Could it help sell more indies?

[G J (Gaff to my friends)]

I had a strange idea recently that I'd like some opinions on, if you have the time? It crossed my mind that some readers don't read indie because there isn't a publisher's logo on the spine/cover. From a purely experimental point of view, I wonder if sales would increase if a few indies came together under the same banner?

In fashion, people are more apt to purchase a product with a logo. I wonder if the same is true of publishing?

[Michael]

I'd be surprised if many readers take any notice of the publisher when buying a book.

[Will]

Not a publisher as such, but there is Indie BRAG to add credibility to a book.

[Jim]

Will wrote: "Not a publisher as such, but there is Indie BRAG to add credibility to a book."

Mind you, given that until this moment I'd never heard of them, I was left wondering how effective they were.

There again, they charge $20 per book submitted purely for admin and if the number of books with medallions is correct, and if they're right that 90% are rejected, they have so far taken $84,000 (Before advertising etc)

[Patti (baconater)]

Can't say a sticker on a book would influence me in any way. A good cover and blurb are much more important.

[S.]

84k?? To get a logo?

[Will]

Jim

I think the high rejection rate is part of the appeal. It sorts the good from the not so good. If I'm in a supermarket looking for a bottle of wine, I might be tempted to buy one that has one an award over one that hasn't. Even if the wine awards business is a bit of a scam.

I dunno. I've entered one of my books into Indie BRAG to see what happens. It's a long process (the judging takes several months). I'll let you know how I get on.

Part of the problem in this business is getting noticed. You might have written the best book in the world with the best cover and the best blurb. But there are more than 32 million books on Amazon all competing for readers.

[Kath]

The problem as I see it is that many of us, myself included, don't noticed the publisher's logo. I sometimes only find out if/when I decided to give a book five stars and then realise it doesn't belong on my indie blog.

For those who do notice, everything lumped under one banner will be thought of as the same. Same quality in other words. One bad book will taint the rest in the reader's mind. The way round that is gatekeeping, which, because it means all submitted books must be read and approved, takes time and therefore costs money.

I hadn't heard of Indie BRAG either so how useful the whole idea is, I'm not sure.

[Jim]

Oh I agree, I just looked at the Amazon Kindle ebook page, and the new releases are coming out at 87,000 a month.
Just stop and let that figure wash over you. Add to this the 160,000 books a month that Amazon releases.
And somewhere in that lot are the 'indies'

If every indie writer didn't publish for a year and instead concentrated on editing and polishing, I'm not sure the vast majority of readers would ever notice.

So obviously we have to do something to be noticed. What?
I don't suppose $20 is all that much but I'm both biased and cynical.
I'm biased because until you mentioned them, I'd never heard of them before and I'm cynical because I suspect whoever set it up will make money out of writing faster than the authors.

But I did look at some of the books, clicked through and looked at them on Amazon.com and .co.uk
Just the random selection I looked at had reasonable US rankings (between 200,000 and 600,000) but I suspect you really want to get your book onto the first page of your genre.

UK rankings were less sparkling, one hadn't apparently sold any books in the UK. My guess is that the site is better known in the US and I suppose it might be a way to break into the US market.

It's interesting. I suspect most of us have to accept that if we pay for advertising, what we're really paying for is a chance to have another go on the roulette wheel. You're almost certainly throwing the money away, but if you don't throw the money away you've not got that slim chance of winning

[David]

I considered submitting to Indie Brag, I have similar to that on my other books IndiePendents approval, for example (which was free and still subjected to scrutiny). I decided not to bother, partly because of the $20 cost, and partly because I believe that readers do not look at such sites: the only people looking at these sites (IMO) are other authors looking to get their books noticed, not to buy the books that are already on there.

OK, $20 is worth the punt, it's not a fortune. But the it's likely better to reduce the cost of the book for a week, spend that $20 dollars on advertising (where readers do look) and hopefully gain some sales traction from word of mouth.

[Desley (Cat fosterer)]

I think publisher details are less important on kindle, I've just looked at a couple of traditionally published books by 'famous' authors on the bookshelf behind me (Virginia Andrews, Patricia Cornwell, John Grisham, Kathy Reichs) - only a couple are on the front page, and they are so tiny I've never noticed them, most seem to be on the spine, which you don't have on a kindle book. I can honestly say that the publisher has never been a key thing for me. Like Patti, covers and blurbs are more likely to attract me. And if your blurb is just reviews, I would only read it if a friend had recommended it

[G J (Gaff to my friends)]

So the short answer is no, putting a publisher's logo on a book doesn't help sell it. I suspect the long answer is far more convoluted, and would take a lot of research.

However, and I'm a little weary of discussing this openly, for obvious reasons, the traditional publishing industry holds sway over the market. It dictates trends and, in some respects, the popularity of a genre at any given time.

Obviously there is the financial aspect, i.e. the amount of revenue they can allocate for advertising and promotion etc, but if nobody cares who a book is published by, how can they hold such a sway on the market?

