Episode 020 - Working with Libraries & Bookstores with Mark Leslie Lefebvre
April 3, 2020
Mark Leslie Lefebvre brings over a quarter century of experience in the writing, publishing, and bookselling worlds to provide insights and strategies for how authors can benefit from developing relationships with libraries and bookstores and can in turn bring benefit to those organizations.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre is an author, professional speaker, and bookseller. Having grown up with an intense passion for reading and writing, Mark started writing when he was thirteen years old, was drawn to bookselling and has remained in the industry since 1992, wearing many different hats. Among other things, he was the founder of the Kobo Writing Life author platform and is currently the Director of Business Development for Draft2Digital.
Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Mark Leslie Lefebvre. Mark, how are you doing?
[00:00:07] Mark: Great. Matty, how about you?
[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. Mark is my first repeat guest on the podcast. He joined me on Episode 14 to talk about our coauthored book, Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction.
[00:00:22] But Mark is so prolific that he had another recent book come out. This is called The Author's Guide to Working with Libraries and Bookstores, and that's going to be our topic for today.
[00:00:31] But first to give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Mark Leslie Lefebvre is an author, professional speaker, and bookseller with more than a quarter century of experience in writing, publishing, and book selling. Having grown up with an intense passion for reading and writing, Mark started writing when he was 13 years old, was drawn to book selling, and has remained in the industry since 1992 wearing many different hats. Among other things, he was the founder of the Kobo Writing Life author platform, and is currently the Director of Business Development for Draft2Digital.
[00:01:02] I think that intro gives our listeners some insight into why you are a great person to talk about not only libraries, but bookstores. So just give a little bit of background, delve into a little bit more detail about your experience in the library and bookstore worlds that informed your book.
[00:01:24] Mark: It’s based on my own experience, having been a bookseller and been a product manager as well as a manager of a independent and chain and box stores and mall stores and all the different types of stores. I was one of the people responsible for acquiring books for a bookstore.
[00:01:42] I sat down with sales reps and pored through the catalogs and looked at thousands of books and only ordered dozens, or hundreds, perhaps, for my store. So I'm familiar with the curation that happens when a bookstore tries to determine if a book is applicable for them.
[00:01:56] And similarly, having worked as an author to do events at bookstores and libraries over the years, I'm quite familiar with the reasoning behind why they decide either to order in a book from an author or whether or not they decide if they want to have you come and do something at their stores.
[00:02:14] In a nutshell, a bookstore or a library is looking to increase traffic and they're looking to find the right book, make sure that the right book is put in the right customer's hands at the right time.
[00:00:07] Mark: Great. Matty, how about you?
[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. Mark is my first repeat guest on the podcast. He joined me on Episode 14 to talk about our coauthored book, Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction.
[00:00:22] But Mark is so prolific that he had another recent book come out. This is called The Author's Guide to Working with Libraries and Bookstores, and that's going to be our topic for today.
[00:00:31] But first to give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Mark Leslie Lefebvre is an author, professional speaker, and bookseller with more than a quarter century of experience in writing, publishing, and book selling. Having grown up with an intense passion for reading and writing, Mark started writing when he was 13 years old, was drawn to book selling, and has remained in the industry since 1992 wearing many different hats. Among other things, he was the founder of the Kobo Writing Life author platform, and is currently the Director of Business Development for Draft2Digital.
[00:01:02] I think that intro gives our listeners some insight into why you are a great person to talk about not only libraries, but bookstores. So just give a little bit of background, delve into a little bit more detail about your experience in the library and bookstore worlds that informed your book.
[00:01:24] Mark: It’s based on my own experience, having been a bookseller and been a product manager as well as a manager of a independent and chain and box stores and mall stores and all the different types of stores. I was one of the people responsible for acquiring books for a bookstore.
[00:01:42] I sat down with sales reps and pored through the catalogs and looked at thousands of books and only ordered dozens, or hundreds, perhaps, for my store. So I'm familiar with the curation that happens when a bookstore tries to determine if a book is applicable for them.
[00:01:56] And similarly, having worked as an author to do events at bookstores and libraries over the years, I'm quite familiar with the reasoning behind why they decide either to order in a book from an author or whether or not they decide if they want to have you come and do something at their stores.
[00:02:14] In a nutshell, a bookstore or a library is looking to increase traffic and they're looking to find the right book, make sure that the right book is put in the right customer's hands at the right time.
read more ...
[00:02:26] Now, libraries have changed, obviously over time. It's not just about books, it's about community. It's about resources and information. When you're thinking about libraries, you have to think a little bit differently than about bookstores. Bookstores are a retail operation. They have bills to pay, they have rent to pay, they have staff to pay, they have shipping and receiving costs, all the utilities. And so therefore, every single book that they get to haunt their bookstore shelves shouldn't haunt them for long.
[00:02:53] They need to turn their inventory. They need to turn that stock. They need to sell the stock so the stock can pay for itself. So just bringing a book into a bookstore and putting it on the shelf and looking pretty is not what it's about. It's about selling, and at a library, it's about conversion of patrons actually wanting to utilize that resource because, again, they have limited shelf space. So very like a retail store, they only have room for so many books. So I think it's really important when you think about libraries and bookstores to think about that.
[00:03:27] Now that's just for print. In this digital world, we now have opportunities, particularly more so when it comes to libraries. They still have budgets, but in terms of libraries, there's an opportunity for digital assets. They don't occupy space physically, so some of those limits are gone. Now it's just a matter of the budget that the library has for acquiring content.
[00:03:50] But I think those are two fundamental things that authors should consider when they're thinking about themselves and their potential for placement in a physical or digital bookstore or library environment.
[00:04:03] Matty: I wanted to start out with bookstores, and I do think of bookstore relationships for indy authors in two categories: one being the placement of the books and one being hosting of author events. It would be great if you could talk for just a minute about, from the bookseller’s point of view, what are the pros and cons of establishing a relationship with an indy author for the book seller.
[00:04:26] Mark: Okay. I know this is The Indy Author Podcast, but this could apply whether you are self-publishing or indy publishing yourself or you're working with another independent publisher, or a small press publisher or even a more traditional publisher that actually has distribution channels.
[00:04:44] Because this is where the differentiation lies. If you are with a traditional publisher, most of those supply chain issues are taken care of in the old boys' methodology. The books are printed using offset printers, they're stored in warehouses, they're fully returnable. So the barriers to getting into an event in a bookstore can potentially be less for those authors. It doesn't mean that you're guaranteed anything because, again, you still have to look at whether or not this is a good fit, that you and the book are a good fit for the target audience for that bookstore.
[00:05:17] But coming back to independent authors, the bookstores in particular can be very, very fond and proud of local writers. When I was managing a Chapters store in the late 1990s-- and this was the equivalent of a Barnes and Noble-size store but here in Canada-- and I was in charge of the merchandising and the placement of books in the store as well as local ordering. A lot of the orders of the front list-- the James Pattersons, the J K Rowlings, the Stephen Kings, et cetera-- the initial buys were done by head office buyers. I would top it up with some local buys looking at local publishers, local authors. Self-publishing was not as prevalent then as it is now. So a lot of my ordering was happening through publisher catalogs or meetings with sales reps.
[00:06:00] But I had a section right at the front of the store. You would walk into the Chapters in Ancaster, Ontario, and right at the front of the store, the very first display that was there was local authors and publishers. It was local authors, or books about Hamilton, Ancaster, and the greater Hamilton region. If they were from Toronto, we would still consider that somewhat local because it's only an hour away.
[00:06:22] If the publisher was local, even if the books weren't about the area, we had it. If there were books about the area, but they were published far away, we used that. So think about yourself as an author. What is it? Is it you the author that's local? Is the book set locally? So you can be a local author with your local independent bookstore, but if your murder mysteries are set in another state, in another city, maybe there's an independent bookshop there or a chain book shop that has local interest and for people who are looking for books set in a particular environment.
[00:06:54] So there's multiple reasons why they would want to have that. The reason it's important to have a relationship in my mind with an author, and I had plenty of relationships with lots of authors when I was managing bookstores, is creation of events is meant to draw traffic.
[00:07:10]For example, I did an interactive murder mystery where you had to come into my store and the whole idea was you would come in and you would get clues and every day there was a new clue, but every day at lunchtime, because that was the location of the store, that was when our traffic was highest. Every day at lunchtime, we had a featured local mystery author doing something, whether it was a reading, whether it was just a signing, depending on what that author was most comfortable doing. And I will say, if you're not comfortable doing readings as an author, don't do readings because you could probably ruin the potential for someone to be impressed by you.
[00:07:42] Maybe it's not a reading. Maybe it's a talk about the research that went into your characters, or maybe it's about why you decided to write these murder mysteries set in this particular local area. It doesn't have to necessarily be a reading. But we did events like that, and it was great for me because if I'm in contact with a local author and I know they're willing and available to come in, if I was looking for themes or looking for opportunities , this is a great opportunity because it's a mutually beneficial thing.
[00:08:11] The author has a chance to be in front of my customers, and my bookstore has the opportunity for that author to reach out to their network as well, to say, "Hey, if you want to see me in person, maybe you've even already bought my books, but if you want to just come see me in person, I'm going to be in here. I'll sign your previously purchased books. You don't even have to buy books from the bookstore."
