[Publishing Tips] Celebrate National Small Press Month - March 16, 2009
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Publishing Tips Newsletter
presented by Five Rainbows Services for Authors & Publishers
affordable solutions for writing and publishing projectsCelebrate National Small Press Month
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Are you considering self-publishing your book? Willing to invest a few minutes or your time to get some suggestions and, just maybe, save yourself a false start and wasted money? Just email self-publishing mentor Walt@FiveRainbows.com or call him toll-free at 866-341-3705 to discuss your project. Initial consultations (email or phone) are always f*r*e*e.
And don’t forget our f*r*e*e How-to-Publish Quiz at FiveRainbows.com. Answer a couple of simple questions and receive information targeted to your needs. You may be surprised by the answer!
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Walt's Notes
This has been a truly gratifying month for Slipdown Mountain Publications, Five Rainbows Services, and yours truly. Despite the nonstop, doom-and-gloom economic news spewing from all the network talking heads, our sales of books and services have increased dramatically.
I’ve spent some time trying to pinpoint what has made the difference and have arrived at two conclusions:
1. Our persistence in providing demonstrable quality in all our products and services is finally paying off, thanks to word-of-mouth and (finally) great placement in Google search results (none the result of paid advertising).
2. My use of Twitter to improve brand awareness, provide valuable information, promote my blog, and (gently) promote our business services.
This all seems to fit in with the theories explained by Scott McKain in his new book Collapse of Distinction. I’m only about halfway through it but have already found much of practical value. I’ll be posting a review on my blog and on Amazon as soon as I finish it. McKain’s basic premise is that, in a world where sameness seems to be the rule, how you differentiate your product or service from the competition and, even better, create true distinction for whatever you sell is crucial. Just meeting the competition is not enough. Even just one-upping them is not enough. Instead, you need to identify what distinguishes you from the rest of the pack is what really matters. And then you need to make that distinction work for you in the marketplace.
It really doesn’t matter whether you’re selling cars, toasters, house cleaning services, or books.
At our companies, we prefer to pay very little attention to the competition. Instead, we try to create products and deliver services in a way that makes us feel good about what we do. If we drive a competitor out of business, that would not make us feel good. If we grow our business by finding customers and clients who, otherwise, might not have bought from anyone (maybe because they didn’t really know about it), we’ve increased the market, at least within our small niche.
I just don’t accept that marketing is a zero-sum game. Create something of value and just keep doing it to the best of your ability. If it truly is valuable, the market just might grow. Talent, knowledge, money, exposure, and all the other things most marketers yammer on about are far less important than…persistence. Plus one other thing that my Air Force survival instructors drilled into us during training — positive mental attitude (don’t let the pessimists turn you into a pessimist).
But you’ve still got to find a way to stand out from the crowd. And that’s where McKain’s ideas in Collapse of Distinction make a great deal of commonsense.
Note: As this is National Small Press Month, I wanted to note that Slipdown Mountain Publications LLC is a member of both the Small Publishers Association of North America and the Upper Peninsula Publishers & Authors Association. Personally, I have been a member of the UPPAA Board of Directors for over three years. If any of you live in the Houghton, Michigan, area, I will be presenting a f*r*e*e seminar this coming Saturday, March 21, at the Michigan Technological University’s Van Pelt Library at 2:00 pm on “You’ve Written It…Now How Will You Publish It?” Refreshments will be provided by the library!
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Celebrate National Small Press Month
March is National Small Press Month — now in its 13th consecutive year. The celebration is co-sponsored by The New York Center for Independent Publishing (NYCIP), The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), and the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA).
So what the heck is a small press, anyway?
There is no hard-and-fast definition, although many people consider a publisher to be a “small press” if it publishes less than a dozen new titles annually or has net revenues of less than $50 million (or $10 million or some other arbitrary number).
However you quantify it, small presses, taken individually, have only a tiny percentage of the total US book market (a market estimated at over $25 billion). But collectively, we represent a much larger share, including a lot of revenue that is just not included in that $25 billion total.
Why isn’t the small-press share included in that total? Because few small presses report their revenue to the organizations that collect such data and very few belong to the big publishing industry associations. Which is why, two years ago, the Book Industry Study Group attempted to capture their data with a broad survey of small presses. The results were published in their “Under the Radar” report.
The BISG “Under the Radar” report calculated that total revenue for publishers with net revenues under $50 million amounted to a bit over $14 billion. Since the Big Six NY publishers are each multi-billion dollar companies, the report made it clear that a lot of book sales just slipped “under the radar.”
How many small presses are there in the US? Good question. We know there are six big ones (Random House, Penguin Putnam, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck, Hatchette, and Simon & Schuster) and maybe 400 medium-size publishers. (Note: of the Big Six NYC publishers, only one is still American-owned -- Simon & Schuster.)
Which leaves something like 86,000 small publishers in the US. So, if those 86,000 account for $14 billion in net revenue, they average less than $200,00 each annually. Most average far less. I don’t have the complete data to be able to calculate the medium revenue, which would be far more meaningful.
Small presses, however, have a major advantage over the bigger ones. We can react to the changing marketplace, try new things, regroup and try again…all while a big publisher is still “staffing” the problem and waiting for approval to proceed.
The American Booksellers Association (representing independent bookstores nationwide) has been trying to convince the book-buying public to support their local, independent (and typically small) bookstores.
How about taking the time to find small presses and sample their books?
Remember: Every Self-Publisher is Really a Small Press!
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Do you have a question or comment on the above or something else related to publishing, writing or book design and marketing? Email me at Walt@FiveRainbows.com and I may include it, with my answer, in an upcoming newsletter.
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What’s Your Best Publishing Option?
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Be sure to visit our Slipdown Mountain Publications website to see our wide range of fiction and nonfiction books. You can also find our books at Amazon.com with many available in the new Kindle e-book format. And don’t forget our downloadable PDF e-books.
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March 15th, 2009 at 10:12 am
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