The ultra-low barriers to entry into Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, have prompted many to ask: “Why not write an article about myself?” Whether or not this is a good idea depends on who you are. Most Wikipedia users don’t care to read about Joe from Boise’s affinity for black jeans and Springsteen’s early work. But what if the person in question were the author of a book—perhaps a book with a brand-new Web-savvy marketing campaign? Unfortunately, it takes more than authorship to get respect at Wikipedia. But it may still be able to give you a push.

Wikipedia has a conflict-of-interest policy, which it implements rigorously, and legions of devoted Wikipedians monitor new articles posted on the site. They professionalize and consolidate information and look for potential abuse, normally deleting over one thousand articles a day. Blatant hoaxes and utter nonsense are axed by means of “speedy deletion.” More contentious articles are listed in “Articles for Deletion,” Wikipedia’s log of entries which are under scrutiny and likely to be deleted. Articles for Deletion is a sort of forum in which users weigh in on whether they think the article should stay or go.

If you decide you want to use Wikipedia to get your name out there as an author, here are some guidelines. Abiding by them will help you avoid ending up on the bad side of Wikipedia’s argus-eyed (and potentially grudge-holding) users:

• Notability: This is the big one. In other words, why would anyone unaffiliated with the subject of the article be interested in reading it? What’s important about the subject? Did it make an important contribution to its field or to history? In order to make your articles “notable,” factual information is a must, along with significant awards or recognition the subject has received. The arbiters of WikiJustice are sensitive to information intended solely for marketing or PR. Case in point: the blocked adjustments made to technical articles by someone commissioned by Microsoft. MyWikiBiz.com was also forced out of Wikipedia for offering to write articles for clients for a fee (they’ve now founded Centiare.com, a wiki site which encourages businesses to write entries about themselves). In other words, new entries have to demonstrate that they exist for some reason other than convincing someone to buy something—even if the “something” is really good and interesting of itself.
• Verifiability: All information in the article should be backed by valid references. Entries with no sources are far more susceptible to being tagged for deletion. Wikipedia discourages “independent research.”
• Neutral Point of View: It shouldn’t be apparent that the author of the article has an affinity for or personal connection to the subject. Advertising is anathema to Wikipedians. Articles with the slightest scent of marketing are eligible for speedy deletion. Wikipedia also closely tracks the usernames and IP addresses which add information, and goes so far as to identify suspected “sockpuppets,” or multiple usernames used by one writer to make his/her claims seem more valid. It’s not technically a problem to write a bunch of related articles under one username, but doing so may throw up red flags and subject your articles to closer scrutiny.

When considering whether to create an article, remember that any information you provide, once posted, is subjected to the often cruel world of universally editable online content. It’s a good idea to periodically check an article’s content to be sure someone hasn’t made incorrect edits which misrepresent you or your work.

While there are many things to avoid, creating a valid entry in Wikipedia about yourself or your work is not impossible. The best way to avoid offending the Wikipedia ethic is by having a good attitude and a sincere interest in expanding the catalog of uncompromised information that Wikipedia strives to be, rather than trying to blatantly market yourself or your product via the project. And of course, given the Wikipedia community’s inimitable style, a notable, neutral, verifiable article will impress them a lot more anyway.

To very loosely paraphrase the Bard, what’s in a bestseller?

That which we call a New York Times bestseller by any other name (such as “underground bestseller,” or “Amazon bestseller”) would smell as sweet—well, maybe not.

As the number of books published each year continues to skyrocket upwards, we face an onslaught of “bestseller” claims. We see the word on marketing materials and press releases, on book covers and websites, and, at Greenleaf Book Group, on many submission forms each week. If this bestseller crown has not been awarded by one of the major publications, such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, what kind of bestseller is it? The publisher may be partaking in sensationalist marketing—or just a stretch of the truth.

