Hi, I’m Dale Beaumont and welcome to Get Published TV. This is only dedicated show on the internet to help authors and aspiring authors to write publish and market their own best selling book.
Now, in today’s episode, we are going to look at the little title is why sell your books in bookstores? Now, some of you may be saying what do you mean? Are you crazy? Are you insane? Or you know, isn’t that the only place to sell your book in bookstores. Well, the answer is actually no. The bookstores are just one distribution channel of many, many, many different places that you can actually sell your books. And in future episodes, we’re actually going to talk about all the different places in which you can sell your books and understand that bookshops is just one, just one place. And the reason why I want to do this video is that I’ve had people actually say to me and other people actually say publicly or at their blogs or websites don’t sell your books in bookshops. It’s a bad place to sell books and you don’t make a lot of money.
So what I wanted to do is to kind of you know clear up some confusion out there because there are some people that say yes, sell your book in bookstores and other people say no, do not sell your book in bookstores. I kind of have an opinion on this subject and what I’m going to do is share with you a little bit later. But first, I want to look at the pros and cons of each, why should you sell your book in bookstores and that’s the purpose of this video. And then in the next video, I’m going to talk about the reasons why you should not sell your book in bookstores and then we’re going to wide them up and then you will be able to make a decision as to which is right for you, does that make sense? All right, here we go.
So the first reason to sell your book in bookstores is that it’s extra income. Now, sure, you don’t make as much money selling through bookstores as opposed to when you sell a book directly. Now, if you go through a mainstream publisher as we have discussed before, you may get of that 10% of the recommended retail price. So the book sells to $20.00, you’re going to get $2.00, sometimes a bit less, sometimes a little bit more. Not a huge amount of money knowing that the book is going to cost a couple of dollars to print and they’re selling it for $20.00. So you are only getting a very small percentage of that overall—and it’s your work.
However, it’s still extra income because if you don’t sell—even if you’re only getting $2.00 per book or if you self publish, you’re getting $3.00, $4.00, $5.00, $6.00, $7.00 per book, that’s obviously much better, but it’s still extra income. So you’re not losing or wasting anything. You certainly going to be making extra money, just another distribution channel. Some people say it’s one of the worst distribution channels or some people would say one as aggressively as that is not one of the best, but it’s still easy distribution channel and you can still make money. Okay, you can—I’d do that with some—but it is extra income. That’s the number one reason, okay.
Number two, is credibility factor. Credibility is huge. That’s a big reason to have your book in bookstores and a lot of people miss it. They just go you know, I’ll just sell my books direct. It’s not necessarily the money that we’re talking about here. It’s the credibility factor. Now, maybe if we can flash up on a photo, I really love you to see this because there’s actually a time where buying and still happens regularly when I ran to a bookshop, and I have four of my books on the shelf side by side, I had four books. Right next to my book was Richard Branson book Losing My Virginity. On the other side, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. I think just above, it was one by Seth Godin and another book by Marco—Gleeson and I think there was a novel one for another famous author. I can’t remember right now. But he is Dale Beaumont and he wrote all these business gurus right next door and you know why I was on this same level as these other people.
So that is great from a credibility point of view. You can be—to have more books on that day than Robert Kiyosaki had on the bookshelves. So that is great from a credibility point of view.
The reason number three, so the first one is, it’s extra income and some people have done it really well and it made good money from selling in bookshops. Second one, credibility. The third one is that it attracts a different level of buyer. Now, normally—and I’ve had a lot of opportunities where people have got my books and they have got them from a bookshop sometimes and many of them actually saw through airports, airport bookshops is where a lot of my sales come from and there’s a lot of people, the business-minded people that are traveling. And one of the guys picked up my book and said I love your story, I love what the book was about and the information that we shared. Would you mind flying down to Melbourne, I’m in Sydney, so like flying from LA to Chicago to speak and I’ll pay you $5000.00 to give an out presentation to our company.
