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Selling Your Books In Bulk
Have you ever dreamed of selling your book to a large corporation? A sale that would register several thousand copies of non-returnable product on the book sale meter? What's that? You've never thought of it, you say? Well, never fear! It's not too late to pursue this avenue, especially if you have a book ripe for a particular market.
Before you embark on this project, it's important to understand the possibilities out there. Start being aware of incentive items you might see and understand how they are used. Many are offered as consumer gifts or incentives while others are used as training tools or morale boosters for employees.
Some examples of premium sales might be:
Books offered at yearly company sales meetings
Books offered to consumers at a discount (consumers are usually asked to send in product UPC's to qualify for these specials)
Books offered to new customers at financial institutions
Books offered to new home buyers
Books offered to new magazine subscribers
To determine the market segment you want to go after, study your book first for obvious clues. If you've mentioned or recommended companies or products in your book, those will be the first tier you'll want to go after. Next, think about the message of your book and how it aligns with particular companies within that industry. Company web sites and ads will offer great clues when trying to match a company or organization up with your book.
If you're going after the magazine subscriber bonus segment, you'll have a bit more flexibility. Generally, if the book fits the reader demographic and aligns itself with the message of the magazine, it will be considered. For example, you might offer a home organization book to Good Housekeeping or a fitness book to Self or Redbook. Before you approach these magazines, read them for about three months so you get a good sense of what they're about and who their audience is.
If you're going after a particular market and are trying to locate companies within that industry, try doing a Boolean search in Google. Your search should look like this: "your industry and companies." Another resource is http://www.thomasregister.com. This site will link you to companies nationally and internationally within your industry.
Next, don't overlook companies in your own backyard. Think about industries, companies and organizations in your area that might work well for your book and begin going after them. Many times, local companies will welcome the opportunity to support hometown authors.
Once you've put your list together, you'll want to contact them and pitch them the idea. Or, in some cases, our company will send them the book and proposal before we even make phone contact. Sometimes the companies you've targeted will be on the lookout for incentive items, other times this will be a new (and exciting) area for them. If you're going after employee incentives, it's interesting to note (and mention in your sales letter) that employee incentives increase individual performance by 27 percent and team performance by 45 percent.
Be open and creative with your pursuit of premium sales! Many times, companies will want to put their logo on the cover or include an extra page in the book with a letter from the President or CEO. Check with your printer or publisher on whether this is possible for you and what the additional costs will be before you start pursuing the premium sales arena.
So, how long does this process take? We've seen premium sales turn around in a week, while others take a year or more to complete. Oh, and the most important part... how many books can you plan to sell? Anywhere from one thousand to several thousand depending on the deal and the company. We've even got a deal in the works for a half a million copies of one book.
Discounts and negotiations vary. Often, we'll negotiate volume discounts of 50 percent to 70 percent on bulk orders. Again, make sure you've got these figures ready when you pick up the phone to make your pitch.
With the right book, premium sales are not only a great way to gain exposure of your book, but in the end, they make great "cents."
BONUS : Selling Yourself As A Freelance Business Writer: Skills, Or Knowledge?
You know the secret to a long-term, and profitable, client relationship is delivering effective communication tools. But you may not realize that the impact of your writing has more to do with your skill as a writer than with your knowledge of the subject.
And unless you help your clients understand the value of your skills, you limit your opportunities to sell those skills again and again.
Every business has its own specialists, people who know more about their products and services than you'll ever know. So why can't they produce great marketing copy, clear user guides, or truly effective training for their employees and sales reps?
Because they don't have the skills that you do, the talent for communicating with impact to achieve specific results. We've all met experts who "know their stuff" but can't share their knowledge -- perhaps your math or physics or French teacher, or an engineer or programmer in a company you know, or even your doctor, lawyer, or insurance agent.
At some point, a company realizes they need help communicating, educating prospects, customers, and their own employees about the benefits and best practices associated with their products and services. They go looking for outside help . . . and then they forget why!
Your long-term success depends on reminding them of that need for communication skills. Most of these experts, whether clinicians or programmers or engineers or legal experts, are more comfortable talking to people just like themselves, rather than creative types like artists and writers.
Left to themselves, they'll hire someone who knows a lot about their area, but perhaps writes only a little better than they do. And a year or two later, they'll be looking for someone else to help them when they realize that all the copy and training content and documentation they have churned out has produced mediocre results.
Help yourself and help your clients.
When you get an opportunity to talk to a prospect about creating effective communications for them, keep pushing the conversation toward the skills they need to pull it off. Make sure they understand their own need for someone different from the resources they already have in house. Help them recognize that your skills complement their knowledge, that it is that combination that produces results in the form of higher revenues, more customers, or enhanced employee performance.
Even if you know their subject matter well, your skills are more important. After all, should their product line change, or new markets open, they may be dealing with a new body of knowledge in a year or two.
But their need for effective communication will remain, and, if you've positioned yourself as the "communication expert" of their team, you'll continue to have opportunities for business from existing clients even as their business practices and markets change.
You know the secret to a long-term, and profitable, client relationship is delivering effective communication tools. But you may not realize that the impact of your writing has more to do with your skill as a writer than with your knowledge of the subject.
And unless you help your clients understand the value of your skills, you limit your opportunities to sell those skills again and again.
Every business has its own specialists, people who know more about their products and services than you'll ever know. So why can't they produce great marketing copy, clear user guides, or truly effective training for their employees and sales reps?
Because they don't have the skills that you do, the talent for communicating with impact to achieve specific results. We've all met experts who "know their stuff" but can't share their knowledge -- perhaps your math or physics or French teacher, or an engineer or programmer in a company you know, or even your doctor, lawyer, or insurance agent.
At some point, a company realizes they need help communicating, educating prospects, customers, and their own employees about the benefits and best practices associated with their products and services. They go looking for outside help . . . and then they forget why!
Your long-term success depends on reminding them of that need for communication skills. Most of these experts, whether clinicians or programmers or engineers or legal experts, are more comfortable talking to people just like themselves, rather than creative types like artists and writers.
Left to themselves, they'll hire someone who knows a lot about their area, but perhaps writes only a little better than they do. And a year or two later, they'll be looking for someone else to help them when they realize that all the copy and training content and documentation they have churned out has produced mediocre results.
Help yourself and help your clients.
When you get an opportunity to talk to a prospect about creating effective communications for them, keep pushing the conversation toward the skills they need to pull it off. Make sure they understand their own need for someone different from the resources they already have in house. Help them recognize that your skills complement their knowledge, that it is that combination that produces results in the form of higher revenues, more customers, or enhanced employee performance.
Even if you know their subject matter well, your skills are more important. After all, should their product line change, or new markets open, they may be dealing with a new body of knowledge in a year or two.
But their need for effective communication will remain, and, if you've positioned yourself as the "communication expert" of their team, you'll continue to have opportunities for business from existing clients even as their business practices and markets change.
