The Economics Of Self-Publishing

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STEVE BROWN'S FIVE WAYS TO INCREASE DIRECT SALES

[1] Contact local bookstores, gift shops, and other businesses to see if they'll agree to sell your publications without a commission. What's in it for them? Offer to arrange an autograph party. . . a gala event which will bring people into the store. Often, the shop's manager will trade publicity of this type for whatever profits he might make on your books.

[2] Advise local civic organizations of topics on which you—or your company's other authors—can speak. Send a
monthly revised list of lecture subjects to church groups, women's clubs, the Lions, Kiwanis, Rotary, etc. Service organizations are always in need of speakers to address their memberships at meetings . . . and this is just the kind of public relations that sells books.

[3] Ask local banks, dry cleaners, or other businesses if they'd like to buy copies of your titles to give away as premiums to new customers. Make up a rubber stamp or have the title page itself printed to say "Compliments of Pitsville City Bank." Many copies of the Little Brown House Colonial Heritage Cookbook have been distributed in this manner.

[4] A hundred or more books a year can be sold to libraries across the country. How? Write to the H.W. Wilson Co., 950 University Ave., Bronx, N.Y. 10452 and ask for an information slip. They'll tell you how your booklets can appear in the Vertical File Index, a monthly journal which lists a variety of non-hardcover, non-trade books of interest to libraries. Often, a city library cannot afford to buy, catalogue, and shelve hard-back best-sellers . . . but can and will send money for small, inexpensive tracts and pamphlets.

[5] Take out tiny classified ads in special interest magazines appropriate to your book's subject. Little Brown House publications are advertised in Early American Life magazine, where a $20.00 advertisement returns many times its cost in orders for books. Experiment with different wordings . . . and keep the ad running. Orders may only trickle in at first, but they'll slowly build as readers scrutinize back issues and keep seeing your ad.

One of Little Brown House's upcoming works will deal with ghost legends. To publicize this book, a radio play adapted from one chapter of the manuscript is being offered—in recorded form—to local radio stations free. . . so long as they plug the publisher.

There you have six ways of increasing your direct sales. For still more, let your imagination run free!

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