From the Tool Shed Publishing Tools

Plans become major tools for the neophyte publisher. The canny beginner starts with the careful creation of a business plan, and alongside the business plan, a marketing plan. Then, with the direction provided by the plans, strong promotional plans can emerge. These are important starting points.

• Business Plans
  
  
• Marketing Plans
  
  
• Developing Promotional Materials
  
  
• Galleys and Reading Copies
  
  
• Tools for Marketing On the Internet

  "They Shopped 'Til They Dropped"

• Talk to the Cat

Part of the roles an independent publisher plays involves writing rather different from the books being published. Among the materials needed are business and marketing plans and promotional materials . The following provide some help along those lines.

I am indebted to Brian Jud for permission to include the following article which he wrote for the Connecticut Authors Association newsletter. He says it is a description of a business plan outline that he has used for several years. Brian Jud (BJud@marketingdirections.com) is the author of fourteen job-search titles, the video You're On The Air and its two companion guides Perpetual Promotion and It's Show Time. Contact him at Marketing Directions, P. O. Box 715, Avon, CT 06001-0715; Phone: 800-562-4357; fax: 860-676-0759.

1. Introduction

2. Current situation

3. Objective

4. Strategies

5. Tactics

6. Forecast

7. Budget

Always include a short summary of your business particularly if you intend to use it to woo investors. It also serves as a reminder of where you propose to focus your efforts. Limit the length of the summary to one page and include the following:

A brief description of your book and market
A brief description of your skills and competence
A summary of your financial projections

1. Company and industry. This contains background information on your company and describes the nature of your industry. It should include the following information:

• Your company
  
  
• Date of incorporation
  
  
• Principals and what role each has played in the business to date
  
• Business purpose and highlights of progress to date
  
  
• Industry
  
  
• Present what you feel to be the current status and prospects for the overall book business; what are your sources?
  
  
• Describe the major "players" and how they are performing, including growth in sales, profits, and current market share

2. Product. Completely describe your book, articles, video or skills (design, editing, etc).

3. Market. This forces you to research your competition and opportunities to create a realistic forecast. Include the following:

• Market Definition. Describe the potential customers, their locations, their interest in your product and seasonal changes in sales. If your book has a track record, discuss how it is viewed in the marketplace.
  
• Market size. Use statistics and other objective data (much of which can be found online).
  
• Market Trends. Describe the market's growth potential. For example, if employment is growing, why should a distributor consider my new job search book? (i.e., I demonstrate that college enrollments are growing and that my title is directed toward this growing pool of graduates).
  
• Competition. Name and discuss all major competitors. Compare your book with your competitors' books on the basis of price, unique benefits and other important factors.

OBJECTIVE
What you will accomplish in this period in terms of unit sales, gross revenue and net income.

STRATEGIES
Remember the 4Ps of marketing: product, place, price and promotion. Describe broadly how you intend to manipulate each of them strategically to reach your objectives.

• Product. What will you do to improve the strategic market position your book (skills, etc)?
  
  
• Place. There are two basic ways to get your book to the intended audience: directly or indirectly. Direct distribution strategy bypasses the traditional channels using distributors and wholesales. An indirect strategy utilizes them. How will you use or combine thse two strategies.
  
  
• Price. Explain why the price you have calculated will increase acceptance of your product, produce profits and maintain or increase your market share.
  
  
• Promotion. Explain how you plan to bring your book to the attention of potential customers.

These are the details of specific actions you will take to implement the strategies that will ultimately achieve your objective. Again, it is helpful to categorize them by the 4Ps.

• Product.
  Can you make your book more detailed than competitors' works? More up--to-date? What will you do next? A new book or planned second edition will enhance your stature among publishers and distributors. They are more likely to take you seriously if you can demonstrate you are not a single-title author.
  
  
• Place.
  If distributors or sales representatives will be used, describe how they will be attracted, motivated, compensated and what geographic (or markets) areas will be covered.
  
