How Going Old School Helps Writers Avert Exploitation

Your support means everything! Thank you in advance!Years ago I was a promoter for a handful of local sporting events and I found my experience with book marketing was extremely helpful in selling race entries.If you’ve never tried to sell anything but your own books, you might not realize how good a salesperson you’ve become. Books are the hardest thing in the world to sell, and when you spend a decade banging your head against the wall trying to come up with ways to create a demand, you pick up skills even if you don’t make sales.When I moved from selling books to selling race entries, it was like eating cake. These were products that people already knew they wanted!I became so busy that there wasn’t any time for impostor syndrome. I also found that my experience as an event promoter opened my eyes to a lot of issues many writers never even consider. When I moved back from race events to books, I was able to apply those lessons and achieve a much higher success rate.Don’t waste your money on social mediaLike every writer, I’ve dabbled in social media marketing. The only thing that’s taught me is to never type my credit card number into any online portal… ever.My personal experience is that paying for social media marketing does not work. However, it is possible to leverage social media as a marketing tool for free.This came up during a conversation with my race director during my days as a promoter. During a meeting, I said, “Everybody walks around with their noses in their phones, but they don’t actually read anything.”He looked up from his phone and said, “Huh?”Now that I had his attention, I pounced.“I want to go old school. I want to create a physical mailer. I want to send people something that they can touch! The advantage is that when people pick up their mail, they have to put down their phones!”You need something local and something cheapWe discovered an inexpensive local printer. This is key, and I’ll go into more depth as to how this applies to book publishing later, but for now let me emphasize that you can’t just do an internet search to find a printing service.Remember that internet searches are also a form of advertisement. To find something suitable to your needs, you have to scroll past the first results that pop up.You aren’t looking for the “biggest” or the “best,” you need something local and something cheap.It turns out there are a lot of little newspapers that are hurting for money and scrambling to find new work. These places sometimes offer printing services as a secondary business that helps keep them afloat.Our full-color, eight page mailerFor our race mailer, I found a place that was able to produce an eight page, full-color mailer, and mail it at a very affordable price. We sent out around 1,500 mailers, and the total cost (plus shipping) was around $600.Mailer in hand, I was able to approach local business for advertisements that covered the production costs.It was a relief to spend our marketing money on a physical product. That made us feel like we were actually getting something. I took the extra copies and handed them out at other races.This mailer seemed to be effective in retaining the athletes that had participated in our events and we saw steady growth every year. Plus, I combined promotion for several different events in the mailer.Whenever the mailer came out, people would get excited and post pictures on social media. I made sure to include pictures of athletes I knew had large followings. “Hey look! I’m featured in the event mailer!” I’d wake up to a social media feed filled with images of my mailer and it felt like Christmas morning. People got excited about getting something in the mail!The lesson that applies to booksI’ve often been at speaking events and recognized that my audience was interested in reading more of my work, but they didn’t necessarily want to spend the $10 on a book.Unit cost is a problem that writers rarely think about. It’s always easier to sell something for $1 than it is to sell it for $10. There are some people who try to claim that raising the cost actually creates a perception of better quality, and that is true in some cases, but it really doesn’t apply to promoting the work of an unknown writer.The other thing that became clear when I was creating and distributing mailers is the significance of production cost. The problem with most book printing services that are available online is that they charge you too much per unit. If you’re printing your book for $9 and selling it for $10, then you’ve already lost. A low profit margin is the best way to fail.Ideally, you want to create something for $0.01 and sell it for $1,000. You know, like life-saving medication. That example isn’t going to be feasible for writers because systems of corruption work against us, but you do need to focus on getting your production cost as low as possible.Books are a hard sell because they’re expensive to produce, expensive to ship, and consumers won’t pay enough to cover these costs.Digital was supposed to be the solution, but…The appeal of E-books is that there is no production or shipping cost. Boom! It’s all profit. That can be something you can leverage at your speaking events. I always purchase a domain name to help me promote my books and I forward it to the sales page. That way, I can say, “Go to IncaExpat.com to get a copy!” Sometimes people will pull out their phones and do it.E-books have turned into the equivalent of offering a small soft drink for 2.50 and a medium soft drink for 2.85. Consumers think, “It’s only $0.35 more, I might as well get the medium.” However, when it comes to book sales, the author actually loses money when the purchaser pays extra for the hard copy because of shipping and production expenses.Ultimately, my experience is that people still have a better reading experience when they have a physical book. You’ve got to give people a reason to come back to reality.Your objective is to get a physical product into the hands of your target market. You want them to be so excited that they post a picture of themselves holding this product (hopefully, your book) on social media. That’s the kind of organic advertising that actually works.How can you print a book for low unit cost?I don’t understand why more writers don’t explore alternative ways to get printed copies of their books. Print-on-demand is an attractive option, but once you’ve established yourself as a writer, you’re losing money on production costs if you go that route.If you know that 1,000 people are going to buy your book, then you need to consider doing a print run to get the unit cost down. A print run is a higher initial investment that helps create a better profit margin, but you have to get some quotes and get the lowest unit price possible.Too often, writers simply submit to obscene production costs as if there is no other way. If you’re on the verge of writing a check for $10,000, you need to stop and think for a second.What kind of project is your book?I understand that there are a lot of books that are written as a form of family record. Years ago, my aunt did a project where she collected stories from all her classmates who attended her one room rural school. That’s a worthwhile project, but the reality is that a book like that is likely only going to be of interest to a couple hundred people (at most).Why not do a project like that in the form of a black and white A4 mailer? If you want some hard copies, just print them off on your computer and put it in a 3-ring binder. You can get printer paper for $0.01 per page (and you can print on both sides).If you really want to be creative, call up some videos on how to sew and glue the binding of a book yourself. You can print up a nice cover with a photo printer. Heck, you could even do a hand-painted cover!Get creative! Getting your unit cost down is the key to turning a small profit on any personal project. The second you start turning a profit, the impostor syndrome goes out the window.Learn how to turn a profit and then scale up!For most projects, cover art doesn’t matterI’ve heard of writers spending thousands of dollars to secure the “perfect” cover art, only to lose their shirts on their book project. You don’t need to do that. If you live in a college town, chances are there is a very talented artist who would be delighted to do a custom project for $100. This is why schools have art shows.Stop searching for artists online, and go check out some local events (get your nose out of your digital device). Are there paintings for sale at the local coffee shop? Call that artist! They’d be delighted to hear from you!I know that every article on book promotion says that you “need” a terrific cover. But think about it, has a bad cover ever prevented you from purchasing the book of an author you already admire? A quality book can feature a cover with nothing but the title written in Times New Roman and people will buy it if they like the author.Books are not a get rich quick schemeYou’re in the book business because you want to preserve a story. That’s a noble pursuit. In order to have any chance at success, you have to recalibrate your thinking on production and promotion.The truth about most of the articles out there is that you’re the product. These articles aren’t written to help you succeed. They’re written in order to separate you from your hard earned money.Business is not complicated. All you have to remember is buy low, sell high. Don’t be fooled by all the advertisements disguised as the answers to search queries. It is possible to produce a book at a fraction of the unit cost most writers pay.Do not skip over unit price when you’re planning your project. Do not take the first print offer that you find. Don’t pay the “book tax.” Instead of doing a search for “book printers near me,” just search for “printers near me.” Then, make some phone calls. If there’s a struggling local newspaper with a fancy press, they might be delighted to work with you and you might be stunned by what they can do.If you can get production costs as low as possible, and eliminate shipping costs (by going local), you greatly improve your chances on making money on your book. Don’t get caught up in the author exploitation funnel that turns you into the product.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. 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