Answers to your questions about why you need a publisher to release a book

Hello! We published the third book, and in the comments to the post you asked why, in fact, you need a publisher. In our case, doubly, because we work with paper, and we have a distribution network - so why then is the publisher?

The answers there are pretty obvious on the first layer - well, this is not our business. But if you dig further, you can learn a lot of wonderful things. I dug, having found half the MYTH. It turned out that they quite calmly share data and stories about what they do with books and how. It turned out that we have roughly similar launch processes (only they have books, and we have games), but there are nuances.
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Therefore, welcome to the post "that you did not know about the Russian book market." And yes, there are a couple of strange things.

Innocent question: so what does the publisher?

It takes risks, provides services for the preparation of the book and the layout, distribution, public relations and promotion.

What are the risks?

If you brought the manuscript to a publisher, and the editorial board liked it, the publisher may suggest that you publish a book using the “we take a license, you get a royalty” scheme. That is the standard story. Royalty, by the way, is 10% per share and significantly higher for the electronic version. It is calculated from the cost of shipping from the publisher, that is, from about half the price on the shelf. When there are two authors, the royalties are divided in half, but the total is slightly above 10%. I heard from Max Kotin about the 15% limit in other publishing houses, but I did not see it. Perhaps it was a dashing 90s.

So, the publishing house invests in the preparation of the book for printing (this is slightly less than six months), the cost of circulation and promo. In total, it turns out about more than a million domestic rubles (but most of this is done by work). If the book does not go - you do not lose anything, because you did not pay for the editor, nor for the proofreader, nor for the preprint, or for the printing of the circulation. Only get a small amount of royalties.

While everything is like in the desktop world. Only the percentage of entry in the myth in non-fiction a little more, and the percentage of "take-off" a little less. Their approximate estimate is 10: 1, that is, out of 10 books there is only one per reprint of the circulation. The other day after this question, they raised the statistics for 1 and 4 quarters of 2018 - every fourth book with dopital. But there are less successful periods.

Our accurate estimate for the last year is that 27% of the games go to reprint of the circulation, the forecast for this year is 34%.

What is a good book in Russia?

3000 books sold per year is awesome. 10 thousand is a bestseller (remember, I used to talk about 20 thousand, both estimates are subjective and received from different experts). This is a speech about paper, since paper is the main format of a publishing house. Although it is specifically in our case with “Business to Own”, thanks to you, who wildly did not want to bend at least 1500 rubles for delivery, the electronic versions of the book sold 3 times more than physical ones. This is an extremely rare case for the market.

In the case of the board game, there is a similar story, but we think in cycles. The circulation turnover and in rare cases the portfolio is important for us. This year we are looking for 1000 boxes to be sold in the first month after the product launch (and it happens two weeks after the appearance of the box in the first store, because it’s going to boxes to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk). It used to be three weeks, now specifically Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Vladivostok and Novosibirsk are launched a little later. So, 1000 units in the first month of promotion is an increase in promotion, in fact, the transition to category A. Circulation for six months is similar. The circulation for six months has not been sold and we do not need the game to form a line - we remove it from production. An example of a game that we keep at relatively small sales is the “Manhattan Project” (but right now the last run has passed, but there is no new one yet).

We make the first draws on games of 2-5 thousand pieces. On books, the Myth makes 3-5 thousand first copies on business and self-development, and a little more (4-6 thousand) on the child-parent theme. In the artistic segment, the circulation is larger, but top authors are very prominent there. In Pelevin may be 70 thousand first edition, for example. With the corresponding budget for promo. If the book has already shown itself to be cool in Western markets and there are serious network expectations, the first edition may be 10,000 pieces.

What kind of book preparation and layout services?

This is something that can be bought separately on the same Ridero, from freelancers or in an advertising agency, but is included in the package of the publishing house. And it is done more qualitatively and with an answer for the final result than outside (because there are no “tracks” at the joints).

