We do not finance, market or sell books. Poetry and fiction are likely to be the hardest books to sell, while local history and areas of specialised non-fiction may have ready-made markets. The good news is that even in this digital era the sale of books is increasing-up 7% in 2016.
You can find companies on the internet who will both print and claim to market your book (for an additional fee). Be very wary of such claims. If you have an ISBN number, your book automatically goes into the database of books published and can be ordered from you by the major book distributors like Bertrams, Coutts and Amazon. That is a service you do not need to pay for anyway. If a company claims to do more than that ask yourself how, if it was a title you might be interested in, could its existence be brought to your attention by a marketing company with the few hundred pounds they will ask you for. If you still think that might be a good idea then Google the company and ‘Problems’ or ‘Complaints’ and see what the experience of other authors has been.
Below are some suggestions based on the experience of people we have produced books for over the years.
1. Family and friends
A lot of the books we produce are family histories in small quantities, either the memoirs of a particular person or the result of family history research. There is not really a need to market these as there is a clearly defined group of people who will be interested, and who will hopefully pass your book down through the generations. It might be worth considering case binding if you want your research to be available to future generations because this is likely to survive better than a paperback. Who knows whether it will survive on-line for decades?
2. Local author publicity
Your local newspaper (if you still have one) probably doesn’t have many reporters any more so if you are able to write an interesting and relevant press release about your book, preferably with a photograph, it is likely to get printed. Don’t forget to include details of how to get hold of the book. If you have a local independent bookshop (even less likely than a local newspaper) they might be prepared to have a small window display for you as long as you supply the information. They will require a substantial proportion of the cover price though (how much will vary from shop to shop).
3. Bookshops
Apart from independent shops this basically means Waterstones these days. Any information here about Waterstones is probably going to be out of date because their policies may change, so you will need to check with your local branch manager who will probably have to check with their head office. However, in the past our local Waterstones has hosted launch parties in the evening for authors whose books we have printed – terms and conditions may vary, but they required the sale at the event of a minimum number of copies before they would agree to stock the book. The discount they expect is around 60%. They are most likely to accept local history, and least likely to take poetry, fiction and specialised books with a limited appeal.
4. Local organisations
Whether or not this is appropriate depends very much upon the sort of book you have written. If, for example, it is local history then there is likely to be a ready-made market and you may already be part of the local history group. But there are usually many other local organisations which have a guest speaker at their meeting, so if you can put together an interesting talk and feel confident that you can hold the attention of an audience then you may be able to get onto the list of speakers for, for example, the W.I.
5. Website
It is quite cheap and easy these days to create your own website to publicise your book. What is less easy is to stand a chance of a search on Google finding you. You are then getting into the area of Search Engine Optimisation.
Hopefully this section has not actually put you off asking us to produce your book. There have been books that we have produced that have been massively successful: one on hypnobirthing has sold more than 10,000 copies. Conversely, a beautifully written novel that should have found a major publisher sold fewer than 100 despite the best efforts of the author. Good luck!