By: Eric (a sales assistant at a major trade publisher)
I’ve followed Nathan’s blog for close to two years now, and he has done an admirable—nay, outstanding—job of outlining, explaining, reiterating, and overall demystifying the somewhat byzantine method by which manuscripts (produced by you, the author) are acquired, auctioned, sold, &c, and eventually transformed into finished books (purchased by you, the consumer). So first of all, thank you, Nathan, for all you’ve done to make this business a little clearer to the rest of us.
The very last stage of this process, though—the sale of books from publisher to book store to consumer—isn’t really the focus of the blog, and so has received relatively little treatment so far. With Nathan’s permission, I’d like to shed a little light on this last leg of a book’s journey.
What life is like for a sales assistant
I work as a sales assistant at a major trade book publisher (feel free to insert your favorite name here: Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins, &c), which means that my job mostly involves:
- Preparing sales materials for the sales reps who sell the books to a given account, and
- Keeping track of the promotions we run at said account. Since the account I work on is a national chain (e.g. Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-A-Million), this is a fairly involved process.
How does this affect your book once it’s already survived the gauntlet of critique group, literary agent, and editor?
Sales materials
First, the sales materials. Each book that we publish is grouped according to its on-sale date, usually by month but occasionally by span. (There are three spans: Spring, Summer, and Fall.) Within a certain month or span, different sales reps are responsible for selling different subsets of books to the account (for example, the two reps for whom I work divide the list of one imprint; one sells the hardcovers, the other sells the trade paperbacks and mass-markets). For each title in a subset, it’s my job to create a sales kit. My sales kits generally consist of:
- A cover sheet, unique to the account, that breaks out basic information (author, title, ISBN, &c) and provides the book’s subject code, which determines which buyer at the account is responsible for it and what section of the store the book will eventually live in. Each buyer usually specializes in just a couple of genres/categories.
- A kind of “fact sheet” that summarizes all the important information about the book: title, author, ISBN, &c, as well as marketing information, quotes/blurbs, copy, and “comp” information. Alas, yes, your book will be “comped” to a previously published title—either your last book, if you wrote one, or a book that is similar in content, format, and span/on-sale month, if you didn’t—and the comp’s sales figures factor into the account’s initial buy.
- A full-color copy of the book’s cover.
- Any other promotional materials (additional praise/quotes/blurbs, sell sheets, &c) that may be useful.
The sales reps then meet periodically with the buyers at their account and “pitch” them each title. (You thought the pitch was over with the editor’s acquisition. You were wrong.)
These meetings are referred to as “selling in” or “sales calls” and they are the meetings at which initial orders are decided. Simply put, the initial order is the number of copies the account’s buyer wants to purchase in time for the on-sale date; any later orders are considered reorders and are used to replenish stock when it runs low.
The sales kits are essential to these meetings—the rep uses them to get the buyers excited and to push them to order quantities that are in line with the publisher’s expectations. This generally involves convincing buyers (via cover images, sales data, praise and quotes from famous critics or authors, &c) to purchase more copies than they otherwise would.
Buying and sell through
So let’s say your book, I AM PRETTY AWESOME, a literary memoir, gets a 2,000-copy buy at a given account. Not bad! Your previous book, I GUESS I’M OKAY, sold 1,500 copies in its first four weeks and has experienced 80% life-to-date sell-through. (Sell-through is the percentage of books an account sells compared to how many it bought.)
Not only that, but a couple of big-time authors have come out to praise it and it got a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. Both the rep and the buyer are confident that 2,000 is a good number based on this information.
After the sales call, the reps will either enter the orders into our computers themselves or ask me to do it. At this point, the order quantity is called an estimate, since we estimate this is how many copies of each title the account will initially order. (Keep in mind that we tend to sell books to our accounts about five months before they go on sale, so it’s possible substantial changes can occur to the order quantity between the sales call and the placement of the actual initial order.) Once the order comes in, it is compared to the estimate, any discrepancies are worked out between the publisher and the account, and the books are shipped in time for their release date.
How accounts decide how many copies to buy
In summary: sales of your previous books, sales of “comp” titles, your platform as an author (as described on the fact sheets), the book’s cover, the current economic climate, events in the news, &c all contribute to how many copies of your book a given account will buy.
If you’re lucky—either because you’re a big shot or because you happened to write a book about the life and times of Michael Jackson a few months back—the orders for your book could be HUGE, say, 10,000 copies. This will qualify your title for promotion, e.g. placement on that magical table at the front of the store, and so brings us to the second half of my job: promotion, through a system we call co-op.
What’s co-op?
