Amazing observation Derek!

Last year at RUBYCONF, I had the exquisite pleasure of meeting Derek (the narrator).  This is such a great observation from a truly inspirational, bright, and compassionate leader.

Amazing Book Facts/Stats

Wow, I just got edu-ma-cated.  There is a ton of interesting facts from this link.  Here are some particularly engaging ones...

6 large publishers (in New York)
3-400 medium-sized publishers
86,000 small/self-publishers


2006: The Top 12 Publishers by revenue were:
Reed Elsevier, Pearson, Thomson, Bertelsmann, Wolters Kluer, McGraw-Hill Education, Reader’s Digest, Scholastic, De Agostini Editore, Holtzbrinck, Gr. Planeta.
--Publishers Weekly, August 6, 2007



California has 6X the number of small publishers than any other state. This finding is consistent with surveys of other creative professions, including desktop publishers, web publishers and multimedia designers.

A larger publisher must sell 10,000 books to break even.
--Brian DeFiore, Maui Writers Conference.

A successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies. --Authors Guild.

In 2001, consumers purchased 1.6 billion books.
--2001 Consumer Research Study on Book Purchasing by the Book Industry Study Group

2004. “Of the 950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies.”
-- Publisher’s Weekly, July 17, 2006

2007. Chains, Internet dominate bookselling.
Chain bookstores accounted for 33% of unit book purchases in the January through September period.
Purchases made through online retailers represented 20% of book purchases.
Book clubs accounted for 12% of book buys.
In all, the direct-to-consumer (Internet, book clubs, book fairs, other) channel accounted for 35% of purchases in the nine-month period.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6515670.html

Number of books sold online in 1999: 57 million.
--The Standard, October 23, 2000.

2008: MORE BOOKS SOLD ON THE INTERNET THAN ANY OTHER PRODUCT and the number is increasing. Polling company Nielsen Online surveyed 26,312 people in 48 countries. 41% of internet users had bought books online. 58% of those online in Korea had purchased books online. In the U.S., 57.5-million had purchased books online.

On the average, a book store browser spends eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover.
--The Wall Street Journal

The library market represents over $5 billion.

90% of the 15,000 public libraries in the US order (some) of their books through Baker & Taylor and spend more than $444 million on books annually.

How much do people like to pay?
28% $5 to $7.99. Presumably they are buying mostly mass-market paperbacks.
19% $3 to $.99
19% $10 to $14.99
19% $15 to $24.99
--2001 Consumer Research Study on Book Purchasing by the Book Industry Study Group

1859: The first self-help book was published by John Murray Publishers. Written by Samuel Smiles, the title was Self-Help: with illustrations of character and conduct.
The self-help book category came into its own in 1936 with the publication of Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Today self-help sales are $538-million and account for one in ten titles sold.
--The Wall Street Journal, December 8, 1998.

64% of book buyers say a book’s being on a bestseller list is not important.
--Publishers Weekly, May 12, 1997, page 13.

So, Let's Talk strategy! (Part 1)

"Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things." - Miyamoto Musashi (1584 - 1645), Japanese Swordsman

"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do." - Michael Porter

NOTE: This is part one of this article, and parts 2 and 3 will eventually provide more detail.

Strategy Foundations
LJB and I had a super strategy session this morning...and I plan to share a specific info about it in the very near future...but first, I want to provide some foundational thoughts to strategy. At the end of the day, authors want to connect with people and share something of value with the them. In return, profit-oriented authors make money. So, how do we devise a strategy for your work to make money?

Betalkaboutable Strategy #1 - Know Your Freakin' Customer!
Aside from stealing or counterfeiting, the ONLY way to make money is to help people...and get paid for your product or service that helped them. So, you need to know how your work is helping your fellow human. If you've failed to figure this out, keep failing and don't stop...but make sure you learn from each failure! Know your customer better than they know themselves!



Betalkaboutable Strategy #2 - No Sucky Content!
There are a million things you can do to try and make money as "an author," but your content CANNOT SUCK! You have to have a great, talkaboutable product if you are an author (or an artist or musician for that matter). CC and Ann wrote contentrulesbook.com, and it covers a lot of this type of info about content. To disclose, CC is a friend, and he totally knows what he is talking about. Other than that book, I would study any other great authors and any good content out there on the internizzle...study it.



Now, I believe firmly in a concept (and am pretty sure I came up with the concept) called "Return on Content." This is based on the marketing operations measurement work I've done...for example, we invested in white papers at Siebel. Those papers took time/money to make...and some produced way more leads and business than others! The same rule applies to media companies who will shut off a TV show that doesn't have enough audience (as audience = ad dollars). Authors, marketers, media companies, and software companies create a TON of content...it's endless. Where do you focus? How do you maximize the return on the investment in content? Well, first...it really helps to think of your investment of time and/or money in content as something that needs to maximize a return. Then, you manufacture content, measure the return, and optimize it. So, that means you need to get a feedback loop in place ASAP...that way, you know when you are creating good content and you know what metrics you are moving the needle on. If you don't know where to start, you gotta start somewhere! Take a an educated risk.

betalkaboutable Strategy #3 - betalkaboutable!
This should be obvious, but if people don't want to talk about your content, it sucks. If people aren't talking about your content/media/work, refer to rule #1 and #2. In the world of social media, people are in a constant state of talking, liking, twitching, and talking about content as noted here. It's now part of human behavior...if you have great content, people will talk about it...and being talkaboutable leads to sales!

That's it for now! Feedback always appreciated!

RT @learningadam you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink; however, you can make him thirsty. #learning #quotes #motivation