Planning for Book Publishing Success
Publishing success depends on five essential ingredients. They are: talent, timing, connections, planning, and persistence.
While some may argue that talent and timing top the list, I maintain
that proper planning is the most critical success factor for successful
book publishing.
Proper planning allows you to identify your goals, consider all your
options and detect potential pitfalls and make plans to avoid them so
that your time and money is not wasted going down paths that won't get
you where you want to go.
Developing a book is equivalent to starting a new business in a new
industry, so you need to create a business plan. In it, you try to
realistically look at the costs and take an educated guess at the
revenue, realizing that it may take longer than you think to make it
all work out.
Just as with any good business plan, you will want to consider a number of key areas.
I. Vision and Expectations
II. Product Development
III. Author and Team
IV. Marketing (including distribution if self-publishing)
V. Financial Projections
Let's take a closer look at each area of your business plan and identify its role in planning your book publishing success.
I. Vision and Expectations
The first step toward successful publishing is planning to get what you
want — in other words, setting your vision. We find
the authors that are most satisfied with their publishing experiences
have thought through their own expectations before beginning and made
sure their expectations are realistic. Realistic expectations enable
you to make the kinds of critical decisions that are necessary to
success. Setting realistic expectations starts with a look at your
beliefs what being a successful author means to you.
Most new authors have no idea how book sales happen or what numbers to
expect. A typical successful book from a major publisher sells between
20,000 and 40,000 copies. A successful book from a smaller publisher
typically sells at least 7,500 copies, whereas a self-published book
may be considered successful if it sells as few as 1,000 copies to a
wide audience.
We want you to set your sales goals high, but your expectations lower.
Obviously you want wide distribution for you book, otherwise why do all
the work? But be clear about your vision. If you plan to author a book
for your own seminar business, your expectations will necessarily be
different from those of the author who wants to become a world-class
speaker and subject-matter guru like a Tom Peters. And clearly a book
about diets will have broader market appeal than a book on corporate
strategic planning.
Your ability to drive book sales will also depend on the name
recognition you've already established. Someone like Dr. Phil can
realistically expect his next book to sell millions of copies,
regardless of the subject matter. How's your name recognition?
Challenge: Write a description of your publishing vision. Begin with
the statement, “I will feel my book is successful if
!â€
II. Product Development (books and other products)
The Product Development section of your business plan provides an
opportunity for you to shape the specific identify of your book or
product. Is a book the best avenue for your message or would another
medium or a variety of types of products serve your purposes better?
Here are some questions to consider when developing your book or product.
1. Product Overview:
~ What is the book's main message and how will you best be able to convey that message?
~ Will the book format be narrative, question and answer, a workbook, or some other book form?
~ What auxiliary products could be developed from your message, such as audio CDs.?
2. Editorial Process:
~ How long will the book be?
~ Will it require graphics? How will you get them?
~ How long will it take to write the book and prepare it for publication?
~ Will you need to secure permissions to use material from other sources?
~ Will you need to conduct interviews or research?
III. Author and Professional Team
It may surprise you to learn that not all authors write their books, or
even if they do, they often have a lot of assistance. Part III of your
business plan poses an opportunity to answer key questions about how to
execute your vision.
Here are three practical steps to follow when choosing an author and professional team for your book.
1. Assess your capabilities
Take a realistic look at your own strengths and weaknesses in the book
process. Are you a good writer? Are you good at organizing your
thoughts? Are you good at getting ideas on paper? Good with grammar?
Good at creating sound bites?
2. Assess your time and energy for this project
Even if you have the talent to write a book, you may not have the time. Here are some realistic figures to consider.
To complete an average-length book of 200-300 pages, with about 400
words per finished page, you will need to write between 80,000 and
120,000 words. Average, beginning authors do well to write between
500-1,000 words a day, while professional writers can deliver up to
2,000 words per day. Given these statistics, it might take up to four
months, working steadily, for you to write your book. And because most
authors don't write every day, this amount of time can easily double.
3. Assess your needs and budget for professional help
Many types of professionals are available to help you accomplish your
goals. A book proposal writer/coach can create a polished proposal. A
ghostwriter can write the book for you, or a writing coach can help you
write it yourself. An editor can help you polish it. A copyeditor can
check sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. And a
proofreader can check everyone's work.
If you self-publish, you will need the talents of all of the above
individuals, plus a book designer, a cover designer, perhaps an
illustrator, and a printer. Get the best help you can afford.
IV. Marketing
Regardless of who publishes your book, the primary responsibility for
marketing it successfully falls to you as the author. Generating your
marketing plan before you write your book will help insure that your
book content, cover, publishing, and distribution all work together and
support your marketing efforts. Be sure to include a positioning
statement and benefits analysis as part of your marketing plan.
The depth of your marketing team and the activities you can afford will
depend on your abilities, time, budget, and goals. Your plan needs to
include:
~ Clear strategies and promotional activities to reach your target market(s).
~ Compelling printed and electronic sales materials that speak clearly and directly to your audience(s).
Take a hard look at how your book can be an integral part of your core
business. Don't forget to take advantage of the contacts and activities
you encounter in your daily business to promote and sell books. In
turn, this will bring added credibility and visibility to your business.
V. Financial Projections
As with any successful business plan, you will want to set up a
financial model. While no one can tell you with any certainty how many
books you can expect to sell, you can be much more precise about your
expenses in order to gain an idea of how many books you must sell to
break even and how many to make a profit.
Because they see it as a career investment, many people decide to break
even, or possibly take a loss, on their first books. Do this if you
choose, but don't do it unintentionally.
Book publishing costs arise from three areas:
1. Editorial
2. Production
3. Marketing
If you self-publish, the costs will be substantial in all three areas. Let's look at each cost area:
Editorial
If you publish with an outside publisher, the publisher may pay for
most of the editorial costs, but you may still be responsible for some
of them. For example, you will still pay for some book proposal
coaching, or to have the proposal written for you. You may also want to
hire your own editor before you send the manuscript to the publisher.
Most publishers also ask you to pay for the cost of indexing. In
addition, if you make too many changes once the book has been typeset,
you may be asked to pay for some of the cost of the corrections.
Production
If you publish with an outside publisher, you probably won't incur the costs of production.
Marketing
Expect to spend most of the money allocated to your book on marketing.
Even if you use an outside publisher, you will be responsible for most
of your own promotions and any travel you do to represent the book. For
the vast majority of books, a publisher will allocate a budget of
$1,000 or less for marketing the book, and that just isn't enough.
Just as with any new business venture, your plan allows you to mentally
go through all the steps your creation will require before you spend
your precious time and money. Planning plus executing fully plans
you've made will be your best shot at publishing success.
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