Here are more questions submitted via Twitter. If you have questions you'd like me to address next week, either leave them in the comment section below or send them to me on Twitter @tyrusbooks
@J_Low An agent said she prefers a potential client to have at least a simple website so that she can easily see their info. Thoughts?
Having a simple website with some basic content probably isn’t the worst idea, especially since it’s so easy in today’s world to put something together that is, if not beautiful, at least not harmful to the eyes.
However, don’t get caught up in the trap of thinking you have to have all of the bells and whistles and accounts across all social media and pretend book trailers and pretend cover art and a marketing plan.
Also, if you are a debut author in waiting, don’t feel like you need to artificially inflate your biography. It’s ok, if you’re querying your first book, to not have a huge track record. In fact, it’s kinda expected.
@blueshenlung What determines initial quantity for sale? What role does digital distribution play in that?
In my case—and I think it’s a fairly typical case—initial quantity for sale is calculated at one stage (P/L) and implemented at another (sales) and adjusted for any variances along the way.
A quick breakdown of that goes something like this:
When a publishing company is deciding if it’s a good business decision to publish a book, they look at what the expected upfront costs are going to be for production and advance (among other things) and then they look at how many copies of the book they’d need to break even AND MORE IMPORTANTLY sell to hit a certain profitability level (could be calculated in raw dollars or %).
Whatever that number is, say 4,000 copies, they have to ask, is it realistic that we’ll sell this many copies. If the answer is no, then the book doesn’t get published. If the answer is yes, then the sales force is told to go out and sell the book to bookstores (well in advance of the release date) and the sales force will, hopefully make that number. If they don’t, there might be problems (all the way up to cancelling publication) or if they do better than expected, the print run will be adjusted to reflect better than anticipated sales.
As far as what digital distribution do to that math? Well, it goes into the great big stew of calculations. If you say, “well we can sell 2000 print copies, can we make up the rest of the money selling digital copies” (where there won’t be the print and shipping costs, but where design, advance, layout, etc. are still considerations) and you really can, then it’d probably drive down the print run number by whatever measure it can support.
The important thing here, for better or worse, is to understand that the viability of a title and the likelihood of it being published in the first place, is dependent on all of those imprecise calculations when the book is little more than a cell on an Excel spreadsheet.
@ruththansen I wouldn't normally mention mental illness on my resume, but what about in a submission letter. Is schizophrenia an appropriate qualification for a writer to reveal when she's hoping to begin a business relationship?
Ps. Protagonist has same illness.
This is a tough one, but my first impulse would be to say there is absolutely zero need to divulge any mental illness issues with a submission letter. What’s important to the agent/publisher is – “Is this book a good fit with our line, do we think we can make money selling it if we produce it?”
If the agent/publisher indicates a desire to move forward—either as an agent/client relationship or a publisher/author relationship, then it’d be more relevant to bring up if the author feels like it could potentially effect the relationship at a later date. At that point, it’d be up to the agent/publisher to decide if that had any impact on their willingness to engage in a working relationship. I’m sure there’d be a wide range of responses to that question.
If the p.s. part of the question is to indicate – “author is writing effectively about something because author is dealing with same” that’s a consideration, too. But in the end, the most important question the publisher/agent is going to ask is – can I make money on this if I invest time/resources on it? And that answer will come from a variety of factors and opinions that will change from address to address.
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