[00:08:29] Because getting foot traffic into that store is so critical, and I know it's difficult. We're talking about this at a time when foot traffic and isolation is, we're in a slightly different environment right now <2020 COVID-19 quarantine>, so you've got to remember, I'm talking about not during social distancing times, but you know, crowds and, foot traffic is really what they're looking for.
[00:08:51] Matty: It seems to me as if for both the bookseller and the author, the time aspect is really critical in terms of weighing the cost benefit of the effort to get an indy book into a bookstore. And so for the bookstore, it's the fact that if it's an indy author, they probably don't have necessarily the same ease of catalog accessibility.
[00:09:14]If you want your book to be appealing to a bookstore so that they don't have to jump through hoops on some kind of one to one payment agreement, you have to have your book probably on Ingram, and if you put it on Ingram, you have to make it discounted and you have to make it ideally returnable for the bookstore. The whole returnable thing I want to put aside for a moment, but that's just to say that you have to make it administratively easy for the bookstore to get your book, and that means putting it on Ingram.
[00:09:43] And so it's a time logistics question. And similarly on the author side, you have to think, is it worth the time to invest, especially in an author event, to pack up your books, go to the bookstore, maybe it's hours away , you're driving, you're setting up, you're waiting for people to show up, and those are several hours you could either be trying to sell your books in a bookstore or writing. There's this logistical cost benefit weighing. And I can completely understand why bookstores can't take on the administrative work of making individual agreements with individual authors.
[00:10:17] Mark: Oh, for sure. Yeah, there is a lot of overhead, and to be quite honest, I do a lot of in person author events and I know that probably the majority of the events I do, I may be willing to say 75% to 90% of the author events I do, I do not earn back in earnings from the time that I invested. And similarly, the people putting on the event probably didn't earn back what they invested in it.
[00:10:41] Because setting up an event requires putting it in the calendar and then they either print posters or they post them or they send it out in their newsletter. When I was managing a Chapters, we actually had the shelves on wheels and we would roll them out of the way and set up chairs and have these big events and the lectern and stuff like that would come out and make announcements all day, that "if you're here at noon, we have so-and-so appearing."
[00:11:02] It's a lot of work, and it usually requires assigning at least one staff member. It depends on the size of the store. If it's independent, chances are it's the manager doing it themselves. But that takes a lot of time and effort. And I've even done in-person author events, and I'll give you an example of how this can benefit you in the long term. Because the thing you have to remember is there is nobody as knowledgeable or as passionate about your books as you are. And this is an opportunity to really connect with authors. I think the most common and popular and very useful marketing advice that most writers should pay attention to is mailing lists.
[00:11:40] Why is a mailing list important? A mailing list is important so you can connect directly with the people who love your books the best, and not leave it to Amazon or Apple or Kobo or Barnes and Noble, or any of those other retailers out there. And so similarly, that's where that time investment comes into play because you give your potential readers or potential new readers an opportunity to connect with you.
[00:12:03] And I will use a personal example. There was a brewery in Hamilton, Ontario, Grain and Grit, family-owned brewery, beautiful place. They have a little pop-up shop every Saturday from the summertime for two and a half, three months over the summer months when it was actually nice in this part of the world where you could actually be out on a patio.
[00:12:21] And they had this little pop-up fair. They had local vendors, they had fruit and vegetable vendors. They had local food concession people selling hot dogs or tacos or crafts. And for most of the summer, every Saturday cost me $20 to set up my little tent, my little pop-up, and I bought like the nice set tent that would protect my bald head from the sun or on some of those weekends from the rain that was coming down and keep my precious merchandise dry, and it was a 45 minute drive to get there, because I live in Waterloo now and I had to go back to Hamilton.
[00:12:50] I would drive in and I would set up and from 11 in the morning till 4:00 PM I was there with my books and some weeks I sold a lot of books. Other weeks I sold absolutely nothing. But I don't think of it in terms of a day-to-day, "Oh, I invested this much time and energy, I got this out of it financially." I think of the long-term benefit.
[00:13:12] I have a really deep relationship with Joe and Lindsey who are the owners of the brewery. They know me really, really well. Most of the staff know me. I mean, I'm there all the time buying beer. So they would know me by name anyway, but they also know me as an author, and so you never know how many sales I may be getting on Kindle, for example, for being there with my print books, or on Kobo or on Apple or on Nook, any of those platforms, because they mentioned, "Oh, you like ghost stories? Well, Mark has written, he's the author of haunted Hamilton, and he also has these thrillers and horror and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, he's done some non-fiction books. You should read his book that he co-wrote with Matty on writing short fiction.
[00:13:49] So you never know what sales have come from those relationships. And one of the things that I thought was most fascinating is I had this little card, and you can get these little coupon codes where people can download books for free off BookFunnel and they get the unique card and you can either sell them or give them away.
[00:14:04] And I had a guy who was there who had read an anthology I'd published with a traditional publisher 10 years earlier and he went, "Oh my God, you're the same Mark Leslie who edited North of Infinity II," and the next week he came and he brought a copy of it so I could sign it. I thought that was kind of cool--a book I published 10 years ago that he had, and he recognized me when he saw my signs. And he really likes science fiction. And he's like, "Well, what should I read?" And I was like, "Well, you know what? You're not familiar with my stuff. And most of my stuff is more like Twilight Zone-y than science fiction. So here, why don't you just take this ebook and download it and read it for free? You can download the free Kobo app, a free Kindle app, Apple app, and you can just go download it and read it while you're having a beer inside, then you can check it out." He did that. He downloaded the free book, started reading it.
[00:14:48] He came back out and bought the print copy. He goes, "I think I'm going to want to keep this book. Can you sign it for me?" Every single week, he came back and bought another book. Now again, this isn't a financial thing because I probably spent more money in time and energy and gas than I earned in sales.
[00:15:03] But just last week he read one of my free online stories and shared the review he posted it on Goodreads and it was a five star glowing review about just how much he loved it. And so I have this guy who I met in person, cultivated a relationship with, started off trying to give him something rather than sell him something, and he's become what is probably going to be a lifelong fan who is probably going to check out every single fiction title that I publish.
[00:15:32] But that's anecdotal evidence of someone I'm familiar with, but that's the reason why I do those events. I do them for the long term gain with a relationship that I can establish with a reader, rather than thinking about, "Oh, it cost me this much money in gas and this much money to buy the tent and then I had to order in my stock," and stuff like that. Thinking about the long term is why I would do something like that.
[00:15:55] That, and also I don't mind, I'm an omnivert. So, I will walk into a brewery and not talk to anyone except maybe the people that know me and say, "Hey, Mark, how you doing? You're buying beer again?" I say, "Yes, I am." But if I'm there at a table with my author books and people approach me, I'm more than happy to talk to them and I'm more than willing to be outgoing and just give what I can.
[00:16:18] Matty: Well, this is why I love working with you, Mark, because you bring that community networking perspective I totally agree, there's a value you need to attach to that community building and networking that can be as valuable as a book sale. But I think a key difference between an event like you're describing at the brewery where you had your table with a tent over it, is that at the end of the day, whatever you haven't sold, you just pack up into your car and you drive home.
[00:16:42] Mark: That's right. Yes.
[00:16:43] Matty: I think that the other really tricky thing about bookstores, which has pretty much made me decide that I'm not at the moment pursuing bookstore placement or bookstore events except for a couple of bookstores that I have relationships with and that have a consignment arrangement, is that returns are really tricky.
[00:17:03] Back in 2017 I did an event at a local bookstore, and I don't know who they thought I was, but they ordered a boatload of copies --
[00:17:13] Mark: I know people are getting excited going, "Yes, that's awesome." No, it's not.
[00:17:16] Matty: No, it's not awesome because a few people showed up. It was a talk I was giving. A few people showed up, and then, let's say they ordered 50 copies and then 48 of them went back and it costs me over a hundred dollars, in essence, setting aside the time I had spent and the effort to prepare the talk, just in terms of the dollars of what I owed.
[00:17:38] It was an expensive day for me, and I had a couple of learnings. One is that if I do do an event, I try to set an expectation with the store about what they can expect, because I had done a couple of events in the area and I had sort of tapped out my own pool of people. They had already been to other events on a similar talk.
[00:18:01] So if I had thought about it, I would have set an expectation with them that they probably shouldn't order 50 copies, but ultimately, I just decided to remove the books as returnable on Ingram. So on Ingram, which is really the only game in town for US bookstores anyway, and I'll ask you to speak to that.
[00:18:20] Mark: Globally it's pretty much the only game in town.
[00:18:22] Matty: Yeah, it's definitely the most prominent game in town, I'll say. And you can say that books are returnable by the retailer and need to be sent back, which is the most expensive option. They're returnable and they can be destroyed by the publisher, which is the less expensive option, or they're not returnable.
[00:18:40] And I ultimately just said, all my books is not returnable. Knowing that that was going to make them unappealing to bookstores by and large, unless they only wanted to buy a couple, which is what I was hoping they would do. And then the other thing is, in order to make them appealing to bookstores, you have to sell them at a deep discount.
[00:18:56] And so at the end of the day, I was making significantly less than a buck a book.