Co-op, in short, is the process by which we work with an account to determine which of our titles get special treatment: placement at the front of the store, on endcaps, in special displays, &c. The account is paid for running these promotions for a set amount of time, either flat amounts or a certain amount of money per book. Any time you see a title on a major front-of-store display, it’s because that book’s publisher paid the account for the promotion. Stephenie Meyer doesn’t magically get her own table, and those “New Release” tables aren’t populated by the store staff’s personal favorites. The publisher and the account agree on time tables, promotions, and monetary reimbursement, and the account is paid upon completion of those promotions.
Of note: co-op is formalized through a legally binding contract process, so it’s not treated lightly by either the publisher or the account. Once the deal is inked, titles are promoted, and once they’re promoted, the account is paid.
Your next question, I imagine, is probably something along the lines of “holy hell, how do I make sure my book gets co-op? How can I help decide which titles it’s comped to?”
Alas, I’m afraid the answer is: you can’t. The vast majority of titles go to their section (science fiction, literary fiction, biography, &c) at on-sale, and the Grishams, Meyers, and Evanovichs receive co-op. To be sure, they’re not the only ones; new authors do get co-op for their titles. It’s relatively rare, though, so don’t be disappointed if your book isn’t front-of-store come release day, especially if it’s your first one.
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Mira says
Eric, wow.
This is so much information – and so helpful! Awesome – I hope Nathan adds this to the writing advice database….or well, somewhere.
I do have a question. You said that you're involved in 'pitching' books to buyers, in order to get them to buy more copies.
What works best? What tactics tend to influence a book store to make a larger order?
Thanks for all the information, I can totally see why Nathan selected you out of the 250!
Jessie says
Very informative.
Do you like your job?
Rhonda says
Thanks. I've actually wondered about all of that. I think maybe if I admitted that to most people I would be placed in the "nerds" section of the bookstore though.
Meg Spencer says
Interesting post – nice pick Nathan! As a former employee at a small town independent bookstore (sadly now out of business) it's interesting seeing how the process is different at the big chains. In addition to the owner we had one full time employee and three or four part timers, including myself. Our new displays worked much more like people probably imagine (ie. ooh, that looks cool, hey boss, can we put it up front?). It's not surprising that at a place like B&N this would be big business. I wonder, do coop agreements go down to the level of what books end up face out on shelves or on shelf ends?
Maya / מיה says
Great post! This is kind of discouraging… with so many people pitching a book in any sale, it feels kind of remarkable that books ever get to the reader. (Btw, I think this also partly explains why the percentages that authors get of the profits on a book are so small… a LOT of people are involved in selling a book. And I don't say that with much bitterness… more like awe.) However, this was a really great demystification and reality check– I think I'm starting to understand why getting on Oprah and the NY Times bestseller list might not be quite as easy as it seems. 😉
I have a question… do you have any idea if the first book by Stephanie Meyer (or insert another breakout other) was originally a promoted co-op, or did it start out back in the stacks? I guess my real question is whether books that aren't co-ops regularly/ever make it out of those back shelves.
Thanks for taking the time to write such a great post when you weren't even sure it would be used! Do you have a blog?
Victoria Dixon says
This was so helpful and informative, Eric. Thank you! I plan on sending today's blog out to a lot of people!
Cynthia says
Great post–thanks Eric.
Question: What formula or relationship determines co op dollars for a given title?
RW says
You said that once bookstores are ordering a large # of books that "qualifies a book for promotion." That sounds like a discouraging Catch-22. I assume that publishers think the vast majority of the authors they've signed who don't get those big initial orders also qualify for promotion in some way.
Otherwise, I get the impression that there is some basis in reality for the reputation that publishers are getting for signing large numbers of writers they have no real commitment to and throwing it all at the wall to see what it sticks.
Laura Martone says
Thanks, Eric, for this extremely informative post – which is both demystifying and dismaying. So, what you're saying is that we should try to make friends with you and/or your bosses… or did I miss something? 🙂
Seriously, thank you for the insights. It's frightening, though helpful, to know that making it past the "gauntlet" of critiquers, agents, and editors is not the end of our heart-stopping work. I realize that, nowadays, authors are responsible for their own marketing and promotion – whether online or otherwise – but it's scary to think that big decisions (about covers, comparisons, etc.) are being made without an author's input. Guess we just have to hope that a sales rep is really excited about our title (even a debut one) and is willing to do everything in his/her power to push it to the buyers.
Bane of Anubis says
Thanks Eric — quite informative rundown.
Eric says
Hi Mira–
While there's a veritable arsenal of sales tactics that can be employed, some of the more effective (in my opinion) are:
1. Promise of major publicity (e.g. Oprah)–of course, only if it's true. It's also great to have existing interest for a book that happens to be timely (such as Ian Halperin's forthcoming "Michael Jackson: The Last Days").
2. Telling the account that their competitors are taking much stronger positions (i.e. buying many more copies) than they are–again, only it that's true–so that the account buys more in order to maintain or increase market share.