The editor is like a product manager. In our case, he is following the logic (“this chapter here, this nafig, and here it is not clear, but here we should add another chapter, on page 115 give the table with numbers instead of poetry, oh, not so healthy, let's get less numbers”) and etc. That is the most useful person, if you have written is not a nauchpop. The editor makes sure that the finished book is good. For the reader, not for you. Judging by the contract, sometimes there are some misunderstandings with the author, therefore in the basic version there are hard points about the fact that the editor from the third iteration of the edits is always right. The third time my editor was Tatyana Rapoport, and everything went perfectly. Thanks also to Olga Svitova, it seems that it was she who analyzed the individual sentences in the spirit of: “this is what you wanted to say, and this is what the reader will think.”

Scientific editor - so, if you write a science teacher, you always breathe in your ear Comrade Major. More precisely, the person who fumbles in the subject. The MIF themselves find university lecturers on a topic (usually doctors of science) and agree with them. Perhaps you can find a scientific editor yourself, but there will be something like a guarantee that you are both responsible for the accuracy of the text. Here is an example of a book with a scientist.

Then the corrector - he checks the errors and corrects them. With proofreaders, I always have a sad experience because of a colloquial language that just pulls them out of themselves. And they also like to replace exact terms with synonyms (which happens after the third reading of the text after the editor), which adds sweet notes of madness to the text. Watch the hands of the corrector. He can be dangerous. However, it is often the corrector that helps to get one more point of view and make out very complex formulations. So when the desire to kill him passes, you begin to understand with your head that this is a good person. Nice and kind. The cycle happened all three times: first you see a bloody mess of edits at the place of your text, and then you understand how they helped you. The proofreaders in this book are Nadezhda Bolotina and Anna Ugryumova. Two, because I'm an evil geek who can bring anyone. Thank. And sorry for the battle for the economic term " ass ."

The cover designer is a subordinate art director (whom you will not see) who draws the cover according to your wishes - if you are lucky - and fits it into the style of the publishing house, the series and the customers' expectations in general. Our practice is to walk through the books with your books and put them on the shelves, and then look closely. Here, for example, our Elina, who wants to write a book about sales, she recently received a mental trauma in the "Read-City" from the illogic of their calculations. When I tried to attach a book layout, choosing between a blue and a red cover. Daria Kazakova did it here, but Aleksey Bogomolov received us - we didn’t communicate much, but everything went very quickly and professionally.

A coder is just a coder. I also have a grudge against it for letters and hard hyphenation (in some places not very good in language) in the electronic version. All the books on the tablet are like books with logical markup, and my third is with a hard-core style. Perhaps this is because the tables are inserted with text, not pictures. And it was important for him to keep the pages. But in general, the layout of the myth is quite good, according to Chehold with his modern modifications. This book is made by Ekaterina Matusovskaya. Our communication was limited to a nod to the final layout.

The Authors Manager is the main person on the project who is responsible for interacting with the authors. This is a new role, when we were published for the first time, this was not. The manager makes sure that you fill out the brief on the cover, send the book to your friends for reviews before publication, asks for your biography, is responsible for iterating the edits, and so on. I also throw off all the bug reports to this beautiful person, and magic happens to them. In general, just a single point of contact. To the level of “it is necessary to assemble a meeting in order to find out how everything is arranged there” - and instead of two weeks and dreary approvals, they took and gathered a meeting. This is the best person of the project. I take this opportunity to convey thanks to Anastasia Dyachenko.

Illustrations - if you need illustrations in a book, it’s better to bring good ones along with the manuscript or later. But sometimes they are ordered inside the publishing house. Then the retail price jumps, because it is necessary to smudge the cost of images on the first edition and the price of printing will increase. Sometimes the pictures are needed in the text, sometimes the author simply asks to draw. The second is discussed. We have no illustrations. In the desktop world, in 99% of cases, we order good art, because books choose for letters, and desktops - for the atmosphere. Therefore, the cost of the artist and process management occupy a large share of the budget. Well, artists, we can afford very good, and not only from the Russian Federation. Actually, when we just go around the network and look at the pictures in the social media feed, then when we see the desired setting, sometimes the script “find the author and send to the publisher” is included.

