After posting a 25% increase in sales last October over October 2016, sales in the adult trade group settled down in November. According to AAP’s StatShot report, adult book sales fell 2.2% in November compared to a year ago. Sales of mass market paperbacks declined 36.7% and e-book sales dropped 5.1%. Downloadable audio sales, however, jumped 45.2% in the month.
In the first 11 months of 2017, sales of adult books were up 2.9% over the comparable period in 2016. The downloadable audio category had the biggest gain, with sales up 28.0%. Among the print segments, hardcover sales were up the most, by 11.0%. E-book sales from reporting publishers were down 5.4%.
In the children’s/young adult category, November sales were down 8.2% compared to November 2016, with hardcover and e-book sales particularly weak, down 17.3% and 20.0%, respectively. For the first 11 months of 2017, sales in the category declined 3.0% compared to 2016, with only board books posting an increase, with sales up 5.1%.
For the 1,212 publishers who report to AAP, sales were down 5.4% in November, but up 1.1% compared to the same periods in 2016.
Facebook has been under serious scrutiny lately as more is revealed about Cambridge Analytica’s use of the social networks’ user information. Cambridge Analytica, a third party data brokerage firm, and Facebook are now the subjects of multiple investigations for the improper use of user data to target political advertising on Facebook. Since the revelation, Facebook has lost stock value, many users are deleting their accounts, Mark Zuckerberg has been in closed door meetings to help determine the networks’ next moves and he will be testifying before Congress. Not to mention he’s taking shade from Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, claiming that Facebook cannot possibly be putting the needs of the consumer first when the consumer is the product they are selling.
Facebook is shutting down its Partner Categories program where brands use third-party data to deliver ads to highly specific groups of people. Partner Categories, which pulled from data aggregation partnerships with companies like Epsilon and Acxiom, allowed advertisers to target customers based on behavior that happened outside Facebook. It’s the reason you can target cat owners in the Bay Area who make more than $100,000 a year.
Where is all that data coming from? Grocery store loyalty cards, warranty purchases, you name it. Individuals’ data is auctioned off to the highest bidder and it is then used to sell products to them. Now, marketers are trained to target their desired audience in this exact fashion.
Will Facebook’s Changes Affect Ad Buyers?
This move may have accelerated publishing companies’ ability to sell hard against Facebook, especially in the brand categories that were relying heavily on this data. A few news outlets have reported that some categories will be more affected than others — such as entertainment companies, retail or consumer packaged goods, and automotive. Small and local businesses are also most likely relying on Facebook advertising to reach their exact target customer.
What’s the Opportunity for Publishers?
Beyond the need to ramp up their first party data collection efforts, sales teams should be jumping for joy at the opportunity to discuss the latest Facebook changes with current and potential clients.
Distrust of Facebook is at an all time high (that article was written before the Cambridge Analytica scandal). Small, medium and large businesses have flocked to social media for its targeting and reach capabilities in the past few years, which is why Facebook and Google own 63% of the digital advertising spend. So what would it mean to your business if suddenly even 5% of that was up for grabs?
So where should you start?
First of all, do you have a list of clients, lost business or prospects that you’ve seen running ads on social media? Start there. Likely they’ve heard about what’s happening with Facebook, but are unsure how it will affect their targeting capabilities and overall advertising strategy.
Secondly, make sure you are well versed on what exactly is happening with Facebook, as it truly is changing everyday. Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean Facebook isn’t a good place to spend your marketing dollars — so don’t go into a meeting ready to trash the social media giant either.
Ask questions. How are they spending their marketing dollars on social media right now? What concerns do they have about Facebook shutting off third-party data targeting? Find out what their concerns are so you can better formulate a pitch.
Next, be ready to tout your own audience and targeting capabilities. One of the draws of Facebook advertising is that business can reach exactly who they want when they want. Share how you can do the same for your niche or market. Brag about the trust you have from your loyal consumer base and first-party data. Hopefully your company has the capability to use your first-party data for off-site ad targeting. Facebook’s elimination of Partner Categories doesn’t prevent you from bringing your own data to their platform and targeting users on behalf of marketers.
Finally, craft a proposal that touches on their concerns, their goals and possibly one that even continues to use Facebook advertising but maybe to a lesser extent. Make sure you have the data to back it up. Encourage a diversification of their marketing spend, especially while the social media space is so volatile.
Salespeople should be setting up meetings with their clients and prospects today to discuss how they are handling the changes Facebook is making with its data. If some smaller businesses haven’t heard about Facebook’s recent announcement about discontinuing its relationship with major data providers, all the better. You can sound like the expert when you tell them.
Use this as an opportunity to improve your consultative relationship with your clients and prospects — likely, they’re confused and struggling with the changes, too. Position yourself as a trusted partner to help guide them. Audience relationships are more important now than ever before. Talk to your clients, show them how you do business. You could be that knight in shining armor they’ve been waiting for.