Whether the claim will benefit them or not depends on whom the publisher is targeting with this information. If the publisher intends to woo the consumer with bestseller claims on the book cover, yes, there’s some chance it could help—although once your happy customer discovers the “bestseller” isn’t as well-known as she thought, there may be repercussions. However, and this is a HUGE “however,” a trumped-up claim of bestseller status could seriously hurt that publisher’s reputation in the eyes of wholesalers, distributors, agents, and other parties in the tight-knit publishing industry, and that harm could result in books not getting on shelves. Note to all small publishers making larger-than-life bestseller claims: you’re not pulling the wool over the industry’s eyes.

Industry types have access to such fabulous tools as Nielsen’s BookScan to research your sales history, and they will certainly consult them (amongst other resources) to corroborate your claims before making a decision to support your title. BookScan is a point-of-sale reporting service thought to reflect sales from approximately 70 percent of booksellers nationally. BookScan uses weekly data from over 6,500 retail, mass-merchant, and non-traditional outlets in combination with a statistical weighting methodology to present the most accurate information on sell-through available to the publishing industry. Certain notable accounts are missing, including Wal-mart, Sam’s Club, airport bookstores, and Christian book retailers. Still, BookScan is a great gauge of sell-through, and as such, it is becoming increasingly influential in how sales are measured and bestseller lists are compiled.

While BookScan offers great insights into overall sales numbers and trends, it is not used exclusively (or sometimes at all) in building the prestigious bestseller lists. The holy grail of bestseller lists is the one published by the New York Times. The methodology behind how this list is built is kept rather hush-hush. But most reports on the subject agree that the New York Times sends out a list of preselected trade titles (meaning titles you would find in a bookstore, not the boring academic titles like medical and law books that generally outsell them) to a selected group of close to five thousand retailers and wholesalers for them to record the books’ weekly sales numbers. There are allegedly blank lines for the recipients of this survey to write in titles not included on the form. That’s a quaint thought, but from what I know about inventory managers, highly unlikely to come into practice often.

With any bestseller list, it’s important to note that it’s a measurement of velocity of sales, not life of sales. A book that moves five thousand copies in one week is likely to make some list in some capacity when that week’s numbers are run; however, a book that sells five hundred copies a week for ten weeks straight probably won’t make any list at all. Lists also differ in how they categorize titles. For instance, the New York Times sorts by category (fiction, nonfiction, children’s) and format (hardcover, trade paper). On the other hand, USA Today’s list lumps them all together, from 1–150 by sales numbers, period. This means that a book listed at number one on the New York Times hardcover fiction list could be ranking in the triple digits on the USA Today list. Amazon.com’s ranking system is a whole separate article in itself.

Differences in list-building aside, the notable bestseller lists are meant as a barometer of American culture. No list is 100 percent accurate, and none purport to be. Still, bestseller status on a major list is highly coveted, highly profitable, and highly protected specifically so that the word “bestseller” does not become meaningless. Use your sales history to support your efforts to expand your publishing endeavors, but be wary of making unsubstantiated bestseller claims lest you earn the wrath of industry types. Star-crossed lovers or not, that kind of behavior can bring a plague on all your houses.

What do Dan Brown and Pope Benedict have in common? Well, not a lot, but they do both know how to take advantage of foreign book sales, a growing sector of the publishing industry where the right book and the right deal can provide a nice padding to authors’ and publishers’ revenue.

Dan Brown’s cultural juggernaut, The Da Vinci Code, managed to get translated into well over forty languages. It has done particularly well in Europe, where publishers obtained rights to the ubiquitous book and watched it top bestseller lists for months. Even the French—seemingly unimpressed by fanny-packed Americans making Da Vinci Code pilgrimages to the Louvre—bought enough translated copies to make it the top-selling commercial book of all time in that country, with over 5 million copies sold, according to Business Week.

