I’m Not a Professional Bookseller But I Kinda Was Last Week

By

Scott D. Parker

I used to work in a bookstore back in the 1990s. It was a Bookstop and I enjoyed many days during my tenure as a professional seller of books.

In the late 2000s, I started a blog and began writing reviews of books I had. This included all the crime and mystery books I was introduced to as I started to see just how broad and deep the genre was. In the written word, I go into great detail about the authors’ style, the plots they developed, and how much I enjoyed the book. As an aside, I rarely write about a book I don’t like so if I’m reviewing it, chances are all but certain I loved it.

I received lots of comments over the years. Many agreed with my take while other thanked me for letting their authors know about a book that they could add to their To Be Read pile. It always made me feel good to connect readers with books.

But there’s something special about doing it in person.

Last Sunday, my church had their occasional book fair. These are all used books, most in boxes used to deliver reams of paper, and they run gamut of genres and styles. The folks who are in charge of laying out the books are readers themselves. They collect certain authors—James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Jodi Picoult, David Baldacci, Clive Cussler—in the same box or rolling cart while other authors are collected by genre.

An older lady and I had struck up a conversation about mystery books. She already had a small pile she was moving around. Since we were standing right next to the Picoult box, I pointed out that my wife has read all of those books. She thanked me and we parted.

With my interest in cozy mysteries now—thanks Murder by the Book—I was delighted to see one of the rolling carts featured just those books. I happily knelt and started to read the titles. Having just finished my first Leslie Meier book, Back to School Murder, I was hoping I would find one of the Lucy Stone novels.

Well, I found one and only one: Back to School Murder. Seriously? I want a different book, something I hadn’t read. But then a lightbulb went off in my head. I grabbed the book and went back to the older lady. She had selected one of the Picoult titles as it was on top of her stack. I literally put Meier’s book in her hands and started to explain the story, the series, and how I had literally just finished reading it the prior week. The lady smiled, seemed pleased that Meier’s catalog was twenty-eight books deep, and added the novel to the top of her stack. She thanked me and I hustled back to the sanctuary to sit in with the orchestra for the second service.

That smile was worth me not finding a Meier book. That smile told me Leslie Meier just might have a new reader.

Telling people about books is a lifelong joy to me. Telling them in person is even better.

Year 5 of an Indie Writer: Week 4 AKA How Best to Sell Direct and Book Murder

by
Scott D. Parker

Other than my typical writing and publishing books this year, the big goal is to create an online store in order to sell my books directly to readers.

The thing is, how best to do it.

Why Sell Direct?

I've had a few folks ask me why I'm creating a website to sell books and other products directly to readers? Aren't there enough other places--sites like Amazon or Kobo or Audible--where users are more accustomed to go? Yes, there are. But there are some compelling reasons to try.

One, naturally, is money. Minus the transaction fees assessed by the companies like PayPal, I would keep a higher percentage of each sale. Nothing wrong with that.

Of more importance, however, is the bond between buyer and seller. As it is now, readers can buy my book via an online store and they will get the book. The store takes its cut and I get the rest. But the store is the middle man, and the middle man can make any rules he wants.

Take ownership. Right now, when you purchase an ebook from an online retailer, you only purchase the license. If the online store negotiates a new deal with a different company, then the book you paid for vanishes from your device. It happened this week with the game Tetris and it happened last year to owners of ebooks purchased via Microsoft's store.

A key component of any store I create is ownership. When I reader buys an ebook from me, they get the digital file. It'll be theirs to keep and do with what they want. Kind of like a paperback. Ownership. It's a fundamental thing for me, even though I still purchase ebooks via online stores. But at least I know it going in.

One might say, for example, that it'll never happen to Amazon because they're too big to fail. Well, so was AT&T in the 1980s.

Which Platform to Use?

When it comes to the selling platform, there are a wide range of choices. A friend of mine started up an online business in the last few months and he selected Shopify. They take any payment method he knows about and the onus is on Shopify to collect payment and distribute the money to his bank account. Now, you might think this contradicts my ownership argument, but when it comes to money, that's a whole other thing. Better to let Shopify, Stripe, or Apple take care of that.

Shopify has a decent number of templates you can use to get the store started. The minimum viable product, the MVP, or the 1.0 version of the store. I am simultaneously getting my store started while helping my wife get hers up, too. We can tweak as we go, so it's better to get it up and running.

Late this week, however, I learned about Payhip. Joanna Penn (as J.F. Penn) uses it and I dove into a bit of research about it. Payhip enables sellers of digital products (ebooks, software, music) to sell direct to customers. In terms of an MVP, I can enable Payhip on my author website with little effort, so I might try it first while I get the store setup.

I'll admit: I'm leaning to Shopify for many of the same reasons my friend used to start his store. If the new store grows rapidly, I can always upgrade along the way. It's remarkable the number of tools and services available to use creatives to distribute and sell what we make.

For any writers reading this, do y'all sell direct? I'd love to hear some real-world tales, pros and cons, about the various services.

