Mistakes To Avoid When Selling (Anything)
Much of the “do this, don’t do this”-style of marketing advice relevant to book sales turns out to also be relevant in other arenas. And visa versa. Indeed, I think it’s a very good thing to step outside the proverbial box and examine trends in other industries. Success is success, particularly when it comes to customer relations. Which is what sales–of books, jewelry, or widgets–is all about. You might not think of things like blurbs as customer relations, but they are. As are high quality photographs of your jewelry, if you’re selling online. Because, ultimately, they’re different means of achieving the same thing: closing the distance gap. Physical, and metaphysical distance. In the comfort of his own home, a potential reader can’t hold your book in his hands. Can’t flip through the pages. Can’t sit down with it, for an hour, before the bookstore closing forces him to make a decision. The same is true with jewelry, or any other good. But, of course, as I’m currently involved in launching a jewelry line I know a little something about jewelry as a discrete item. You’re not there, prepped and ready with an elevator pitch and your product isn’t there for them to examine.
So what do you do?
You mind the gap. Hey. See what I did there? But really. Understand what it is, understand what it means to your potential customer, and act accordingly. Now, in that vein, let’s move on to specifics.
DO reevaluate your prejudices. It took a few solid sessions with Hugh Howey’s blog to help me understand that “indie” didn’t equal “failure” and to thus even consider self publishing as an option. It took finding out that Etsy’s vast online network of cottage industries complete, in total, somewhere in the ballpark of a hundred million dollars of transactions per year and that top Etsy sellers earn 65,000 per month–or more–to shake me out of my assumption that “cottage industry” meant “lack of ambition.”
All too often, we don’t research things because we’re so convinced that we already know the answer–and thus, in turn, our prejudices become self-fulfilling. Break out of the box and see what other people are doing. Not to follow in their footsteps but to learn from them, so you can create your own, individual path. Which you won’t be equipped to do, in the slightest, unless you learn everything you can about the different business models available to you. And that means understanding why, firsthand, authors who could publish through other channels go the indie route–not relying on your assumptions. Or, indeed, understanding why a team of people capable of generating a million dollar a year business would choose to team up with Etsy as opposed to doing something else.
Assumptions are toxic to success, in every field. Speaking for myself, after reviewing the various options–and there are a lot of them–I decided to go with launching my jewelry exclusively online and exclusively through Etsy even over and above more traditionally appealing options–or appealing-seeming, at least–that were handily available. Like a brick and mortar boutique. And, keep in mind, I’m already in the ideal location for what I do: my target audience is all around me in Salem, Massachusetts.
But guess what? Assumptions aside, they’re going on Etsy, too. Etsy is where people go to find handmade jewelry, especially jewelry in new and cutting edge designs. From the finest of fine jewelry to the cheapest bottom of the dime store barrel baubles, you might assume that people want to see these things in stores but they don’t. Just like you might assume some things about the publishing industry. Because you’re approaching the problem from the perspective of a seller, not a buyer. Which is a mistake. When it comes to jewelry, specifically–and here we’re discussing global trends, rather than attempting to account for each individual’s viewpoint–consumers tend to associate brick and mortar jewelry stores with “my grandmother.” They’re where you go for something expensive, well made, and traditional. If you’re lusting after a skull and crossbones, on the other hand….
Jewelry stores say, “open hearts collection.” Or whatever. Etsy says, “diamond encrusted cat.”
Which brings us back to the all important issue of knowing your market. Which, like we just discussed, means thinking, not, how can I cadge some of this business but if I were in this person’s shoes, how would I shop? Are you planning to purchase your next athame at Kay Jewelers? Do you automatically put a book back on the shelf if Random House isn’t emblazoned on the spine? The answers to these questions aren’t obvious; treating buyer expectation as a series of toss off statements might not guarantee failure, but it will almost certainly prevent you from achieving your full potential in terms of marketing success.
DO know your bottom line. And not just because that shit’s a tax write-off. When it comes to both writing and art, you encounter no end of people who claim to understand that “writing (or art) is a business,” and self-importantly moan on about the ignorance of everyone else. Which would be fantastic, if all it took to succeed was standing in the mirror and striking poses a la American Psycho. In the real world, however, success is a lot less about being a bloviating blowhard and a lot more about understanding things like workload and overhead.
Yes, your business is a business. But convincing yourself of that is only the first step. After comes keeping meticulous records. And that means knowing, down to the penny, what you’re spending and what you’re bringing in. Take a common issue in online sales: shipping costs. You don’t have to worry about this if you’re in publishing (unless you’re super old school), but selling jewelry or other forms of art necessarily leads to the problem of uniting it with the buyer. Shipping is important. And yet most sellers guess–either dramatically under-charging or, indeed, dramatically over-charging for the service. They charge 4.00 in shipping fees when shipping is really 4.75. Which might not sound so bad, but depending on your volume of sales can add up to a few hundred dollars a month. Or they don’t factor expenses like shipping materials into the cost–of the shipping or, indeed, the item.
Some will advise one, some the other (largely depending on their individual opinions about buyer perception). But in either case, that’s the advanced game. So long as you’re factoring in the cost somewhere, though, you’re not missing out on a car payment. Overcharging, though, is no good either. A buyer might forgive a shipping charge of 3.75 when the actual envelope carries 2.50 worth of postage (in that case the additional 1.25 would be–a very carefully calculated number–to cover packaging costs and overhead), but 10.00 in shipping feels dishonest.