And the pope? His Italian publisher, Rizzoli, sold North American rights to his upcoming Jesus of Nazareth (due in spring 2007) to Random House imprint Doubleday this month. Doubleday wisely bought not only the English rights to the book in North America, but snapped up Spanish-language rights as well, securing access to the vast population of Spanish-speaking Catholics on the continent.

These deals demonstrate both ways that foreign rights negotiations can work for U.S. publishers: we can license rights to foreign publishers to translate, distribute, and sell titles initially published in America, or we can buy the right to distribute foreign books that have an audience here. The former is by far more common, and many authors have found that selling foreign rights to their book is a nifty way to diversify and increase revenue, often with little up-front cost.

If you think your title has potential for overseas distribution, here are some things to remember:

Your Book Must Travel Well. Content must be relevant to appeal to foreign publishers and agents. Books that hit the big time in foreign markets must have somewhat universal subject matter, and it helps if they are easily translated as well; the prospect of spending valuable time and money on a long and difficult translation can kill off agents’ and publishers’ interest in no time. Popular categories tend to be business, self-help, parenting, and personal empowerment. Fiction is likely to do well only if it has a stellar track record and broad appeal.

Also remember that changes in format may occur. A slim book may fatten considerably in certain languages. Your trim size may change. Pictures and illustrations you don’t have the right to sell may have to be removed. And don’t leave any ugly messages on your Israeli publisher’s voicemail for printing your book backwards—it’s supposed to be like that.

The Price Must Be Right. Hammering out the royalties and advance with a foreign publisher can be tricky, particularly when dealing with exchange rates and cross-cultural bargaining. Royalty rates are typically between 5 and 10 percent. A couple of seasoned foreign rights negotiators suggest using the following formula to come up with a rough idea of a reasonable advance:

[anticipated first print run] x [royalty percentage] x [retail price] = [your advance]

You may also consider an agreement in which a foreign publisher pays you a fixed amount to print a given number of copies. Foreign rights grants generally last around four to five years, and royalties can be paid anywhere from every six months to annually.

Terms Must Be Defined. Always make sure you know exactly what you sold and for how long. Are audio rights and book club rights included in the deal? Are you selling the right to distribute your book in Spain, or anywhere Spanish is spoken? Clearing up issues like these can help you sidestep future catastrophes.

Communication Must Be Sustained. Don’t just send your book to Taiwan and get frustrated that you never heard back. Without being pushy, try to keep up with your contacts in foreign countries and cultivate a healthy relationship. Great distances can create great frustration when the lines go dead for long periods of time. Many newbies to foreign distribution tell horror stories of backed-up royalties and unresponsive contacts.

Longtime foreign rights negotiators emphasize that personal relationships are often vital in a successful deal. Your contacts will probably speak English for the most part, but cultural differences remain. Naturally, remember to be polite, friendly, and respectful, and studying up on the country in question doesn’t hurt either. Embarrassing geography gaffes or a bad attitude could easily prompt a publisher to pass you over for another of the many titles ripe for successful foreign distribution.

At the end of the day, it’s not likely that the foreign rights to your book will get you rich. It may seem a daunting task for a modest amount of money, but anything you make is basically found money—you’ve already done all the hard work. (It’s also cool to tell your friends your book is big in Scandinavia.)

Foreign readers are hungry for quality books. If yours fits the bill, why not send it packing and see what happens?

The allure of the Amazon.com sales rank is well known to many an author, as is the bewilderment it often brings. How convenient—a number that tells you in hard, empirical terms how your book is doing! But alas, the Amazon sales rank is a fickle mistress. After noticing wild fluctuations in their placement, authors and publishers often fall prey to obsessive rank-checking, waking up at night in cold sweats to boot up the computer and surf to Amazon.com, spending endless hours staring bleary-eyed at the monitor: Refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh.