Book Murdering?

As it does multiple times a day, the internet exploded when a tweet was launched into the world. As best as I can discern, writer Alex Christofi posted a photo on Twitter of a few paperbacks that were ripped in half. The reason: better portability.

I love physical books: the smell, the feel, the shelf appeal. I have long taken pencil, pen, and highlighter to the pages of books I'm reading. Always in the Bible, often in non-fiction, and occasionally in fiction books when I see a particularly good piece of storytelling. I dogear pages if I don't have a bookmark or if I don't have any post-it notes handy. Basically, I view the book as mine and I can do with it whatever I want in order for me to get the most out of the reading experience.

Maybe it's the ebook reader in me, but I can't imagine ripping books in this manner. Granted, I don't have a commute via mass transit where carrying a heavy tome is something I do. I do all of my physical book reading at home where this isn't an issue.

But I can't imagine ripping a book like this. I don't find it particularly abhorrent. See my rational for book ownership above. But if Alex or other use this method to get the most out of the words on the pages--the real reason you buy a book in the first place--who am I to judge.

They would look weird on the shelf, however. Then again, you'd know exactly which books you've actually read.

TV Show of the Week: Modern Love

Just got around to seeing this show. Holy cow, is it good.

Modern Love, on Amazon Prime, is an eight episode series showcasing not only excellent acting and storytelling, but the various ways in which people love each other. From romantic love to familial love, old love to happenstance love, this show is a wonderful reminder that kindness and love can pierce through the mundane and the sadness we too often see in our world. The full review is here.

Highly Recommended

Cuckoo in the Nest

Updated 19/07/13 - It has  now been revealed that the tweeter was connected to a lawyer who was aware of the pseudonym. So even though it did look suspicious, the publishers are actually innocent in the unveiling. Which I do find rather heartening.


Unless you’ve been living with your head in a sound-proof box this week you’ll know that JK Rowling was revealed as the real author of a crime novel called The Cuckoo’s Calling. The book - depending on who you listen to - sold between 450 - 1500 copies. I’m inclined to believe the lower numbers given the distribution of the book in the UK. A number of well known authors including Mark Billingham and Val McDermid blurbed the novel* and it got a couple (but not that many) of good press reviews.

Then JK Rowling was revealed as the author. The publishers deny leaking this information, but I still have to wonder how anyone noticed the “similarity to Rowling” when the book sold so few copies. And yes, she did share a publisher and agent with her pseudonym, but again that isn’t an unusual situation for an agent to build up a good rapport with a publisher and sell more than a few of their clients to them. When this happened, of course, sales increased by a staggering amounts and bookstores that had ignored the book ordered in droves.

What does this tell us?

It tells us that debut authors have a tough time. It tells us that names and platforms shift books and while good writing may rise to the top, it takes time. A lot of time. Ian Rankin didn’t sell too well until the seventh or eighth book. James Lee Burke won critical acclaim and then got lost in the publishing deserts for years until he rose like a Pheonix from the ashes. Most debut authors don’t sell.

Because readers are often afraid to take the chance.

That’s the basic truth of it. Working in bookselling for years, I know how hard it is to move a debut author. James Oswald is one of the biggest exceptions I have ever seen, but even he had a great platform to lift off from (as well as having talent), and a marketing campaign that you would rarely see for a new author. Most of the time, you can tell everyone about a debut author until you’re blue in the face but readers are still wary. And its no surprise. With crime writers in particular, readers like to have long affairs with authors. They like to come to authors with big backlists that they can read from the beginning or authors that come with the seal of approval of multiple publications (must mean that they have staying power). They don’t like it when debut authors come along, steal their hearts and then vanish without a trace.

But all of this makes it tougher for debut authors. After all, all a debut author often has to go on is their words. The lucky few have a great platform, but most are just plying their trade. The book should speak for itself, but in the modern world. its the people who shout loudest get the most attention. There are several reasons I can think of that Galbraith didn’t get attention until he took off that Scooby Doo mask and revealed himself to be JK Rowling. the most important of which is that the book wasn’t really pushed that hard. Working in the trade, I was aware of its existence, but the buzz was quiet. Nothing pushed it above the crowd, least of all the frankly rather dull cover**. It was another police procedural in an already overcrowded market. And while Galbraith’s pseudonym may have had a background in this according to the blurb, that’s not unusual these days, Matt Hilton and Luke Delaney both spring to mind as former police officers, so its not that unusual a background for a crime writer to have, necessarily. Certainly its not guaranteed to get them instant attention. And as The Literary Critic herself (Lesley McDowell) pointed out, having an author who can’t do the publicity trail may also have an effect upon the book itself (was there even a fake Galbraith twitter feed or fb presence?)

