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Getting a Jump on Sales with Preorders
July 11, 2011
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by Kristen Sears
Many authors begin the hard work of generating sales for their book long before the actual release date. There are many different options for collecting these preorders, as well as many ways to make the most of them, helping you meet your goals and priorities for the project.
One method of collecting preorders is to set up a preorder button on the book's website. During the preorder process, customers will be prompted to fill in their basic information and make a payment through the website for the book (or books) they order. Matching Amazon pricing or offering signed copies can be an added hook to get people interested.
It is also common to create a dedicated landing page for preorders, which you can utilize in your marketing initiatives, that drives consumers to a central location to make their purchase. This is a popular option when you are incentivizing customers by giving them access to extra content at no charge with an order. The landing page can host this content, and once the order is placed, the customer can be given a code to access the free content.
But collecting preorders can also be as simple as keeping a spreadsheet with all the information that you manually collect from customers as they place orders directly through you leading up to the pub date.
A different route is to simply send people directly to a retailer, such as Amazon, to place their order during a specified period of time, usually immediately following the release of the book. In this case, it's important for your publisher to know how many orders you expect to be placed at least three weeks in advance so they can ensure that adequate stock is in place in the supply chain to meet the rush of demand. (Also see our recent newsletter tip, In The Loop.)
Regardless of how you collect the orders, the idea is to have a complete record of all customers and their orders at the end of the preorder campaign.
Once all of the preorders are collected, you have to decide what your priority is for these sales. Have you generated all of these preorders so you can generate maximum revenue from your book right away? Or is your goal to have all of these sales count towards your retail track record? (Shameless plug: With Greenleaf, you have the flexibility to meet either goal, and we can help execute the orders or connect you with experts in the field that specialize in placing those presales in a strategic and planned way for maximum impact.)
If the primary goal is to maximize revenue with preorders, you’ll want to sell the books directly. Revenue generated through direct sales is not shared with a distributor or retailer, allowing for larger margins. Remember to bill the appropriate shipping charges directly to your customers if you want them to cover the cost.
If the goal is to drive retail sales as high as they can go, run preorder sales through a retail channel that reports to BookScan (the book industry’s go-to tool for measuring retail sell-through). This will make these sales a part of the book’s auditable track record. For bulk preorders, we work with a company called 800 CEO Read and they make this process very simple. Corporate customers (or your own company) can buy the books from 800 CEO Read, which reports sales to BookScan.
If you plan on generating thousands of preorders and want to use them to make a run at a bestseller list, we recommend working with an expert who specializes in handling this type of campaign. A campaign like this requires careful coordination and planning and the ability to process thousands of individual orders in a short time span.
What are your goals leading up to pub date? What’s worked to help you generate preorders? Share and discuss!
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From The Archives: Why Ingram Returns Your Books and Then Orders Them Again
April 18, 2011
by Tanya Hall
Originally posted on March 31, 2009.
--------------------------------------------------
One of the most common questions we hear from authors is "Why does Ingram return my books only to order more the next day?" And it’s true: Ingram, the biggest player in the book wholesaling game, will frequently send books back to a publisher’s doorstep only to turn around an place an order a few days later. Why on earth didn’t they just keep them?
All books that bookstores ship back to Ingram are sent to their Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, warehouse for processing and then are directly returned to publisher or distributor of the title. Unfortunately, Ingram does not restock returned inventory. (You can imagine that tracking, inspecting, and restocking undamged returns would be a time-consuming endeavor for an operation of that size.) At the same time, Ingram has to bring in new stock to cover ongoing demand.
Another scenario that creates returns followed by more orders is a shift in regional demand. Ingram has four warehouses serving the country by region (in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Indiana, and Tennessee). If your cookbook is overstocked in Seattle bookstores, but you just did a great local radio tour in the Chicago area, Ingram’s going send the Seattle books back to you while simultaneously asking you for more to cover the new demand in Chicago—no matter how inefficient that seems.
The best way to minimize returns is to balance supply with demand by trying to maintain supply at a level that will sell in less than three months. So, as we’ve told you before, avoid overstocking and subsequent returns by always communicating your marketing and publicity activities to your publisher or distributor.