Yet for all this scrutiny, the Amazon sales rank remains cloaked in mystery. Derived from a complex algorithm that the folks at Amazon are not about to give out, the rankings take into account more than just how many copies of a certain title have been sold. There are varying decay rates, predictive curves, tiers with different refresh rates, historical analysis. Rather than regurgitate the inconclusive findings of studies that try to identify Amazon’s secret formula by buying books and painstakingly analyzing the changes in rankings, let’s first identify what we know for sure about the system.

• The smaller the rank number, the more books you’re selling. Perhaps this is obvious, but to clarify—the number one spot is reserved for the top seller. As your relative sales go down, your rank number goes up.
• Not all books are updated hourly. And in fact, some books are updated more frequently than that, as the seasoned refresh button junkie will tell you. It all depends on the range you fall in. Books between 1 and 10,000 are re-ranked at least hourly. Books between 10,000 and 100,000 are re-ranked once a day. Those beyond 100,000 are re-ranked weekly.
• After you sell one book, you get a rank. There is one slot per book, so no two books have the same ranking. As your book sells more, it moves up the ladder; as other books outsell yours, it moves back down.
• Total historical sales are part of the equation, but not a huge one. For instance, Martha Stewart’s latest book has no problem towering hundreds of slots over, say, Catcher in the Rye at the moment. This is because her book has sold more copies at a faster rate within a recent time span, not because she’s sold more copies overall.

The most important thing to remember about your sales rank is its temporary and relative nature. The Amazon rating is more like a popularity contest than the litmus test for a book’s success. The number you see on the page is merely how you’re selling compared to other titles in a very brief period. Two or three purchases of the same book within an hour can send a title skyrocketing up the rankings. Sure it’s exciting to leave a few thousand of your competitors in the dust, but unless the buying continues at a good pace, you can slip from the higher rankings fairly quickly.

By the same token, don’t feel sick if following your rankings feels like riding a particularly nasty roller coaster. For a more accurate assessment, get an average ranking: check the rank once an hour for twenty-four hours if you’re in the top 10,000, once a day for a week or two if you’re between 10,000 and 100,000, once a week for a couple of months if you’re lower than that. This will give you a much more stable picture of how your book is selling online. Services like titlez.com can show you a graph of a particular book’s historical rankings. Titlez.com is in beta testing and currently does not list all titles, but you can request that a particular book be added. At booksandwriters.com, you can register to receive email reports on your rankings for a small fee.

Remember also to take seasons into account when assessing your sales rank. Students buying for the upcoming semester can clog the top spots with textbooks and paperback classics in the late summer and midwinter seasons. Likewise, books without gift appeal will probably see a significant drop in the holiday months.

But in the end, the sales rank is meant to be, in Amazon.com’s words, merely “interesting.” Don’t sweat it if you can’t figure out why your number is exactly where it is. Instead, focus your energy on making your product page as informative and consumer-friendly as possible. It has been our experience in optimizing Amazon pages that the product’s rank improves as it collects additional content. Whether good reviews and number of hits have a direct effect on the sales rank formula is unclear; it’s more likely that books with more detailed pages simply attract more buyers. Either way, ensure that your product page does a good job of representing your product.

For those of you interested in deducing sales numbers from rank and trying to crack the magical algorithm, read Morris Rosenthal’s What Amazon Sales Ranks Mean or this report from MIT’s ebusiness center. If you don’t have the time for übercomplicated mathematical gymnastics, just remember that your ranking depends on many variables we’ll probably never fully identify. Enjoy the spikes in your number—you’re selling copies fast—but don’t forget that the Amazon.com sales rank does not make the book.

3 Tips to Help You Deal with Returns

FACT: The average return rate in the book industry is almost 30 percent—and it’s close to 40 percent for mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart and Costco.

Behold the Publisher’s Paradox: One of the best ways to increase book sales is to roll out big supplies supported by big publicity. One of the best ways to reduce book returns is to aim for steady, consistent sales and to be conservative with supply. Can these two truths find a way to coexist, to live together in peace, harmony, and net profits? The honest answer is . . . well, let’s just say it’s tough. To better understand the relationship between targeted promotions and returns, let’s take a brief look at the buying process.