[00:19:01] Mark: Yes. In my traditionally published books, I make $2 a book, and that's a pretty crappy return, right? I mean, it's usually 8% is what I make. And so for indy authors who are used to 70% off their ebook sales, that's a really crappy return. Although I think you were undervaluing, your books should be priced a little bit higher in print because there are over 300 pages. The reviews you've gotten are stellar, and they sit perfectly alongside a similar, way higher priced books by traditional publishers, and the average customer, they don't know or care. They just want a good book. And so it meets all the criteria. So just remember that.
[00:19:39] Matty: That's my activity for the afternoon is I'm going to go out on the platform to raise the price of my books.
[00:19:43] Mark: And it's only a couple of dollars, but instead of you making chump change, you're actually getting closer to making a dollar or two per book, which helps supplement that return costs. Now, a couple of things to remember. Ingram is the world's largest wholesale distributor in the world. When I was a bookseller, I always placed orders from Ingram and pretty much any bookstore chain, independent, online has access to Ingram's catalog. And so if the book is not in stock, I could walk into any local bookshop here in Waterloo, Ontario, and say, "Here are the books from my favorite author, Matty Dalrymple. I'd like to order the whole Ann Kinnear series. Could you please order these books in print? Hey, I even have the ISBNs cause she's so cool, she sent them to me in her author newsletter." I can go to the library, I can request them as well. And they can order them through Ingram.
[00:20:29] Now library doesn't care about returnability because they never return them. A bookstore, if it's a special order, they don't care about returnability. If the book was only available through KDP Print, I call their extended distribution "pretended distribution" because it gives authors the false sense that the books are actually available to the retail and library markets.
[00:20:49] They are. But at such horrible terms that, there's short discounts and let's be honest, no independent bookstore wants to support the enemy, which is Amazon. I used to order books from Amazon if I could get them from Amazon cheaper than the publisher, which unfortunately in Canada was the majority of the time.
[00:21:05] So, ironically, I was doing special orders for my customer from Amazon just because of the ridiculousness. And back then, this was also when the Canadian dollar was higher than the American dollar. But the price has never changed from traditional publishers at the time.
[00:21:18] But I had a different mindset. I was interested in supporting my consumers, my customers the best that I could with the most margin for my store. That's what I cared about. And knowing that there's nothing I'm going to do is going to change, Amazon's still trying to put me out of business, I'm going to play it to my advantage if I can.
[00:21:34] But anyways, Ingram is a great place to order books from. When it comes to returnability, here's a couple of things that I've done. I made that mistake in 2004 when I first self-published, I made my books fully returnable cause I had been a book seller and I might have to, that's why they order them.
[00:21:48] I will order 50, because who cares? We can just return them. As a book seller, I have ordered non-returnable books for authors coming in, but I did it knowing I would hand sell those books myself because I loved the author so much.
[00:21:59] And so they may make exceptions if they know your books and love your books. They may go, "Oh yeah, no worries. We'll sell them. Cause I'm going to get Matty to sign them and I love her books." I had contests with my staff. I would have them pick a book every day that they had to carry around and they couldn't put it down until they'd sold it. Now again, it had to be a book they were passionate about and loved.
[00:22:17] And it didn't matter. I didn't pick it for them. They had to pick the book themselves because it was a book that they loved and they couldn't just sell it to anyone, they had to sell it to the right customer. I would even offer money back guarantees for some customers on recommendations. "If you can put this book down, I'll personally buy it from you, from my own money. Here's my phone number."
[00:22:35] Matty: That's fantastic! I could to a whole episode with you about ideas for bookstores to sell books.
[00:22:42] Mark: But you have to be passionate about it and that's why our relationship with the author is critical. Anyways, I made my book fully returnable and it was great because I could call up a Barnes and Noble and say, "In three months I'm going to be in town. I'd love to do a book signing. I know you're a downtown location. That probably means noon. I'm available this time on these days. My book is here. It's available from Ingram. It's fully returnable."
[00:23:02] They go ahead and order it. They bring in 10 or 20 copies. I'd go and maybe I'd sell half of them or three quarters of them. And then they'd return them. And it was normally not a big deal because I was making enough of a margin based on the print costs, et cetera, that even with the returns, I still came out ahead.
[00:23:19] When a head office buyer at Chapters, which is Canada's chain, found out about the book and liked me, and they went and ordered 300 copies, and they distribute them--like, you know, a bunch of stores got one or two copies, spines on a shelf in a store with 100,000 books. Nobody noticed them or saw them, nobody knew about the book, therefore, the books went onto the shelf. Very few people bought them. And then six months later they got returned and I got dinged for way more than I earned, that's when I stopped setting my books to returnable.
[00:23:48] But here's what I've done in collaboration with bookstores. If I want to do an event now, this is because, in my particular case, I do a lot of in person events and sometimes I'll do a library talk where they allow me to sell my own books. Sometimes I've got author tables at different comic cons, so it depends on what your business operation is.
[00:24:05] But if I'm going to do an event, now I know some of my books are returnable from traditional publishers. I can let them know about that and say, here are the ones that I have the rights to. You can order them from Ingram. Here are the ISBNs. They're not returnable, but here's what I'm going to do. As long as you don't over order, and I usually will recommend, like maybe only bring in 10, because chances are you're going to sell a few of them and then you might be stuck with them, is I offer to buy the books after the event is over, if the bookstore doesn't want to keep any in stock, cause sometimes they want to keep one or two just to say, "Hey, local author, they're signed. You should check them out. They make a great gift." I will offer to buy them from the bookstore to guarantee that they're not going to be stuck with the stock.
[00:24:43] So that removes that stress from them. I do ask because I know most bookstores have a 20 or 30% discount that they offer to their staff. I say. Could you give me your staff discount? And I know with a staff discount, they're still making margin. They're making less margin than they normally would, but they're not stuck with it.
[00:25:00] And I guarantee you the cost for them to return the books, the labor, the shipping, the packing material, all of the stuff to put into returns, they still lose more money on that than by giving me a 30% discount. And so what I'll do is they're going to get a guaranteed sale from me anyways.
[00:25:18] If we don't sell anything, and so that puts them at ease if they're willing. Again, not everyone's willing to do that, but if they're willing to do that, that makes it easier than the consignment model. Cause then I don't have to cart stock in, I may cart stock out or if it's local enough, I can say, you know, maybe keep the books for a week or whatever, and then I'll come buy the remaining stock at X amount of time.
[00:25:41] But then that way I have stock available that I didn't have to pay shipping on, that I didn't have to sit on for a long, long time. So that's a strategy you could potentially use. Again, it's a recognition of the business model that the bookstore uses.
[00:25:55] Matty: Yup. I want to use the opportunity to switch over to libraries because I don't want to give that short shrift. I'm going to start out with author events just to sort of quickly say that it can be difficult in my experience to get that first author event. But once you've gotten the event and you have established that you're going to approach it in a professional way and you've prepared and all the things that you want from a presenter when you as an audience member go to a program, it's fairly easy to get follow on activities. I'm sure this varies based on the library, but I've never had a problem selling books at an event after a talk at a library, and I've always been explicit with the person who's organizing it that this is my goal. My hope is that at the end I'll be able to sell books, and I've never had anyone say that I couldn't do that. I think that anyone who can get library events, why not?
[00:26:53] Because it's easier to gain momentum with them, in my opinion, than trying to line up bookstore events. What are your thoughts about that?
[00:27:01] Mark: Oh yeah, for sure. And the other thing you have to remember is when you do an event at a library, it's not just the people who show up that you need to pay attention to and be considerate and kind and respectful to, it's the librarians.
[00:27:13] It's the staff. It's the part time people that are walking around and shelving books. They're watching you. They're paying attention to how you behave and how you interact with people. They may recommend your book to patrons six months down the line, because I'm like, "Oh my God. Matty was in, and she was talking about her murder mysteries. And you were talking about looking for a good murder mystery. Well, she's a local author, and oh my God, I saw her talk. It's amazing. You've got to go check this book out."
[00:27:37] The other thing, and you said this at the beginning, and it made me think of it is, as a professional speaker. Liz and I have both done events and speaking engagements and I remember Liz saying this to me early on in our relationship, she said, the goal is to always be invited to the next party.
[00:27:53] It's true. When I finish a talk, when no matter where I'm giving a talk, I want someone in the audience to go, "Ooh, I want to book him for my next event." And that's the same thing is when you finish the talk at the library. The last time I did an event at the Toronto public library, it was like middle of February, blowy, windy, cold. And it was a topic that was supposed to be popular only in October, like ghosts and stuff. And what I loved is that's as I'm doing my talk, they had to keep bringing out stacks and stacks of chairs because more and more people just kept coming into this giant auditorium and it was kind of like, "Whoa, this is neat."
[00:28:30] So yeah, they're going to have me back. Cause I helped fill the room with a lot of people have given them something to do.
[00:28:36] So that's really, really important, is that aspect of it. And, with the library, sometimes the library has policies that will not let you sell. Other times they'll let you sell and other times they will partner with a local bookstore. When I launched my book Haunted Hamilton, I partnered with Bryan Prince Bookseller in Hamilton, Ontario.
[00:28:55] They had ordered my book and they did it all, which was even easier. All I had to do: I finished my talk, finished my presentation. I went over to the table at the back of the room. They handled the selling. I just signed books. That's way easier. And not only did I support the local library, I went in and did give a talk and filled the room, but I was also supporting a local bookstore.
