Pursuing Excellence in Design and Technology - Raj Lal

Friday, February 2, 2007

Scott Meyers: Advice to Prospective Book Authors

Excerpt


If you deliver what you promised on time, all the whales in sales and
marketing that feed on the plankton of your words will develop a special
affection for you.


Remember, most authors are late with their plankton. If you distinguish
yourself by being on time, the whales take notice. That's important, because if
you're a sales rep with, say, 100 titles you're peddling to university
professors or corporations or buyers for Amazon or Borders, 100 titles on topics
you can barely pronounce (much less comprehend), which, say, 5 of those 100
titles do you push especially hard on your sales calls? Let's be frank, it's the
5 that you think will make you the most money. But there's something to be said
for goodwill, too, and I believe that authors who deliver on time make life just
a little easier, a little more predictable for the gamut of people involved in
sales and marketing, and those people are likely to try just a little bit harder
for the authors they like, for the authors who are trying to help them out.


A reliable author selling 5,000 copies a year can't expect the attention from
commission-based sales reps that an unreliable author selling 50,000 copies a
year can, but odds are that you'll be part of the masses of authors with
run-of-the-mill sales, so your real goal is to stand out from those masses.
Delivering on time can help you do that.


Delivering on time is good for your personal life, too. That's assuming you
have one, and by the time you're in the throes of completing your book, there is
a very good chance that you won't. For a great many authors (including me),
bringing a book to completion requires a tremendous expenditure of time, energy,
and concentration. It's common for it to displace almost everything else in your
life: friends, family, your "real job," etc. It stresses everybody, so it's in
everybody's interest to know when the stress will end. It will end when you
deliver your final manuscript, so it's good for both you and everybody you know
for that date to be the date you said it would be lo those many weeks or months
ago when you signed your contract.


(Incidentally, you may have noticed that the acknowledgements of almost every
book thanks the author's spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend, children, pets, etc., for
their tolerance of having been neglected during preparation of the manuscript.
Such comments aren't pro forma; they're sincere. Getting the damn thing done
typically does demand that you neglect almost everything else. On the upside,
the first glimpse of your freshly-printed darling goes a long way towards making
you forget about such things. Few things compare to the thrill of holding your
newborn book.)


This is especially relevant if one keeps in mind the remark by author Jeff
Ullman that authors should never keep track of how much time it takes them to
write a book, because if they do, they'll be able to calculate how much they
made per hour, and the result will almost certainly be depressing. I've also
heard from acquisitions editors that though they have a pretty good idea how
many hours it takes the average author to write a book, they never tell
prospective authors this information, because they fear it will scare them away.
(Sorry, I don't remember the number. I know that it's big, but having written
books of my own, that's hardly news. On the other hand, writing a book is also
intensely satisfying, and there's something to be said for a few thousand hours
of intensely satisfying work.)


Also remember that from a financial point of view, your goal is to maximize
your income, not maximize your royalty rate. If publisher A offers you a 20%
royalty rate and publisher B offers you a 10% rate, publisher B is still the
more profitable option if B can sell more than twice as many of your books as A
can. Of course, it's generally not possible to know which of two publishers will
be able to sell more of your books, much less by what factor, so you'll want to
listen carefully to your prospective publishers' marketing plans before deciding
whom to climb in bed with. In reaching your decision, remember that royalty
rates are only one piece of the compensation puzzle and that compensation is but
one aspect of the overall book-publishing experience. My advice is to try to
optimize the overall experience, not just the financial part.


Speaking of translations, I find that few things evoke quite the level of
giddiness as seeing a copy of your book in a foreign script. I, for one,
cherished my books in Chinese, and I continued to cherish them even after I
found out that they were actually in Korean.


If you write for profit, and if sales are important to you, then you can not
just leave promotion to your publisher. You need to be on the newsgroups
answering questions and gently (!) mentioning your book. You also need to be
ready to do book signings and other public appearances. If your publisher
doesn't set it up, do so yourself. Don't EVER knock anyone else's book, but
don't be afraid to mention your own book when asked for recommendations or for
guidance.



Be ready to support your book. That means constant attention to your
errata sheet, creating an internet (email/web) connection with your users and so
forth. And keep your book up to date.


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Yours Truly


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