What Will They Want to Read Tomorrow? Anticipate Trends with “Top Searches.”

Books, E-books, Fiction, Nonfiction, Publishing, Writing No Responses »
Oct 162011

George Bernard Shaw was an ardent socialist.

 

 

 “If you want to see how a society thinks, look at what it searches for.”

—George Bernard Shaw

Allow me to slightly rewrite Shaw’s wise counsel: “If you want to know what a society is interested in reading about, look at what it searches for.”

As writers (and publishers) of nonfiction books, magazine articles—even novels—it behooves us to be on top of whatever is about to break into the collective consciousness.

In other words, to be able to predict what a majority—or at least a large segment—of us are going to be interested in next week, next month, or next year.

 Easier said than done

I don’t know about the rest of you, but it seems to me that, by the time I notice a trend exists, it’s already fading.

So how do you figure out what next will be hot?

Check out the “Top Searches” lists supplied for free by many Internet search engines. Most of them keep the lists updated and archives of past lists are even available.

The searched-for items that appear on each list are undoubtedly what people are interested in at the moment.

However, these subjects may be old news by the time you do your research and write about them, so look for subjects that are just beginning to show up here and there on these lists. Also check the archived lists to see what subjects have exhibited staying power.

Here are some places to start:

 Google Trends

On Google Trends, you can get a list of the 20 current hot searches or reset the date to see what was hot on any specific day going back to May 15, 2007.  

You can also do a keyword search that returns a graph that shows search volume and news reference volume.

When I searched on “Kindle,” the graph went back to 2004, which I assume was the first mention of Kindle by Amazon.com. It then flat-lined through 2005, 2006, and most of 2007, spiking when the first Kindles became available late in 2007.

After a lackluster 2008, search volume steadily climbed in 2009 to the present with a huge spike coinciding with the recent release of the Kindle Fire.

 Yahoo! Buzz

Yahoo Buzz lists its search engine’s current top 20 searches as well as the current top 20 “Movers.” Movers are terms that are currently spiking.

As I write this—on Sunday, October 16, 2011—Movers include “401k Plans,” “9 9 9 Tax Plan,” and “Bankruptcy Protection.” Hmmm. Wonder why.

 Menu choices across the top of Yahoo Buzz’s home screen deliver the current top 20 searches under the categories actors, movies, music, sports, TV, and video games.

Want to know what’s fading? Click on “Decliners” for a current list of the 20 terms that are most rapidly declining in popularity.

 Bing

Go to Bing Images to see the latest trends in what images people are searching for.

 Technorati

Technorati doesn’t have a great deal to do with Internet searches, but nothing much is more current than the blogosphere. Spend some time on Technorati to keep up on what is popular in the world of bloggers.

 By the way, George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both the Noble Prize for Literature and an Oscar. We should be so talented.

 Just a write thought.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 2:35 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Book Pricing, Finding the Sweet Spot

Books, E-books, Publishing 3 Responses »
Aug 182011

E-books range from $.99 to $12.99. What's the right price?

At Quill Driver Books we put a lot of thought into the pricing of each title we published.

Here is an abbreviated list of things we considered:

• How big we anticipated the market for the title would be. A small, concentrated market may support a higher price because there are fewer books for those who are in this market to choose from. Large general markets may require a competitive price.

• The buyer demographics: Is this book for poor, starving writers or successful business people?

• How are competing titles priced? The last thing we wanted to do was to compete on price, but we knew the retailers were sensitive to pricing and might not stock a book they felt was overpriced.

• What the demand for the book would be. We felt we could get a couple of extra bucks for a book written by an author with a huge platform. Duh.

• What it cost us to print the book.

With all these factors—and more—to consider, we likely missed the optimum price, that is, the price that would return the largest profit to us. This price is often called the “sweet spot.”

For instance, if we priced a book so we netted $3 on each copy and sold 10,000 copies, we would make $30,000. But, if we priced it with $6 in it for us and sold 40 percent less, or 6,000 copies, we would make $36,000, a 20 percent increase in profit. Of course if the price that returned $6 each cut our sales to 3,000 copies we would make only $18,000.

Until a title sold down and we went back to press on it, we were stuck with the price we set since it was printed on the back cover.

I say, we “likely” missed the optimum price because, how could we ever know unless we published the identical book at different prices in identical parallel universes?

You can see why we gave it so much thought.

Enter E-Books

One grand thing about e-books is, since there is no printing involved, once edited, designed, typeset, and formatted, the cost of an e-book is zero. Another is that the retail price a publisher sets can vary day to day.

But, with these two advantages, what does a publisher need to be concerned about when pricing an e-book? Vook, the innovative company that melds books with video, has issued a splendid white paper that goes a long way toward answering this question. I’ll let you in on what it has to say in an upcoming blog.

Clever, Clever

Crown Publishing is rushing out a $.99 e-book on Rick Perry, the latest candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination. The book is actually one chapter from The Victory Lab a fall 2011 release by Sasha Issenberg. According to Crown, Victory will present a broad coverage of electoral strategies and the motivations behind the voting decisions people make and isn’t solely about Perry. This is doubly clever, because the $.99 book will sell on its own and act as an ad for the whole book. Why not consider doing this with a chapter of one of your books? If you’re an author, suggest this to your publisher.