[00:29:16] So you can support the local library and the local bookstore if they already have a partnership. I have something scheduled for the summer at Hamilton Public Library. And they said, you can sell your books, or we can bring in a bookseller. And I'd said, I'm happy to sell my books, but I'm more than happy if a bookseller does it and I can help provide them with stock, they can't or don't want to get from Ingram, like if they just want to do a consignment thing, I'll bring in some stuff if they want and see if they can sell it, and if not, I take it home. No big deal, right?
[00:29:44] Matty: The other aspect of libraries that I think is really underutilized by indy authors is library placement, and there were two things that I learned in the process of figuring out how to get my books out to people. One is that if you put your book out on a platform like Draft2Digital for eBooks or like Ingram for print books, it means that it's available to a library to acquire, but it doesn't mean that it's available for the library's patrons to acquire until the library acquires it.
[00:30:16] Mark: Exactly.
[00:30:16] Matty: I would put it out on these platforms and people would ask me, "Oh, can I get it at the library?" And I would say, Oh, sure, because I put it on Draft2Digital and Ingram, sort of discounting this interim step that the library has to then acquire it.
[00:30:28] Mark: A critical step is they have to be aware and acquire it.
[00:30:33] Matty: Yes. And, so when I finally realized that I would clarify that to people, you know, it's available to the library, but you as a patron might need to ask for it if you look in their catalog and it's not there already. But I also launched a campaign directly to libraries. And this was a ridiculously time-consuming effort, but I was curious to see what would happen.
[00:30:57] I started out by getting a database of library contacts. It was put together by a guy named Eric Simmons, and it's an Excel spreadsheet, it has over a thousand libraries in it. Probably more by now because I bought my copy of the database some time ago, and I'll include a link to where people can go for that in the show notes if they're interested in it.
[00:31:17] But I put together a form letter and it had all the information you're describing, like the ISBN and blurbs. My understanding from talking to librarians is that, if they're editorial reviews like Kirkus or if you've been reviewed in a well-known publication, that carries more weight with a library than a reader review would.
[00:31:37] Mark: You offer an Amazon review.
[00:31:39] Matty: Exactly. So I ended up sending that form letter personally to all 1000 plus people in this database, and all I was doing was changing, you know, "Hello, Mark," "Hello Jane." And it's the kind of thing that I would do if I was at the end of the day and I was just burned out and I just needed like 15 minutes of mindless stuff and it took me several months to get through the whole list.
[00:32:04] But my sales of books to libraries went up significantly.
[00:32:09] Mark: Imagine that, you invested time and effort, and it worked.
[00:32:13] Matty: And it's this sort of thing that if I averaged out the time I spent over what I made, it probably wasn't significant on a per hour basis, but it was an interesting experiment. I was approaching it as an experiment anyway.
[00:32:26] It was time that I wouldn't have spent doing anything else productive anyway. And I believe it got me known to the librarians, and even in a couple of cases, I got notes back, you know, "Oh, thank you for the email. I've put it on the list, I forwarded it to our acquisition department," whatever it was.
[00:32:41] So I don't know that I'd do that exact experiment again with the personalization in each case, but what tips do you have in order to help indy authors get their work in front of librarians in the most beneficial way for both parties?
[00:32:57] Mark: Yeah. Well, before I answer the question, I want to comment on that.
[00:33:01] And I think the fact that you have had libraries acquire your books, both eBooks and print copies, there is a sense of discoverability that you now have over me in the same section in that library. Your book is on the shelf. Mine isn't, your book is listed in their online catalog. Mine isn't. There are probably readers you never would have reached ever had that not happened and they could, one or two of them could become like that fan I talked about that I met at that in person event.
[00:33:33]That could in the long run have turned into a lifelong fan who continually requests your books from the libraries, meaning they're always going to stock your new books, and they're always going to have you front of mind like, "Wow, people keep coming in and asking for Matty's books."
[00:33:46] Well, they pay attention to those things. So patron request is critical. If you have a newsletter and your books are available through Ingram to the libraries through a place like Draft2Digital, let them know. One of the most common places that books can be available is through Overdrive, overdrive.com, you can even send to your newsletter people a link to the book on Overdrive so they can see that the book is available for libraries to purchase.
[00:34:11] And, I have to update the book because the book was released in December 2019, and at the time there was a ghetto of self-published books. There was the regular database and then every self-published book was in a ghetto secondary database the librarians often didn't even look in because it was filled with so much crap and 99 cent books. When eBooks first went into the library market, librarians were excited and bought really crappy books for 99 cents, then said "No, never again." And so Overdrive sectioned them off to keep people safe from this nastiness.
[00:34:40] However, Overdrive communicated to me three weeks ago now, maybe a month ago, that there is no longer a segmented database. It's all one. So now when they do a search, they will find you without having to go to the secondary database. So like they search on Google, then they don't have to go to Yahoo to find it. They stay on Google and they can find everything. So that's important.
[00:34:59] Matty: That's a game changer.
[00:35:01] Mark: That is a massive thing. And you know, from a Draft2Digital perspective, we have seen sales of eBooks to libraries go up from Overdrive since that change went into effect. No marketing or anything has been done. It's just the sales have gone up because it's easier to find it. Reach out to your readers, let them know, especially if you were in Kindle Unlimited and you trained people to read for free and they're mad at you because you're now publishing wide.
[00:35:27] Because, well, I don't want to pay for your books. I want to read them for free. Well, you can still read them for free and so can millions of other people who are not Amazon customers can now read them for free at the local library. Here's how easy it is for you, and you can use the free Libby app to download my ebook right to your smart phone. You don't even have to walk into a library to do that. You can get the ebook online and not even have to go in there.
[00:35:47] Matty: That was a game changer for me in terms of being a consumer of library books. When I want a book, I want instant gratification, and I found out I could often achieve instant gratification through the library apps with no cost.
[00:36:01] The other thing related to cost that I wanted to mention is that it was also a sort of late discovery of mine that you can charge more for a copy that's sent to a library. And so part of this experiment I did with sending the personal emails to the thousand librarians was that I listed my book that was available to libraries for $29.99 so this is an ebook that would normally sell for $4.99. But obviously the system realizes that you're giving up some income if you're making it available through libraries. And yet people were still buying it.
[00:36:37] I think that the money I was earning from library sales during that time was a combination of the personal outreach and the fact that the price was high enough. And I think the personal outreach helped make the higher price palatable for the people who are acquiring the book.
[00:36:52] Mark: But the other thing to remember is people might be having a coronary, saying, "Oh my God, she's selling her book for $30." Well, the comparable titles from major publishers in your genre are selling for $50, $60, $70, and $80, so to the library, that book has a really reasonable price.
[00:37:11] Even at 47% which is what you would've gotten if you sold the eBooks through Draft2Digital, even at 47% that's still way better than 70% of $4.99. I guess I'm not good at math in my head, but I'm pretty sure that 45% of $30 is somewhere in the $15 range as opposed to $3.50.
[00:37:33] And the reason that they have that is that that's the one-to-one licensing model for libraries, where the library can buy one ebook and loan it to one consumer at a time, which means in the long run, you may potentially could have earned more had you sold them one-to-one, but that's why the libraries were willing to spend more, because they know that it's a longer term investment that patrons can use indefinitely.
[00:37:54] There is an additional model, and Overdrive does have this and the library opts into this model, so if through Draft2Digital, you're submitting your books to Overdrive, be aware that you can go into your account and you can change it to also add cost per checkout.
[00:38:08] Overdrive and two or three of the other library platforms that Draft2Digital distributes to has a cost per checkout model option. In the case of your book, the library pays $30 for that book of which you get 47% of that. In the cost per checkout model, instead of the library curating the book and putting it in their catalog, what they do is they have a catalog that's based on all the books that are available, and they let their patrons decide. It's a lot more like Amazon where the inmates run the asylum, right? But the patrons decide what books they want. And the library sets a budget that says, okay, for this quarter we have $10,000 and we'll let our patrons just pick whatever they want.
[00:38:49] And that would be a case where the patron goes to the library and finds your book and my book, because the library didn't have to acquire it. It's just sitting there. But in the cost per checkout model, you make 10% so you would make $3 per sale. Now keep in mind that cost per checkout is a minimal payment, right?
[00:39:03] 10% as opposed to 47% or 70% from retail, or 60% from retail. But that's $3. You would make $3.50 on a retail sale, but every time a patron checks that book out, you get another $3. In the long run that can earn you lot money. Or let's say a book club wants to read your book because they heard you talk and you're going to come in and do a talk, and there's 30 people in the book club, or 12 people in the book club.
[00:39:30] The library would either have to buy 12 copies, which can be expensive at $30, or in the cost per checkout model they make it available to each patron. Let's say six of those people want to get the books from the library and the other people either borrow it from a friend or they buy the print book or they buy the ebook on some other retail platform.
[00:39:48] You're making for those six sales, six times three, that's $18 you made immediately. Well, not immediately, because you get paid a couple months later, but that's another option that is available. And ironically, well, you can't go direct to Overdrive, and if you did, you don't want to. There are a lot of authors who used to be direct and backed out. Cause you know Overdrive's a really great business-to-business company, not a great business-to-author company. If you come in through Kobo Writing Life, you don't actually have the option of cost per checkout. You do get 50% which is what you would've gotten if you were direct with Overdrive anyways, but there's no cost per checkout model.