National retail and wholesale book buyers use computer programs to evaluate recent demand and automatically generate new orders based on a simple mathematical algorithm. Spikes in sales that coincide with targeted publicity campaigns cause these computer programs to inflate orders in the weeks that follow a campaign’s conclusion—even though demand may have returned to normal levels. The result is overstocked shelves and, later, returns.

What to do: (1) Sequence your promotional campaigns to sustain the steadiest demand possible in a given region. (2) Understand that this return phenomenon is largely a function of a “dumb” computerized buying process, and adjust your forecasts, budgets, and mental expectations accordingly. Returns are an unhappy fact of life in the book industry, but they don’t have to catch you by surprise. (3) Always inform your distributor of publicity plans and media hits so they can manage the supply of books as efficiently as possible.

Rick Warren could not have anticipated the success of The Purpose-Driven Life, his Christian life manual that is closing in on a record-breaking 25 million copies sold. So widespread is the phenomenon of the book that Warren, head of a massive empire of followers, is now well on his way to creating what he calls the first “Purpose-Driven nation” by reforming Rwanda from the top down.

Maybe you won’t get to be head of your own small African country, but by tapping into the same market as Rick Warren, you may be able to see a book with the right themes blossom. According to the American Association of Publishers, the religious book market grew at a rate of 8.5 percent per year between 1997 and 2004, and Christian titles are still breaking into the mainstream and flying off shelves.

Here are some steps that can take you and your book down the straight-and-narrow path to success:

Get a Christian Code. (This has nothing to do with Dan Brown, by the way.) Labeling your book with a Christian Product Category (CPC) code will make smaller Christian retailers more eager to stock your book. These codes used to consist of a super category, primary category, and sub-category printed just above and right-justified with the bar code (e.g., GENERAL INTEREST / OTHER RELIGIONS / CULTS). Recently, the Christian Retail Solutions Committee (CRSC) approved the new BISAC code list, which now integrates CPC codes into this industry-wide cataloging system. The industry hopes the new codes will both simplify inventory management for independent Christian retailers and facilitate integration of Christian titles into mainstream bookstores. Many found the old CPC listings confusing and redundant; accordingly, 20 percent have been altered in some way and 10 percent have been eliminated in the merge with BISAC codes. Changes take effect January 2007.

Fit in. There’s no rule that says your book has to cite a certain number of New Testament verses to be sold in Christian stores. CPC codes actually make room for quite a wide variety of topics (Romance, Action/Thrillers, Westerns, Personal Growth, Time Management, and my personal favorite, Whodunits). That said, emphasizing Christian elements that aren’t there is exploitative and strongly discouraged.

Spread the Word. Networking works wonders in the Christian community. Any chance to join relevant organizations or write for denominational publications can increase your name recognition among Christian consumers and get you closer to distribution through Christian channels. Attend the annual Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) conference and make contacts. Speak to church groups. The Christian community will be eager to evangelize about a good book that fits their worldview.

Join the Club. It’s a big draw to Christian bookstores, such as the 124-store LifeWay chain, if you happen to be with a distributor affiliated with the CBA. The CBA is pretty selective about who it works with, but you can have your trade distributor submit your book to Spring Arbor, a division of Ingram which carries Christian titles, to be CBA flagged. You may need to mark relevant passages to help them decide. Once you’re flagged, you will be part of a list from which most Christian bookstores order inventory. You can also try submitting your book to local Christian stores; LifeWay has a program through which you can give a title to a regional manager to be considered for local store placement. Make sure no child labor or breaches of Fair Labor Standards Act were involved in the manufacturing of your product before submitting it to LifeWay and other stores; this is one of the things they check out before accepting a title.