  
• Price.
  Always consider the discount the people in your distribution channel will assess.
  
  
• Promotion.
  

  Public relations. Describe how you will generate free publicity through appearances on television and radio shows. How will you stimulate book reviews? Show samples of press releases.
  
  

  Sales promotion. Give examples of the sales promotional tools you will implement. What kind of promotional literature will you develop? Four color? Black and white?
  
  

  Advertising. In what media will you advertise? How will you use continuity to create awareness of your new book? How will you use direct mail to reach your targeted lists? Include a description of the trade shows you will attend such as the BEA or regional shows.
  
  

  Personal selling. Describe how you will stimulate sales through personal presentations, book signings and seminars you will conduct.

FORECASTS

If you perform all these tactics, how many books will you sell? Here you will provide an estimate of sales in terms of units and revenue. Identify any major customers who have made or are willing to make purchase commitments.

BUDGETS

Given the revenue you expect and the costs for implementing all your tactics, create a budget. The amount of financial information presented in your business plan will depend largely on the stage of your financing and the amount of money you are seeking. Your plan should describe in general terms the type and amount of funding you need.

• Current Financial Statements. If your company has a financial track record, provide financial statements for the last three years or since your company's inception including a detailed breakdown of income statement categories.
  
• Assumptions and explanations of any unusual fluctuations in income or expenses
  
• Financial Projections. Provide a three-year cash flow, profit and loss statement and balance sheet projections. If your company has had a track record, the projections should be on a quarterly basis for the first year and annually thereafter. Otherwise, the projections should be on a monthly basis the first year, a quarterly basis the second year and annually thereafter.

Make sure you allocate for returned books (20%?) and bad debt. Also take into consideration the 90 -120 day payment policies of retailers and distributors.

It will take a considerable amount of time to create this document the first time, but it will be well worth the effort. You will have a prepared list of actions to take to sell more books. Your objective will be there to motivate you to work more, and your budgets will keep you fiscally responsible.

Brian Jud, ©1998

Also worth looking into is Jim Horan's The One Page Business Plan. The site is developed around his book, The One Page Business Plan Book ($19.95), and his consulting on business planning. Don't be deceived by the "one page" --pages of planning go into distilling down to one page.

The Canada/BC Business Service Centre has anOnline Small Business Workshop in five on-line sessions. The sessions begin with Starting with a Good Idea, Marketing Basics (which includes a marketing primer), Financing Your Business, Planning Fundamentals (which includes a sample business plan), and concludes with Basic Regulations for Getting Started (attuned to Canadians, but still with some points to consider). An allied site connects with other useful sites.

A business plan template is available at Business Plan Framework, created by the Money Hunter at a site put up by Stybel, Peabody and Associates. Like many templates, this leaves room for a lot of adapting.

Also recommended is Planning and Financing the New Venture by Jeffry A. Timmons

Gail Golomb (of Four Geez Publications) lays out "A Successful Book Marketing Plan" in BookZone Pro. (also a very fertile section for other materials!)

A succinct and practical little book on marketing --A Simple Guide to Marketing Your Book by Mark Ortman is an excellent starter piece. Check out Wise Owl's site, and while you're there, take the test on whether you want to be a publisher.

Another is "A Sample Marketing Plan" by PMA president and Independent Publishing Group president Curt Matthews.

Publicity is an important ingredient in your book's success. It's tied in very closely with your marketing plan and with your promotional activities. Good promotional materials (and you'll need lots of them) are vital to the continuing sales of your book. Whether you write your own promotional materials or whether you engage the services of a specialist, you can look at some models to see what has to be done.

Again in BookZonePro, Cor van Heumen also write an excellent basic promotion plan, which while aimed at New Age writers, nonetheless has a great deal to offer others wanting to promote their books.

Shel Horowitz's article on news releases, "Get the Press on your side"

Check the Smart Business Supersite site for their highly recommended site for public relations materials. Lots of other good stuff there, too.