Circulation preparation is prepress and other, but we will skip them, because usually it is included in the printing service itself. I have not seen anyone or anything there.

UPD: Here is another comment from Alexey2005 about the fact that the publisher will legalize the profit for you. That is, you do not need self-employment, IP, legal entity and reporting.

Well, since I began to thank, I would like to thank the editor-in-chief of the direction Renata Shagabutdinov (he is responsible for the concept of everything), Vera Yozhkina, without whom the first book would not exist at all (for some reason I thought she left left for promotion, it turns out) and Artyom Stepanov (editor-in-chief, a man who openly answered all questions five years ago).

Set aside snot. Come on the case!

What is important in distribution from the publisher?

So you made a product. You have it in stock in boxes. You can sell the part yourself, but in most cases you do not have a normal retail, and you need to give it to someone to the stores. Retail, of course, will twist your hands, because it wants to make money on the product itself, and not to share most of the money with you. If everyone needs your product, and without it in any way - you will be able to twist the arms of retail. But more often it happens the other way around, because you know where you can shove your goods, there are still millions of analogues on the market. On this fragile balance and hold all negotiations procurement.

We counted and made vertical integration, when about 40% of the desktop (share in revenue, in the assortment matrix less than 5%) is produced in our own publishing house. That is the main fear of retail - to remain without goods - we closed immediately. But the same Monopoly comes with a rather small mark-up, for example: it is needed in stores, people will be perplexed if it doesn’t exist, but we don’t earn the bulk of it.

So, professional players already have a more or less established equilibrium, when the shares are distributed, and everyone in the chain is satisfied. This time. Two - there are agreements with retail, that is, directly supply contracts that allow shipping here and now. To conclude a supply contract in a small network - 2 months and at least 50 thousand rubles in work (including the time of a lawyer), in a big one - six months, and you need a special person to monitor the conditions (because there are usually horse penalties for every sneeze). Delivering goods to us and to Auchan are two big differences. In our case, if you shoot yourself in the leg, you will find a bunch of fractions in the foot. And in the case of a large network, you shoot a W-54 projectile from Davy Crockett in the leg.

The third feature - publisher managers can explain to all market players why they should take your book. But about this a little further. In general, people take a profile product from someone who understands it. That is, they take a lot. Because the main thing in this area is the credibility of processes and people. It is established usually for 3-5 years. Without this interval, the full volume simply does not go out.

We feel this very keenly in working with the Germans, because for them you are just the noise of the first 6-8 years. Only then begin to notice.

What about promo and PR that are in the package?

If you have carefully read and considered everything higher, you may note that you will not be paid very much for the book. In a sense, this is clearly not a salary. So, the money for the promo will be even less. Much. Or the book will become gold on the shelf and will not be sold at all.

Therefore, there are methods of content marketing, SEO, co-branding, guerrilla, mediator (now called influenza) and classic PR. A certain amount of the budget goes into performance (such as contextual advertising), but the main work is done far from there.

Myth due to their excellent content marketing has a huge base of readers in social networks and in the newsletter. Slightly more than a million readings per month on the blog, 450 thousand contacts in the newsletter, 330 thousand VK subscribers, about 225 thousand on Instagram, about 200 thousand on Facebook. And the audience of the site. These are those who should read about the book and buy half of the first edition. So that later, if you like it, talk further and launch a wave.

The second half will go to partners. Yes, at the MYTH, up to 50% of the first circulation goes through its store. No one else in Russia can do this. But still the audience is quite specific. And not always sales at the start determine long-term success. That is indicative of the 4th month. This is when the book either “grabbed” in physical stores and went, or when it is not taken from the shelves. It is important for shops to keep track of revenue per square meter, that is, shelf turnover. Therefore, if something goes wrong - you fly out of there with the sound of "pop."

