Consumer Behaviour

It’s been a while since I updated my series on getting a book published, partly because I’ve been so busy with book-related activity!

The publishing industry works backwards.  That’s not a slur on their approach, just an observation.  They set a publication date based on a number of factors:

• Is there an event they can associate the book with? If you’ve written a book on space travel it probably makes sense to time the launch to coincide the publication with a large space conference or the intended publication date of the latest Mars pictures, or whatever.  There are two reasons for this: firstly, the human brain works by associations and if the media are developing the neural paths to space-related thoughts your book is going to feel more relevant and is more likely to get noticed.  Secondly, journalists looking to cover the event will appreciate an angle from you that helps them make their piece more interesting.
• What other titles the publisher has scheduled and whether they have an obvious position in the calendar: with limited resources you want to be published when the publisher can give you it’s full support, not be fighting with every other new book author for limited internal resources.
• The lead times for publicity and submission to catalogues: some media have very long lead times (such as monthly magazines), some are much shorter.  It’s no use being on radio today if your book isn’t going to be published for another two months.  Equally, it’s no use being in next February’s magazine if the book is going to feel like old news by then. 

I was expecting more of a break between final editing and initial publicity, but that’s not been the case.  I’ve already done a handful of interviews, articles and contributions to articles.  For me, this process will probably be a little more drawn out because the US launch of Consumer.ology is the month after the UK launch.

Mind you, even when things seem quiet your publisher will probably be working in the background, trying to sell the translation rights to your book.  I believe that the Spanish rights have now been purchased for Consumer.ology, which is fantastic news!

The role of the publisher’s publicist is critical.  I am incredibly fortunate to have Nadia; an enthusiastic, experienced and dedicated publicist working on my book.  I was given some incredibly good advice by my unofficial literary agent Francis: “Get on well with your publicist – if he or she doesn’t support your book enthusiastically you won’t get anywhere.” 

Fortunately, I haven’t ever  had to try hard to get on with Nadia, it’s easy because she is the sort of person who oozes integrity: she’s a credit to her profession.

I’m also lucky that my publisher has recently taken on an internet publicity manager, Dan.  I’ve not been able to support his efforts as much as I would have liked in the last couple of weeks because of other projects, but in the next week or two I hope I’ll be working with him to make sure the world wide web gets to hear a little more about the book.

Philip Graves Getting a Book Published getting published, published

So, having written my book, and to be honest a question I pondered whilst I was writing it, how should I try and get it published.  I say ‘try’ because we’ve all heard stories about people trying to find an established publisher only to discover that they receive a billion manuscripts a day and only think about looking at a couple; OK a mild exaggeration, but no doubt it’s a tough route to go.

What are the options?

Self-publishing sounds like one option, but in fact it covers a multitude of possibilities (and let me say right now that I’m no expert on any of them).  These range from essentially paying a company to publish your work for you to sending it to an on-line company who do nothing more than print one off (or send it electronically) when a request arrives. 

Paying to be published strikes me as a risky route to go.  You have no way to know how effective the support you’ll receive will be, and with the publisher earning all their revenue from your business with them (rather than from the sales of the book) they don’t have a compelling need to market it aggressively on your behalf.

The print on demand type services are an interesting way to go.  My friend Jay Wright wrote a book on Guitar Acquisition Syndrome and lodged it with Lulu.com.  He’s sold several thousand around the world through his own marketing efforts, through guitar shows, guitar stores and EBay.  With a print on demand service there’s no major risk; you can order a large number of copies to get the average cost down slightly, but you can order small numbers too.

Self-publishing offers the attractive potential of  receiving a higher profit per sale.  With no publisher’s profit to consider the sales model is a very simple function of volume and price.  What’s more, the print quality is excellent and you don’t have to fight with anyone about pricing, marketing, the cover design or anything else!

With so many advantages to the self-published route why look for a publisher?

I think there are several potential advantages:

• It’s easy to look at publishers as the enemy, but they should be the people with the knowledge and expertise to help make the most of your (and their) product.
• Being master of your own destiny is all well and good, but if you respect someone else’s opinion having someone care about your all the elements of your book should help make it better, not worse.
• Publishing works like an implicit endorsement; yes, there are many lousy books that have been published, but nevertheless anyone can self-publish.  At least a published book has found one person who thinks enough of it to bring it to the book-buying market.

Downsides?  Not finding a publisher who wants your book is probably the biggest!  And once you have one they may suggest changes you don’t agree with, fleece you with a contract that is unfair, not lift a finger to market your work, and probably a thousand other things I’ve yet to encounter!

I’ve decided to try and get a publisher for my book.  I want the expertise, I want someone to help make my book as good as it can be and I think that the added endorsement will enhance its status.

But I know finding a publisher won’t be easy.  I’m willing to be persistent.  But it’s a big publishing world, how the heck do you decide where to start?

I’ll discuss that next time, when a big stroke of luck shines a bright light on the murky world of publishing!

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Getting a Book Published book, getting published

I pondered whether to use this blog on consumer behaviour to detail my book-writing journey and have decided that, since the book is (of course) about consumer behaviour and market research, it’s fair enough.  And I’ll be explaining elements of psychology that crop up along the way too, so I hope it will be interesting from a number of angles.

So, I’ve written my book. 

And writing a book is quite hard.  Between making the decision that I wanted to write a book and sitting there thinking, “Bloody hell, I’ve finished” there were weeks of sitting and researching and typing and hoping and wondering.

The wondering is quite preoccupying.  Writing is a very solitary process and you occasionally wonder if what you’re writing is worthwhile, whether anyone would be in the least bit interested in what you’re writing about and, perhaps most worryingly, whether you’re capable of writing at all.  The problem is that there’s no easy way of answering any of those questions until you’ve finished, and even then you probably don’t really know.

The best writing advice I received was from published author Kevin Hogan who said that I should never go back and edit before the book was finished.  Too many people end up with a perfect first chapter, or first page, but nothing more.  You just have to write until it’s done, then make it better.

For me the best writing aid was the Microsoft Word ‘word count’ feature.  I’ve always found numbers reassuring and it was comforting to track the progress I made (which I did on an old envelope).  This provided me with the most astonishing discovery; if you write at least a little each day the word count increases and you get closer to your target (I know, astonishing isn’t it).

What I discovered, psychologically-speaking, was that if you want to become a writer you have to pretend to be a writer for a couple of months, after which time you forget you’re pretending and the ingrained habit of writing becomes something you find yourself doing.  Fairly soon the serotonin buzz of seeing the word count tick over another 5,000 word threshold was significantly greater than the low doses available from watching re-runs of Friends or some other TV show that I wasn’t really that bothered about.

I’ve heard people say that you should stop watching TV if you want to make time to write.  Undoubtedly that’s a great idea, but in order to want to do something else like writing you have to push yourself to the point where that something else is more rewarding.   Just like with dieting, wanting an outcome is unlikely to be enough for most people, you’ve got to force the behaviour first.  It’s easy to be smug and say, “Stop watching TV and write”, but it doesn’t work that way for most of us.

So having written my book what now?

Over the coming weeks I’m going to share my experience of trying to get a book published. 

Some of what I’m going to write about has happened (but over such a long time period that you would have undoubtedly lost interest if you’d been living through it in real time – I nearly lost interest and it’s my book!). 

You’re going to meet some interesting characters, a few villains and perhaps even a hero or two. 

One thing is clear, no one knows what the ending will be.

Next time I’ll talk about the different routes to getting your book into print, what I believe the benefits are of each, and which route I plan to take.   I’ll hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Getting a Book Published consumer behaviour, consumer research, getting published, market research, psychology, writing a book