Authors Can Save Barnes and Noble

Authors can save Barnes and Noble. All they have to do is sell their books. Imagine if Barnes and Nobles had an author in every day. Not to sit behind a table but to sell their books. Not an author signing but an author selling. The author sells their book and then signs it. They will never beat Amazon at their game nor Starbucks or small cafes. But what Barnes and Noble does have is a physical presence and they have books and they have real live authors.

I sold 24k of my last book at a single Barnes and Noble last year. An unknown book. I did it all by talking to people coming in the front door. Most people are looking to discover a new story and guess what there is an author there to tell them all about a new story. Their own. And they can sign the book. It is a resource a sleeping sales force that Barnes and Noble can unleash right away because authors have a vested interest in selling their own books.

Look not everyone wants to talk to author when they walk into a Barnes and Noble but one in four  do. I counted it out and I sell a book about every fourth person. People are interested in the story the author has to tell and then they are interested in the author. The biggest advantage Barnes and Noble has is there are real people in those stores and real authors selling their books would cost them nothing. I impacted the bottom line of many Barnes and Nobles after four hours of selling my book and the managers were grateful. My sales swung the total revenue for the day.

This is a no brainer. The resource is there waiting to be tapped. An army of authors who just want people to read their books. Somebody just has to invite them in. The customer gets to hear about a new book, have an interesting conversation, and then get a signed book. And the author sells their book and now has an active role in controlling their royalties. It is a win for the author and more importantly the passive art of selling books will be gone for good, replaced by a motivated sales force of people going to the customers...authors.

Finally, yes it is a cyber world, but we are human beings. And humans like to talk to humans. An author can demolish any online sales model with this simple model. Give the author cards with a cover of his book. The customer walks in. "Can I give you this card? It is actually a book I wrote... "

www.williamhazelgrove.com william hazelgrove

What I learned After 31 Barnes and Noble Signings

The first thing I learned is people just want to hear a good story. In fact they are dying to hear a good story that will take them out of their everyday life for even a minute. I cant tell you the amount of times people came in looking for another book and walked out with mine. Especially when they are looking for a book to give someone. Many times people would buy all three of my titles after I spoke to them about my newest book. It is as if once they had stopped and started to listen then all sorts of possibilities opened up.

The second thing I learned after 31 signings in two months is that people don't care about price. Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair lists out the door at 36 dollars and my other two nonfiction titles Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson and Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt lists out the door at about 32 dollars  On an average I would sell every signing 20-50 hardcovers. I can count on one hand the number of times people did not buy because of price. If the story is good and people want the book then people are willing to pay.

Women seem to buy more than men. They just do. Men are more reluctant to stop. Lets call it the hunter gather syndrome. Women are just more open to something new while many times men wont even stop to consider. Women think of others and are always considering what might make a great gift although many women buy for themselves. Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson was a surprise buy for many women who were caught up in the story of our First Woman President. Saying that, men did buy and  Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt was a favorite. I learned never to assume. Many times I was surprised at who was a reader of history and who was not.

People want something for free. Even if it is something small. It is an icebreaker if nothing else. I give them a small business card with the name of my book on it and that initiates a conversation.  It is nothing really but a reason to stop and if they don't buy they take it with them and there is a chance they may buy later. I have had many people circle back later and buy a book. Also I learned people you don't think will buy will surprise you every time. So I give everyone a card and I cant tell you the amount of times I was floored when someone I assumed would never buy my book would do it.

Authors are their own best salesmen. A signed copy of a book by the author is coveted. People like having their book inscribed to them or to someone they will give it to. Many times people told me they had never met an author before. I am literally surrounded by bestsellers when I am selling books and yet they just lay there and people breeze right past them. I know my book. I can talk to anybody about Al Capone, The Worlds Fair, Sally Rand, Edith Wilson or Teddy Roosevelt. The biggest advantage Barnes and Nobles has over Amazon is that it is full of human beings who interact with other human beings. People like talking to an author who is dressed up in a tie and a vest and who has a story to tell and will also listen to a story.  I can't tell you the amount of stories I have heard about Al Capone from people who bought my book.

Finally people seem to buy during the day more than the evening. If I arrived around eleven AM then there seemed to be a sweet spot right up to about 4PM. Usually I stayed in the store four hours. By then I usually ran out of books or out of gas. Evenings were hit and miss and yet I have been in a Barnes and Noble when it was absolutely dead and sold all my books. More books are better than a few. It is better to stack up fifty or a hundred books than twenty. At one Barnes and Noble outside of Chicago there were 65 books stacked on a single table and they all sold. More books implies a successful author who has come to the store to sign his or her latest.