[00:40:22] I do know that Draft2Digital, it's 47% rather than 50. But there is an additional cost for checkout model. So again, being aware of your options and choices as an author is really important because that can change how different libraries may want to interact with your digital assets.
[00:40:40] Matty: I think that that sort of flexibility is a great benefit for indy authors. The other thing, I think it's a great benefit for indy authors is that traditional publishers have not been treating libraries very well recently. And so in my letter to the librarians, I said, "William Kingsfield Publishers loves libraries, and we'll do whatever it takes to make it easy for you to add these books to your collection."
[00:41:04] So this is a case where being indy can give you a leg up just coming in the door because you're not bringing along the baggage that the traditional publisher is. For a while, one of the publishers was withholding new releases for a period of time, not making them immediately available to libraries, so you can capitalize on that as well.
[00:41:24] Mark: And that's where comp titles come into play. If you know who your comp titles are from the big publishers from in this particular case, Hachette, McMillan, right? If you know your comp authors from there, the libraries have to buy the books for $80 and they can only buy one book in the first six months of the book's release.
[00:41:42] They probably have 300 consumers who want to read books in that genre and that style. If your books are in the style and the library can look at you and go, "Wow, I can buy the entire Ann Kinnear series for a fraction of the price." And more importantly, from the librarian's perspective, they can satisfy the needs of their patrons, which is what they're there for. They're there to provide their local community with access to information and entertainment.
[00:42:07] Matty: Well, Mark, thank you so much. I think that your perspective, both as an author and a publisher and a bookseller, gives great insight into the bookstore side. And obviously you have developed great relationships with the libraries, so I think we have a lot to learn there. And there's plenty more in your book.
[00:42:25] Mark: Many more lies and the deceitful things that I say. Yes.
[00:42:29] Matty: It's all good. It's all good stuff. The Author's Guide to Working with Libraries and Bookstores. And can you tell our listeners where they can go to find out more about you and your work?
[00:42:38] Mark: Well, you can go to markleslie.ca. There are links to my books on most of the major retail platforms. You can also ask for any one of my books at your favorite local library. Just let them know that they are orderable in ebook, audio book, and in print book through Ingram and Overdrive.
[00:42:53] Matty: Thank you so much, Mark, this has been very helpful.
[00:42:55] Mark: Thanks, Matty.
[00:02:53] They need to turn their inventory. They need to turn that stock. They need to sell the stock so the stock can pay for itself. So just bringing a book into a bookstore and putting it on the shelf and looking pretty is not what it's about. It's about selling, and at a library, it's about conversion of patrons actually wanting to utilize that resource because, again, they have limited shelf space. So very like a retail store, they only have room for so many books. So I think it's really important when you think about libraries and bookstores to think about that.
[00:03:27] Now that's just for print. In this digital world, we now have opportunities, particularly more so when it comes to libraries. They still have budgets, but in terms of libraries, there's an opportunity for digital assets. They don't occupy space physically, so some of those limits are gone. Now it's just a matter of the budget that the library has for acquiring content.
[00:03:50] But I think those are two fundamental things that authors should consider when they're thinking about themselves and their potential for placement in a physical or digital bookstore or library environment.
[00:04:03] Matty: I wanted to start out with bookstores, and I do think of bookstore relationships for indy authors in two categories: one being the placement of the books and one being hosting of author events. It would be great if you could talk for just a minute about, from the bookseller’s point of view, what are the pros and cons of establishing a relationship with an indy author for the book seller.
[00:04:26] Mark: Okay. I know this is The Indy Author Podcast, but this could apply whether you are self-publishing or indy publishing yourself or you're working with another independent publisher, or a small press publisher or even a more traditional publisher that actually has distribution channels.
[00:04:44] Because this is where the differentiation lies. If you are with a traditional publisher, most of those supply chain issues are taken care of in the old boys' methodology. The books are printed using offset printers, they're stored in warehouses, they're fully returnable. So the barriers to getting into an event in a bookstore can potentially be less for those authors. It doesn't mean that you're guaranteed anything because, again, you still have to look at whether or not this is a good fit, that you and the book are a good fit for the target audience for that bookstore.
[00:05:17] But coming back to independent authors, the bookstores in particular can be very, very fond and proud of local writers. When I was managing a Chapters store in the late 1990s-- and this was the equivalent of a Barnes and Noble-size store but here in Canada-- and I was in charge of the merchandising and the placement of books in the store as well as local ordering. A lot of the orders of the front list-- the James Pattersons, the J K Rowlings, the Stephen Kings, et cetera-- the initial buys were done by head office buyers. I would top it up with some local buys looking at local publishers, local authors. Self-publishing was not as prevalent then as it is now. So a lot of my ordering was happening through publisher catalogs or meetings with sales reps.
[00:06:00] But I had a section right at the front of the store. You would walk into the Chapters in Ancaster, Ontario, and right at the front of the store, the very first display that was there was local authors and publishers. It was local authors, or books about Hamilton, Ancaster, and the greater Hamilton region. If they were from Toronto, we would still consider that somewhat local because it's only an hour away.
[00:06:22] If the publisher was local, even if the books weren't about the area, we had it. If there were books about the area, but they were published far away, we used that. So think about yourself as an author. What is it? Is it you the author that's local? Is the book set locally? So you can be a local author with your local independent bookstore, but if your murder mysteries are set in another state, in another city, maybe there's an independent bookshop there or a chain book shop that has local interest and for people who are looking for books set in a particular environment.
[00:06:54] So there's multiple reasons why they would want to have that. The reason it's important to have a relationship in my mind with an author, and I had plenty of relationships with lots of authors when I was managing bookstores, is creation of events is meant to draw traffic.
[00:07:10]For example, I did an interactive murder mystery where you had to come into my store and the whole idea was you would come in and you would get clues and every day there was a new clue, but every day at lunchtime, because that was the location of the store, that was when our traffic was highest. Every day at lunchtime, we had a featured local mystery author doing something, whether it was a reading, whether it was just a signing, depending on what that author was most comfortable doing. And I will say, if you're not comfortable doing readings as an author, don't do readings because you could probably ruin the potential for someone to be impressed by you.
[00:07:42] Maybe it's not a reading. Maybe it's a talk about the research that went into your characters, or maybe it's about why you decided to write these murder mysteries set in this particular local area. It doesn't have to necessarily be a reading. But we did events like that, and it was great for me because if I'm in contact with a local author and I know they're willing and available to come in, if I was looking for themes or looking for opportunities , this is a great opportunity because it's a mutually beneficial thing.
[00:08:11] The author has a chance to be in front of my customers, and my bookstore has the opportunity for that author to reach out to their network as well, to say, "Hey, if you want to see me in person, maybe you've even already bought my books, but if you want to just come see me in person, I'm going to be in here. I'll sign your previously purchased books. You don't even have to buy books from the bookstore."
[00:08:29] Because getting foot traffic into that store is so critical, and I know it's difficult. We're talking about this at a time when foot traffic and isolation is, we're in a slightly different environment right now <2020 COVID-19 quarantine>, so you've got to remember, I'm talking about not during social distancing times, but you know, crowds and, foot traffic is really what they're looking for.
[00:08:51] Matty: It seems to me as if for both the bookseller and the author, the time aspect is really critical in terms of weighing the cost benefit of the effort to get an indy book into a bookstore. And so for the bookstore, it's the fact that if it's an indy author, they probably don't have necessarily the same ease of catalog accessibility.
[00:09:14]If you want your book to be appealing to a bookstore so that they don't have to jump through hoops on some kind of one to one payment agreement, you have to have your book probably on Ingram, and if you put it on Ingram, you have to make it discounted and you have to make it ideally returnable for the bookstore. The whole returnable thing I want to put aside for a moment, but that's just to say that you have to make it administratively easy for the bookstore to get your book, and that means putting it on Ingram.
[00:09:43] And so it's a time logistics question. And similarly on the author side, you have to think, is it worth the time to invest, especially in an author event, to pack up your books, go to the bookstore, maybe it's hours away , you're driving, you're setting up, you're waiting for people to show up, and those are several hours you could either be trying to sell your books in a bookstore or writing. There's this logistical cost benefit weighing. And I can completely understand why bookstores can't take on the administrative work of making individual agreements with individual authors.
[00:10:17] Mark: Oh, for sure. Yeah, there is a lot of overhead, and to be quite honest, I do a lot of in person author events and I know that probably the majority of the events I do, I may be willing to say 75% to 90% of the author events I do, I do not earn back in earnings from the time that I invested. And similarly, the people putting on the event probably didn't earn back what they invested in it.
[00:10:41] Because setting up an event requires putting it in the calendar and then they either print posters or they post them or they send it out in their newsletter. When I was managing a Chapters, we actually had the shelves on wheels and we would roll them out of the way and set up chairs and have these big events and the lectern and stuff like that would come out and make announcements all day, that "if you're here at noon, we have so-and-so appearing."
[00:11:02] It's a lot of work, and it usually requires assigning at least one staff member. It depends on the size of the store. If it's independent, chances are it's the manager doing it themselves. But that takes a lot of time and effort. And I've even done in-person author events, and I'll give you an example of how this can benefit you in the long term. Because the thing you have to remember is there is nobody as knowledgeable or as passionate about your books as you are. And this is an opportunity to really connect with authors. I think the most common and popular and very useful marketing advice that most writers should pay attention to is mailing lists.
