The Week of Release

I worked in the film industry for about 20 years, and as such, I had the concept of the opening weekend ingrained in my head.  Nothing is more important than that opening weekend.  In fact, studios have gone so far with that logic that they now typically determine a movie's success or failure on the first weekend.  To be honest, they don't even wait for that opening weekend to end.  The trade magazines, like The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety reveal how well films are doing by mid-day Saturday, and everyone more or less cheers or gives up by that point.  So you really only have Friday night and Saturday morning to prove your wealth in Hollywood.

In reading up about how to get attention for your book, I had become convinced that the same mentality was true of books.  I read that the best way to get people's attention is to be on the New York Times Bestseller List.  Fair enough.  That list had been the watermark for decades to determine what books out there were being eaten up by the masses, who in turn looked at what other people were reading to determine what they would buy.  It's a cyclical process, success begets even greater success.

So of course my goal was to get on that list; and one of the best ways reportedly is to get a lot of pre-sales.  When you put a book up for pre-sale, every purchase of the book counts as being on one day.  So if you have three months of pre-sales, every purchase within those 90 days counts as being on one single day; thus shooting you up the ranks of the best seller list for that day.

Using my education from the film industry, I figured that release day should be a Friday, the day when people will want to get it so they can spend the weekend reading it.  However, about halfway through my pre-sale period, I found that the entire first week counts toward that best-seller list.  So you want the book to come out on a Monday, (because the week ends for the NYT on Sunday.)  I researched every other book company and store, and found that indeed, pretty much all books come out on Mondays; and for that very reason.  They want all the sales during that first week to count toward that all-important New York Times Bestseller List.  And if you combine good sales during that week with good sales for the past few months, you might just reach it.

I didn't unfortunately.  I spent three months talking this story up, sending it to news sources, radio stations, blogs, podcasts, and especially NPR and PBS stations.  I only heard from a select few news sources, and no NPR or PBS locations, (except the show my friend Genevieve runs.)  It's disheartening, especially when I hear hosts rail on the evils of stereotyping when here I'm trying to tell the story of a great Italian-American man who broke the mold of his family.  Then, the week it came out, I talked it up on every social media outlet I could.  I even made my profile picture the cover of the book.  Interestingly, I did start getting sales during that first week, and the word of mouth seems to be beginning to build as I'm seeing sales slowly starting to increase.  I didn't get anywhere near the numbers to be a NYT bestseller, but the post-release sales are at least promising.

And so the lesson I'm taking from this is that pre-release probably works better for the major companies that have their claws dug into the media; (that media which complains about big business, yet ignores anything in the publishing world that is not big business.)  Those of us who are independent and unknown do better to simply release the book, show everyone what we have, and build from there.

I'm still going to do pre-release in the future, but in a limited way, and I won't count on it.  It'll be more about releasing the book and getting the word of mouth moving.

I also learned a very valuable lesson about non-fiction that I'll probably go more into in a future post.  But suffice to say for now that it seems the public is less keen on seeing independently published non-fiction work.  They seem to be more anxious to read fiction from independents.  The reason I say that is because most independent authors who have made it into the NYT bestseller list, (in fact, I think all of them,) have been fiction authors.  My own non-fictions have done better than my fiction work, but I'm beginning to believe that is a fluke.

We will see as I begin working on my sci fi book Relic Worlds, book 2.

Pre-Sales Have Begun

I have now been in phase 2 for almost a month.  This is the phase where I try to get people to purchase the book through pre-order.  This is a difficult task as people have to pay for something they don’t get right away; something I don’t like to do, let alone people in today’s instant gratification society.  I would normally agree with them and not bother with pre-orders, but, as I mentioned in my last entry, all sales in pre-orders go toward one day, and are more likely to put you in the bestseller list.

This isn’t so much of a prestige issue as it is a practical one.  Books on top 10 lists typically get far more sales.  Plus, when mixed with the fact that a lot of people are talking about the subject when it releases, others who then see it in the top 10 list feel like they have a history with it, and are more likely to buy.

So the way I go about achieving this goal is by appearing on as many media outlets as I can.  I made a huge list of radio, television, and newspaper locations, focusing primarily in Nebraska, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Austin.  (I’ll probably add Florida to that, now that I think about it.)  I’m sending out a general press release, then emailing them afterward so they hear about it through the release, then are reminded through the email.

This book in particular plays well to this specific type of promotion, as it’s a very newsworthy story.  A long-lost Capone hardly anyone knew about has finally been discovered, and he was one of the most successful lawmen in the country.  Headlines mean the most in this step.  I want to attract the producers and editors first so they’ll have me on their show.  Then the public will hear me.

I’m following this up with sending bits of information to bloggers and podcasters to get them to pick up something about the story.  During the first part of this phase, it’s less important for people to see where my book is available to buy, and more important for them to learn that the story exists.  If everything goes as planned, they’ll have heard about the real person so much that by the time they see the pre-order, they’re already sold on purchasing it.

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