you can commit to selling more than 1,000 books a year by yourself, plenty of conventional publishers will sit up and listen.
So how do you go about selling 1,000 books a year? Well, there are two schools of thought. The first is to deliver seminars and to offer books at the back of the room at the end of your seminar. That's the conventional approach, and, boy, do I dislike it!
To me this says to your audience, “I hope you enjoyed our work together. Now, if you really liked what I had to say, for a few dollars more, I'll help you learn it.” If you are conducting general sessions, it might make sense to do this. Personally, I'd add the cost of your book to the tuition and make it a part of their seminar package.
If you are conducting closed-session seminars, it's a little tougher but well worth your effort to make the sale of books a part of your training routine as well. In seminars that are a half day or longer, it should not even be a topic of discussion. Any client who wants a half-day program or longer is saying to you, “Help us to make the cultural change you are teaching us.” That means the client needs participant guides and books – period.
For keynote deliveries, it's a little bit tougher. When you are speaking to 500 people for an hour, it's tough to add the cost of 500 books to the proposal without the client protesting. However, let me tell you a quick story of how I recently sold 650 books for a one-hour keynote presentation.
When I first approached the client with the idea, they immediately said, “No.” I mentioned I never charge a client more than the cost that I pay for the book. Even at $9.10 a book, the answer was still “No.”
My contracts typically allow me to fly business class. My next move was to offer to bump that $2,000 ticket down to an $800 coach ticket. I now had the books down to about $7.25 each, but the answer was still “No.” Finally, I offered to pick up the airline ticket myself. When you are in the seminar business, you accumulate airline miles. With more than 1 million miles in my United Airlines account alone, this was an easy thing to do. This brought the cost to about $6.00 a book. Most companies that bring in large groups of clients to meetings often put gifts in the hotel rooms each night. One of those nights became Rob Jolles Night, and the attendees found an autographed book of mine waiting for them in their room.
Six other professional speakers spoke at the meeting I'm writing about. Each set up a little table in the back of the room and hawked books at the end of their seminar. From what I could see, each sold five or six books.
One last comment on buying books and selling them to clients. I strongly recommend that you find a distributor you like, develop a relationship, and set up a distribution channel. The reason for this is a simple one but often is overlooked by those who conduct seminars.
It's wonderful to be published but even more wonderful to make your book a best seller. If you buy your books directly from your publisher, your discount will be deep. Depending on quantity, it could be as large as 50 percent. However, every single book that you buy will not be counted toward any best-seller list.
If you buy your books from a distributor, your discount usually will not go higher than 45 percent. So why use a distributor? Use a distributor because book sales can count toward these best-seller lists. Let me tell you how these lists work. When a book makes a best-seller list, it doesn't necessarily mean it has sold more than any book of its kind. It means it has sold more than any book of its kind from the major book chains that make up the count. It's almost like watching television from a TV with a Nielsen box on top of it. Those ratings don't track how many TVs are watching a certain program. They track how many TVs with Nielsen boxes on them are watching a certain program.
What you potentially give up in book sales, you make up in seminar fees. When a book hits the Business Best-Seller List or the New York Times Best-Seller List, it is the equivalent of receiving an Academy Award. When an actor is nominated, the cost of hiring that actor goes up. When an actor wins the award, the cost goes up even higher. You do the math. When you are marketing your services, which sounds better, “Please welcome author Glenn Faulkner” or “Please welcome best-selling author Glenn Faulkner”?
Write the book. Ultimately, it's your decision whom to sell your book to and whom you buy your books from. For me it's an easy decision. I strongly recommend you try to sell your book to a publisher. If your selling is unsuccessful, you can always move to self-publishing. There are plenty of stories of those who self-published their book, had it sell well, and then had a publisher offer to publish and distribute their book.
Most important, write the book.
Speakers' Bureaus
Once you have your book in hand, another marketing approach you might want to consider is establishing a relationship with various speakers' bureaus. You won't be the only speaker they represent. However, the easier you make it for them to sell your services, the more seminars they will sell for you.
The speakers' bureaus will want that book of yours, and they'll want a clear sense of your particular branding. There's also one other thing they will want, and that's a speaker's tape. They will want that tape because it will be their primary tool to help sell your services.
For years I avoided creating a speaker's tape because I felt it was a terrible way for me to sell my services. Eleven years later I still believe this. Almost all the seminars I sell for myself are sold based on an existing relationship, someone who has seen a seminar I've delivered, or on a referral.
However, in the world of the speakers' bureaus, almost all their sales of speakers go to clients who have no idea who you are. That means they have to see you in action. Clients who call speakers' bureaus looking for speakers are already prepared to receive links and watch YouTube videos of the speakers they intend to contract.
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