[David]

You could always just bung a little logo that looks like a publishing company logo in one of the corners of your cover.

I don't know whether you need to be a registered company or anything to fill in the publisher box on the KDP doodah either.

In short, make your own publisher up.

[Desley (Cat fosterer)]

Obviously there is the financial aspect, i.e. the amount of revenue they can allocate for advertising and promotion etc, but if nobody cares who a book is published by, how can they hold such a sway on the market?

I'm going to guess it is who they publish rather than the publisher's name - anyone who doesn't use an e-reader will probably only read traditional authors, as it's rare for an indie to get a paperback in shops like Waterstones. And even those of us who do use them have 'favourite' authors from pre e-reader days. You only have to read the Just Finished thread to see that there is still a lot of traditional authors being read - I'm on three forums that have a similar thread, and ours has the most indie books because of some of our members, one of the other forums has a lot of members who don't own an e-reader, so they only talk about paper/hard backs.

[Will]

Marketing is such a dark art. I am struggling to try to understand it.

What I think happens is this ...

First a reader has to discover your book. That isn't going to happen if you are languishing at the plankton end of the Amazon food chain. Very few people wade down to the seventeenth page to find a book they want to read.

So your first job is to put your book in a reader's hand. That might be through word of mouth, free giveaways, advertising, competitions. They have to know that your book exists.

Then when they have your book in their hot sticky paws (or in front of their little beady eyes) you've got to persuade them to buy. That might be the cover, the blurb, the title, how many reviews it has, the first page, friend recommendations, whether they recognise the author, whether the book has won awards, the price.

All of these things help to tip the potential reader from "nah" into "okay then". I have heard marketing gurus say that most people don't buy something on the basis of a single piece of advertising. Instead it is about a constant drip feed of exposure.

That's why brands advertise on formula one cars. The advertising has nothing more than the brand name. It doesn't say anything about how good the product is. But that is not as important as increasing buyers' exposure to that brand and associating the brand with something aspirational and desirable.

So when we are pitching books, we need to have layer upon layer of brand recognition. A good cover. An enticing blurb. Good reviews. Awards. That all helps to build up an image of an author that you can trust.

It is very rare to find a single thing we can do to increase sales. Instead, I think it's about lots of little things, repeated and reinforced over time.

The name of the publisher may a long way down that list.

[Jim]

Best sales I've had was when I was standing behind a stall with Will and Barrie thrusting paperbooks into people's hands and taking folding currency in exchange. It was the sort of business deal that could have taken place after 1200AD in China (because they'd got printed books AND paper money) but couldn't do in England until 1759.

Old technology does have it's advantages :-)

[G J (Gaff to my friends)]

I does make me wonder though, how much influence trad publishers have beyond marketing. Okay, money talks, I get that. But big name authors didn't become big name (with a few exceptions recently) without the support of publishers. So how come they have such a large influence over the market?

It might be one fbthose questions I might never understand...

[Jim]

Some of it is that they act as gate keepers.
Let's assume you're a journalist got to provide stories to a local paper. You have 'local author' who might be a story.
Self Published on Kindle. Not a story. He could be good, he could be rubbish, but to find out he'd have to read it. He hasn't got time and even then could he tell if it was 'any good' and who cares whether he likes it anyway.

But local author with genuine publisher, different kettle of fish, someone has already checked them out, so you can run the story,secure in the fact you've not got an illiterate fruitcake on your hands.
Actually if they turn out to be an illiterate fruitcake you've still got a story, 'Local nutcase cons major publisher, read all about it' :-)

Just scale things up for national media and big six

[Tim]

I ran out of money to throw at advertising (I didn't have much to start with), and it shows - 6 weeks since my last UK sale, almost 2 weeks since my last US one.

The problem we have is that if you're not on the first couple of pages of the Amazon store, no one will bother to click through to find you.

With Big-5 publishers, it IS different, because they will get you into bookshops (somewhere that's nigh on impossible for indies). And that gives an immediate benefit because casual browsers will pass your book and see it on the shelf, even if they don't pick it up and buy it. That's a little piece of recognition that one day might pay off in "oh I've heard of this guy, I'll give it a try"

Of course, the trad publishers will only give you 6 weeks in the glorious sun of a back shelf spine out, before your books are unceremoniously yanked and pulped. But them's the breaks.

[S.]

Im hoovering between 150K to 1.2 million in the US on my own. So that BRAG has to do better.

[Tim]

Jim's shared stall at a book fair looks like the route most likely to achieve sales. Unfortunately the only way I tend to hear of these events is when someone posts "I sold loads of books at so-and-so last weekend".

[Will]

I enjoy doing the literary festivals and genre events. They all tend to have a good crowd and great 'after event' parties, where the authors spend their take.

Tim, if you google 'literary festivals' or 'book events' near where you live, I bet you get some hits