Nimble Books LLC » Writing

#usage The Mystery of the Circonflex, explained

Fred Zimmerman — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:55:50 +0000

One of my authors was kind enough to explain this to me.

The [French] accent circonflex is indicative of a hidden “s” which applies with Davoût =Davoust or the archhaic d’Avoust as some would have it.

#usage death to “cremains”

Fred Zimmerman — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:37:41 +0000

1950 origin convinces me that this is a bogus marketing word. I would argue that the only example where the use of “cremains” is more appropriate than the use of “remains” is the final example. In all other cases, “remains” is simpler and more dignified.

950 Times-Mirror ( Warren, Pa. ) 12 Sept. 5/1 Interment of the cremains to take place in the family plot. 1963 Punch 16 Oct. 577/2 The loved one..has his cremains hygienically dissolved. 1982 C. H. NICHOLS Funerals, Burial & Cremation in T. G. Duncan Over 55 xl. 655 Cremains may be buried in the container in which they were delivered by the crematory, or, in the absence of restrictions, simply scattered. 2002 Washington Post (Home ed.) 25 Sept. C15/5 Louise travels first class to more places and attends more functions as cremains than she did when she was flesh and blood.

#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.

Copy Editing Guidelines

Fred Zimmerman — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:21:56 +0000

General guidance for editing Nimble Books manuscripts

Please use the 15th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. I highly recommend a $30 subscription to the online version.

Mechanical issues

Use Word 2007 (.docx) if at all possible. If necessary, .doc format is accceptable. Track Changes on.
Change all ^p^t to ^p (ie remove leading tabs from paragraphs).
All sentences should be followed by a single stop.
Expand acronyms at first use.
Check spelling of all proper nouns.
Make sure authors use consistent transliteration schemes (e.g. ”Peking” v. “Beijing”).

For my style philosophies and idiosyncrasies see the Nimble Books Style Guide and my regular #usage posts on Twitter.

The following sections provide tips on issues to watch for with particular types of manuscripts.

Edited collections

Make sure usage is consistent among authors.
Ditto reference styles.
Watch out for internal cross-references.

Military, political, and naval books

Ship names: USS Harry S Truman (CVN-75)
Hyphenate all US navy ship numbers and all other navies by default unless author or publisher indicates that historical practice in the navy under discussion was to use spaces rather than hyphens (“MAS 512″).

#usage is “healthcare” a word?

Fred Zimmerman — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:22:13 +0000

I’m going with no: “health care,” please.

#usage MM for millions? no …

Fred Zimmerman — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:50:24 +0000

#usage MM for millions is 1) usu. unnecessary 2) non-standard 3) illogical (why not MN?)

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.

Marketing suggestion: scheduled Tweets

Fred Zimmerman — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 14:05:10 +0000

Twitter has rapidly become a key source for real-time news recommendation and dissemination. Twitter results will often show up in the top few results on a Google search for [x].

I like sending scheduled Tweets — one a day or week — about the books in our stable. I make sure to point to the Amazon or Nimble pages about the book via the URL-shortening service bit.ly (which allows one to track click-throughs). With about 500 “followers”, I get about 15 click-throughs to a book per Tweet; don’t know about sales impact.

If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can set one up at http://twitter.com.

I recommend the web-based service www.hootsuite.com, but there are lots of other services that will let you send scheduled tweets.

If you include the phrase @nimblebooks in your Tweets, I will re-Tweet them (RT).

Numeric Impact of Specific Marketing Events on Nimble Book Sales

Fred Zimmerman — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:33:51 +0000

Over time I have had the chance to observe the numeric sales impact of a wide variety of marketing “events” (some planned, some not) on the sales of Nimble Books and I thought I would provide some actual data points for authors to contemplate. Remember that Nimble Books uses a low-risk, low-inventory model and focuses only on online booksellers, who now account for somewhere between 15 and 30 percent of all US book sales.

In all cases these numbers are fuzzy, arrived at by observing sales immediately following the event and subtracting an estimated number of normal “background” sales based on the title’s historical track record.

What this all tells you: a) no one is getting rich here b) certain types of events have more impact than others c) the more of these events that you make happen, the better your book will do. The impact of these events is at least additive, and at some point becomes more than linear.

Event	Impact
Mentioned in book review in Financial Times, which is the English equivalent of the Wall Street Journal; the book is one of four books mentioned in a general review of a topic; the comments about the book were concise and neutral	27 additional UK sales in four months
Title surfing: an ”unauthorized analysis of X” where X is a top 10 bestseller, book is a thoughtful but very short take on X	1600 copies in eight months
Announcement of book on community forum of ~ 500 members where author is a “big cheese” and known expert on topic	59 copies in first month
One-hour appearance on EWTN, the Catholic TV channel–it is available on hundreds of cable systems worldwide, but I couldn’t figure out viewership numbers	15 copies to EWTN store plus 10 sales that month
Several book signings a month, appearances on local radio, TV, & podcast, by former local news anchor in top 20 market	1,100 copies in seven months
Adoption as required book for a course	60 to 80 copies for each course
Promotion by a mini-network of 8 to 10 bloggers who all write on a similar topic	100 copies in a month
Foreword to book is by best-selling author “Q” who has not yet written very many other books, so book X shows up high in the search results for author Q	~12-15 copies a month
Bookstore at HistoryNet.com picks up a series of books	50 copy initial order for each book in the series
Glowing review from prominent blogger	~ 50 copies per month for several months
“Table copies” at a convention	75 in four days

Bookstores say they can’t order my book — what’s going on?

Fred Zimmerman — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:53:30 +0000

Bookstores *can* indeed order POD books, they do it all the time and can do so with 24 hour delivery provided by Ingram, the largest distributor in the US.

Bookstores *prefer* not to order POD books because they have to take the business risk of paying for them up front. Also, bookstores prefer not to buy “nonreturnable” books, again, because they have to take the business risk of owning unsold books, rather than shifting the risk of returns back to the publisher, which was the historic norm in the US bookselling industry.

If we were to use sheer unbridled logic to attack the problem, the logical thing for a bookstore to do would be to adjust their orders downward — from an optimistic x copies to say, a more prudent 1/3x copies — so that they are buying slightly under the number of books they think they will actually sell, while accepting a modest amount of risk that it won’t happen.

Human nature being what it is, bookstore employees and even policies often default to a “no POD, no risk” policy. This means that buying a box or two of the books and carting them to your signings is probably the most expedient thing to do. it’s not that terrible to carry 10 or 15 copies to a bookstore.

It’s the low-cost, low-risk nature of selling nonreturnable POD books that enables me to make bets on lots of commercially risky books rather than only publishing a few “sure bets” every year, so I can’t modify these policies.

You can also direct booksellersto the Direct Purchases page http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/direct-purchases-and-quantity-discounts/, which explains that if they don’t want to use Ingram, I will sell direct to them for 35% off, with additional quantity discounts beginning at 50 units and stepping all the way to 500+.