Nimble Books LLC is an innovative publisher of timely material on topics ranging from Harry Potter and Dan Brown to politics, business, science, and medicine. We use electronic publishing technology to reach markets that are moving too fast for the large publishing conglomerates to address. Because our marketing strategy is tightly focused on the Internet, we look for titles that respond well to keyword searching in on-line markets, or on-line promotion via blogging.
Some of our recent projects include:
RED ZONE BLUES by Pepe Escobar
THE JESUS FAMILY CONTROVERSY by Dillon Burroughs
GLOBALISTAN: HOW THE GLOBALIZED WORLD IS DISSOLVING INTO LIQUID WAR by Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar.
MISQUOTES IN MISQUOTING JESUS by Dillon Burroughs
UNAUTHORIZED HARRY POTTER BOOK SEVEN NEWS
We publish twelve titles per year and we are selective. We are looking for books that are substantially ahead of the curve in that they address emerging trends that are readily connected with large, literate on-line communities.
Distribution
We fulfill orders via Ingram using print-on-demand from Lightning Source. Your book will be available in most on-line booksellers including Amazon.com; the Amazon.com stores in the UK, France, Germany, and Japan; Barnesandnoble.com; Powell’s; and dozens of on-line resellers. Customers can special order the book in bookstores via Ingram, the market-leading distributor in the U.S. We also ship direct to prepaid purchasers and provide a quantity discount.
We are true partners throughout the publication, distribution, and marketing of the book. It’s not a case of give us the manuscript and we’ll give you the check – it’s now that the manuscript is ready, let’s go make some money together! Of course, we bear all costs; there are no author fees of any kind.
Online Sales
Our experience is that about 80% of our online sales come through Amazon.com, which means that you can use your expected Amazon sales rank as a rough indicator of your revenue opportunity. It’s important to note that Amazon’s algorithms diminish the visibility of short-discount books in some of Amazon’s inside-the-store marketing programs, such as “Buy X, Get Y,” and “Also Bought …” This means that your book’s sales will depend primarily on how many readers come to Amazon looking for your specific book or a book that is very close to your specific topic.
The key thing to know about Amazon sales ranks is that the relationship between sales rank and unit sales on Amazon is an inverse logarithmic function, so a book that is ranked #1 sells about 30 times more than a book that is ranked #1000.
Our business model
We normally sell books to retailers at a “short discount” of approximately 25% and do not allow returns. This makes our books considerably more profitable per copy than traditional offset books which are sold at a 55% discount with the additional cost of returns. However, there is no guarantee that we will always be able to sell books on these terms, so our book contracts are written to allow us to set the discount, return terms, and price at our sole discretion.
We pay authors 30% of net publisher compensation for the first 5,000 units sold, 35% for the next 5,000, and 40% for more than 10,000 units sold. Net publisher compensation is defined as (list price * wholesale discount) - printing cost. For a 25% discounted book, 30% of net publisher compensation usually works out to about a 17% royalty, considerably better than market rates.
The following table presents an estimate of the correlation between 30-day average Amazon sales rank (as measured by Titlez.com) and the net monthly author compensation for a $19.94/200 page book. Needless to say, this table is strictly an illustration and should in no way be considered binding.
30 day avg sales rank of … should result in projected net author compensation per month of about …
1000 => $1968
10,000 => $379
30,000 => $173
100,000 => $73
This model is based on Nimble Books sales data plus four different academic studies from 2001 to 2005 whose estimates of the relationship between Amazon unit sales and sales ranks all found r, or degrees of correlation, of .8 or higher; for details and citations, see this article on the Nimble Books website. The primary financial risks in this model are that any increase in printing costs or increase in the short discount rate would adversely affect both publisher and author net compensation.
Pros and Cons
The total theoretical revenue oportunity is less in our model than if you publish with a publisher that uses a traditional model (55%, returnable) for the simple reason that we are primarily addressing the online portion of the market, which is about 10% the size of the total market. However, if a book is successful enough, we do reserve the right to go to a second edition with the traditional model. Of course, the maximum potential for rights sales, etc. is just the same in our model as in the traditional model.
In our model, both author and publisher assume less risk.
- By publishing your work promptly, you reduce the risk that your work will go unsold.
- The success of your book is not constrained by the “six-week window” in which traditionally published books must “sink or swim” on the chain bookshelves. Your book will always be in print.
- You evade the trap of “midlist misery”, which traps many worthy authors in a vicious circle of lukewarm chain sales, half-hearted marketing, and difficulty selling new works.
Both author and publisher can take creative aim at niche, hypothetical, or “bleeding-edge” markets.
Both author and publisher can challenge the “big boys” by focusing online, where creative individuals can readily use successful blogs and websites to establish a category-leading presence.
You have better visibility into sales: we provide monthly statements.
You have an additional revenue stream: we pay every month.
What We Will Need From You
We prefer that manuscripts be provided in Microsoft Word format.
We will ask you to review chapters as they are copy-edited and formatted for production.
We may also ask you for the name of experts in your field who may be willing to review the manuscript for technical accuracy.
As the publication date approaches, we will help you set up a blog or website specifically devoted to your book. We expect you, as the domain expert for your topic, to take the lead on getting the word out about it to knowledgeable reviewers.
As a way of stimulating reader interaction and gathering positive reviews, we offer readers free PDF updates for each book. We ask authors to offer at least one chapter update per year.
Marketing
Please review the Nimble Books Marketing Playbook, which has grown long enough it needs its own page.
How We Pay
We get paid by our distributor, Lightning Source, 120 days after the end of each month in which your books are shipped. Accordingly, we pay you each month on a five-month delay from when your books sell. Thus, if we sell ten of your books in January 2006, we will pay your royalty in May 2006. In June 2006, you will receive February ’s royalties, and so on. We prefer to pay via electronic means such as Paypal but will issue paper cheques if necessary.
About Nimble Books
Our trusty Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines “nimble” as follows:
1: quick and light in motion: AGILE *nimble fingers*
2 a: marked by quick, alert, clever conception, comprehension, or resourcefulness *a nimble mind* b: RESPONSIVE, SENSITIVE *a nimble listener*
And traces the etymology to the 14th Century:
Middle English nimel, from Old English numol holding much, from niman to take; akin to Old High German neman to take, Greek nemein to distribute, manage, nomos pasture, nomos usage, custom, law
The etymology is reminiscent of the old Biblical adage, “to whom much is given, much is expected” (Luke 12:48). Nimble Books seeks to honor that Christian principle by combining the spirit of nimbleness with the Biblical concept of abundance: we deliver what you need to know when you need to know it.