Who’s Got the Power?
How a Publisher’s Sales Force Can Make or Break Your Book
© 2003 By Deanna Carlyle
Romance Writers Report, October 2003

Once upon a time before the Internet, I was an entry level sales assistant for a big, multinational publisher. It was a confusing time, not least because I had no idea what was going on in all those meetings my boss attended, seemingly for days at a time.

Every now and then an editor and her cohort would wander past my cubicle on the way back from one of the meetings and I’d catch a scrap of conversation, a clue to the mystery that is publishing.

“Did you get it past Sales?” editor A would ask editor B, her voice thin with worry.

“She has to check with the accounts.”

The editors would shuffle by, casting furtive glances into the offices that lined the hallowed halls of Sales. I watched their retreat and scratched my chin. Apparently I worked in a powerful department.

But from what I could tell, all my boss ever did was check things in the computer and chat on the phone, then run off to meetings, endless closed-door meetings.

What went on in there anyway?

Twelve years later I finally got the chance to find out. I asked several publishing insiders for the skinny on sales, and they graciously complied.

It turns out the cringing editors were right: Sales is a mighty force. It wields a powerful influence at every stage of a book’s career, from manuscript acquisition to print run and budget calculation to the retail connection. Sales can make or break your book.

Acquisition Power

How much influence does a publisher’s sales staff have on title acquisition? “Sales is very integral the acquisition process,” says Alison Lazarus, President of the Sales Division at Holtzbrinck Publishers (which owns St. Martin's Press and Tor Books). “We may be asked to read a manuscript or proposal and give our estimates on what we think the title could sell. If the readers are very enthusiastic about the project it can help influence the decision to try to acquire the title.”

Sales can also influence the decision to reject a title. “On at least two occasions,” one author says, “I've had books rejected where the editor has hinted to my agent that someone in sales or marketing killed the deal. It was obvious that the editors really loved the books and had wanted to buy them.”

If you’re lucky, however, someone on the sales force could bring your manuscript to an editor’s attention. That’s what happened to former romance writer Mary Daheim. In an interview she gave to About.com, Daheim describes how she asked her regional Avon sales rep to take at a look at the opening chapters of her first mystery. The rep then took the chapters to Avon’s regional sales conference and gave it to a senior editor. Within a month, Daheim had herself a three-book contract for a new mystery series.

Sales reps also look to acquire authors. “If our sales representatives see a competitor's book selling well,” says George D. Bick, Senior VP, Director of Distributor and Morrow/Avon Sales, “they alert us immediately to that fact and we get into gear to see if that's a viable author to go after. Since several of our accounts—Walden, B & N, Wal-Mart, Target—provide us with point-of-sales (cash register sales) information, we can instantly see competitors’ authors who are doing well.

“Though we haven't acquired any romance authors in this manner in recent history, we have been able to use the feedback from our reps with certain romance genres. For example, we've seen the sales increase of the romantic suspense genre and have pursued authors who write these kinds of stories. We will also steer in-house authors away from, say, Regency time frames to this genre if they have the ability to do so.”

Sales is always gathering author and trend information like this, from a variety of sources. “Sometimes the agent will provide previous author history,” explains Lazarus. “Or we might use one of our own titles as a comparison. Sometimes we will call a key buyer or major account and say, we're looking at a book on X (usually a non-fiction subject). Do you think there is a market for this, or how many books have you seen on this?”

This last practice puts the big chain book buyers in a powerful position. “Every time a major author changed publishers,” says Denise Little, former book buyer for a major chain, “I'd get a call from the publishers interested in acquiring that author with queries on whether the author was trending upward or downward in sales, what the ballpark figures were on the last couple of titles, what I thought of the writer's work, and so on. Sometimes I would get asked point blank if I thought the author was worth pursuing.”

Power in Numbers

Once an author is acquired, the publisher’s sales force plays a key role in determining her print run numbers, which can directly affect her book’s chances in the market—and the long-range health of her career. If print runs are too low, her book won’t likely have a shot at a national bestseller list (According to conventional wisdom, you need at least a 250,000 first print run to have a shot at the New York Times list). If the initial print run is too high, on the other hand, the author may risk poor sell-through percentages, which could adversely affect her chances of being published again. For new and midlist authors, this is a crucial consideration. A good sell-through percentage of 70%, for example, is easier to achieve with a 35,000 print run than it is with 100,000.