Trackback URL for this post:
http://www.greenleafbookgroup.com/trackback/2531
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Why Ingram Returns Your Books and Then Orders Them Again
March 31, 2009
by Tanya Hall
One of the most common questions we hear from authors is "Why does Ingram return my books only to order more the next day?" And it’s true: Ingram, the biggest player in the book wholesaling game, will frequently send books back to a publisher’s doorstep only to turn around an place an order a few days later. Why on earth didn’t they just keep them?
All books that bookstores ship back to Ingram are sent to their Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, warehouse for processing and then are directly returned to publisher or distributor of the title. Unfortunately, Ingram does not restock returned inventory. (You can imagine that tracking, inspecting, and restocking undamged returns would be a time-consuming endeavor for an operation of that size.) At the same time, Ingram has to bring in new stock to cover ongoing demand.
Another scenario that creates returns followed by more orders is a shift in regional demand. Ingram has four warehouses serving the country by region (in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Indiana, and Tennessee). If your cookbook is overstocked in Seattle bookstores, but you just did a great local radio tour in the Chicago area, Ingram’s going send the Seattle books back to you while simultaneously asking you for more to cover the new demand in Chicago—no matter how inefficient that seems.
The best way to minimize returns is to balance supply with demand by trying to maintain supply at a level that will sell in less than three months. So, as we’ve told you before, avoid overstocking and subsequent returns by always communicating your marketing and publicity activities to your publisher or distributor.
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Don't Print Off More Than You Can Sell: What to Consider When Deciding How Many Books to Print
May 10, 2007
by GreenleafBookGroup
Book publishing is a lot of things, but an exact science it is not. In fact, it’s an educated guess at best. So what do you do when you finally get down to deciding the hard numbers of how many books you need for an initial print run? First day sales for Bill Clinton’s My Life exceeded 400,000, prompting the publisher to print 725,000 more copies beyond the initial 1.5 million printed. So does that mean that all books on famous people will have instant success? Hardly. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2005, the book Brad & Jen: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Golden Couple, shockingly or not, sold a meager 4,000 copies. There is no magic answer, but there are factors to take in account when making your decision.
Direct sales: You don’t have to be famous to draw a crowd. If you’re a public speaker with a lot of engagements, a decent following, and a large potential for back-of-room sales, assume that you can inspire at least half of those people to buy a copy of the book from you. Popular websites that already generate a fair amount of traffic can act as advertising space and give your existing audience instant access to the book. Also, never discount the number of people who you know directly (i.e., clients, colleagues, family, and friends).
Price per unit: There is one aspect of exact science in publishing that you can hold on to. As print quantities increase, price per unit decreases. It’s a good idea at the beginning of the project to get three print quotes, so that you can see what numbers work best for the price you are paying.
Timeline for reprints: Make sure to factor in time for reprints to reprint. For U.S. printers, the time frame is about 8-12 weeks; for overseas printing, you’re looking at 3-4 months. If demand is high enough that you need to reprint, then you definitely don’t want to run out and miss sales.
Marketing: Books unfortunately do not sell themselves, but when authors actively market their books, it creates demand. When there is increased demand, you want to have the supply to meet it.
Co-ops: Co-op is the intensely coveted space in bookstores—endcap displays, front of house, and forward facing books on shelves. This space is expensive and hard to get, but if you’re one of the lucky ones to get these highly visible spots, then buyers will often pull in large quantities of your book to fill the space.
Distribution: If you’ve got a quality distributor and want national distribution with the major retailers and independent bookstores, then you’re going to need more copies available than if you were going for strictly regional, online, or direct sale distribution.
Size of audience: If you’re writing a ground-breaking book on how to reverse global warming, then you’re audience is going to be a lot larger than if you were writing a book about knitting sweaters for kittens. If you’re writing to a niche audience, you might want to be more conservative in your estimates.
Storage cost: When books are not on the shelves, they have to be somewhere. Where you don’t want a lot of them is in a storage facility collecting dust as you are being charged per month, per book. A realistic print run in the beginning can save you a lot in future storage costs.
When considering the number of books to print, it doesn’t require that you err on the side of being conservative or liberal with your estimates, but you do want to stick closely to reality. You want to make the most money you can early in the life of your book when marketing efforts work and demand is at its peak. It’s impossible to predict audience demands, trends, and the overall success of the book, but an educated guess beats any shot in the dark.
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