Copywriting is an important skill. You can find new articles, sample sales letters and ads, and even excerpts from Joe Vitale's new book, There's a Customer Born Every Minute! Joe recommends starting your browsing at the index.

[I am indebted to Andrew Wooldridge, president of Orca Book Publishers for the following comments on the importance of galleys that he made on the Publishers Marketing Association Forum. It is a very clear discussion of why it is important to prepare and send out galleys. Also check Production Issues in the Tool Shed for where you can get galleys done. PB ]

Galleys are very important because they show you are professional, organized and most of all, serious. Reviews in P[ublishers]W[eekly], Booklist, Kirkus, etc., are intended to alert booksellers, librarians, etc., to new titles so they will know about the good ones before the general public hears about them. There is no sense in getting a review of your book in the Hicksville Herald if bookstores and libraries and wholesalers and others aren't aware of the title. A glowing prepub review in Booklist or S[school]L[ibrary]J[ournal] or PW can sell thousands of books.

If you are a professional, you must work within the system, otherwise you get ignored as an amateur -- this is a business, not a hobby. Galleys and the prepub system exist for a reason, and with 50,000 or so new books a year, you better make every effort to get your book noticed. Advance copies of a book are the single most important part of a marketing program (besides having a book that someone actually wants to buy) and pay off much better than most other forms of advertising.

I read this article in the June 2001 Format, Minnesota's Advertising and Communications Monthly. I thought it was pertinent for us in the publishing world, especially since we are usually intimately involved in the creation of our Web sites. I am grateful to Format for permission to include this article in the Tool Shed. I wrote Beth Temple, the author, and she was very helpful in getting permission to post this. Thanks, Beth, for a good reminder and for your help.

A year ago, common knowledge set forth that shopping online signaled the end of brick storefronts as we know them. Instead the death toll of the big-name players--garden.com, pets.com, and furniture.com-is growing.

And why?

The reasons are varied: excessive "burn rate" (the speed in which these companies burned through money), bad management and poor execution of not-so-good ideas. The one reason I don't hear about much is what I consider to one of the major factors in the demise of these online shopping sites. The "abandoned shopping cart."

The astonishing fact, from the Boston Consulting Group's shop.org study, is that 65 percent of shoppers who take the time to fill up a cart don't actually buy the items. Imagine walking into a Target [store] and doing the exact same thing (not that it would be possible to imagine or actually do at a Target).

Companies trying to solve this problem focus on customer buying patterns and creating buying programs. But I think there are some simple (very simple in this short of a discussion) things that a site can do:

1. Create a shopping cart that morphs easily into a wish list, which the customer can come back to, sort through and purchase from.
2. Give as much cost information up front as possible, especially shipping costs.
3. Provide easy-to-use navigation and a good search engine.
4. Provide product information to make decision making more definitive.
5. If the site is also a brick business, provide a way to have shoppers fill up their carts online and pick them up at the nearest brick storefront.
6. And hope for some type of e-wallet standard that follows you around so you don't have to input your payment and shipping data every time. If all this goes well, the shoppers will drop from exhaustion and not from the site.

Beth Temple is principal at Marketing Tech-nique, a strategic planning firm that focuses on helping clients develop new ways to think about their business and their customers.
This article first appeared as a column in the June 2001 edition of FORMAT, Minnesota's Advertising and Communications Monthly. Call (952) 924-2322.

Comments or suggestions?
Write to catspawpress@aol.com; we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for dropping by, and come again--we'll be adding new "shelves" and "rooms " in the Tool Shed from time to time, and there's always new material to put in the Tool Shed!

You can also take a publishing class: Pat Bell is a faculty member of the Writers College, where she teaches an on-line class on publishing. Check out When is The Next Publishing Class? for her current schedule.

Don't have time to take a class? You can also arrange for consultations with her. Help is close at hand!