A Career Making Books (or so I thought)
For anyone in publishing who thinks they're in the business of making books...
I'm not afraid to admit that I'm new to publishing. My newness and small business upbringing have allowed me to fearlessly march ahead thus far through walls of archaic systems and new-age technologies that are hell-bent on taking control. I started out as an author myself launching Modern Marigold Books in 2019 and four and a half years, six books, three authors and three awards later, I feel I've made pretty good progress given my small (non-existent?) budget and lack of industry experience and connections. Through it all, I learned one important lesson. That lesson is that, even though I thought I was for the longest time, I'm NOT in the business of making books.
Let's start at the beginning.
What drove me into publishing five years ago, was a long-time desire to write a book. What steered me towards self-publishing was obsessive research, a need for control over the creative process and my curiosity for how a book is made. By the time I held my very first book in my hands, I was infatuated with the entire publishing process. I loved how varied my work was - writing one moment, art directing another. I had the freedom to sell my books as I pleased and got satisfaction from figuring out my way through roadblocks and the reactions of parents and children alike when they read my books.
When I was approached by an author - who eventually ended up being the first author I signed as a publisher - I dove back into researching. At that point, I knew how to create a beautiful book. I couldn't wait to start carving a powerful story out of the manuscript she had sent me and I had a brilliant illustrator in mind, but I had no idea what it took to go from an author to a publisher.
At first I thought the difference was primarily in the paperwork. I got to work figuring out royalty percentages and calculating production costs. I spent more time drafting up and explaining lengthy contracts and formed an LLC. I wasn't stretching my creative wings but it was exciting to work on new aspects of the business and see the world of publishing from a new perspective. Somewhere while working my way through where I'd be storing the 2,000 books that I'd be in possession of the following year, I realized that I had overlooked my biggest hurdle.
Distribution.
From the beginning, I had decided to invest in offset printing which yielded beautiful, high-quality books and a pretty sweet profit margin, but that was about it. No bookstore or library was going to order my books directly from me. I needed to either print-on-demand (yikes, print costs) or find a distributor. Seeing as I already had three of my own books printed and sitting in boxes in my garage, I started the search for a trade distributor. To my delight, I was offered a distribution contract almost immediately with a large distribution company in North America but to my dismay, their costs and fees would take most of my profit margin (and then some). I was too new to know I could try to negotiate — not that it would have helped — and after six months of debate, I signed their contract and my books were almost instantly available everywhere. Honestly speaking, I have no regrets, I made the best calculated decision I could have made at that time and started my career as a publisher.
I was happy to see sales start coming in almost immediately for all of my books, way more than I had been able to sell myself through my website. The distribution company got me on all sales platforms and helped me gain visibility through their own marketing efforts. But it wasn't enough - I knew we could do more. Once my first author's book was released, I decided to invest money into our sales efforts and immediately saw an uptick in our sales and that's when it dawned on me. I was officially in the business of selling books. I could spend all the time and money I wanted crafting a beautiful book but it wasn't worth anything — and I wouldn’t be a good publisher — unless I figured out a way to sell books. A LOT of books.
To build a publishing company that generates a high volume of sales takes years of diligent work both publishing quality books/building a powerful backlist and fostering sales and the thought of having to focus so much on selling loomed over me like a dark cloud. To this day, marketing and sales is a big part of the job I don't look forward to doing and the idea of selling books is just the tip of the iceberg. Discovering who your real audience is, finding volume sale opportunities, ways to curb your rate of return and cut out middlemen and what marketing investments will actually result in sales —there are so many complex factors to consider and navigate for even the hope of success.
And while I'd much rather spend all my time creating books, I've come to the realization that, until I can afford to hire someone who can do it better, I'm the best person who can get out there and sell our books. Luckily there are endless ways to go about it from cold-calling libraries to marketing on social media to exhibiting at conferences and investing in email campaigns, but the most important thing I try to remember is to never miss out on an opportunity to talk about my company and books.
Fast-forward two years from this realization and my new business partner and I are in the throes of acquiring our existing publishing companies as imprints under our new company, Sambasivan & Parikh. I am beyond proud of the work we both have accomplished individually and together over this past almost one and a half years. As for my publishing/sales career, I'm happy to report, it's going well. The sales part isn't anymore fun but the challenge of finding creative ways to grow in this industry has been really exciting and I’ve learned so much by working with Ambika who has been building Yali Books since 2014. Also, we just published Modern Marigold Books sixth picture book at the beginning of April and in just one month we've sold through our first print run, a new record for us.
I hope the lesson I learned overtime, proves valuable if you haven’t yet reached that point in your publishing journey yet. It's time to get your sales gear on!