Last year, we at Slipdown Mountain Publications LLC began developing a plan to increase our regional travel as part of an overall marketing strategy. In the past, we have had good luck with selling books after making related presentations to small groups of people interested in the subject of a book.
For starters, we had considered paying for a vendor booth at several local festivals and events and to travel to a couple of events in regions associated with the subject matter of our books. However, as the price of gas soared beyond any anticipated maximum, we paused to reconsider.
Those local festivals seemed to have all but died out, with very few vendors compared to previous years. Potential vendors are not willing to travel to small festivals and bet on sufficient sales to offset costs, let alone make an actual profit.
I had planned to attend the upcoming event to mark the 100th anniversary, this October, of the Metz, Michigan, wildfire on which my historical novel Devil in the North Woods is based. However, I would now have to sell 25% more books than just a year ago to offset the travel costs. And it is likely that fewer people will be attending, meaning a smaller pool of potential customers.
I had to face reality and cancel those plans. Luckily, the Presque Isle County Historical Museum contacted me about buying a batch of autographed books to sell during the event.
Many of our other considered venues are also now off-the-table due primarily to the price of gas. Unless we can convince a sponsor to buy a minimum number of books, it is just not worth risking a sizable expenditure for gas. And airline travel is rapidly becoming a non-starter as ticket prices increase, new fees are tacked on, and overall hassles increase.
The sad part is that we enjoy those face-to-face encounters with our potential readership. It’s fun to get that immediate feedback, verbal and non-verbal. But most of the rest of our publishing and marketing costs are inflexible, so something else has to give. Like travel.
All of which makes me wonder if we are the only micro- or self-publisher having to reconsider marketing plans that involve signficant travel.
Excellent post, Walt. From a different perspective, you’ve confirmed what I’ve suspected and was trying to avoid focusing on: gas prices have really given a miserable push to the economic downturn. Book design and production projects that were on the horizon have dried up, and what was a “golden” two-year period for me has skidded to a stop.
I don’t like feeling passive during the work slowdown, but, realistically, I am not sure how to find freelance work in this shrinking market. As a publisher, do you have any ideas along those lines? Or must I just wait it out?
Stephen,
I wish I had a good answer for this one. The problem certainly seems to be rippling through the economy.
Last year, in my post Have You Evaluated Your Competition?, I said, “Books are mostly discretionary purchases, meaning those dollars could be spent on a wide variety of other discretionary things – from attending a movie to buying burger and fries at McDonalds.”
I suppose I need to revise my position on the competition for consumers’ book-buying dollars to include non-discretionary commodities like gas for commuting to work.
Last year, we established a publishing services company, Five Rainbows Services for Authors & Publishers, based on demand. We kept very busy with it throughout the year. This year, we keep trying different approaches and service offerings to try to drum up sales but are, so far, having limited results.
Book sales are down, at least in number sold, but profits are up a bit (mostly due to some changes we made this year in discounts and such). And we have begun selling e-books via Kindle — minimal incremental investment for reasonable profit per book. So, we started offering downloadable PDF e-books, but not much happening there so far.
We have some other ideas to try both on the book publishing and publishing services fronts. People are still self-publishing, so they still need some kind of services…although many don’t realize it.
Good point about gas and festivals. We are registered at four festivals this summer, the first of which has already taken place. There were the usual number of attendees, but at even 15.95 many people were holding off on buying our book because of the cost of gas (and its trickle down effect). On the other hand, I’ve noticed that more people who usually leave for the summer are in town, so the overall population numbers are the same, its just that people are really watching their wallets.
Newbie,
Thanks for the interesting feedback. I expect to see more of this over the summer and fall.
One of our best venues is our local gun show, even though our books and art prints have nothing to do with guns. In general, it seems that the men are hoping to buy some neat new toy, while their wives/girlfriends are usually borderline bored. They tend to stop at browse our books and prints. We keep the prices as low as possible (“gun show special”) and simple.
Simple? Always a multiple of $5 with tax included (for a $14.95 book, either $15 with tax or a $10 special with tax). We also have hurt copies available at very low prices ($5 or, for more expensive books, $10). As the end of the show approaches, we knock off a few bucks using a bold, red magic marker on our price list sign.
Keeping most prices in multiples of $5 and including tax in that price makes it easy and quick to make change and compute totals.
Good luck with the rest of those festivals!