Getting your book into Christian outlets can be the catalyst that helps it succeed. Interested browsers come to topical stores like these for the wide selection and a confidence that all the merchandise has been preapproved by like-minded people. A Barna Research Group study identified Protestant senior pastors as one of the most active book-buying segments of the population, typically purchasing twenty books per year, or quadruple the amount purchased by the average book buyer—and the majority preferred to shop at exclusively Christian stores. Pastor recommendation can really help a book take off, and the practice of using books as church curriculum can create buzz of biblical proportions (a big player in the “Purpose-Driven” craze).

The Christian shopper is part of an active book-buying niche; demand for Christian books is steady and strong. Learning to position your book correctly can help open it up to a vast, involved, and interconnected audience. And that’s good news for everyone.

Short answer: yup. More accurate answer: sort of. Answer you will likely hear from a publisher or distributor: “It depends.” Answer from a retailer: “You’ll have to talk to corporate.” Corporate’s response: click.

Translation: premier shelf placement, face-out arrangement, and positioning on promotional stands (e.g., end caps, new release tables in the front of the store, and virtually all placements in airport bookstores) are paid for by publishers, distributors, and authors. It’s a common misconception that store employees select the titles to be featured and base their decisions on the quality of the content or perhaps the power of the author’s message. Pshaw. Not only do retailers sell the front-of-store placements, but they also sell obscure arrangements such as “in section, top shelf, face out” and “regional placement on end caps in section.” So, does this mean that any author—regardless of the quality of their work—can pay their way into the most trafficked areas of bookstores? Are we being fed content based on riches instead of richness?

Not exactly.

Authors cannot simply walk into Barnes & Noble’s corporate headquarters with a check for twenty thousand dollars and demand premier placement across the country. Though publishers, distributors, and authors do pay for the placement, retailers are very selective about which books get the opportunity to be promoted. They base their decisions on sales potential, which boils down to

1. Author’s platform and name recognition
2. Cover design
3. Quality of content
4. Author’s marketing plan

If you want premier store placement for your book, make sure you have

1. All of the items listed above
2. A publisher or distributor with a history of negotiating strong co-op promotions
3. Six months of lead time

So, how does a book end up on the new release table at the store’s entrance or the holiday table in the children’s section? Here’s a quick breakdown of the process:

Publisher or distributor’s sales rep meets with the category buyer.
WHEN: The reps generally pitch buyers five to six months in advance of publication. By that time, they already have dust jackets; galleys, blads, or review copies; and marketing plans to add weight to the pitch.
WHO: Each rep must have at least five titles in the category in order to get a meeting with the buyer, so note that sales reps are not self-published authors with no distributor.
WHERE: The reps meet with the buyers at the retail outlet (if the outlet is independent) or the corporate headquarters (if it’s a chain). Unless the retailer is a small independent, store employees and floor managers do not decide on what books to carry or promote, so do not waste your time pounding the pavement. (Exception: some stores will support local authors with small displays, but in general, placement decisions are made by buyers, not managers or clerks.)

The rep solicits a buy and a placement promotion if co-op money is available.
WHAT: Co-op is what retailers call placement promotions. The term comes from “cooperative advertising,” stemming from the major publishing houses’ practice of allocating a set percentage of the previous year’s sales for co-op to be divvied out between titles as agreed upon by the publisher and bookseller.
HOW: After the sales rep finishes pitching a book, the buyer typically tells the rep how many copies that particular retailer will likely carry when the book comes off the press. If the publisher, distributor, or author has a budget for co-op promotions, the rep negotiates the placement directly with the buyer.
WHO: The buyer will only offer a co-op placement for the book that he or she believes will sell the most copies in that space at that time. Retail 101: location, location, location. Buyers will not sell the best real estate in their store to a title that won’t perform. If Dr. Phil’s diet book will outsell your book of poetry on the front-of-store table, it is not likely that the space will be available to you.