So that was an opportunity whereby that was a $5000.00 sale that I made on that day. It wasn’t a $2.00 or $3.00 book. So by having them in bookshops, you don’t know who’s going to pick it up in there and who’s going to say—because again, when they’re seeing you next to Richard Branson or Robert Kiyosaki or someone else that are really high caliber, they then are putting you on that—so that—undeserved pedestal saying we know well, this person must be good and therefore I’m going to pay them to come and speak to my organization.
So that is really important. You’re attracting a different level of buyers and you’re not interested necessarily in selling you know, sure it’s great to sell tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of copies in bookstores but if you just sell 10 books to 10 people, they’re going to pay you $10,000.00 a year or $5000.00 a year then that can be a very, very profitable exercise.
So again, we’re going to talk more about how to do that. You need to position your book in a way to actually act this—lead generation of us to encourage those people to call you into book presentations or coaching or consulting or mentoring or whatever other product package you want to offer.
Number four is that it will enable you to get the attention of the media. Now, this is not always the case but in many cases, the media, the mainstream media, so major television radio and the major newspaper will not run a story promoting or talking about you and promoting your book unless your book is in bookstores. Now, why do you think that’s the case?
Well, if there are television network and then they may have a million viewers and you’re on primetime television and you talk about your book, and they don’t have any way to direct those people because nobody at the end will say, if you’d like to buy Dale Beaumont’s book, then head to all the bookshops that it’s available there. And then their job is done. They’re passing on to someone else then they’re going to go to the bookshops and they can actually buy it. The other alternative for them is to say go to secretsexposedclub.com, but normally they don’t like to promote television, oh sorry, websites on television or radio. Sometimes they do but for major shows, they kind of think it’s a little bit tacky to promote in lots of websites.
So the other alternative is do not say anything, don’t direct them to the bookshops, don’t direct them to your website and they say nothing, thanks very much for coming in to do the interview today Dale. And what they’re going to be left with is a 100, 200, 500, a thousand calls coming in to their reception saying where do I buy the book, where do I buy the book, where do I buy the book? So, at that many cases whereby they’re actually saying, yeah, we’ll run something, but are your books in bookstores? And I said yes they are. Okay, great, we’ll run something. If the answer is no, then they’ll say, look, we won’t worry about it.
So by having your book in bookstores, you can actually attract more media. If you don’t, you just make your job a little bit harder. It still can work. I have people debate me on that and say, I’ve got a huge amount of exposure and my books have never been in bookshops and that’s great for you. But many of those people you know haven’t obviously beaten the big, big levels with mainstream television and radio whereby that they don’t always—you know they don’t like to promote websites, okay.
And the last one is, your customers like it, not like it but you’re giving them options, you’re giving them flexibility. So I say to people, yeah, if you want to buy my books, head to my website, and I mention them the website name, or go to your local bookshop and you can pick up them, so it gives people choice. Some people like to be able to walk in your bookshop and buy off the shelf and that’s great, it helps my book sales to go over in bookstore stops and helps the book buyers to keep reordering. So nothing is able wasted. I don’t mind if people are going and buy it from the bookshops but obviously, I make more profit if they come to me directly, so I prefer—but I’m not fast either way. Because obviously I’m going to be promoting and marketing to all different types of people. Hi-tech people that buy a lot online and love using their computer and other people that actually would prefer to go into a bookshop.
So they’re the five reasons, the five biggest reasons in my opinion as to why sell your book in bookshops, extra income, credibility, you attract the high level of buyers or you attract some quality buyers, people—otherwise wouldn’t have attracted if you just try to sell to everyone directly. It helps you to get the attention of the media of makes it more attractive for people to do stories on you. And the last one is, it just gives your customers choice and options in order to deal with you.
So they’re the five top reasons. I would love to hear if you’re watching this and you’ve got an answer or something that you like to contribute or you want to debate me on some of these topics. If you want to say that what I say was right or maybe not right, then leave me your comments. There’s a comment section on the getpublishedtv.com website and I really would want to hear from you or just leave a message telling me of what you thought of today’s episode, and we will continue the conversation next time. We’re going to look at the reasons why not to sell your book in bookstores.
This is Dale Beaumont from Get Published TV. See you again next time.
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