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sales figures for books about torpedo boats

Fred Zimmerman — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:15:41 +0000

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

Fred Zimmerman — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:13:19 +0000

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).

One Nimble Twitter Account to Rule Them All

Fred Zimmerman — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:47:05 +0000

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]

How the production queue works

Fred Zimmerman — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:42:15 +0000

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.

#Ichiro Suzuki on getting your book into bookstores

Fred Zimmerman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:39:21 +0000

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
a) your price per copy is low enough that
b) you can give bookstores a 55% discount and
c) make the books “returnable” (i.e., pub bears all the risk of the retailer stocking them)

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.

Setting Publication Dates

Fred Zimmerman — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:28:04 +0000

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.

Who are Nimble Books authors?

Fred Zimmerman — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:08:55 +0000

Nimble Books authors are an accomplished group who have, at various points in their careers, been:

a computer consultant for IBM Europe
a 6′7 1/2″ member of the 1979 University of Michigan basketball team
a multiple winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards for best science fiction novels
a distinguished professor of social anthropology at Cambridge University
a globe-trotting journalist who speaks five languages
a diving instructor
an 85-year-old retired explorer
a lawyer
a certified project management professional
an intelligence consultant
a geographical information systems (GIS) specialist
an information security expert
a tenured professor
a retired Gurkha officer who speaks nine Asian languages and is the world’s leading expert on jungle warfare
a technical illustrator
a painter
a TV news anchor in a top 20 market
an imprisoned dissident
a Harvard PhD
a candidate for state assembly
a professor of linguistics
a dolphin trainer
an M.D.
and lots more! No cab drivers or cowboys, though, as far as I know.

Join the Nimble network! Read how to submit a proposal.

Dashboard

Fred Zimmerman — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:11:50 +0000

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.

Continuous Improvement — publishing chores

Fred Zimmerman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:12:02 +0000

This page is where I keep track of achievements in continuous improvement of carrying out key publishing tasks.





Initial Daily Norms
Improvement Goal or Achievement 


Pay all authors one at a time using PayPal
Automate payments


Generate all sales reports in PDF at once using Excel
Consider creating them in Excel instead


Enter all distributor data into sales reports by hand
Write macros to copy data from distributor reports into master authors' comp


Create one cover/day
Switched to Scribus


Write 4 pages/day
Write 4 pages/day


Format 100 pages/day
Write formatting macro


Copy-edit 50 pages/day
Write macro to fix common punctuation errors


Sign one contract / day
Update assent form to 1) be in You/We language 2) enable author to print out form with his particulars filled in

Nimble Books Letter to Authors, March 2009

Fred Zimmerman — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:44:51 +0000

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:

I completed production on one excellent book, volume III of Joe Hind’s DEFINITIVE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE TORPEDO BOAT, but I had hoped to publish two others this month, and they are now on tap for April, along with the others previously scheduled for April.
I moved the website to another hosting provider this month. This was a necessary distraction because our old provider was prone to unpredictable service interruptions. Things at the new place (PressHarbor.com) seem much better so far.
The Nimble Books Store was down for a while, but it is now all the way back up.
I added a public calendar of Upcoming Nimble Events that lists all signings and appearances by Nimble authors. If you want to add an event, just send me an email. If you are tech savvy, you can post your own events to the shared calendar by entering this iCAL address in your calendar program (Outlook, Google, etc.):

http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/nimblebooks.com_i0vi4o8qcguqlnqh1884oirc14@group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

I established a Twitter presence. To follow me, go to http://twitter.com/nimblebooks.
- It was discovering the Twitter Tools plugin by Alex King that motivated me to explore Twitter: this plugin integrates Twitter and WordPress, so all my Tweets show up in my blog, and blog posts show up on Twitter. I don’t like doing social networking things unless they are additive to my existing activities.
- When you see a message marked “Please RT”, and it is about one of your fellow Nimble authors, please do retweet: we all benefit from building the network around Nimble.
I am in the process of adding a Help Desk for Nimble Authors that will enable you to file “trouble tickets” when there is something that you have been bugging me to do. The advantage of this over email is that it forces a structure of open & closed tickets that makes it harder for me to lose things in the shuffle. For the test version, see http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2009/03/help-desk/. Note that I’m still straightening out some bugs and tweaking the look and feel, so keep sending me email as well for now.
The end of the printer’s accounting period is Friday 4/3, so author’s comp statements and payments should come out towards the end of next week.

On tap for April: publishing a lot of books!

Cordially,

Fred Z.

Initial Daily Norms	Improvement Goal or Achievement
Pay all authors one at a time using PayPal	Automate payments
Generate all sales reports in PDF at once using Excel	Consider creating them in Excel instead
Enter all distributor data into sales reports by hand	Write macros to copy data from distributor reports into master authors' comp
Create one cover/day	Switched to Scribus
Write 4 pages/day	Write 4 pages/day
Format 100 pages/day	Write formatting macro
Copy-edit 50 pages/day	Write macro to fix common punctuation errors
Sign one contract / day	Update assent form to 1) be in You/We language 2) enable author to print out form with his particulars filled in