Louis Shalako
Setting a rational sales goal, month to month, isn’t
all that difficult. Making it happen isn’t all that difficult either, since it’s
a rational goal. Here at Long Cool One
Books, over the last three months, we’ve seen sales increases of ten
percent or greater. It’s a kind of exponential
growth, but like interest rates, whether you owe money, or you`re earning
money on an investment, sales increases are compounded upon the previous month’s sales increase.
It is analogous
and so the math works just fine.
Let’s assume you sold 100 books in December 2014. A
ten percent increase would translate into 110 books as of January 31. That`s a
straightforward, ten percent sales increase. By the end of February, you should
be up to 121. It’s not ten more books
a month, but ten percent more books per
month. This results in sales of 132-point-something by March. There is a factor,
and you can multiply Month One sales
by that factor to project what sales might be in Month Twelve, if in fact you meet your sales goals, month-by-month,
for an entire year.
The factor, using simple interest compounding
techniques as a substitute for sales
compounding, is 2.138428377.
Simply put, if you can meet your ten percent sales-increase goal, month on
month for twelve months, then you will be selling 213.8 books the next January
for every 100 books you are selling this
January. Ten percent increases are a form of exponential growth.
The math
is pretty simple and here`s another
link.
“Each week, her goal was to drop time in her
races--not win, but beat her own personal best. Sometimes she only cut
one-tenth of a second from her previous performance, but it was an improvement
nonetheless and worth celebrating.”
This is exactly
what we`re trying to do. This is why I go swimming, and try to see how far I
can go. This is also why by the end of the season I can go farther than in the
beginning of the season—I`m in training, and I`m keeping track accurately, and
I`m trying to beat my personal best.
So our goal here for the month of September isn`t so
much to attract a literary agent. Our goal here is not to make the New York
Times Bestseller List. We know very well we`re not likely to release a novel
and sell 100,000 copies. We`re unknown, but we`re also independent.
It
is our greatest strength.
We don`t give a shit about any of that. What we want
to do is to take last month`s (August, 2015), sales total and increase it by
ten percent. That`s all, ladies and
gentlemen. That`s all, ladies and gentlemen, month after month. We just have to
keep going—that`s all.
In July, we sold 362 books. In August, 395 books. For
September, we`re hoping for about 450 book sales across a bunch of platforms,
all of which have strengths and weaknesses, and which must be treated on an
individual basis. It is true, that a
traditional publisher wouldn`t be interested in these kinds of numbers. They
have a long tooth-to-tail ratio. For every book I sell, they would have to sell
a thousand, maybe even ten thousand books just
to break even.
They
are no better at business than you or I.
The thing is, after twenty years on a disability pension,
I really can`t succumb to that sense of entitlement and turn my nose up at a
couple of hundred books a month. Especially since I`ve been seeing sales grow
lately, when everyone else is blogging doom and gloom, everyone else is writing
about the Top Ten Thousand Mistakes You
Amateur Newbie Author`s Make, and WHY YOU`RE NEVER GOING TO BE VALIDATED BY
SOMEONE IMPORTANT.
(There really shouldn`t be an apostrophe there in
authors, Louis. – ed.)
(Point taken. P. S. Fuck off. Louis.)
So, you`re no doubt thinking, how do we achieve these
ten percent increases in sales.
The simple answer is that we work ten percent harder,
or for ten percent longer, or do our jobs ten percent better. WE WRITE TEN
PERCENT MORE BOOKS. These are our own personal algorithms that we are gaming,
which is a perfectly legitimate thing
to do.
Here at Long
Cool One Books, we could write our product descriptions ten percent better.
We could make our book covers ten percent better, okay, that sounds silly when
all of art is so subjective. But merely working, pushing ahead at a constant
rate, becoming better-skilled and more professional every day, probably helps.
Producing more products, each and every month,
probably helps.
Becoming a better writer, and learning more about what
people read, probably helps. Writing the sort of books that people want to
read, might not actually help—that`s because those product categories are
already extremely crowded by people following a trend. Finding a niche that is
underserved, or badly-served, might help quite a bit.
Here at Long
Cool One Books, reading the rules set down from on high for other people
has been very illuminating for us. They`re the ones that told us to raise our
prices to where we can make a living at it—which would price our books at about
a hundred and eighty-five bucks each; and no one would ever buy one. They`re
the ones that told us not to check our accounts, when that is a wonderful source
of data and feedback. It will just depress you, or so they said.
They forgot to mention just how much it will empower you.
(They`re the ones that told us never to use a
semi-colon. – ed.)
(Point taken. Now fuck off again. Louis.)
Here`s an interesting point. Let`s say you are lucky
enough to land a traditional publishing contract, signing up, in your very
first contract, with a small press. It looks like a lucky break.
Someone else
believes in you. They believe they can make money off of your work, the only question is why you don't. But how big is that advance. A couple of grand, five or ten grand tops. They`ll print up anywhere from 750 copies, (selling at forty bucks
in an independent, brick-and-mortar store) to maybe, if you`re lucky, 2,000.
You will never earn out your advance. You will likely never see a royalty
cheque, and it takes years for the contract to revert. And you`ve sold
somewhere between 750 and 2,000 books. The only street credibility you get is
that you`ve been published.
This is the way to attract an agent. Or so they say.
This is the way to make the bestseller lists—or so they say.
We`re going to continue to buck that trend, to reject
all such advice, and just keep on doing what we`re already doing well. For one
thing, we`ve distributed well over a hundred thousand books in five years. It`s
taken that long to get where we are now. But you could submit books forever, without actually getting
anywhere. That`s why so many people talk about luck in this business, when it`s really art and science that will get you to where you need to go.
Fuck
them, anyways. I don`t have time for that shit.
To hell with the rest of the industry. But I will
promise you this: guys like me are going to take a billion-dollar bite out of
this industry in 2015. And next year, at least one-point-one billion. Maybe even one-point-one-one billion.
It`s called thinking outside
the box, and they`ll lecture you on that too.
If you don`t believe it, just sit back and watch. Sit back and listen to them bitch, and whine, and piss and moan.
You
will see, ladies and gentlemen.
End
Another article.