“The way publishers set print run,” explains Denise Little, “is to solicit their six or seven biggest accounts three to four months before the book goes on sale, and get estimated buys (which need to be accurate to within 10% of the actual order, which comes in a month or so later) on the titles in their list. They add up these estimates, and that's what they use to set up the actual print run. Generally these six or seven big accounts make up a reliable percentage of total orders, so the publishers extrapolate from the estimates to get the total order.”

The process gets more complicated when Sales adds the marketing budget to the mix. “Determining a print run and promotional budget for a title is done over time, and with many people involved,” explains Alison Lazarus. “Generally it is done in the context of looking at the books for a given season, and trying to balance the relative strengths of each title and the sales potential. We look at the competition, at our own sales history on similar titles, at the publicity potential, the salability of the subject, the strength of the final manuscript, and other factors.”

Which other factors? I asked.

George Bick enlightened me. “Factors that affect the printing and the budget are an author's trajectory—is the author growing, declining, flat?  Market demands and timing—is now the right time to be building the author?—come into play as well.”

So, if the time is right, what can sales do to impact the marketing budget? “We will sometimes ask for more marketing to be done for a book to help us reach our sales goals,” explains Lazarus. “Or we might suggest that marketing money be spent in a certain way to help influence our buyers to take more. For instance, a largely regional advertising campaign might work for a regional title, but if we are looking for national distribution, we prefer the marketing to be spent accordingly.”

A book’s promotion budget is also impacted by the big chain buyers. “There were many, many times when what I did as a buyer had a direct impact on what a publisher did with a book,” relates Denise Little. “It was particularly effective with first-time writers. If I loved a galley, I could take the book in quantity and arrange in-store promotion. Diana Gabaldon and Antoinette Stockenberg were among the authors that I pushed from book one.

“I could also make a difference with established authors expanding into new audiences or dealing with changes in their careers. Once I convinced a  publisher to put Jayne Krentz's backlist in print by offering to buy out an entire new print run of the titles and keep the books on the shelves for two years. In those days [early 90s], publishers didn't believe in keeping a romance author's backlist around. They thought that romance was a frontlist-only concern. The books sold, and publishers realized that romance backlist could be profitable.”

The major chain buyers can also impact how a book is displayed and shipped nationally. “I bought a bunch of display dumps of Linda Howard's first single title release,” Little says by way of example, “enough so that the publisher could afford to make custom headers for the dumps for all accounts. Another area that I had a lot of impact was in loosening up Harlequin/Silhouette’s shipping policies. In those days [early 90s], it was impossible to get any single title from them without buying all the accompanying titles in the prepack. In other words, to get sufficient copies of a Nora Roberts book, I'd have to order every single other title in the line for that month at the same level. I was able to convince the publisher to allow me to order, well in advance, extra copies in addition to the prepack quantities for a select list of authors. In order to offer it to me, they had to offer it to everybody. And, thanks to that, Silhouette books started making the bestseller lists. I was so pleased.”

Information is Power

A lot has changed since this writer’s pre-Internet days as a sales assistant. Nowadays big publishers are wired to the max, which gives them a competitive advantage over smaller presses—and over their authors.

“Everyone at HarperCollins has access to our Intranet site that is jam-packed with information,” explains George Bick, “—everything from Title Fact Sheets to sales information (which is updated daily) to ad hoc reports to terms of sale to archived bestseller lists to our online travel page and more. Everything we in the office and everyone in the field needs to make their time more productive is available with a mouse click.”

Holtzbrinck Publishers also touts up-to-the-minute data retrieval systems. “In the office we have all kinds of data from our accounts,” says Lazarus, “and our own systems to help us track each title’s velocity.”

Each title’s velocity? What that? And why is it so important?

