Main Street Books and Self-Publishing: The Reality

I have more than a few, but let me start with a few words about self-published books and the truth, not the myth, about how Main Street Books (an example of one independent bookstore, not speaking for all of them) feels about them. May I first say, we like any book that sells no matter who publishes it or how it is published (unless it is Amazon, but that is a completely separate post!). The self-pubbed books we have that have sold well are either about the local area or have been purchased by the friends and family of the author (and we truly appreciate that the author sent them to us to buy). We also have self-pubbed books that are yellow with age.

The main advice I have about any publishing venture is to do your homework – on companies, on what sells, on pricing, on what bookstores carry, on terms. Everyone feels like they have a book in them and that others will be interested in reading that book, but there are so many books to choose from, how will they find your book? We handsell books here, but it has to be a book we love. The reason for that is we want our customers to trust our choices. If we feed them too many books they dislike, next time they’ll look elsewhere for a recommendation. We want them to come back to US. And truthfully, we have types of books we like better than other types. You could bring me the best written, most literate and interesting science fiction book in the world and chances are I couldn’t get through it. That’s not my genre and it isn’t our customers’ either. That is also something you could discover by visiting our store because we don’t have much science fiction. Poetry? Not something we sell much of. (When was the last time you bought a poetry book from us? Bought a poetry book at all? Using your answer to those questions calculate your chances of selling your poetry book at MSB.)

Pricing is another issue that comes up time and again with books that authors would like us to carry. Of the books we carry, most adult paperback fiction books are $12.00 to $16.00. If you go much higher than that, people will balk. A children’s book sells for less. A middle grade paperback is in the $6.99 to $7.99 group and a young adult is $9.99 max. Paperback picture books are $3.99 to $8.99. No matter how great it is, we can’t sell a $19.99 paperback picture book (or even a $19.99 hardcover picture book).

On another side of pricing is the split between the store and the author. We will take your book on consignment (meaning we will pay when it sells) for a 60/40 split (firm, no exceptions no matter how much it costs you to print it). Author receives 60% of the cover price and we receive 40%. It is also the author’s responsibility to follow up on whether or not the book sells. I often am left with the impression that the author thinks this is unfair. We provide shelf space (our shelf space is precious because we have a limited amount and we are giving you a spot that might be filled with something that sells better). We have to pay rent and utilities to give you that space and we pay wages to staff to sell the book. Some stores are starting to rent space to self pubbed authors but we haven’t adopted that practice yet.

Just as we choose the rest of our inventory carefully with an eye to what our customers want to see in the store, we’d like that to be the case of books we take on consignment. We want to support local authors and, in that spirit, have an entire shelf in our store of books we’ve agreed to carry. But before you bring your book in, come see our store and see if it fits with the rest of our inventory and if you are willing to place it under our terms. Even before that, make sure it is competitively priced and has a good cover (more about that in a future post).