Holiday Sales

If your organization or brand has a cookbook, I hope that you started gearing up for holiday sales months ago. So often I hear people say, "We want to get our book out before Christmas to take advantage of the holiday sales."

While I agree that holiday sales are the biggest and best of the year, making sure your title is out there at Christmas usually means having it published in July or August. Buyers make their gift store and book store promotions along with which products they want to promote before fall even arrives.

This is one area that an ounce of planning is worth tons of sales results. If by some chance you didn't already know this and got caught short this year, don't let it happen next year. Mark your calendars now to start planning for 2011 holiday sales on July 1, 2011.

Unreasonable is the new reasonable

I subscribe to Seth Godin’s blog and find it very inspirational and motivational. A post last week was particularly relevant to us as we develop business plans to sell services, raise money, etc. How many times and in how many different ways must we be told that “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it”? Here is Seth’s take on the subject:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/11/unreasonable.html

Navigating the waters of distribution

One of the most frequently asked questions we hear is, “What are you going to do to sell my book?” The answer is always the same, “If you are looking for anyone other than yourself to sell your book, then you shouldn’t publish.” In fact, FRP does offer a distribution service into chain and gift stores, but those entities only order based on demand. Demand is generated through marketing efforts put forth by you. No one is going to care more about your book than you do.

The two biggest reasons that authors self-publish are to retain control and to maximize profits. One of our most successful publishers has several “trade published” books on the market, but she has told us repeatedly that the titles she self-publishes are the most profitable. Here is an article we published on working with distributors—I hope if clarifies some questions you might have on how books are sold.



Navigating the waters of distribution