Sales velocity is your book’s “rate of movement” to and from bookstores. In fact, you may want to ask Sales for your “rate of movement” or “print reconciliation” report, which some authors receive, but many don’t, for reasons to be discussed below. The rate of movement report a monthly record of how many copies of your book were shipped and how many were returned—and when. This report is important because if Sales sees that your book is being reordered a few months after its release, they’ll sense that yours a book to get behind, a book with “legs,” and they’ll quickly go back to press.

Even better for you, if Sales sees that your backlist sales are positively affected by your current release, they’ll know you are an author to watch, one they should get behind with their massive publicity and marketing machine, which suddenly becomes more available.

But by the same token, Sales will also know you’re an author who could gain contractual bargaining power . . . that is, only if you find out how well your books are doing.

Do you see what a poker game publishing can be?

So, if Sales won’t show you their cards—those rate of movement numbers which you can always ask and negotiate for—you’ll have to use smoke and mirrors to get at the information some other way.

One mirror you can use is Ingram’s stock status system. You can call this large distributor at 615-213-6803 to get an idea of your book’s weekly demand and yearly sales totals. Ingram’s stock numbers will also give you an idea of when and how often your book ships to booksellers. Multiply these numbers by twenty and you’ll get an approximate sense of your books’ movement nationwide.

(Author’s note: Since the date of this article’s publication, Nielsen Bookscan http://www.bookscan.com/index.html now does continuous retail sales monitoring service for books in the US for a fee).

Frontline Power

Another type of sales power is frontline power. Publishing sales people have direct personal knowledge of who the bookstore buyers are and what they want—and what they can be persuaded to want. This is frontline power, and it can impact your book’s pre- and reorders.

“A passionate rep (and all our reps are!) could easily talk for hours about a single title,” says George Bick, “but often, given the constraints of the customer, who sees dozens of reps representing hundreds of imprints every day, our reps may only have a minute or three to discuss a title. It is our responsibility therefore to make sure that the rep has everything he or she needs to make those minutes count most.”

Good buyers can reach a decision quickly, as Alison Lazarus reminds us. “Most books probably get sold in anywhere from thirty seconds to a couple of minutes discussion, depending on the account, the buyer and the book. Remember, many of our customers have seen our catalogs before their reps arrive and so the discussion might be more about the right quantity to take, what in-store promotion can be done, or what is different about this title from the author's previous one.”

With so little time and so much to discuss, do sales reps ever push one title at the expense of another? Not so, according to Denise Little, who adds the caveat that sales techniques may have changed since the early 90s when she was a buyer. “They fully expected me to take every title—romance is a commercial genre, after all. The kind of horse-trading you're talking about did happen, but usually with books that were published strictly for the academic market, or with specialty titles. I didn't get many of those in romance. I did sometimes get pressure to reduce an order when I placed orders that surprised the heck out of the reps, because the order was larger than they expected, and that could throw them for a loop.

“Once I was being presented with a Sandra Brown title,” Little offers by way of example. “At that time, she was published only in mass market. But this title was being released in hardcover for libraries to pick up. I placed an order for several thousand copies of the hardcover for the chain. The rep tried to talk me out of it—my order was more than twice the size that they had contemplated printing for the whole print run. He then called his boss to see if he could even take the order. In the end, the publisher reconsidered, pulled the book and redesigned it for the trade market, and the book went on to make the New York Times list in hardcover.

“I also got pressure to increase an order occasionally,” Little adds, “if the publishers had higher expectations than I did for a title. But I never got asked to skip a book or reduce an order in exchange for increasing somewhere else.”

Power to the Author

Now that we know what frontline power is, how can we get some?

One powerful tactic is to focus your self-promotion on a single chain, such as Border’s or Barnes & Noble. If you can impact your pre- and reorders at a just one chain, your publisher’s sales department will likely notice and will advertise your increased order numbers to their other accounts.

This kind of synergy happened occasionally when Denise Little was a buyer. “I'd invest heavily in new authors I thought were likely to be hot,” says Little, “or midlist authors I thought were ready to break out into bestsellerdom. This dramatically increased my company's sales. But my advantage (being a reader of the genre) was eliminated when it paid off once too often. After that, publishers would notify the other big accounts when I took a flyer on a relative unknown, and they'd stock up, too. That was good for the genre, but a bit frustrating for me—it absolutely destroyed my competitive advantage.”

