As we sold the first edition of the book 5000 copies. in two months

“Yes, we did it!” Is what I thought to say when we sell the first edition of the first volume of the book. And we really did it - in a sense, we sold the circulation. But for this short but extremely saturated period of time from the end of December to February, inclusive, much in my understanding of book sales has changed.

Books can be sold not only in bookstores

First, it finally became clear that books are not sold in bookstores. Yes, the presence of books in the familiar to us "books" - an attribute necessary, but not decisive. And, rather, more status. When I, at the very beginning of this journey, talked with publishers, I always heard, among the main reasons, from their mouths something like the following: “Your book will appear in all bookstores in the country”. And it sounded like something very convincing. When asked what circulation they would sell in a year, everyone called a figure of 5,000 copies. But, as you can see, this bar can be taken much earlier. And then what's the catch? Publishers are cheating and do not tell authors about reprinting or bookstores really go to the second role in terms of book sales?
')

Where did you sell

Since we did not have an understanding through which sales channels one or another number of books could be sold, we decided to try a bit of everything. Conventionally, I divided our samples into groups and these are the ones that we were able to more or less reach (in terms of sales):

• our online store
• Joint Shopping sites
• sponsor fees
• preorders
• wholesale shops
• sponsors bought extra
• partners in Ukraine and Belarus
• retail is different

Online store

It is clear that we have made a simple online store consisting essentially of only one basket. But potential buyers were previously sent to the landing page .



We intentionally did not use paid advertising. All buyers came to the page by reference in articles, social networks, etc.

Sites of "Joint Purchases"

This sales channel was offered to me by my friend, who successfully sells his products through him (he is a food producer). For a long time he did not have to persuade me, it was enough to show the sales figures of his goods. As a result, we sold a fifth of the books in this way.

Sponsor rewards

I understand that pointing out sponsorship copies of books as “sales” is not entirely correct, but on the other hand, it was sponsors who were our first “buyers”. Therefore, I decided to take these specimens into account as sold. Those who are not aware of our crowdfunding history can study a separate post on this topic.

Preorders

Even in the process of launching a project on a boomstarter, we launched a page with a collection of pre-orders for future books. About 2000 of these orders were gathered. Of these, exactly one third were real. Not so bad.

Bulk in stores

And so we got to our first samples as “suppliers” for bookstores, children's and other stores. We can say that we only tried this method and he allowed us to implement a little more than one tenth of the first edition. From what I conclude that retail stores can sell far more than 5,000 copies. But here is what I observed: large bookstores, for example, “Moscow” or “Biblio-Globus” per month can sell a maximum of 50 books of the same title. And this is a very optimistic figure. Now I think to bet not on monster shops, but on their competitors.

Sponsors bought additionally

And again sponsors. Of course, one can argue, they say, why divide them into two separate groups, but there is a very good reason for this: in order for the sponsors to make an additional order, you need to carry out a separate work, which for us turned out to be very costly in human resources (that is, our personal time).

Partners in Ukraine and Belarus

We began to appear partners in different cities of Russia, as well as in Ukraine and Belarus. So far, they have made a very modest contribution to total sales, but I am sure this is only the beginning.

Retail is different

As far as possible, we try to participate in various exhibitions, meet with schoolchildren and teachers, encourage private distributors and so on. Directly for the sale of books, this method can hardly be called justified, but for recognition it is mandatory. As the saying goes: small spool, yes dear :)

Plans for April-March

Since April, we have allocated a small budget for online advertising and we will begin to explore this area. If anyone can help in word or deed, it will be great. Here's what the near future is: ads on Yaplakal, the World of Facts, a media-context banner on Yandex and contextual ads on Yandex.Direct.

We also have an application for iPad.



And who has not yet had time to buy our books, and there are already two of them, and after a month we wait for the third one, you are welcome to buy them;)