Offline helps a lot PR. He also helps when the book misses the direct audience of the myth. There are quite a lot of lifestyle and okolonauchpopa, so books away from the mainstream will not pass exactly on target. Therefore, PR. Our case. We have a lot of our PR and through publishing.


In our case, “Business as games” publications were more, but there we worked from two sides. In the case of "Business on their own" publications less, but they have not all come out, and Forbes is already there. There, journalists predictably took the chapter about why to pay taxes at all, as last time everyone took the chapter about “Welcome, but do not go up the ass.”

Mediators: MYTH has a reader base that can influence others. Most often it is bloggers and famous people. And just sends them books. So I once came to the office and found a package of business books from them with a note, in the spirit that you enjoy. With me, the logic is simple - I do reviews of useful books for the year, and if you give me about 10 pieces, you can catch something that I would not read like that. It is important for some bloggers to get a book before the circulation and tell the first one, to someone simply on the topic of a blog and so on. I can say that this part of the myth was perfected over the years, and they are just monsters of the market there. We are wildly jealous of them and want the same with nastolkami now.

They have almost no partisan methods. In a sense, this is usually on the author. Right now, according to this classification, you observe one of these methods, and more than half of the message has already been read.

With the performance we had an epic failure. The title of the book “Business on Your Own” appeared to Google's neural network of ad checking as an advertisement for microlending organizations. And it is forbidden. So they didn't let in context.

There are more features when the name of 7 words is complex search queries.

The whole range of opportunities will be available to you under three conditions:

1. You like the editorial board and the promotion team, that is, the publisher will invest in your promo.
2. You get into the exit matrix (there are no books with you on the same topic or in the same series, but stronger). The exit matrix is ​​naturally spread. This affects the term - a month may be added in order not to cross you with another book in the same audience. Because the average reader can manage no more than 2 books per month. Our games are less frequent, but we also distribute announcements, trying to make no more than 1 nursery and 1 adult A-novelty from the desktop in focus per month.
3. You will give an exclusive to the publisher for sales in the first two weeks. Looking at his channel with a blog and other things, the MYTH prefers to use each book as a lever to collect people. That is, when you bought from them, and not from us during an exclusive, the following transaction occurred: we shared our audience with them. For this, they have invested more work in public relations.

PR service can be purchased separately at the agency, but it will be unrealistically expensive, since the agency is not a source of books. That is, does not have such authority. A separate distribution service to buy will not work, or it will cost more rational features. Therefore, we must endure half a year and be in publishing.

Why half a year?

Because the process of publishing a book is linear, and there are almost no parts that parallel. Is that the cover can be drawn while the proofreader is tormented. Many simultaneous projects, checking in and out at every stage, working with a bunch of external people like the same scientific editor - and here you go smoothly in 4 months. 2 more to prepress and print logistics to the warehouse. It is possible and faster, but then the process turns into sitting at night in the office. Similarly with us, the terms are the same for localization and development of the desktop. In the localization, the main brake is international coordination, and in development there are arts and miscalculation-designing of components.

What can an author do?

As I said before, the success of a book is influenced not only by the quality of the information, the level of the language, the cover and everything, but also who the author is and what he can do. In the sense that if you like Batyrev speak at conferences and seminars and, for example, give your homework to the audience to read your book, then every time there will be hundreds of sales. Naturally, typing is profitable.

But it turned out there are more factors. First, distribution loves the series. More precisely, if the first book of the author sold well, then the second will be considered as an analogue, and it will immediately be taken more. The third in the successful series is already a very good plan for everyone. We are now just reaping the benefits of this unexpected bonus. When I say "series", to a lesser extent, this applies to series like "The secrets of the gardener" or "Self-development", namely, about links from several books by one author. The overall series also affects, but not as much as direct analogues.


Secondly, the author himself can help the promo not only with his social networks and friends. Sometimes you also need to review your own book in different stores. It looks strange, and I did not do it and do not plan it, but here’s an example. It is quite ethical and beautiful: here is the top review just from the author.