Okay, so romancing the big chain buyers is good. But don’t stop with them. Emulate your publisher’s sales force and get finished copies or advance reading copies of your book into the hands of the entire store staff. “Trying to get store staff to read new titles, either frontlist or midlist is the single best way to get a title to standout,” says Alison Lazarus. “Publicity is the other best way. We also can make liberal use of free finished books for store staff where it makes sense. Most people don't realize that the average bookseller on the floor would still have to buy a book in their store to read it. When The Red Tent by Anita Diamant was taking off, due largely to word-of-mouth, we sent copies out to our reps to hand out to the store staff who might not have read it yet. That book's sales grew almost exponentially and we feel that sharing it with those who could recommend it certainly helped that to happen.”

Unfortunately, however, your publisher may not be willing or able to share all this frontline selling power with you. Sometimes they can’t afford to print reading copies of your book or they can’t share their contact information. Holtzbrinck Publishers, for instance, does not share its account contact information with its authors.

But don’t let any lack of backing stop you. Buy bookstore and special interest mailing lists or hire a freelance publicist who has such lists.

“I do most of my own promotions,” says Brenna Lyons, (Prophecy, 8/03, Treble Heart Books), “alone or with the other authors. [My publishers] have a promotions staff. They make announcements, send out review copies, etc. But, whether you are NY or small press, the author has to take an active role. . . . There are a few stories of authors who do nothing and hit the USA Today Bestseller list, but they are few and far between.”

Your natural creativity will come in handy when thinking up co-op promotions. For example, at a panel discussion during this year’s RWA national conference, Senior Editor at Warner Books Karen Kosztolnyik described how author Leanne Bank’s (Some Girls Do, 5/03, Warner Forever) had 7,500 tee-shirts printed up, each sporting the cover of her book. She gave these shirts to her editor. Her editor then gave them to the account managers, who passed them to their sales reps, who then offered them to their store buyers. Like most people, store buyers love getting free stuff. At the same time they get the message that here’s an author who knows how to promote herself, a message they may well remember when it comes time to place that very important order. Yours.

Even if you’re on a budget, you can still do a countrywide bookstore tour. LaVyrle Spencer got her start that way. “Way back when,” says Little, “LaVyrle asked her publisher if they'd cover her gas expenses if she covered lodging for a book tour.  They said yes.  She then called in favors across America, and begged couch space from friends, relatives, and booksellers in her target cities.  She managed a large scale tour to support an early single title release for essentially the cost of her meals—organizing her own publicity along the way.”

All right, so you’ve got your fabulous promotion ideas and you’re ready to hit the road. How do you communicate your ideas to the sales force? Go through your editor. “Sales reps do not have the time to respond directly to author inquiries or ideas.” says Alison Lazarus. “The editor . . . will know the right person to communicate the information or idea to in house.” Lazarus also emphasizes the importance of letting your editor know of any local connections you may have in the bookselling community, so that Sales can leverage this connection when selling in your region. “Often success starts on a grass roots level,” Lazarus says, “and builds from there.”

In addition, see if you can get yourself invited to a publishing sales meeting or booksellers’ trade show.  “We have authors attend trade shows that might be happening in their local area,” says Lazarus. “The number of authors who come to a sales meeting is very limited, maybe one each conference, and it is usually done for an author whose title is a lead book in the season. Again, the author's editor or publicist should be the conduit for any appearance ideas.”

Ultimate Power

However much you and your sales team work it, there’s still no guarantee of better sales. “Active support for an author merely speeds up the process of letting the author's talent find its appropriate readership,” Denise Little reminds us. “In other words, I couldn't make a bestseller happen. I could merely put enough copies out there for readers to find them. The real magic happened when authors sat down and wrote wonderful books.”

Writing wonderful books. Now that’s power. If we as storytellers can mainline that kind of power—the power of creation—and harness it to our craft, the readers and the publisher’s sales force will sit up and take notice.

Whether they’ll buy the book once it’s in their hands? That’s another story.

So, I ask you, who’s got the power?

We all do.

May the force be with us.

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