If the title performs well, the rep can negotiate an extension.
WHEN: Co-op placements are usually sold in blocks of two to four weeks. If the book sells well during that time, reps can negotiate extensions.
HOW: Extensions are based on sell-through. If a book sells well and the retailer believes the demand will be sustained for a notable period of time, they will offer to extend the promotion. Time your consumer marketing efforts (such as publicity) to coincide with your co-op promotions. If you do not drive consumers into stores while the book has the premier spot, your product will likely move to a spine-out placement in section the moment your co-op promotion expires.

The history page on Simon & Schuster’s website proudly declares that its founders made it “the first publisher to offer booksellers the privilege of returning unsold copies for credit—a practice that revolutionizes the book business,” happily oblivious to all the anger and controversy their little invention has caused.

Some numbers:
• 40 percent of manufactured books never sell.
• The typical waiting period before books start the long and expensive trek back to the warehouse is a mere four months.
• The industry return rate is 36.3 percent for hardcover and 25 percent for paperback.
• Superstores like Barnes & Noble sell around 70–80 percent of what they order, discounters like Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club only 60 percent.
• 37 percent of all books sent to stores in 2002 were returned.
• HarperCollins lost $250 million in 2002 on returns alone.
• Between 65 and 95 percent of returned books are destroyed once they come back from a bookseller (that’s a lot of time, energy, and money to be turned back into pulp).

The process was developed to help the little guy. In 1924, Max Schuster and Dick Simon were two enterprising young men scrambling to get the world’s first crossword puzzle compilation off the ground. They pitched the idea of a completely refundable product to the bookstores in hopes that it would make them more willing to buy. It worked, but in retrospect the practice seems almost as gimmicky as the little pencil that came attached to The Crossword-Puzzle Book. Bookstores decide how much to order; if they order too much, they can send it back.

So why continue such an antiquated and outmoded system? It’s a good question. The most important benefit is that returns allow bookstores to take risks, just like they did back in the crossword craze of the 1920s. A book buyer with a bit of intuition can have a spunky little unknown rubbing spines with Dean Koontz and Anne Rice in no time. Without the guarantee of 100 percent returnable merchandise, bookstores would be tempted to order only bestsellers or books with huge preestablished appeal.

So returns are a vital part of getting the book into stores. But once your book is on the shelf, returns become the enemy. As it exists currently, the returns process is often an exercise in inefficiency and waste. Perhaps reform is the key: Several years ago the advisory firm KPMG produced a report called “Tackling Returns,” which detailed steps to a more organized and less wasteful returns process in the U.K. That report sparked the Book Industry Returns Initiative, a movement that now lists hundreds of companies as supporters of its cause. Key to the proposed new methods are better organization and improved stock management. In the U.S., returns have been getting worse in the last decade, but the climate for small publishers has been improving. It’s also worth noting that of all bookstore outlets, independent stores have the highest sell-through rates (around 80 percent), suggesting that careful and insightful buying can minimize returns.

On the publisher’s side, preventing returns means getting back to basics: producing a quality product in numbers you can sell through, then timing publicity to coincide with distribution so you don’t have huge numbers of unpromoted books sitting on the shelf. When you do have to deal with returns, just remember that the ability to return your fresh-printed babies may be what nudges a buyer into giving them a place on the shelf and a chance at a reader’s attention. There’s something to be said for the process—but if you could give those ol’ crossword-puzzle hustlers a piece of your mind, even they would probably understand.

Any statistician will tell you that 50 percent of statistics are incorrect. Of that, 20 percent are pulled from thin air. In the spirit of using random numbers to analyze a complex industry, I’ve compiled a list of important statistics from many different sources. With these little nuggets, you will be able to impress all your friends at the library, just do so quietly.

