If you’re an author with a handful of books published (or you’ve published nonfiction and have one book with a great program to help clients), AMMO is unlike any other program on the market. You’re going to have to work the program to find success, and bestseller status likely won’t hit in weeks of joining the program, but for many authors, AMMO is the beginning of a lucrative career that puts books first. Learn more here.
THIS IS THE LINK TO MY SUBSTACK if you’re listening elsewhere.
Starting Small to Go Big
Libraries are really going to be a big project, but as I’ve said, the payoff is nothing short of career stability. So in order to begin the process, we’re going to start close to home.
You can sell your paperback directly into your home library. In the same way direct fulfillment is the best path for author and reader, direct fulfillment is the best for authors and libraries.
You may have heard me say this, and if not, check out parts 1 and 2 of the library series to recap, but if a library buys from Ingram Spark, they pay double the price of your retail cost.
If they buy direct from you, you can sell at retail, save the library 50%, and gross 97% of you sale. Every time you sell your paperback into a library this way, you earn full-price, and enable local readers to read for free.
Few, if any, channels will be more profitable to your author business. Often times, a simple visit to the library can lead to a purchase of a paperback. And if you find you meet resistance, donating a copy can be a great way to start a relationship, but if you donate, you need to commit to follow-up visits to ensure the library is giving your book a fair chance.
One technique that can lead to a thriving snowball effect is returning to the library after your book is catalogued to encourage a patron to borrow the book. This does require a measure of extroverting yourself—which is a skill all of us should strive to build. You’ll want to select a good time to visit the library when the most patrons are likely to be on location.
Find someone browsing in your genre and recommend your book. It’s tough because it means talking to a stranger, but it’s an easy sell because they read your kind of book and it’s a free checkout.
Once your book is checked out, you have data to export to get your book in more libraries.
And here’s the deal, according to wordsrated.com the average book gets checked out 8 to 10 times per year, but what that statistic manages to misrepresent is that averages account equally for powerhouse books like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow as well as that one book you never heard of that sits on the shelf gathering dust. What that means is averages make poorly circulated books seem more successful.
I called my local lending library here in Omaha and spoke with Autumn at the Ralston branch. She agreed that the 20/80 principle probably fit pretty well with lending trends. In other words, 20% of books account for the majority of borrows while 80% may see fewer than 1 checkouts on a given week.
(Honestly, it is very likely that 50% of books in a library will see fewer than a single checkout per year. Using our example of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, consider that just one branch the OPL system, say the Sorenson location, may have as many as 50 copies of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow in circulation. If that one book remains constantly loaned for even six months, it would account for 1,200 borrows.
With a little bit of fast math, we can determine that it would take about 86 books being checked out just once a week for six months to bring the lending average to 8-10 times a week for the lot of them. That means one successful book can impact the average for almost a hundred library rejects.
Anecdotally, my best guess is that most books are checked out in the single digits per year and many books are never checked out.
Are Checkout Statistics Depressing?
You might be tempted to feel depressed by the stats on the majority of books, but I feel encouraged by them. It means the hardest work you’ll do is getting your book in libraries. After that, all you need to do is visit the branch to ensure your book is consistently borrowed, and by doing that, you’ll strengthen bonds with your local librarians and begin to build a case study for why your book is a great addition to regional, state, and national locations.
See, the thing is, most libraries are fighting for funding. They have to show a good deal of savvy and they need to produce results, or Neanderthals like Omaha Mayor, Jean Stothert, will do everything in her power to destroy them.
And what is savvy? It’s picking hot titles people actually read. I mention this because if you are at a library helping to see that books are checked out, you’re strengthening the library’s resilience when politicians who can’t read try to shut libraries down.
(In case you think I’m being too hard on Jean Stothert, consider that she once tried to mandate that snow plows not being clearing until snowfall had ceased. Her utter disregard for human life makes her unfit for office. But this isn’t a political show.
Building Out From Local to Regional
Once you’ve grown comfortable with your local library branch and worked to get the book borrowed with regularity, it’s time to repeat the process with nearby branches of the same library system.
For me, I can type in “Omaha Public Library” to see a full list of branches in my system. Substitute your city or town to do the same. Prepare to visit these locations by having documents ready. It’s an easy process, and one that will serve as the powerhouse of your growth.
First, contact your pilot library—he branch you already have a book in. Ask for an email showing your usage stats. Print your usage stats and go to a new branch. First, you’ll try to sell the book, showing your usage stats. If the librarian is not prepared to buy ask what they would need to see to make the decision. If the effort they’re requesting is simple, followthrough and repeat your process for lending with the first branch.
If the new branch has a complex request and it would take significant time to complete, ask to donate a copy and repeat the steps that gave you success with the pilot library.
Getting Started Will Be Time-Consuming
You may have thought at some point during this, that at the pace you’ll be able to get books in branches, you’d be 199 years old before you had decent market penetration. You’d be right, if it weren’t for the law of acceleration.
At some point, you’ll have enough data to send a compelling email to a library branch without visiting the location in person, and libraries will buy the book on your data presentation. From there, you can build a compelling case for regional acquisition, and quite quickly to state and national acquisition.
But if you’re like me, you may have little patience for slow-moving beginnings. If that’s the case, and you have the funds, donate a copy of your book to every branch in town, and visit those branches nightly until your book is lent at every location.
Get a robust lending history quickly, and you may have an entire metropolitan community worth of statistics in as little as a month, but either way, you’ll spend the same amount of hours hustling to get the books moving.
If You’re Finding Value in TRBM, Consider Supporting It By Purchasing the Host’s Novels
Every week I bring you two episodes of this podcast, and if you see value in the information I provide, you’ll notice, I have no call to support. There are two ways you can, however help this show grow and ensure it’s future. My favorite way is to purchase my book in any format here.
Second, if you’re an author and want to see massive sales in the fastest time possible, if you want to earn a living as an author and you have at least one professionally published book, look into Author Marketing Mastery through Optimization (AMMO). Steve’s program is second to none, and the proof is in the testimonials.
Have a look here, and see if the program is right for you.
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