the garbage it’s cause for celebration. Figure that for all the mass market paperback books published in NY and you begin to get the whole horrifying picture. As an author, this has another ramification for Audi. Up to half of her royalties are held against returns. In other words, when those stripped covers come back, Audi’s royalty account absorbs the cost.

The giant bookstore chains take full advantage of this antiquated system. For instance, they might buy 10,000 copies of Audi’s novel, and strip 6,000. Meanwhile, they still haven’t paid for the original 10,000 and only wind up paying for the 4000 they sold which means 6000 of Audi’s books were just destroyed without making any money for Audi or the publisher. I’m not exaggerating here though the largest of the chains probably buy in bigger quantities.

I talked to a small distributor several years ago that had been driven out of business in exactly this way. He said a certain giant chain uses books for wallpaper in their stores never intended to sell them all. The giant chains were partially responsible for the down fall of the old distribution network. The distributors simple couldn’t absorb the cost. Up until 1995 there were about 450 independent distributors. There are now less than 10. The small distributors probably would have handled POD by the way- most of them loved small presses because they were local and they could sell local books. The system as it stands now has no room for POD or small presses because it is too far removed from the consumer. The buyers for the big chains can only go on general demographics. They can’t even target to a specific area.

This is one way POD has an edge over traditional publishers. POD, or Print on Demand, means just that. The book isn’t printed until someone buys it. If there is already a buyer, nothing gets thrown away. There are still wasted copies, of course. A cover might get put on upside down or the pages somehow get out of order but it’s something like 10 out of 10,000. In other words for every 10,000 books, 10 POD books might end up in the land fill as opposed to 5000 in the old system. If you bring e-books in to the picture, it’s even more amazing because there is no paper involved at all! Right now the benefit is to big companies because the public has no idea this is going on. In my opinion, it is time the truth came to light and the practice of stripping for returns stopped. People need to know about the senseless waste in paper, fuel and landfill space. I suspect it will be like Pandora’s box. Once the lid is open and the truth is out, there will be no going back for NY or for the book-buying public.

Carolyn Lampman 8/8/07