In terms of writing, this means knowing exactly how much you’re paying for services like interior formatting and exactly how much you’re paying for whatever form of marketing you’ve decided is appropriate. Know, again, down to the penny, when you’ve recouped those costs. Earning 10,000.00 on a book is great…unless you’re still in the hole for another 1,500.00 above and beyond that because of all those Facebook marketing campaigns. The human brain is good at fooling itself, which is why casinos pay out winnings in smaller chips. Ten hundred dollar chips seems like less money, somehow, to most people than one thousand dollar chip. Likewise, a few small payments to places like BookBub can seem like drops in the bucket compared to the thousand or so you dropped on formatting but guess what: if you sit down and tally everything up, you’ll probably discover that you spent way more on the “cheap stuff.”
And by “sit down and tally everything up,” I mean with math. Not soft, pleasant, made up numbers in your head. Because again, your brain can (and will) fool itself. Don’t believe me? Tell me, in the next ten seconds, how much you spent at Starbucks over the past month. Write that number down. Then, grab a price list and whip out your calculator.
The difference between us is I know I spend a couple hundred a month at Starbucks.
I account for that cost. Same as I account for the cost of using the air conditioner more in the summer and my son’s growth spurts. Three trips to the mall for new shoes in one month? Check! It sounds obvious but you can’t know if you’re succeeding unless and until you know if you’re succeeding. And that means knowing your bottom line. Which yes, is also going to help you refine your relationship to your product and thus your communication with the outside world about that product. You can’t win the game if you don’t know the rules–or, for some of you, what field you’re even on.
And finally, do NOT spam. Not potential customers and not other artisans (or authors, or whomever). There are two kinds of spam, in my experience, both of which are equally bad: “buy my product” spam, and ego boost spam. Let’s tackle the second one first. Ego boost spam is something I’ve gotten a fair bit of on this blog, as well as on Goodreads. Would be writers coming here–probably the tenth site they’ve visited that day–to use me as a mirror. Whether it’s attacking one of my books as a whole or nitpicking my grammar in a post (usually incorrectly), they shore up their vision of themselves as literary luminaries.
What do I get out of the experience? I don’t have what I’ve always assumed must be the hoped for response, which is thinking, “wow, that person must be a genius.” Instead I think, “wow, that person must have an ego of glass. What a buffoon.” Nothing says my insecurities are ruining my life like a troll. And yes, using someone else’s work as a springboard for discussing how your work/life/command of the English language/cats are better is troll-like behavior.
You win friends and influence people not by trying to impress them with your stellar powers of awesomeness but by being real. So be real. Treat others as you would want to be treated. And as I’m guessing “worship me, a complete and total stranger, ’cause I’m so amazeballs” doesn’t work on you….
Now, as to the other kind of spam, I don’t leave negative feedback on Etsy. Or on Amazon. Or on eBay. It’s one of those “never try to teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig” things. This is someone’s business, however poorly run, and posting public, negative criticism only embarrasses them. It certainly doesn’t solve anything. So if I have a problem, I contact them directly.
They, unfortunately, do not do the same.
If I favorite something in your shop, do not convo me to remark on this. Do not tell me what you think of my favorites list. Do not ask me personal questions. Just like in the writing arena, a bad attitude impresses no one, in no arena does “buy my book/jewelry/peridot encrusted house elf” generate sales. Online shopping is supposed to be a private experience. People, for the most part, like that it’s a private experience. An experience of which they are in complete control. Remember, they stay home to shop when they could be going to the mall. People reaching out to me is just the sort of thing I’m trying–and probably you’re trying–to avoid. I like the illusion of being alone on Etsy, damn it!
The same, of course, is true on Amazon or Goodreads. When someone leaves a bad review of your book, for God’s sake don’t track them down. I’ve had authors do it to me and it’s awful. My disliking their book is not a personal criticism; I don’t even know them. But to be honest, having someone fling verbal excrescences at me because I pointed out the obvious that her book promoted rape culture is the major reason I no longer leave book reviews. Anywhere. Including on Amazon.
Now, did any of this change my mind? Of course not! My opinion of someone, in a situation like this, generally only worsens. As, I’m sure, does yours. If I have a question–and this applies particularly with marketplaces like Etsy–I expect the seller to respond promptly and sensibly. Not with strange, drawn out tales about their cats or underpants or whatever. And yes, I’m speaking from experience. I might still buy that one particular item, if my heart is really set on it, but I likely won’t visit that shop again. Likewise, if an author is really rude to me on Twitter I’ll probably give their next book a pass. Because Fight Club has a point: no one is really that special.
You might be able to succeed on the strength of having the best book in the world, or the most unique jewelry in the world, or whatever, but chances are your book is merely good (or even merely great) and your jewelry isn’t so amazing that no other jewelry artisan could ever compete. More likely, if you succeed, you’ll do so because you made–and continue to make–interacting with you a pleasant experience. You’ll succeed, because you’ll be the kind of person whom others want to see succeed. All the artistic merits in the world might be, the legal term is necessary but not sufficient. Understanding, as clearly as possible, who you are and what your purpose is–that’s the ticket.