• 78 percent of titles published come from small/self publishers. —PMA
• Advances from major publishers generally fall into one of two categories: $2,000 to $20,000 or $100,000 plus. But the six-figure advance is an endangered species in today’s market (especially for first-time unknown authors). —Greenleaf Book Group
• POD books sell 150 to 175 copies on average. —New York Times, March 1, 2004
• The industry average return rate is 35 percent. —Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2005
• Barnes & Noble bookstores generally carry 60,000 to 200,000 titles at one time per store.
• Bookstore co-op promotions typically range in cost from $5,000 to $30,000.
• According to preliminary estimates from R.R. Bowker, title output fell 9.5 percent in 2005 to 172,000 new titles and editions. —Publishers Weekly
• There are six large publishers (in New York), 300–400 medium-sized publishers, and 86,000 small/self-publishers. —Dan Poynter
• According to R.R. Bowker, there are 2.8 million books in print.
• Saurage Research reported that for every one book sold online, eight are sold in traditional bookstores.
• 59 percent of customers plan to purchase a specific book when entering a bookstore, according to the Book Industry Study Group.
• On average, a bookstore browser spends eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover of a book. —Greenleaf Book Group
• 8,000–11,000 new publishing companies are established each year. —ISBN.org
• About 50,000 titles are published each year in Canada. —bookwire.com
• In 2002, 73,000 smaller and newer publishers grossed $29.4 billion. —PMA
• In 2002, five large New York publishers had U.S. sales of $4.102 billion and worldwide sales of $5.68 billion. —Publishers Weekly, June 16, 2003
• 2002 sales of Christian books and products through all channels were just under $4.2 billion, up from $4 billion in 2000. $2.4 billion sold through Christian retail outlets, $1.1 billion through general retail, and $725 million through direct-to-consumer ministry channels. —Christian Booksellers Association reported in Publishers Weekly
• A successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies. —Authors Guild
• The top ten U.S. cities by dollar volume of book sales and number of bookstores are Los Angeles-Long Beach, New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, San Jose, and San Diego. —Christian Science Monitor
• Entertainment content is the largest U.S. export. —Wall Street Journal
• Global piracy losses to the U.S. book publishers were estimated at $650.8 million in 2001. —International Intellectual Property Alliance
• Of the top 50 books, fiction outsells nonfiction about 60 percent to 40 percent. Fiction peaks in July at 70 percent, but nonfiction reaches almost 50 percent in December. —USA Today
• Of the authors surveyed by Business Week, 96 percent said they realized a significant positive impact on their businesses from writing a book and would recommend the practice. —Businessweek.com

The most important thing to take away from this is that the book industry is a competitive one. To have a shot, a book must be well written, well packaged, well distributed, and well marketed. Above all, the book needs an audience and that audience must want the book. If you’re looking for more provocative industry revelations, subscribe to the Big Bad Book Blog’s RSS feed. To find more book industry stats, we recommend Dan Poynter’s stats page and BISG.org.

Much has been said, written and blogged about Google’s free book search feature, and the BBBB will not bore you with yet another debate over copyright issues and potential pirating scams. Instead, we’re going to break down the basics of the service and what you need to know to join the program, so you can use Google to increase your book’s sales and Internet rating.

The scoop: When users enter search terms that are relevant to your book, the book appears in their search results. They also have the option of using Google’s advanced book search, which offers more specific ways to search, such as by publication date range or even the omission of certain words. Once users are connected to your book, they can view a limited number of sample pages from the book and buy it through prominent “Buy this Book” links. Your book is hosted on Google’s secure servers and users can only see a limited number of pages unless you choose to make the entire text available. To counter potential copyright and pirating problems, Google has programmed the service to disable the copy, save, and print functions.

The nitty gritty: One of the more useful tools in Google’s program enables you to view detailed reports, including information on page views, ad clicks, and “Buy the Book” clicks. The program is that simple. For more info, check out Google’s information page.

To add your book to Google’s book search, you have to fill out an online application and submit the book to them either by mail or by uploading a PDF file. You can remove your book from the program at any time. For full details, check out the Partner Program.