“This is done for the Labyrinth’s own audience. They have it voluminous, there are people who buy books exclusively there. And their reviews are always captivating. ”

Ray Dalio in general videos on YouTube wrote about his book, but about the English. There is almost a training course.

It is important to apply for bonuses. If nauchpop - the main "Illuminator", a lot of PR around. It has a block of humanities and a block of techies.

We didn’t know anything about the business, but won the PWC Best Business Book of the Year. There are simply no others, and we found out about this award almost at the moment of winning - I did not want to go by invitation to the International Economic Forum, but wanted to finally get to Madagascar. Since then, there has been an ebola, a plague, an expedition of this year has flown down, and I never got. So, they had to say directly that I am so beautiful on the forum in general, nobody needs nafig, but I will be given a prize. Therefore, it is important to be. The prize turned out to be a very big plus: this is both PR and a package of money. More than royalties over three years. Then the Astrakhan journalists confused everything and made me almost an oligarch, but this is a separate hellish story of how I fought off VKontakte students.

Where do the books go?

In my estimation, with a finger to the nose, in a non-fixture for 5 years, there has been a shift from 1/10 of the officially purchased electronic versions to the circulation of the paper, to about 50%. We are not right now, we have an e-mail card that exceeds paper, and much. That the publishing house is glad, because in e-mail is another cost price (very small) and a lot of profit. But when the book reaches the stores and starts to be sold in retail, this ratio will move.

There are also online players who sell paper books. This, for example, Ozone and Labyrinth. The maze is generally cool, cunning types. They are partners of the Myth and are refining where the Myth doesn’t have time. In our case, a lot of sales were driven by the fact that the minimum order from the site of the myth is 1500 rubles. This restriction is from the delivery service, and now in the MIF, they are trying to get around it, this also frustrates them a lot with missing orders. So, the Labyrinth just collected these orders. They made a pre-order with a good discount. The book will come - they will simply send half of their party in the first days. I also ran in circles and ofigevat from the extravaganza that was taking place, when people are ready to order goods, pay for delivery to the other side of the world, but they don’t want more than one book. And he prepared such a scenario for intercepting orders, but decided that it was not very ethical. We promised an exclusive. We promised to follow the policy of the RRC.

Oh, and one more thing. During the sales of "Business on their own" many who ordered "Business as a game," the first book of the series. And she ended. Reprint only goes. Habraeffekt and surprise. This added to the atmosphere of joy at the sight of the action of the Labyrinth.

So, back to the distribution. Then there are retail chains and small shops, which somehow managed to survive without consolidation (although already five years as a trend for this in the book market). MYTH in partnership with EKSMO (if someone did not know), therefore, it transports the books to their warehouse, and from there they already travel around the country to the very same Chita-city, Republic, Bookvoed and other excellent places. Yes, here is the latest news on Kommersant about the development of the network of books for the next 5 years, and there is an interesting ownership structure.

Online distribution is the same as Liters, where electronic versions of books go.

Networks from different publishers are different. For example, Alpina is not in the Labyrinth, and the MYTH is not in the subscription services such as Bookmate. By the way, there is no due to the complex accruals of royalties, there is accounting for the chapters read (percentage of the book), and the amount of the subscription is divided between the number of chapters read by books. Given that the model is not very common in Russia, there is still a penny there, and hemorrhoids in bookkeeping for days of work.

Paper comes better to the older audience, which buys in the book. The electronic version is younger and more IT-savvy.

Offline the price of a paper book often rises above the recommended retail price.

More books go to the pirates. The publishing house has a special person who tracks the first 3 months of the news on pirate trackers, file sharing sites like VKontakte and so on, and then, at the sight of the copy, checks the entire site, sues and tries to close the distribution. True, VKontakte so close and could not. As the employees commented: “There is only one — a unique case — when the author does not try to fight pirates.” They are about me. In the eyes of the pain, misunderstanding and this phrase was read:



But they were very correct and polite.

What about your book say on the distribution network?

Here the process is like ours, the details are different.

