Welcome to our latest fortnightly eBulletin, posted here on Tuesday 8 May 2012. In this issue:

How to address the ‘books are too expensive’ argument
Why we should all be using personas, with a great SAGE example
The latest out of office email that’s made me smile
On The Marketability Grapevine on Facebook
Tip of the Week – never underestimate the power of pictures

How to address the ‘books are too expensive’ argument

It is widely believed that publishers are wilfully over-pricing to line their own pockets. Are there any academic authors out there who don’t subscribe to this? Last week’s Thinking Aloud on BBC Radio 4 interviewed two sociology authors who claimed that since printing technology had improved it was outrageous that the average price of a sociology monograph is now £55. With academic conferences in full swing many of you will be under fire from authors demanding that you accept how tough it is for them right now and do something about your prices … We really, really need to start addressing this head-on by putting our case.

One of the most useful and compelling ways of doing this is to show where the cost of your £55 book goes (or your £10 trade title for that matter). Here are a couple of models, but I’d strongly recommend that you substitute your own typical figures to produce your own; it’s a really useful exercise. The academic monograph model is informed by actual figures from two publishers, one big, one small (thank you, you know who you are!), but their actual models were very different.

MODEL 1: £55 academic monograph, print run 200
Trade discount (45%): £24.75
(So nett receipts are 200 x 55 less 45% = £6,050)
Production: £9.50
Overheads (25%): £13.75
Royalties (5% of NR): £1.50
Marketing (6% of NR): £1.80

For each copy sold, someone else gets: £51.30
Publisher gets: £3.70
Assuming print run sells out, publisher banks £740 over the space of a year. (Whoo hoo.)

MODEL 2: £10 trade book, print run 3000
Production: £1.20
Royalties (5%): 50p
Marketing (5%): 50p
Overheads (20%): £2.00
Trade discount (55%): £5.50

For each copy sold, someone else gets: £9.70
Publisher gets: 30p!
Assuming print run sells out, publisher banks £900, over the space of a year or two.

Comments on the above:

Production costs may be cheaper now, but set up (processing the manuscript) is a fixed cost, print runs are much smaller (and POD takes over once initial print run is exhausted), we have new costs of digitizing files, and costs of paper and distribution have increased.
A ‘trade discount’ of 45% may be excessive for our £55 model, but this includes Amazon, the wholesalers, rep commission, and any buy-backs. Achieving direct sales may mean your marketing spend is higher (which would be funded by moving some of the trade discount allocation), plus you’ll also be selling a percentage of stock at discount at conferences and to authors.
‘Overheads’ are generally applied as a percentage of RRP, simply because your salary, rent, warehousing costs, IT etc etc ultimately have to be paid for through the sale of your products. The way this is accounted for varies widely - your actual may be much higher than in the models above. Do you know what percentage is applied in your case?

What next?
I hope this will motivate you to write your own models, and to use them in conversations with authors at conferences and in meetings. And I’d love you to share them with me (confidentiality assured), and simply give feedback on the ones featured here.

This topic is part of our Introduction to Marketing in Publishing Workshop, now rescheduled to run in London on Tuesday 31 July. Care to join us?

Why we should all be using personas, with a great SAGE example

Personas help you to identify what potential customers are looking for, how they search, what they need to know, and how they’ll choose to act. And if you know all of this then your copy will resonate because you’re now writing to a ‘real’ person. And it’s easier to think through the implications of decisions if you can anticipate how your personas will react.

At the Digital Publishing Forum which took place at UCL in March, Martha Sedgwick (Senior Manager, Online Products) from SAGE explained how they are using personas to get closer to what academics want from digital products. Anna the undergraduate, David the PhD, Agatha the lecturer, Jenny the distance learning masters student and Jo the librarian were fleshed out by talking to real people in those roles.

Creative Publishing for Textbook Markets is our brand new course tutored by Anna Faherty and Lynda Cooper, due to run in London on Thursday 24 May and the perfect place to discuss using personas!

View Martha Sedgwick’s slides from the Digital Publishing Forum.

The latest out of office email that’s made me smile

Thanks to Vikki Reilly at Birlinn in Edinburgh for this one!

‘I am on holiday, which will be mostly spent underneath my duvet. It’s been a tough winter. I’ll be back at my desk on Monday 30th April 2012.’

Love it. And it’s my excuse to remind you about our Email Marketing Workshop (17 May, London) and Copywriting Workshop (21 June, Oxford), both guaranteed to run.

On The Marketability Grapevine on Facebook

On the Wall this week:

New Simon’s Cat cartoon, and another example of an overheard comment in a bookshop which made me laugh out loud. If you’ve worked in a bookshop, do add your own!
Read something that hit the spot in this eBulletin? Click through and like the item or add a comment
Watch the Wall for postings of new jobs, or feel free to add to them.

Visit The Marketability Grapevine.

Tip of the Week – never underestimate the power of pictures

Ever wondered at the origin of the wonderful pub signs we have here in the UK? Well a sign illustrating a rose and a crown outside the Rose and Crown pub was originally for the benefit of illiterate customers. Hopefully we don’t need to worry about that one, but a picture is still more effective at conveying information that text, especially if your message is complex, or if English is not the first language of your audience. So this week’s tip is a reminder that if you can say it in pictures, you should.

That said, our Copywriting Workshop is a great place to home in on the well-chosen words you DO need!

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Rachel Maund
Marketability - extra marketing resources and training just when you need them
Tel and Fax: +44 (0)20 8977 2741
Email: rachel@marketability.info

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