3. Excellent sell-through of previous/comp titles, which relies on striking a balance between faithful comps and comps that have good sales figures.
Eric says
Jessie–
Yes, I do. It can be frustrating at times, since my own tastes run toward literary fiction and sci-fi–neither of which sell as well as, for example, paranormal romance–and it's hard to see the books I love not making the kind of sales I think they deserve, but you've gotta give the people what they want.
Eric says
Meg–
Yes, they do. Endcaps and in-section face-outs aren't as pricey or as common as front-of-store and BOGO (buy one, get one) table promotions, but they are very much a part of co-op.
Anna says
This is fantastic information Eric, thanks so much!!!
Kristin Laughtin says
Interesting post, thanks! We all seem more worried about the getting-an-agent stage, but it's good to be at least somewhat informed of the process after you get the deal.
Eric says
Hi Maya–
I don't know whether Stephenie Meyer's first book had co-op, but I'm willing to bet that it did. However, it's not uncommon for titles to move from their sections to FOS (front-of-store). This could happen if:
1. The author's title suddenly becomes hugely popular (either by word of mouth, i.e. the Rowling Effect, or due to events in the news that generate a lot of interest in the author, the book, or the book's general subject);
2. The author writes a second book that receives co-op, so the previous ("backlist") title is brought out with it;
3. The book's subject is seasonal (e.g. Christmas-themed titles going FOS in November).
Jessie says
Thanks for your answer Eric. Although I am still curious. What do you like about it? Are you a writer as well?
Eric says
Hi Cynthia–
I imagine it's different from house to house, but you might see something like:
$1.00/book for hardcovers;
$0.50/book for trade paperbacks;
$0.25/book for mass market editions.
Eric says
Also, Maya–
Yes, I have a blog of sorts, but it doesn't pertain to my job and would be very boring for anyone other than me to read. I could, however, be persuaded to start a blog pertaining to book sales, if there were enough interest.
Kiersten says
I had no idea about comp books. How…strangely terrifying. Thanks though, this was very interesting and helpful.
Lupina says
Amazing what goes down in the life of a book! Now I understand why that bookstore manager got his undies in such a twist when I sneakily set the copies of my book face outward. I obviously had no co-op! Yes, I truly did that, I admit with red face. Now I know better.
Eric, thanks for the great info. Nathan, excellent choice for Monday, can't wait for Tuesday's.
Rick Daley says
Ahhh…So this is why my entry did not get picked 😉
Great post, this was useful insight into the "other side" of publishing.
Fresh Water Mermaids says
Hey Eric!
Thank you for this most fascinating blog post.
You have opened up a window into that world.
Eric says
Hi RW–
Sorry, I think I was unclear. The publisher formulates initial print runs and "pub goals"–estimates of how many copies it believes the account should buy–which are based on previous sales figures and various profit-and-loss analyses. The reps, therefore, already have an idea of what promotions they'll ask for when they go into their sales calls, assuming the account roughly agrees and buys enough copies–it's when the publisher and the account buyer(s) substantially disagree that promotions can get hairy.
Eric says
Hi Laura–
Haha yes, well, being friends with me will get you something–not much, but something. Being friends with my boss(es) will get you slightly more.
The real power, though, if you want to know, lies with the buyers at the accounts. While they can be persuaded, nudged, cajoled, &c, their final decisions are what determine how many copies go to the account. If they're convinced it won't sell well, the initial will be low.
The theory is that if the book surprises them and goes viral via word-of-mouth, reviews, &c, they'll run out of stock and will have to place several reorders, thus setting the stage for a much larger initial when the author's next book comes around.
thoughtful1 says
Thanks, Eric,
I submitted a manuscript to an online publishing organization which outlined its procedures and policies clearly. The manuscript passed round one and I had to decide if this was the way I wanted to go. The organization required assistance from the author on the business end of selling the book and asked for a commitment to travel to stores and market my book. I decided against this. Is this kind of a publishing organization legit? They have honored their policies and procedures and not contacted me with any pesky emails. Seemed legit, but not for me. What do you know about this?
nkrell says
Wow. Thanks for all of the information. I can totally understand why Nathan picked you. This was very helpful and it sounds like you have an interesting job.
allegory19 says
Just when you think you know all about publishing… you realize you don't know much at all.
Thanks Eric for the post. I'd definitely be interested in following a blog about book sales. Anything that helps me understand this crazy industry is a plus. I find it all really fascinating. You really know your stuff.
Anonymous says
Okay, so what happens if an author's first book has had good sales and continues, a year and a half later, to sell well, but with the second book the sell-through thus far, due to the economy, hasn't been what they hoped. It's time to sell the buyer on a third book, coming out in 2010, which should appeal to fans of the first book
How much will the second book sales vs. the first book sales come into play as they make their decisions?
