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A review of BookScan sales statistics for books about torpedo boats shows that the Release To Date (RTD) sales for books with the words “PT boat” or “torpedo boat” or “MTB” in their titles would produce revenue for me that would fall within a range between 0.5X and 20X, where X is my average unloaded breakeven cost.  Average unloaded breakeven cost only includes direct costs, excludes labor and overhead costs, which, properly speaking, should be accounted for, but, given the shoestring economics of my scheme, currently aren’t. When I look at publishing a book, I ask myself whether the likely sales would produce revenue > AUBC. AUBC translates into average unloaded breakeven unit sales (X) as X = AUBC/(revenue per unit). I realize that life would be simpler for my Twitter followers if I only posted about a coherent set of related topics, e.g. “books and publishing.” As it is, I post about everything I’m interested in, which means that many of you have to wade through lots of stuff that is irrelevant to you. Two words come to mind: “tough” and “sorry”! I am sure that I would have more followers and readers if I focused the blog and Twitter streams on a single topic, but that’s just not who I am. In the words of the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, I am a fox, not a hedgehog. I do use Twitter #hashtags religiously, so, if you want to focus on the topics that are most interesting to you, just do a search on, e.g. [@nimblebooks #GoBlue] or [@nimblebooks #scifi] Nimble Books works off a production queue which determines the order of books worked on and published. The order of operations is determined by a number of hard nosed factors such as contractual obligations and business prospects plus some squishier factors such as how much work is left to do and what human resources are available. In the meantime, the routine business of acquisition, marketing, sales, and accounting is always going on. Some books in the list require very small amounts of additional work, others will require a great deal of effort. Things that are closest to complete tend to be nearer the top because publishers (and authors, in the Nimble model) only make money when books are actually published. Naturally, manuscripts that are not yet received or complete are at the bottom. This FOFI (first out first in) algorithm works for Nimble but from the author’s perspective it does tend to produce long bursts of inactivity followed by seemingly frenzied bursts of progress. While at this point, Nimble’s scheduling is an art, not a science, it would be reasonable to assume that four to six books will be published each month. Firm publication dates for each title are issued only when the book has been accepted by the printer and there are no remaining obstacles that might produce inaccurate expectations. Here’s the 1-2-3 of how to get into book stores. 1) print at least a 5,000 copy offset run so that 2) have a sales force that is credible with Barnes and Noble and with major indie stores and can hit every region of the country. 3) have a substantial number of good marketing events occur so that the stores actually believe your sales force and place significant orders for your book (and here, for everyone, including the big publishers, you also need luck). To accomplish all those things, you need a major publisher to buy your book. Unless they pay a high 5 or 6-digit advance, you are going to be the person primarily responsible for item 3. Even if your publisher gives you “a big laydown”, there are no guarantees; your book has about six weeks to “sell through”, then it’s off to remainders. I follow a different “no inventory” model. I don’t offer advances, I don’t do offset runs, and I don’t stock inventory. But I am not a service provider like Booksurge, CreateSpace, Alibris, or Lulu–I only publish books that are interesting (to me) and that (again, in my judgment) offer a significant and important perspective. The key advantage of this approach is that it frees up enough capital that I can make lots of bets on books I like. In essence, I am a singles hitter; almost all of the books I publish are profitable (for me) and all of them are interesting (to me). Some of the books I publish wind up being “doubles” or “triples.” I just don’t have enough capital to hit “home runs.” On good days, you might consider me a miniature Ichiro Suzuki. Henceforth I will be setting (and communicating) publication dates only after the book is completely proofed and typeset, the cover is completed, and the book is “available for printing.” In most cases, the nominal publication date will be three to six months subsequent (although the book will have a soft launch and gradually become available on Amazon, etc. quite a bit earlier than the nominal pub date). This will a) dramatically reduce my opportunity to establish inaccurate expectations and b) provide more lead time for prepublication reviews and publicity. It also means that there will be a prolonged and rather annoying (to the writer) lag time from when the complete manuscript is submitted to when the publication date is established. That is a pity, but this seems like the best strategy all factors considered. Nimble Books authors are an accomplished group who have, at various points in their careers, been:
Join the Nimble network! Read how to submit a proposal. This month’s projected year over year retail sales (i.e., how are things going this month, excluding direct sales). Every month in fiscal 2009 saw better sales than the average in 2008. The peak in May represents results from the introduction of the AGE OF OBAMA books beginning Jan. 20. This page is where I keep track of achievements in continuous improvement of carrying out key publishing tasks.
Dear authors, A quick note to bring you up to date on this month’s activities. I must apologize that this month I made a few frolics and detours, which put my release schedule a bit behind. Here is what I did accomplish:
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/nimblebooks.com_i0vi4o8qcguqlnqh1884oirc14@group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
On tap for April: publishing a lot of books! Cordially, Fred Z. |
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 Torpedo boat crew 1898 HI Res.jpg "(166) Torpedo boat crew 1898 HI Res.jpg")
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