My services can provide you with: editing, design, layout and a lower price than the big companies and I have the experience 29+ years to help you become a successful Independent Publisher!!!
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When you look around at the most beloved books of the past decade, the books that seem destined to be classics, one thing becomes clear:
Small presses are amazing.
Whether we’re talking about the more literary side of things (like Citizen or Grief Is A Thing With Feathers, both published by Graywolf) or weirder sci-fi projects (like Subterranean Press raising a $72,000 Kickstarter for John Crowley’s translation of The Chemical Wedding), some of the coolest things happening in the book world are happening by way of the small press.
Some of the coolest things happening in the book world are happening by way of the small press.
We’re also seeing some pretty crazy sales numbers in the indie book world, supporting the idea that small presses are riding a huge wave right now. Between February 2014 and May 2016, the percentage of eBook sales attributed to the Big Five publishers fell from just under 40% to below 25% In that same window of time, indie publishers went from producing under 25% of eBook sales to being responsible for just below 45%.
While the burst of small press publications we’ve seen over the last 10 years or so is undoubtedly a good thing, one thing that often gets overlooked is just how it came to be — and more specifically, how modern self-publishing made it all possible.
To understand all of this, you need to know what makes modern self-publishing different than the self-publishing of 10 years ago.
How Self-Published Authors Became Book Marketing Experts
In recent history, the only real marketplaces for books were controlled by major publishers. If you were an author who wanted to sell copies of your book, you needed major bookstores to carry it, and that could only happen if you went through a traditional publishing house. Self-publishing, as a result, was reserved for people who didn’t care about selling copies.
With the rise of the internet, and Amazon in particular, self-published authors found a way to sell books that didn’t involve negotiating with bookstores. And when a real sales channel opened up, dozens of book marketing strategies soon followed:
There was suddenly a premium on having a good author website, where you could blog or give away free writing to build a massive email list of readers.
Authors like Mark Dawson began using Facebook Ads to sell books, A/B test covers and to drive signups to their email lists.
Amazon released their own advertising platform (multiple, actually) that authors were able to use to boost their sales.
Authors began compiling “street teams” of their friends and colleagues, who could seed their book with reviews and social shares to get the ball rolling when a book debuted.
The position of “Freelance Book Publicist” was, for the first time, not just a job title you made up to sound employed.
Self-published authors were approaching book marketing the way a startup might approach marketing their company, and they were killing it.
Self-published authors were approaching book marketing the way a startup might approach marketing their company.
It didn’t take long for the success of self-published authors to trickle into the small press world. After all, most small presses are started by a couple of friends who’d like to publish other writers’ work — typically with the same processes self-published authors use.
From Self-Published Authors To A New Generation of Presses
Literary magazines, anthologies, and full-blown presses start popping up at an astounding rate, and some pretty amazing writing was published as a result.
The Adroit Journal, one of the most popular literary journals in America (especially among young writers), was started by a group of teenagers and originally published using a print-on-demand publishing service.
Through some popular events (like letting writers submit unlimited amounts of work to the journal for one weekend), they were able to create a massive subscriber list, and laid the groundwork for an insanely successful journal.
Sibling Rivalry Press, the amazing small press that published Ocean Vuong’s first chapbook, Burnings, uses Ingram — one of the biggest platforms used by self-published authors for book distribution — to distribute their books, and has built a massive community by publishing multiple literary magazines under the Sibling Rivalry umbrella.
And countless small presses use ecommerce platforms like Big Cartel, Shopify, and Squarespace to sell books directly to their readers — something that was previously only done by people who couldn’t get traditional publishing deals, i.e. self-published writers. Here’s an example from the amazing Two Dollar Radio, who recently published Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and host their entire store on Shopify:
All of this points to the same thing. What modern self-publishing has done — whether we’re talking about the small presses listed above or the new generation high-quality hybrid publishers like Bookouture and Mascot Books — is democratized our ability not just to publish books, but to market and sell them.
Modern self-publishing has democratized our ability not just to publish books, but to market and sell them.
As a result, some of the best writing of the last century has been published and championed by some of the coolest presses ever put together.
The deadline for entering books for the 2018 PubWest Book Design Awards contest is Thursday, April 19, 2018.
We are offering a four-for-three deal: submit three books, and a fourth entry is free!
NEW CATEGORY! Children’s Book – Wordless A children’s book in which the narrative is told solely through illustrations.
The PubWest Book Design Awards are effective tools for marketing your books, and for recognizing your design and production staff and suppliers. We will publicize the winners to the publishing media and showcase them at the 2019 PubWest Conference, February 7-9, 2019, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The grand prize winner of the Design Awards will receive a complimentary pass to the 2019 conference.
Please submit your books as soon as possible. All details on the awards and entering can be found here.
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