Creating Passive Royalties From eBook Sales To Libraries With Amy Collins

Welcome to this addition of the Real Fast Results podcast!  In
many cases, this show provides information on how you can take
digital assets and use them to pull in more revenue and build a
bigger following for yourself.  What you are going to learn
today is going to feel counter-intuitive.  Let’s see what
guest Amy Collins has to share… Today's Promise: Discover How Your
eBooks and Print Books Make Money In The Library Market Today we
are going to discuss how your eBook and your print book can make
you a great deal of money in the library market.  It is
counter-intuitive because people think that libraries are old
fashioned and places people used to go.  Not true. 
Libraries are where it’s at, and we can make a lot of money there.
The Book Industry Study Group put out a study with Nielsen BookScan
recently saying that avid readers, which is the type of consumers
that book authors and publishers want to go for, avid readers visit
libraries.  Also, their households buy, on average, nine books
a month.  They're in libraries and they are buying
nine books a month, on average; a lot of them buy more. 
With that, combined with the fact that a lot of libraries
are in the United States, it’s the perfect place to focus your
marketing and your sales efforts. Step 1 - Make Sure Your
Book Belongs In A Library The first “Big Picture” step is to make
sure that your book belongs in a library.  If you’ve
written a mystery novel, a sci-fi novel, a cookbook, a self-help
book, a business book, you belong in libraries.  If
you’ve written a journal, a coloring book, a word search, those
probably aren’t good library books because libraries can’t take
what we call consumables. Make sure that you have the kind of book
that belongs in a library, and make sure it’s priced right. 
Is every other book in your genre $17.99 and yours is $24.99? 
Get your book in line with your competition.  The next step,
after that, is to get your book into the wholesalers. Step 2 - Get
Your Book Into the Wholesalers Libraries buy from
wholesalers.  Wholesalers are just big warehouses that will
buy books from you, the author or publisher and turn around to
resell them to libraries.  The next step is to present
your book to the librarians so that they can order the book from
the wholesalers.  My favorite step, the one after
that, is when wholesalers pay you because the libraries have paid
them, and then the libraries start reordering your book. So, make
sure your book is ready for the library and that it belongs there,
get your book into the wholesalers, the appropriate wholesalers.
Pitch your book to the librarians, get them to put it on the
shelves. Then wait for the sales to come rolling in. If
your book does well in one library, other librarians are going to
hear about it, and they are going to start ordering your book
too. That’s the really cool thing about this because there
is a sort of viral nature to the buying of books within the library
system. Selling eBooks to Libraries My favorite thing about selling
eBooks to libraries is that you get to charge a lot of money for
them.  You may sell your eBook on Amazon for $8, $9, or maybe
even $10.  You can sell that same $9 eBook to a
library for $30 or $40 because they are going to loan it
out.  They are going to loan your book out, over and
over again, to their patrons, but only one at a time. I’m an avid
reader in my library, and I’m always waiting for the next book. If
the waiting list gets too long, they will license another eBook
from you.  So, all of the sudden, what was a $35 eBook becomes
a $70 sale, all because your book did so well. Eventually,
if you sell enough copies of your eBook, you then have the demand
you need to start licensing them.  That means you
sell them, in essence, the right to loan out your eBook for one
year, or for a certain number of loans.  That means every
year, you get more money because those loans are re-upped, those
licenses are renewed. And yes, if you get your book into one
library in Los Angeles, which has a $25 million dollar a year
budget, and the other dozens and dozens of Los Angeles libraries
can see how well your book is doing, they’re going to start
ordering it.  But, what if they see that you have an
eBook?  What if you told them that you have an eBook? 
All it takes is a simple email, and all of the sudden,
you’ve doubled your sales.  In some cases, you have
tripled and quadrupled them. How To Make Your Book Library Ready I
know these steps intimately because we cover them in our
course.  I mean, these are the steps that we actually walk
through in the course. However, when I said to make sure that your
book is ready for libraries, there’s an entire list of things that
your book should have.  One of them is a catalogue and
publication block. This is a block of information, of
data, codes, numbers, and categories that all go into a small space
that sits on the back of your title page, also known as the
copyright page. If you would like to get into libraries,
this chunk of data is very helpful because it shows the librarians
that you mean business. That you understand their
business and what they need from you in order to get your book into
their system. When we say, “Make sure your book is ready,” there’s
a long checklist of things you may not have actually heard of, and
our course covers that.  It’s the catalogue and
publication block. We teach you how to price your book. 
