Beyond Art: The Business of Selling Your Book
Image by Olga Tutunaru
You’ve polished your manuscript, found a great agent, and sold your book to a publisher. Now you get to sit back and watch your book fly off the shelf, right? Very likely not. Here are a few additional thoughts about what working in a bookshop is teaching me about about writing and publishing. You can see part one here.
At every step, someone is going to be looking at your book and thinking, "What's the ROI on this?"
There are a ton of books being published, and the competition is fierce. At every step, someone is going to be looking at your book and thinking, "What's the ROI on this?" It's not romantic. You wrote the book because you loved the idea, but when it comes time to sell it (even if you are self-publishing your work), put your business hat on. Know who your reader is (ie, your market). Know how your book stands out from or converses with your competition on the shelf. Know why someone (an agent, a publisher, an individual reader) would pick up your book.
A lot of people read to be part of something bigger.
The most popular books are not the best books in terms of "literary quality" (whatever that means), but they've grabbed readers' hearts and minds for a reason. And the reason could simply be that they got better marketing (a business person clearly identified the audience) and the popular kids on TikTok started talking about it. A lot of people read to be part of something bigger. In other words, a book can be a social connection point, and that's valuable to a lot of readers. How can you use that desire for connection in your own project?
There are all kinds of readers who want to read all kinds of stories.
In bookselling, there's no room for literary snobbery. As booksellers, we're often connecting people with books we think they will like--and they may be books we ourselves don't particularly care for. There are all kinds of readers who want to read all kinds of stories. This is good news for writers. It means that there is room for your story on the shelf--and all the more reason to define your audience and write your story for them, to them.
Writing is a labor of love and is often lonely, repetitive work, but to get that end product--your beautiful book on the shelf--you sometimes have to set your artistic heart aside and trade it for a cold, calculating one. It helps to have a strong network to support you and provide honest feedback. That can be anyone from someone like me (👋 a book coach), beta readers, your writing group, and possibly family and friends, though it can get tricky with loved ones. (Loved ones love us and it can be difficult for them to deliver critique--and for us to hear it from them.)
If finding a writing group is a challenge, here are a few ideas:
See if your state (province or city) has a writers club, group, or association and find the chapter nearest you. For example, California has the California Writers Club and there are chapters across the state.
Check out The Narrative Method, which hosts free writing salons. A bookstore customer told me about this just yesterday so I haven't had the opportunity to try it out yet.
Join the London Writers Salon for writing sessions. I've done this on several occasions and find spending an hour with other people from all over the world really productive!
It helps to remember that your book, though it may be the story of your heart, is someone else’s product to sell. (Especially in traditional publishing.) An agent will take your book on because they think it’s a good financial bet, and the same is true of a publisher. Agents and publishers don’t expect all the books they acquire to be the next blockbuster title (so you can breathe a sigh of relief if that’s not what you’re going for), but their livelihoods and jobs depend on making smart acquisitions. Is your book a smart acquisition?