[00:11:40] Why is a mailing list important? A mailing list is important so you can connect directly with the people who love your books the best, and not leave it to Amazon or Apple or Kobo or Barnes and Noble, or any of those other retailers out there. And so similarly, that's where that time investment comes into play because you give your potential readers or potential new readers an opportunity to connect with you.
[00:12:03] And I will use a personal example. There was a brewery in Hamilton, Ontario, Grain and Grit, family-owned brewery, beautiful place. They have a little pop-up shop every Saturday from the summertime for two and a half, three months over the summer months when it was actually nice in this part of the world where you could actually be out on a patio.
[00:12:21] And they had this little pop-up fair. They had local vendors, they had fruit and vegetable vendors. They had local food concession people selling hot dogs or tacos or crafts. And for most of the summer, every Saturday cost me $20 to set up my little tent, my little pop-up, and I bought like the nice set tent that would protect my bald head from the sun or on some of those weekends from the rain that was coming down and keep my precious merchandise dry, and it was a 45 minute drive to get there, because I live in Waterloo now and I had to go back to Hamilton.
[00:12:50] I would drive in and I would set up and from 11 in the morning till 4:00 PM I was there with my books and some weeks I sold a lot of books. Other weeks I sold absolutely nothing. But I don't think of it in terms of a day-to-day, "Oh, I invested this much time and energy, I got this out of it financially." I think of the long-term benefit.
[00:13:12] I have a really deep relationship with Joe and Lindsey who are the owners of the brewery. They know me really, really well. Most of the staff know me. I mean, I'm there all the time buying beer. So they would know me by name anyway, but they also know me as an author, and so you never know how many sales I may be getting on Kindle, for example, for being there with my print books, or on Kobo or on Apple or on Nook, any of those platforms, because they mentioned, "Oh, you like ghost stories? Well, Mark has written, he's the author of haunted Hamilton, and he also has these thrillers and horror and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, he's done some non-fiction books. You should read his book that he co-wrote with Matty on writing short fiction.
[00:13:49] So you never know what sales have come from those relationships. And one of the things that I thought was most fascinating is I had this little card, and you can get these little coupon codes where people can download books for free off BookFunnel and they get the unique card and you can either sell them or give them away.
[00:14:04] And I had a guy who was there who had read an anthology I'd published with a traditional publisher 10 years earlier and he went, "Oh my God, you're the same Mark Leslie who edited North of Infinity II," and the next week he came and he brought a copy of it so I could sign it. I thought that was kind of cool--a book I published 10 years ago that he had, and he recognized me when he saw my signs. And he really likes science fiction. And he's like, "Well, what should I read?" And I was like, "Well, you know what? You're not familiar with my stuff. And most of my stuff is more like Twilight Zone-y than science fiction. So here, why don't you just take this ebook and download it and read it for free? You can download the free Kobo app, a free Kindle app, Apple app, and you can just go download it and read it while you're having a beer inside, then you can check it out." He did that. He downloaded the free book, started reading it.
[00:14:48] He came back out and bought the print copy. He goes, "I think I'm going to want to keep this book. Can you sign it for me?" Every single week, he came back and bought another book. Now again, this isn't a financial thing because I probably spent more money in time and energy and gas than I earned in sales.
[00:15:03] But just last week he read one of my free online stories and shared the review he posted it on Goodreads and it was a five star glowing review about just how much he loved it. And so I have this guy who I met in person, cultivated a relationship with, started off trying to give him something rather than sell him something, and he's become what is probably going to be a lifelong fan who is probably going to check out every single fiction title that I publish.
[00:15:32] But that's anecdotal evidence of someone I'm familiar with, but that's the reason why I do those events. I do them for the long term gain with a relationship that I can establish with a reader, rather than thinking about, "Oh, it cost me this much money in gas and this much money to buy the tent and then I had to order in my stock," and stuff like that. Thinking about the long term is why I would do something like that.
[00:15:55] That, and also I don't mind, I'm an omnivert. So, I will walk into a brewery and not talk to anyone except maybe the people that know me and say, "Hey, Mark, how you doing? You're buying beer again?" I say, "Yes, I am." But if I'm there at a table with my author books and people approach me, I'm more than happy to talk to them and I'm more than willing to be outgoing and just give what I can.
[00:16:18] Matty: Well, this is why I love working with you, Mark, because you bring that community networking perspective I totally agree, there's a value you need to attach to that community building and networking that can be as valuable as a book sale. But I think a key difference between an event like you're describing at the brewery where you had your table with a tent over it, is that at the end of the day, whatever you haven't sold, you just pack up into your car and you drive home.
[00:16:42] Mark: That's right. Yes.
[00:16:43] Matty: I think that the other really tricky thing about bookstores, which has pretty much made me decide that I'm not at the moment pursuing bookstore placement or bookstore events except for a couple of bookstores that I have relationships with and that have a consignment arrangement, is that returns are really tricky.
[00:17:03] Back in 2017 I did an event at a local bookstore, and I don't know who they thought I was, but they ordered a boatload of copies --
[00:17:13] Mark: I know people are getting excited going, "Yes, that's awesome." No, it's not.
[00:17:16] Matty: No, it's not awesome because a few people showed up. It was a talk I was giving. A few people showed up, and then, let's say they ordered 50 copies and then 48 of them went back and it costs me over a hundred dollars, in essence, setting aside the time I had spent and the effort to prepare the talk, just in terms of the dollars of what I owed.
[00:17:38] It was an expensive day for me, and I had a couple of learnings. One is that if I do do an event, I try to set an expectation with the store about what they can expect, because I had done a couple of events in the area and I had sort of tapped out my own pool of people. They had already been to other events on a similar talk.
[00:18:01] So if I had thought about it, I would have set an expectation with them that they probably shouldn't order 50 copies, but ultimately, I just decided to remove the books as returnable on Ingram. So on Ingram, which is really the only game in town for US bookstores anyway, and I'll ask you to speak to that.
[00:18:20] Mark: Globally it's pretty much the only game in town.
[00:18:22] Matty: Yeah, it's definitely the most prominent game in town, I'll say. And you can say that books are returnable by the retailer and need to be sent back, which is the most expensive option. They're returnable and they can be destroyed by the publisher, which is the less expensive option, or they're not returnable.
[00:18:40] And I ultimately just said, all my books is not returnable. Knowing that that was going to make them unappealing to bookstores by and large, unless they only wanted to buy a couple, which is what I was hoping they would do. And then the other thing is, in order to make them appealing to bookstores, you have to sell them at a deep discount.
[00:18:56] And so at the end of the day, I was making significantly less than a buck a book.
[00:19:01] Mark: Yes. In my traditionally published books, I make $2 a book, and that's a pretty crappy return, right? I mean, it's usually 8% is what I make. And so for indy authors who are used to 70% off their ebook sales, that's a really crappy return. Although I think you were undervaluing, your books should be priced a little bit higher in print because there are over 300 pages. The reviews you've gotten are stellar, and they sit perfectly alongside a similar, way higher priced books by traditional publishers, and the average customer, they don't know or care. They just want a good book. And so it meets all the criteria. So just remember that.
[00:19:39] Matty: That's my activity for the afternoon is I'm going to go out on the platform to raise the price of my books.
[00:19:43] Mark: And it's only a couple of dollars, but instead of you making chump change, you're actually getting closer to making a dollar or two per book, which helps supplement that return costs. Now, a couple of things to remember. Ingram is the world's largest wholesale distributor in the world. When I was a bookseller, I always placed orders from Ingram and pretty much any bookstore chain, independent, online has access to Ingram's catalog. And so if the book is not in stock, I could walk into any local bookshop here in Waterloo, Ontario, and say, "Here are the books from my favorite author, Matty Dalrymple. I'd like to order the whole Ann Kinnear series. Could you please order these books in print? Hey, I even have the ISBNs cause she's so cool, she sent them to me in her author newsletter." I can go to the library, I can request them as well. And they can order them through Ingram.
[00:20:29] Now library doesn't care about returnability because they never return them. A bookstore, if it's a special order, they don't care about returnability. If the book was only available through KDP Print, I call their extended distribution "pretended distribution" because it gives authors the false sense that the books are actually available to the retail and library markets.
[00:20:49] They are. But at such horrible terms that, there's short discounts and let's be honest, no independent bookstore wants to support the enemy, which is Amazon. I used to order books from Amazon if I could get them from Amazon cheaper than the publisher, which unfortunately in Canada was the majority of the time.
[00:21:05] So, ironically, I was doing special orders for my customer from Amazon just because of the ridiculousness. And back then, this was also when the Canadian dollar was higher than the American dollar. But the price has never changed from traditional publishers at the time.
[00:21:18] But I had a different mindset. I was interested in supporting my consumers, my customers the best that I could with the most margin for my store. That's what I cared about. And knowing that there's nothing I'm going to do is going to change, Amazon's still trying to put me out of business, I'm going to play it to my advantage if I can.
[00:21:34] But anyways, Ingram is a great place to order books from. When it comes to returnability, here's a couple of things that I've done. I made that mistake in 2004 when I first self-published, I made my books fully returnable cause I had been a book seller and I might have to, that's why they order them.