What’s the right trim size?  We’ve got an enormous discussion
going on right now among all of our students about why 6x9 is not a
great trim size for most books, not all, but for most. What you do
is you get your book ready.  If your book’s already
printed and ready to go, you compare it to what the marketplace
needs.  You’ll learn these things in our course. When
your book’s ready to go, registering with the wholesalers is as
simple as writing a cover letter, sending them a copy of your book,
with a marketing plan. Wholesalers want to know that you’re
going to create demand.  Are you going to be calling
40 libraries a week?  Well, then tell them that.  Are you
going to be doing radio interviews or podcasts?  Are you going
to be writing guest posts as a blogger?  If you tell the
wholesaler what your marketing plan is, you have a much better
chance of getting in there. The wholesalers are going to
ask for a very deep discount.  In some cases, this
will be 50-60% off the price of your book. And, they are going to
want to buy the returnable.  If a wholesaler, such as Ingram
Wholesale, Baker and Taylor Wholesale, Broder Wholesale, Bookazine
buy 40 copies of your book, and only 20 sell, they are going to
send you the other 20 back. So, you’re in the wholesalers
now, you’ve agreed to their terms, they’ve ordered a few copies,
and now it’s time to write your cover letter for the
libraries.  The cover letter does not focus on how
wonderful you are or how terrific your book is.  Although you
probably are wonderful and your book is great, your letter is
focused on what the librarians want to hear and what they need to
know. What they need to know is that you understand their
goals.  If you approach a librarian and say, “Hey, I
understand your goals, I know how hard your job is, and I’m here to
make it easier,” you are so in. You want to create a cover
letter, or start a communication email chain with them that says,
“I know you want to create foot traffic.  I know that you only
want to bring in books that you need, the category is right for
you, that your patrons are looking for.  My book is exactly
the kind of book that your patrons are looking for. How do I know
that?  Well, because I took this course and Amy told me that
self-help books were #3 for non-fiction and cookbooks were
#1.  Well, my book is a self-help cookbook, so you clearly
need my book.  It’s priced perfectly, it’s got a category and
publication block.  It’s available at the following
wholesalers. I also have an eBook available at the following eBook
wholesalers.” I’ve been mentioning the print book wholesalers, but
don’t forget the eBook wholesalers, like Overdrive and 3M.
IngramSpark has a good one, or you can even use some of the eBook
distributors like Bookbaby or Smashwords.  So, once you’re in
and once you’ve created that cover letter, and you start sending it
out to emails, I suggest spending 15-20 minutes a
day…that’s it…5 days a week, 20 minutes a day, for about 90 days,
should really get you going, sending out this cover letter and
tweaking it for each librarian.  Example Cover Letter
“Dear Susan, My name is Amy.  I’ve written a book about the
publishing industry.  I’m hoping that you will consider
stocking it on your shelves.”  And then, you go on from there,
“Here’s my marketing plan.  Here’s what I know about your
library.  I would love to send you a copy as a PDF for you to
review.  May I send you a copy?”  Just start with that.
Communication With Librarians Librarians are lovely.  They are
so nice.  They are going to start communicating with you.
 As we get into the nitty-gritty on exactly how to do
this, there’s also a long list of things not to do. 
You do not pick up the phone and call a librarian at noon on
Saturday and expect them to give you half an hour.  They
aren’t going to.  They are going to be annoyed; they’re busy.
You do not call a school library and ask them to spend $400 on your
book.  They don’t know you, and they don’t have that kind of
budget.  School libraries are different than public
libraries; they depend a lot on donations. 
If you really want to be focused on the school library market,
that’s a slightly different cover letter.  Again, we cover a
lot of that in our course. What you want to do is to keep
going after the libraries that want your book. You
may hit a spade of libraries that aren’t interested because
the category isn’t right for them. Yes, you have a self-help
cookbook, and yes, that’s a huge market for libraries right now, in
the print book world and the eBook world. But, what if that
particular library system is just stuffed with self-help cookbooks?
 What if they don’t need anymore? That’s okay. 
There’s almost 13,000 public libraries in the United
States.  Go find others.  Just start sending out
your emails.  Twenty minutes a day.  You will eventually
start enough conversations, and those orders will start coming in.
Eventually, you will start seeing residual and viral sales. 
Things will start to snowball.  Things will start to grow.
Tips On Getting Into the Library Market For those of you who would
love to hit the library market, but you don’t have the time--I’ve
always said, “When you need to sell a book…time, money, talent…pick
any two.”  If you’ve got time and money, but no talent, you
can still be very successful.  If you’ve got money and
talent, but no time, you’re golden. If
you don't have enough time, but you have a great book,
you might want to consider using some of our advice and hiring
someone to do this for you. Examples: a local college kid,
your nephew, your grandson, etc.  It should be someone that’s
email friendly. You can hire a virtual assistant.  I take out
ads on Craigslist all the time.  There are ways to
hire somebody else to do this for you in a way that still is very
profitable.  Libraries are profitable enough that if
you don’t have that 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week, maybe somebody
else does. You should consider training someone how to do it. 
It is very transferable. Connecting With Amy You can actually view
the webinar about our library training.  If you like what
you’ve learned today, and you really want to get more into it,
check that video out.  I’m very, very proud of the work that
Daniel Hall and I did on that.  Also, if you need to reach me,
I’m always reachable at Info@NewShelves.com or on my website,
NewShelves.com.  You don’t have to implement any of
this, but if it resonates with you, then you should absolutely take
the time and energy to actually start using what you’ve learned
today. Daniels Real Fast Results Tips: Getting Into
Libraries   You can watch a FREE on demand webinar called...
How to Sell & Rent Your Book to Libraries So You Can Grow Your
Readership and Generate Passive Income Watch it by clicking here.
    Resources: Daniel And Amy's Course:
Real Fast Library Marketing Wholesalers: Ingram
Wholesale Baker and Taylor Wholesale Broder Wholesale Bookazine
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