Just a write thought.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 5:21 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Will Books Go the Way of Music CDs?

Books, E-books, Publishing, Writing 2 Responses »
Jun 072011

According to a recent USA Today article, retailers such as Best Buy, Target, Barnes & Noble, and Wal-Mart are cutting back on their CD selections. A Best Buy spokesperson is quoted as saying, “As people buy less, we stock less.” Sounds like a self-fulfilling cycle to this observer, but, sadly, one that isn’t likely to be reversed.

There’s more bad news….

In 2010, CD sales fell 19% and are down 8.8% this year.

Pretty dire, huh?

But wait.

Downloaded albums sales are up a healthy 16.8% and downloaded tracks are up 9.6%. Overall music sales are up 1.6%.

Yep, you read right, music sales are up.

Music isn’t going away. Albums aren’t going away. And according to Dave Bakula of Neilson, a company which tracks weekly sales statistics, “CDs are going to be around for a long time.”

So, to summarize what’s happening:  

Downloads are growing, brick and mortar store sales are slipping, online sales of CDs are strong. Music is a growing industry.

(By the way CDs are enjoying the “long-tail” effect: Amazon.com offers 4,000,000 CDs. Great for lesser-known songsters.)

Should we look for the same things to happen in books?

Yes.

The future is bright. Keep on writing and publishing.

Just a write thought.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 9:43 am Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Do Book Publishers Need Distributors?

Book Marketing, Books, E-books, Publishing 1 Response »
May 312011

I’m fresh back from New York City and the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Publishing University, which they refer to simply as “Pub U.”

The Pub U is held on the two or three days just prior to the huge, annual Book Expo America.

If you are a book publisher or if you plan on publishing, attending both makes a great one-two educational punch. I’ve been in the book biz for 17 years or so, and I learn something new from these two events every year. And, of course, networking is perhaps the most valuable component of both.

My presentation at Pub U was part of a panel that discussed the necessity of a publisher using a distributor or a wholesaler to get his or her books to market. The two others on the panel were Richard T. Williams of Small Press United, a book distributor, and Craig Pollock of Ingram Book Company. Ingram is the 800-pound canary of the book wholesale industry. Nancy Stewart, also of Ingram, moderated.

In the book industry the terms “distributor” and “wholesaler” are not identical. A distributor contracts with a publisher for the exclusive right to supply a publisher’s books to the greater book trade, including retailers, wholesalers, and libraries. A wholesaler sells into the same book trade but doesn’t require exclusivity.

A distributor is supposed to supply active and aggressive sales representation on behalf of the publisher’s titles. This sales representation can get watered down for a number of reasons, including the fact that many distributors represent too many publishers to give first rate attention to any but the largest and most successful ones. A distributor’s staff may not like a title or see its potential, or may not feel the publisher is doing enough marketing for it and therefore may not get behind it.

The distributor usually retains 25% to 30% of net sales for its services.

 Below is a link to the PowerPoint from my talk. The first two slides explain this a bit more.

Steve Mettee Look Before You Leap IBPA-2011 

I think with brick and mortar bookstores accounting for less and less of the market for books, a publisher should think twice before signing with a distributor. That was the gist of my presentation.

What should a publisher do with the extra margin retained when not using a distributor? Spend the money on marketing the books.

 Just a write thought.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 3:29 am Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Book Publishing Is a Whole 'nother Business

Book Marketing, Books, Promotion, Publishing 1 Response »
Apr 172011

The book business is more granular than other businesses. Books are sold one copy at a time.

Hook someone on your brand of toothpaste or a certain wine and you’ll get sale after sale. Hook someone on your book and the best you can hope for is that he buys copies for gifts—and that he has lots of friends—or that he talks it up so others will be prompted to buy a copy.

Here is a quote I stole from a recent edition of Shelf Awareness, a great daily newsletter for those interested in bookselling:

Margaret Atwood (Image from Wikipedia.)

“When people say publishing is a business—actually it’s not quite a business. It’s part gambling and part arts and crafts, with a business component. It’s not like any other business, and that’s why when standard businessmen go into publishing and think, ‘Right, I’m going to clean this up, rationalize it and make it work like a real business,’ two years later you find they’re bald because they’ve torn out all their hair. And then you say to them, ‘It’s not like selling beer. It’s not like selling a case of this and a case of that and doing a campaign that works for all of the beer.’ You’re selling one book–not even one author any more. Those days are gone, when you sold, let’s say, ‘Graham Greene’ almost like a brand. You’re selling one book, and each copy of that book has to be bought by one reader and each reading of that book is by one unique individual. It’s very specific.”

                          —Margaret Atwood in an interview with the Globe & Mail

Canadian Margaret Atwood is a poet, novelist, and short story writer. She has been described as a “scintillating wordsmith.”

As challanging as we find the book biz, many publishers—and authors—manage to thrive. My guess is, excellent writing is the best place to start.

 Just a write thought.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 10:15 am Tagged with: , , , , , ,
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