 In the end I chewed through thirty packs of gum. Ruined three ties with coffee. I was probably asked where the bathrooms were fifty times where the calendars were twenty times and where the Starbucks was at least ten. I gave out four thousand cards and bumped into that many people. I sold over 600 hardcovers in the last two months of my three nonfiction titles It was hard work and I have a real appreciation for the Barnes and Noble employees and the managers who do this for eight hours straight. But it was also fun.

What I learned finally is that  it isn't price that sells books and it isn't having an online store at your fingertips. You just need to tell a good story. Believe me... people will listen.

William Hazelgrove

Selling Books in Barnes and Noble in the year 2017

Its amazing how many authors still sit behind their table. That is what happens when you arrive at your signing. There is a chair and a table and your books. There is also a sign announcing your book and a picture of yourself. So the author then takes a seat behind the table and waits for the hordes to arrive. They don't. Even NY Times Bestsellers don't pull in the people. Yes if you are Erik Larson you will get a crowd but even that can be a crapshoot. Selling books in the year 2017 is just different from before. If you don't have a television show then you better not sit in that chair.

I just had another signing and sold 27 hardcovers at 32.00 a piece. The reason I bring this up is that no one was there to see me or to find my book. The difference is I never sit down. The whole passive experience of selling books is responsible for many good bookstores going away. People come into a bookstore to look for a book, to look for a great story. I tell them a great story and out of three people one of them will buy. It is not hard to tell the story of our First Woman President, or how Teddy Roosevelt went to the Badlands after his wife and mother died on the same day or how Chicago held a fair in the worst year of the Great Depression and had to get rid of Al Capone ad the same time.

The author who sits behind his table will be asked if he knows where the bathroom is or if he knows where that new Harry Potter book is or if he knows where the magazines are. But he or she will not sell any books. You cant blame bookstores for not wanting to have book signings. Most authors just don't sell. Which is sad when writers are really story tellers and really all people want to hear is a really good story. And they are really happy to get a book signed by the author.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Writers Making Money off of Writers

You see it all the time. The success story and then the pitch. I became a Kindle Bestseller and so can you. So you click. Why not you don't want to miss out. And it is a testimonial and basically breaks it all down to  a system. Becoming a bestseller has nothing to do with the merit of your book but the merit of the marketing. And here is how you do it. Post until you die. Shoot an email to these people. Contextual advertising. Facebook. Twitter. Skype. Radio. YouTube. Here is the secret and for a mere 9.95 or 19.95 or 99.95 you can have my secret.

And sometimes you pull the trigger. Why not?  It is the wild west out there and no one knows what really works and these writers selling these programs know that too. The hungry must be fed and so writers turn to making money off of writers. It is pathetic in a way. Writers have little money. Most writers. And now there is another predator out there. And maybe the system worked for the person. Maybe they lucked out and the marketing or Internet Gods turned in their favor. But probably the only thing that turned in their favor was the idea to con other writers.

And it all assumes that the central idea of writing a good book is secondary. That telling a really good story might be the only way to sell lots of books. This is buried under the pyramid scheme idea that there is some secret nestled deep down in the ground that has more to do with computer algorithms than the merit of your book.

The sad truth is the only thing deep down in the ground is a treasure chest filled with the fools gold of people who think talent can be bought for 19.95. 

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

The Authorial Spammer

Authors are between a rock and a hard place now. They either are called spammers or they are called nothing at all. I just had a man ask if I would please quit spamming. Sure. Point taken. Spam can be defined as advertising anything  and certainly advertising a book can be spam. But here is the new authors dilemma. Quietly publish your book and wait for reviews or the Gods to make sure people know about your book or let people know and be accused of laying spam all over the Internet. But first some history.

I came up through traditional publishing. I was given an advance with Bantam and went to New York and had dinner with  my agent and publisher and sat back to wait for the two books to come out. I never spammed  a thing. I never went online. Yes it was there I just didn't care. I depended on the Gods and publishing to do the work for me. Some would say that was stupid but that was the way it was. Well publishing has changed and if it is for the better remains to be seen but the days of sitting back are way over.

The author today has to all the work. All of it. They have to get out there and push and with the bookstores slowly disappearing there is only one place for this and that is the Internet. Now one might not be comfortable with this. I know I am not. But all you have to do is go online to see thousands of authors screaming from the rooftops; READ MY BOOK. And that would be spam but does it matter? I had a man say to me the other day he didn't know I wrote books. This after a hundred posts about my book on facebook.