Margaret Yang says
@thoughtful1, look up "author mill" on Wikipedia. It should answer your question.
Lisa Schroeder says
Eric, I'm SO glad Nathan chose you. As an author, this gives me a behind-the-scenes peek of a part of the process I've always wondered about.
Thanks for the great information!!
Haste yee back ;-) says
Good stuff, Eric…
When a book goes co-op, is that expense charged against author's royalty?
Haste yee back 😉
Anonymous says
Thank, Margaret.
Eric says
Margaret–
Great answer. Beat me to it.
thoughtful1, while this particular case sounds like a vanity press to me, it's not unusual for authors to do a fair amount of self-promoting; for example, last month I accompanied one of our authors while he signed stock at some of the local stores.
Amanda J. says
Wowzer. I learn something new every day!
This was a fantastic post, Eric. Thanks a bunch for writing it, I'm glad you got picked!
I know I'd definitely like to read more about the post-agent pre-publish process, even if it is a little daunting.
Thanks again for all the info!! 😀
Eric says
Hi Anonymous @1:24 PM–
Sales are compared year-to-year, but they're also compared to general sales and market trends for the current year. The short answer: I think most publishers and account buyers will be more apt to attribute the second book's less-than-stellar sales to the general economic climate, meaning that if they expect economic rebound in 2010, the third book's initial will be more in line with the first book's sales.
Keren David says
I think Stephenie Meyer's agent had already sold the film rights before the first book was published. So that would help with orders and co ops I should think.
Thanks Eric for a really interesting post.
Eric says
Hi Jessie–
I really enjoy working in the industry, and while I never would have pegged myself as a "numbers guy," I have to admit I like knowing, numerically, exactly how our books are doing in stores.
While I would eventually prefer a move to the agenting or editorial side of things, I'm happy to be on the front lines for the time being. The experience is invaluable.
And yes, I am a writer, more or less.
Eric says
Haste yee back–
No, it's not. (I think I heard the collective sigh of relief!) The funds come from the house's marketing department, and the theory is that all money spent will be recouped by increased sales due to the promotion.
allegory19 says
Hey Eric,
What's your bosses names? Hahaha J/K
But seriously though, in your opinion, how much does networking influence buyers at the accounts?
I'm just curious. They always say it's who you know in the publishing business. I wonder if it's the same when it comes to buyers.
Thanks
Melanie Avila says
Eric, this is amazing! Wonderful post — thank you so much for the breakdown. I've read bits and pieces of some of this, but never all in one place.
Anonymous says
Wonderful information!
Victoria Dixon says
Hi, Eric. I have a friend who just mentioned that she once had a book (early in her career) and when she talked with her store owner, she found out the rep hadn't alerted the area stores that she was local. Is that common and something writers should watch for? BTW, I think the amount of chatter over your entry today is evidence you should start a blog on this process. LOL!
Elaine 'still writing' Smith says
That was a fascinating read – but I'm possibly more mystified than before.
Perhaps hiring the services of a good astrologer might be the way to cut down the odds of getting a book published.
Concept – execution – agent – co-op …. OK
Thank you for the illuminating beam cast upon this, even more, shadowy state of Writerdom.
Anonymous says
Eric,
Thanks for the information! I appreciate any information regarding the business side of publishing.
Great job.
AM
Matilda McCloud says
Thanks for the great post. When I worked in publishing, I had to prepare what we called tip sheets or book briefs for each title (children's books) for the sales dept. I think it would be a useful exercise to imagine what might be on a tip sheet for one's own book, ie what are comparable titles, how well have they sold, author platform etc. I'm having a hard time imagining this with at least one of my WIPs, so this is definitely something I need to think about….
Eric says
Matilda–
Absolutely. When I refer to a "fact sheet," I also mean "tip sheet" (as far as I know, the terms are interchangeable).
Victoria–
I'm thinking of fact/tip sheets now, and I know they list the author's hometown. Attentive reps will do everything they can to let book stores know if an author is local, but with the hundreds upon hundreds of titles reps sell each year, some of the smaller ones (in terms of initial buy) are bound to fall through the cracks when it comes to things like this. (I'm the first to admit it's embarrassing, though, especially if the author's hometown book store doesn't have the book in stock!)
And honestly, if the demand is there, I'd be happy to guest blog again–or even start my own.
Elaine 'still writing' Smith says
Eric
These are the problems we are aspiring to – worrying about product placement would be one worry I'd love to have.
Stop replying…go set up the blog already! 🙂
chris bates says
Great stuff, Eric.
Thanks for putting the effort into submitting this to Nathan.
Victoria Mixon says
Eric,
This is wonderful stuff. Thanks for writing it! You absolutely should do a blog on it. I'll link to you!
Great post–
Victoria Mixon