The fact is that, even though it should be, good writing isn’t always the first thing people look for when buying a book. They want assurances about what they’re reading whether through testimonials they trust or an assurance of the author’s pedigree. To create a brand from a good writer takes time. Its no wonder that Galbraith’s sales were so apparently low (but as lots of people have said, not bad for an unknown debut in hb) even when the writing might have been brilliant. There wasn’t enough volume to convince reader’s to listen. And the same is true of so many debuts. The fact is that a debut shouldn’t be about selling millions in one go. It should be about entering the market and starting to build something. One book’s sales are not enough to judge an author’s worth. Even Rowling didn’t start shifting until book 3. And who can forget that Raymond Chandler didn’t really shift that well for three or four books (part of that being to do with the fact he was published in hardcover only for those books)?

I would love the publishers to have been able to leave Galbraith alone for a few books and see how he did, same as King did with his Bachman persona. It would have been an interesting experiment to see how difficult it really is for a debut author to make it, especially when everyone knows the sales potential of that author's talent already. But at the same time I’m happy for Rowling that people who have read the book have enjoyed it. And I hope she is still able to exploit this second persona. After all, there is little more fun in this world than writing gruesome violence and dark deeds, as we at Do Some Damage can attest.

In the meantime, can Mr Stephen King please step forward and announce that he’s really me? Oh, what do you mean that isn’t how this works?

*cynics claim they must have known the truth as all three share a publisher. Yeah, it looks odd, but frankly I can see why publishers would do interhouse blurbs/reviews and it doesn’t mean that a) McDermid/Billingham were just being nice or that b) they knew who they were blurbing. I’ve met both McDermid and Billingham on several occasions and my instincts tell me that they are essentially honest types, so let’s just leave that particular conspiracy to one side, shall we?

**And yes, perhaps I’m one to talk - - this is not about targetting Galbraith/Rowling, however

Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying...

By Russel D McLean

Today, returning from Edinburgh after attending the launch of Tony Black’s excellent new novel, TRUTH LIES BLEEDING, I found myself stuck for an hour or so in a small town waiting for the next train. I took a walk around and found myself in the local bookshop. A bookshop even locals don’t seem to know exists.

I find this strange. I know people in this small town, people who are avid readers, and they are completely unaware that this shop exists. Many of them have lamented the lack of a local bookstore – citing a long remembered indy that closed down in the early nineties when the owners retired – and do not seem to have noticed that this store has existed in their town centre for… well, a long time apparently.

The store itself is not large but it has the potential to be one of those little hidden away places you delight in discovering. But it suffers from huge problems. A lack of local publicity. And the frankly appalling stock management. I have been in this bookstore before and every time have noticed the same trends; a distinct lack of interest in local authors (of which there are a fair few, although even those advertised outside are not clearly in stock) and a shelving system that seems to be based along the lines of “lets throw it on and see what happens.” I’m not event going to mention the “feature table” that was just random books thrown on with some balanced on plastic displays. Not a shred of passion evident. Not a jot of local personality. Not only that, but to the best of my knowledge the store has no internet presence, either. And one can talk about the perils of the internet until they’re blue in the face, but the fact is you need some kind of presence on there. Not neccesarily a store front, but a presence, something that lets people know who and where you are and why they should come to you if they are in the local area.

During my recent tour of the states, the best indies I visited had much in common: they thrived on knowledge, enthusiasm and a welcoming atmosphere. They were well organised (even if they initially looked chaotic) and most of them thrived on local atmosphere. And events. Offering something chain stores and the internet could not; a chance to meet authors. This local bookstore has shrugged when presented with authors from the area in the past (Even when customers have asked for authors from the local area, they’ve been met with a shrug and a “I haven’t heard of them. What, they were in the local paper? Why would I read that?” response). In short, they were good at what they do. They were on the ball. They were part of the local community. They were supportive of authors.

This bookstore is none of these things, and it depressed me to see. In the current climate, I think that while ebooks offer a challenge to print, they are not – and some people are going to disagree with me on this – going to entirely replace them. I think that physical bookstores; by offering more than a place where one goes to buy books, by offering a hub and a face to face community* where readers can engage both each other and, yes, authors. Oh, I’m a believer in good author events, in that unique physical interaction and in the fact that a personally signed book is genuinely worth something that is immeasurable in money terms.

Yes, e-books are here to stay and probably at cheap prices that will appeal to mass buyers. But physical books and bookstores need to up their game to stay relevant. They may never have the dominance they once enjoyed (and I believe that is a shame) but they need to remain as the bastion of the joy of books and written-word storytelling, as the people who know whereof the talk, the people you go to, the people you who genuinely love what they are selling. You should want to walk in because they can offer you the kind of discussion that cannot be had with Amazon’s “recommend” system and because they can offer you a uniquely human and direct link to their product.



*at last year’s Bouchercon I was struck by toastmaster Eddie Muller talking about how face to face interaction encourages romance in the world. My interpretation of what he said was that he meant not just lovey-dovey romance, but that genuinely exciting feeling that comes with real interaction - - something that online forums cannot replicate entirely, despite presenting the illusion thereof and despite having an undeniable place in modern society.