[00:21:48] I will order 50, because who cares? We can just return them. As a book seller, I have ordered non-returnable books for authors coming in, but I did it knowing I would hand sell those books myself because I loved the author so much.
[00:21:59] And so they may make exceptions if they know your books and love your books. They may go, "Oh yeah, no worries. We'll sell them. Cause I'm going to get Matty to sign them and I love her books." I had contests with my staff. I would have them pick a book every day that they had to carry around and they couldn't put it down until they'd sold it. Now again, it had to be a book they were passionate about and loved.
[00:22:17] And it didn't matter. I didn't pick it for them. They had to pick the book themselves because it was a book that they loved and they couldn't just sell it to anyone, they had to sell it to the right customer. I would even offer money back guarantees for some customers on recommendations. "If you can put this book down, I'll personally buy it from you, from my own money. Here's my phone number."
[00:22:35] Matty: That's fantastic! I could to a whole episode with you about ideas for bookstores to sell books.
[00:22:42] Mark: But you have to be passionate about it and that's why our relationship with the author is critical. Anyways, I made my book fully returnable and it was great because I could call up a Barnes and Noble and say, "In three months I'm going to be in town. I'd love to do a book signing. I know you're a downtown location. That probably means noon. I'm available this time on these days. My book is here. It's available from Ingram. It's fully returnable."
[00:23:02] They go ahead and order it. They bring in 10 or 20 copies. I'd go and maybe I'd sell half of them or three quarters of them. And then they'd return them. And it was normally not a big deal because I was making enough of a margin based on the print costs, et cetera, that even with the returns, I still came out ahead.
[00:23:19] When a head office buyer at Chapters, which is Canada's chain, found out about the book and liked me, and they went and ordered 300 copies, and they distribute them--like, you know, a bunch of stores got one or two copies, spines on a shelf in a store with 100,000 books. Nobody noticed them or saw them, nobody knew about the book, therefore, the books went onto the shelf. Very few people bought them. And then six months later they got returned and I got dinged for way more than I earned, that's when I stopped setting my books to returnable.
[00:23:48] But here's what I've done in collaboration with bookstores. If I want to do an event now, this is because, in my particular case, I do a lot of in person events and sometimes I'll do a library talk where they allow me to sell my own books. Sometimes I've got author tables at different comic cons, so it depends on what your business operation is.
[00:24:05] But if I'm going to do an event, now I know some of my books are returnable from traditional publishers. I can let them know about that and say, here are the ones that I have the rights to. You can order them from Ingram. Here are the ISBNs. They're not returnable, but here's what I'm going to do. As long as you don't over order, and I usually will recommend, like maybe only bring in 10, because chances are you're going to sell a few of them and then you might be stuck with them, is I offer to buy the books after the event is over, if the bookstore doesn't want to keep any in stock, cause sometimes they want to keep one or two just to say, "Hey, local author, they're signed. You should check them out. They make a great gift." I will offer to buy them from the bookstore to guarantee that they're not going to be stuck with the stock.
[00:24:43] So that removes that stress from them. I do ask because I know most bookstores have a 20 or 30% discount that they offer to their staff. I say. Could you give me your staff discount? And I know with a staff discount, they're still making margin. They're making less margin than they normally would, but they're not stuck with it.
[00:25:00] And I guarantee you the cost for them to return the books, the labor, the shipping, the packing material, all of the stuff to put into returns, they still lose more money on that than by giving me a 30% discount. And so what I'll do is they're going to get a guaranteed sale from me anyways.
[00:25:18] If we don't sell anything, and so that puts them at ease if they're willing. Again, not everyone's willing to do that, but if they're willing to do that, that makes it easier than the consignment model. Cause then I don't have to cart stock in, I may cart stock out or if it's local enough, I can say, you know, maybe keep the books for a week or whatever, and then I'll come buy the remaining stock at X amount of time.
[00:25:41] But then that way I have stock available that I didn't have to pay shipping on, that I didn't have to sit on for a long, long time. So that's a strategy you could potentially use. Again, it's a recognition of the business model that the bookstore uses.
[00:25:55] Matty: Yup. I want to use the opportunity to switch over to libraries because I don't want to give that short shrift. I'm going to start out with author events just to sort of quickly say that it can be difficult in my experience to get that first author event. But once you've gotten the event and you have established that you're going to approach it in a professional way and you've prepared and all the things that you want from a presenter when you as an audience member go to a program, it's fairly easy to get follow on activities. I'm sure this varies based on the library, but I've never had a problem selling books at an event after a talk at a library, and I've always been explicit with the person who's organizing it that this is my goal. My hope is that at the end I'll be able to sell books, and I've never had anyone say that I couldn't do that. I think that anyone who can get library events, why not?
[00:26:53] Because it's easier to gain momentum with them, in my opinion, than trying to line up bookstore events. What are your thoughts about that?
[00:27:01] Mark: Oh yeah, for sure. And the other thing you have to remember is when you do an event at a library, it's not just the people who show up that you need to pay attention to and be considerate and kind and respectful to, it's the librarians.
[00:27:13] It's the staff. It's the part time people that are walking around and shelving books. They're watching you. They're paying attention to how you behave and how you interact with people. They may recommend your book to patrons six months down the line, because I'm like, "Oh my God. Matty was in, and she was talking about her murder mysteries. And you were talking about looking for a good murder mystery. Well, she's a local author, and oh my God, I saw her talk. It's amazing. You've got to go check this book out."
[00:27:37] The other thing, and you said this at the beginning, and it made me think of it is, as a professional speaker. Liz and I have both done events and speaking engagements and I remember Liz saying this to me early on in our relationship, she said, the goal is to always be invited to the next party.
[00:27:53] It's true. When I finish a talk, when no matter where I'm giving a talk, I want someone in the audience to go, "Ooh, I want to book him for my next event." And that's the same thing is when you finish the talk at the library. The last time I did an event at the Toronto public library, it was like middle of February, blowy, windy, cold. And it was a topic that was supposed to be popular only in October, like ghosts and stuff. And what I loved is that's as I'm doing my talk, they had to keep bringing out stacks and stacks of chairs because more and more people just kept coming into this giant auditorium and it was kind of like, "Whoa, this is neat."
[00:28:30] So yeah, they're going to have me back. Cause I helped fill the room with a lot of people have given them something to do.
[00:28:36] So that's really, really important, is that aspect of it. And, with the library, sometimes the library has policies that will not let you sell. Other times they'll let you sell and other times they will partner with a local bookstore. When I launched my book Haunted Hamilton, I partnered with Bryan Prince Bookseller in Hamilton, Ontario.
[00:28:55] They had ordered my book and they did it all, which was even easier. All I had to do: I finished my talk, finished my presentation. I went over to the table at the back of the room. They handled the selling. I just signed books. That's way easier. And not only did I support the local library, I went in and did give a talk and filled the room, but I was also supporting a local bookstore.
[00:29:16] So you can support the local library and the local bookstore if they already have a partnership. I have something scheduled for the summer at Hamilton Public Library. And they said, you can sell your books, or we can bring in a bookseller. And I'd said, I'm happy to sell my books, but I'm more than happy if a bookseller does it and I can help provide them with stock, they can't or don't want to get from Ingram, like if they just want to do a consignment thing, I'll bring in some stuff if they want and see if they can sell it, and if not, I take it home. No big deal, right?
[00:29:44] Matty: The other aspect of libraries that I think is really underutilized by indy authors is library placement, and there were two things that I learned in the process of figuring out how to get my books out to people. One is that if you put your book out on a platform like Draft2Digital for eBooks or like Ingram for print books, it means that it's available to a library to acquire, but it doesn't mean that it's available for the library's patrons to acquire until the library acquires it.
[00:30:16] Mark: Exactly.
[00:30:16] Matty: I would put it out on these platforms and people would ask me, "Oh, can I get it at the library?" And I would say, Oh, sure, because I put it on Draft2Digital and Ingram, sort of discounting this interim step that the library has to then acquire it.
[00:30:28] Mark: A critical step is they have to be aware and acquire it.
[00:30:33] Matty: Yes. And, so when I finally realized that I would clarify that to people, you know, it's available to the library, but you as a patron might need to ask for it if you look in their catalog and it's not there already. But I also launched a campaign directly to libraries. And this was a ridiculously time-consuming effort, but I was curious to see what would happen.
[00:30:57] I started out by getting a database of library contacts. It was put together by a guy named Eric Simmons, and it's an Excel spreadsheet, it has over a thousand libraries in it. Probably more by now because I bought my copy of the database some time ago, and I'll include a link to where people can go for that in the show notes if they're interested in it.
[00:31:17] But I put together a form letter and it had all the information you're describing, like the ISBN and blurbs. My understanding from talking to librarians is that, if they're editorial reviews like Kirkus or if you've been reviewed in a well-known publication, that carries more weight with a library than a reader review would.
[00:31:37] Mark: You offer an Amazon review.
[00:31:39] Matty: Exactly. So I ended up sending that form letter personally to all 1000 plus people in this database, and all I was doing was changing, you know, "Hello, Mark," "Hello Jane." And it's the kind of thing that I would do if I was at the end of the day and I was just burned out and I just needed like 15 minutes of mindless stuff and it took me several months to get through the whole list.