So the authorial spammer is here to stay. Some would say no no go out and talk to people and that is the way to do it. Authors only have so much time to chat and so many end up just leaving a calling card as the authorial spammer. You always have a choice. Be the quiet literary author waiting for the Gods or start yelling from the rooftops. I did the first one for years and paid a price.

 It's time to get the megaphone out.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

The Powers That Be: Marketing Books in the Eat What You Kill World

So now nobody knows how it works. Used to be the old send out review copies and get reviews in the trades and start the buzz and bookstores order up and people see your book or they hear about it in a review in a newspaper and there was some order to the process. And this all started with an advance and a publisher who was going to build you up.  Gone with the Wind in the new world of the internet and the new norm of Eat What You Kill.

And it is not so different from all those grads sitting at home because they cant find a job. Those jobs are gone too. The same digital revolution obliterated business as we know it and publishing got the double hit of the ipodifcation of books. So for the author the marketing became make it up as you go. You might send out review copies and you might not. You may just go straight to the internet and upload your book and hang out on the kindleboards. Or you may look for that traditional publisher and bank on the fact that some people still want to hold a book between their sweaty hands.

But the point is the rules are all gone. As a publicist said to me: you have to do everything now and as a web designer said to me: you basically take on the whole world. So you either sell or you don't. That is it in the rudimentary nubby bottom line. You can upload all you want but if nobody buys does the tree really fall. Probably not. And so you have to dig in and do those a million and one things and hope one of them hits the bell.

In the meanwhile,  you just keep pumping in those nickels and playing the slots. It works in Vegas. Sometimes.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have

Outsmarting the Whole World

Hitting the Internet is now akin to taking on the whole world. Take marketing a book. You are literally competing against the noise of the world. The rarefied channels of the literary world have become so narrow that most of us operate in the larger world where the biggest megaphone wins. This is what is so daunting about selling anything on the Internet. You are not competing with the store down the street or the stores in your town or the stores in your country. You are competing with the stores of the whole world.

And you know it when you hit that wide open market where everyone is selling. When you start a book you don't think of selling. I'm sorry but you don't. In fiction it is a vision, an emotion, if not a dream. Then you enter the wide open market of the Internet. Now all you think about is selling. And there is a million ways to do it and that paralyzes you. I literally get a headache from the multiplicity of avenues that present themselves. Even the big publishers have to pick and choose but as a book publicist said to me....you have to do everything.

So you have this large gaping mouth of the Internet but the question is how to fill it. And there comes your first inkling that you are trying to move this mammoth rock. That you as an individual have less than the chance David had against Goliath. A slingshot looks pretty good about now. But you don't even have that. You have your keyboard and you're endless queries and then you have your God given ability to do what is critical and not get lost on exercises.

Because if you do get lost on just working to work you are finished. Bots do that much better than you and they never stop. Your only chance is to outsmart the forces that be. In other words...you have to outsmart the world. Nothing less will do.

http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Man-William-Elliott-Hazelgrove/dp/1938467582/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359822181&sr=1-4&keywords=rocket+man

 

 

“Rocket Man is the funniest serious  novel since Russo’s Straight Man.” Chicago Sun Times

 

The Modern Writers Challenge

You really aren't sure how to approach a new book coming out anymore. It has changed that much. Maybe you are at the top of the food pyramid and so it is not a great concern. A publisher has paid you enough to ensure they will push like hell and make your book a success. But for the rest of us each book is a race and you aren't quite sure each time if you are even on the right track or how hard to run. Because it is daunting.

The Social Media alone can bury you. Hopefully you believe in your book because you will need every once of your belief to get you through the machinations of having to sell. You have to sell so you can make a living and continue to publish. And you are taunted daily by the success stories so thrilling in their pluck and audacity and bestsellerdom. You feel a bit like a man with a sling shot taking on a Giant.

How can you fight the jaugernaut of mass culture and make your book known? This then is the problem confronting every author. And some authors go to great lengths. Some authors appear at Carnegie Hall and sell it out. Some authors become pundits. Some become actors. And there is nothing new under the sun. Do you not think Hemingwayw as cognizant of news worthiness as he fished off Bimini or hunted in Africa? You bet. His exploits were truly measured against his legend and his legend sold books. And he knew it.

So we have our work cut out for us. You knew when you signed up to be a writer there would not be one easy moment. There would never be a I made it. Its not that way. Even when you get an advance it is merely a bet that you will sell...not a guarantee. The awful truth is it all comes down to you and you alone.

And that is all.

www.billhazelgrove.com