The important part here is at the “battlecard” stage, when materials are collected into something that the seller can work with on the spot:



We can influence sellers. Publisher no. We can come and play the game somewhere, but with the collective reading of the book the focus will not work. Therefore, they affect distribution (as we do, but their process is more complicated and better).

In the book world, managers will collect a presentation about your book, send it online (large - individual versions with interesting details, small ones - general), mark whether the project is focused or not, what circulation, what promo and where it is planned, what PR what to expect, which series, who is the author, why he is cool and so on.

A trend is necessarily marked (it is asked by the network to understand where to put the book). Here is a quote from the brief about us:

Theme Myth: Management
Tags: Company Management, Management, Small Business Development, Entrepreneur

Who writes a card about the book to the site? If the site is a myth, they are. If the store site is a store. But the myth there is a unique thing. They find and check all descriptions of their books at all chain stores. And they ask to add, they will send the content and so on. We do not do this, for example, but I feel it is necessary.

More influenced by seasonality. To release a business book in the summer is an idea for ourselves (we did it), because everyone is on vacation. But we just have paper in August on the shelves around the country everywhere, so this is not the worst thing that could happen.

Some books are clearly gift ones, their best for December.

More from seasonality are important exhibitions for focus projects. There is an exhibition "non / fiction" in Moscow, where it is important to stand with a stand and present new items to journalists. She is at the end of November. An exhibition in Frankfurt in the fall (this is how Essen is here, the main event about partners), but now MYTH buys licenses there and sells very little. In a sense, only children's books are still successful abroad. This is logical. It is unlikely that the book with the subtitle "The Rake of Russian Business" is needed in France. In mid-spring, the exhibition in London is also big.

Renat:

“Always, all publishers from Russia and other countries mainly buy and buy there, and always will be. But we, as well as colleagues from other publishing houses, have already started selling the rights to books of Russian authors in other languages. Mostly for children, but also for adults too. This year, for the first time, we had our own booth - at the international exhibition in Bologna, this is the No. 1 exhibition on children's books. ”

What's up with the promo?

If the book is “hooked,” then people advise it to each other, give it, and so on. If not - well, oops. The life cycle of a few years, because the older the book, the worse. The continuation of the series or some actions from the author help. Old books without the participation of the author is difficult to promote. Sometimes some books are lifted on the website in sales or in a promotional block for a week, but this is probably the maximum.

How to check that your intended book is cool?

Typical method - count your subscribers, evaluate the interestingness and language, then send a table of contents and 5 characteristic chapters to the publisher. So, it turns out, there is another way. Testing blog. If your posts come on Habré - this is one level of steepness. And the MYTH proposes to write in their blog after their editor - and if it comes in there, then it is a signal to them that the first edition will go to their audience. That is, you can write a few posts and see what their audience is more interesting. Badly like - do not take the book. Good - it is necessary. So Larisa Parfentieva wrote two bestsellers about ways to change life.Thanks to this calibration, she changed.

Some books are for a different audience. And they are moving from other channels, mainly.

Total

Yes.The book came to us in Mosigra. We have the word "Habrahabr" 10% discount on everything, everything, including a book. Valid in any store in any country, but the book is only in Moscow and on delivery from the online store of Moscow. We can do EMS, we don’t have a minimum order quantity, but the basket is made through the ass (because we didn’t roll a new big release of the site, I'm sorry). And that was what Habr's invasion looked like before last time . But this time it will be calmer, the publisher got the brunt. Actually, here is the link to the book .

And the moral of all is higher. Quickly print print-on-demand circulation of 5 pieces, get proofreader and ISBN - Ekaterinburg Ridero. Steep and sudden, better than typography "around the corner." I even published a semi-annual report there. If you just need a book "to be" - any publisher where you will be taken. But it is better to choose the distribution network and promotional opportunities. Promotional opportunities depend on the profile of the publisher and audience. I would say that it is worth considering for the non-fiction MYTH, Alpina and Peter-press for hardcore IT.

Unja.