[00:32:04] But my sales of books to libraries went up significantly.
[00:32:09] Mark: Imagine that, you invested time and effort, and it worked.
[00:32:13] Matty: And it's this sort of thing that if I averaged out the time I spent over what I made, it probably wasn't significant on a per hour basis, but it was an interesting experiment. I was approaching it as an experiment anyway.
[00:32:26] It was time that I wouldn't have spent doing anything else productive anyway. And I believe it got me known to the librarians, and even in a couple of cases, I got notes back, you know, "Oh, thank you for the email. I've put it on the list, I forwarded it to our acquisition department," whatever it was.
[00:32:41] So I don't know that I'd do that exact experiment again with the personalization in each case, but what tips do you have in order to help indy authors get their work in front of librarians in the most beneficial way for both parties?
[00:32:57] Mark: Yeah. Well, before I answer the question, I want to comment on that.
[00:33:01] And I think the fact that you have had libraries acquire your books, both eBooks and print copies, there is a sense of discoverability that you now have over me in the same section in that library. Your book is on the shelf. Mine isn't, your book is listed in their online catalog. Mine isn't. There are probably readers you never would have reached ever had that not happened and they could, one or two of them could become like that fan I talked about that I met at that in person event.
[00:33:33]That could in the long run have turned into a lifelong fan who continually requests your books from the libraries, meaning they're always going to stock your new books, and they're always going to have you front of mind like, "Wow, people keep coming in and asking for Matty's books."
[00:33:46] Well, they pay attention to those things. So patron request is critical. If you have a newsletter and your books are available through Ingram to the libraries through a place like Draft2Digital, let them know. One of the most common places that books can be available is through Overdrive, overdrive.com, you can even send to your newsletter people a link to the book on Overdrive so they can see that the book is available for libraries to purchase.
[00:34:11] And, I have to update the book because the book was released in December 2019, and at the time there was a ghetto of self-published books. There was the regular database and then every self-published book was in a ghetto secondary database the librarians often didn't even look in because it was filled with so much crap and 99 cent books. When eBooks first went into the library market, librarians were excited and bought really crappy books for 99 cents, then said "No, never again." And so Overdrive sectioned them off to keep people safe from this nastiness.
[00:34:40] However, Overdrive communicated to me three weeks ago now, maybe a month ago, that there is no longer a segmented database. It's all one. So now when they do a search, they will find you without having to go to the secondary database. So like they search on Google, then they don't have to go to Yahoo to find it. They stay on Google and they can find everything. So that's important.
[00:34:59] Matty: That's a game changer.
[00:35:01] Mark: That is a massive thing. And you know, from a Draft2Digital perspective, we have seen sales of eBooks to libraries go up from Overdrive since that change went into effect. No marketing or anything has been done. It's just the sales have gone up because it's easier to find it. Reach out to your readers, let them know, especially if you were in Kindle Unlimited and you trained people to read for free and they're mad at you because you're now publishing wide.
[00:35:27] Because, well, I don't want to pay for your books. I want to read them for free. Well, you can still read them for free and so can millions of other people who are not Amazon customers can now read them for free at the local library. Here's how easy it is for you, and you can use the free Libby app to download my ebook right to your smart phone. You don't even have to walk into a library to do that. You can get the ebook online and not even have to go in there.
[00:35:47] Matty: That was a game changer for me in terms of being a consumer of library books. When I want a book, I want instant gratification, and I found out I could often achieve instant gratification through the library apps with no cost.
[00:36:01] The other thing related to cost that I wanted to mention is that it was also a sort of late discovery of mine that you can charge more for a copy that's sent to a library. And so part of this experiment I did with sending the personal emails to the thousand librarians was that I listed my book that was available to libraries for $29.99 so this is an ebook that would normally sell for $4.99. But obviously the system realizes that you're giving up some income if you're making it available through libraries. And yet people were still buying it.
[00:36:37] I think that the money I was earning from library sales during that time was a combination of the personal outreach and the fact that the price was high enough. And I think the personal outreach helped make the higher price palatable for the people who are acquiring the book.
[00:36:52] Mark: But the other thing to remember is people might be having a coronary, saying, "Oh my God, she's selling her book for $30." Well, the comparable titles from major publishers in your genre are selling for $50, $60, $70, and $80, so to the library, that book has a really reasonable price.
[00:37:11] Even at 47% which is what you would've gotten if you sold the eBooks through Draft2Digital, even at 47% that's still way better than 70% of $4.99. I guess I'm not good at math in my head, but I'm pretty sure that 45% of $30 is somewhere in the $15 range as opposed to $3.50.
[00:37:33] And the reason that they have that is that that's the one-to-one licensing model for libraries, where the library can buy one ebook and loan it to one consumer at a time, which means in the long run, you may potentially could have earned more had you sold them one-to-one, but that's why the libraries were willing to spend more, because they know that it's a longer term investment that patrons can use indefinitely.
[00:37:54] There is an additional model, and Overdrive does have this and the library opts into this model, so if through Draft2Digital, you're submitting your books to Overdrive, be aware that you can go into your account and you can change it to also add cost per checkout.
[00:38:08] Overdrive and two or three of the other library platforms that Draft2Digital distributes to has a cost per checkout model option. In the case of your book, the library pays $30 for that book of which you get 47% of that. In the cost per checkout model, instead of the library curating the book and putting it in their catalog, what they do is they have a catalog that's based on all the books that are available, and they let their patrons decide. It's a lot more like Amazon where the inmates run the asylum, right? But the patrons decide what books they want. And the library sets a budget that says, okay, for this quarter we have $10,000 and we'll let our patrons just pick whatever they want.
[00:38:49] And that would be a case where the patron goes to the library and finds your book and my book, because the library didn't have to acquire it. It's just sitting there. But in the cost per checkout model, you make 10% so you would make $3 per sale. Now keep in mind that cost per checkout is a minimal payment, right?
[00:39:03] 10% as opposed to 47% or 70% from retail, or 60% from retail. But that's $3. You would make $3.50 on a retail sale, but every time a patron checks that book out, you get another $3. In the long run that can earn you lot money. Or let's say a book club wants to read your book because they heard you talk and you're going to come in and do a talk, and there's 30 people in the book club, or 12 people in the book club.
[00:39:30] The library would either have to buy 12 copies, which can be expensive at $30, or in the cost per checkout model they make it available to each patron. Let's say six of those people want to get the books from the library and the other people either borrow it from a friend or they buy the print book or they buy the ebook on some other retail platform.
[00:39:48] You're making for those six sales, six times three, that's $18 you made immediately. Well, not immediately, because you get paid a couple months later, but that's another option that is available. And ironically, well, you can't go direct to Overdrive, and if you did, you don't want to. There are a lot of authors who used to be direct and backed out. Cause you know Overdrive's a really great business-to-business company, not a great business-to-author company. If you come in through Kobo Writing Life, you don't actually have the option of cost per checkout. You do get 50% which is what you would've gotten if you were direct with Overdrive anyways, but there's no cost per checkout model.
[00:40:22] I do know that Draft2Digital, it's 47% rather than 50. But there is an additional cost for checkout model. So again, being aware of your options and choices as an author is really important because that can change how different libraries may want to interact with your digital assets.
[00:40:40] Matty: I think that that sort of flexibility is a great benefit for indy authors. The other thing, I think it's a great benefit for indy authors is that traditional publishers have not been treating libraries very well recently. And so in my letter to the librarians, I said, "William Kingsfield Publishers loves libraries, and we'll do whatever it takes to make it easy for you to add these books to your collection."
[00:41:04] So this is a case where being indy can give you a leg up just coming in the door because you're not bringing along the baggage that the traditional publisher is. For a while, one of the publishers was withholding new releases for a period of time, not making them immediately available to libraries, so you can capitalize on that as well.
[00:41:24] Mark: And that's where comp titles come into play. If you know who your comp titles are from the big publishers from in this particular case, Hachette, McMillan, right? If you know your comp authors from there, the libraries have to buy the books for $80 and they can only buy one book in the first six months of the book's release.
[00:41:42] They probably have 300 consumers who want to read books in that genre and that style. If your books are in the style and the library can look at you and go, "Wow, I can buy the entire Ann Kinnear series for a fraction of the price." And more importantly, from the librarian's perspective, they can satisfy the needs of their patrons, which is what they're there for. They're there to provide their local community with access to information and entertainment.
[00:42:07] Matty: Well, Mark, thank you so much. I think that your perspective, both as an author and a publisher and a bookseller, gives great insight into the bookstore side. And obviously you have developed great relationships with the libraries, so I think we have a lot to learn there. And there's plenty more in your book.
[00:42:25] Mark: Many more lies and the deceitful things that I say. Yes.
[00:42:29] Matty: It's all good. It's all good stuff. The Author's Guide to Working with Libraries and Bookstores. And can you tell our listeners where they can go to find out more about you and your work?
[00:42:38] Mark: Well, you can go to markleslie.ca. There are links to my books on most of the major retail platforms. You can also ask for any one of my books at your favorite local library. Just let them know that they are orderable in ebook, audio book, and in print book through Ingram and Overdrive.
[00:42:53] Matty: Thank you so much, Mark, this has been very helpful.
[00:42:55] Mark: Thanks, Matty.
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