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Home » Archives for Dan Balow » Page 8

Dan Balow

Publishers Are Book Investors

By Dan Balowon September 15, 2022
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Traditional book publishers have a wide variety of employees, each with different but complementary abilities. Every task required to effectively publish a book is under one roof (metaphorically speaking these days, of course). Everything is geared toward publishing books well.

The same could be said of many author-paid or indie publishers. Talented people with a goal of publishing well, working together.

But the unique element traditional publishers bring to the table is money. Traditional book publishers are, in effect, venture capital investors in authors and their books.

Author-published books simply shift the financial risk to the author or organization paying to have a book published. Hybrid publishers have a mix of each, with both the publisher and author contributing to the publication costs.

But traditional publishers evaluate every project as an investment of their resources, assessing each for the message, but also from a financial standpoint.

Every traditional publisher has a limited number of books they can publish in a year and revenue targets to hit from those books. Depending on the publisher, the baseline revenue for every book is somewhere between $20,000 and $100,000. Some are a lot higher. Since publishers have overheads like payroll, insurance, electricity, IT, and everything else a workplace needs; they must allocate an amount of every book revenue to overhead.

Traditional publishers all do the same type of financial analysis for every book. While specifics will vary, publishers start with a projected retail price for a book, estimate sales and wholesale revenues, calculate gross profit, and decide, with finances as a key element.

When agents or authors propose a new book to a publisher, many of the questions confronting the publisher are similar to what a venture capital firm would ask of a businessperson seeking investment in their company:

Tell us about yourself.

What experience do you have in this field?

Have you successfully proven your concept?

What type of marketing will make this business grow?

What is your long-term business plan?

One could make direct comparisons of the above questions to those sections in a book proposal:

Tell us about yourself.

What is your writing experience or publishing history?

Have you successfully proven your ability in books and other media?

What type of marketing platform are you doing?

What are your long-term plans for additional work?

Every question leads to a yes or no decision about whether to invest $20,000 to $100,000 in a book.

Even if an author accepts no royalty advance, a publisher must evaluate whether a book is worth a substantial investment to publish it. Publishing is a risk-based business.

Of course, authors start the “risky business” by writing something without compensation. Then agents might take over and put time and effort into something that may or may not sell to a publisher, meaning no money for them either.

In a world where authors can hire people to create a book and self-publish on Amazon, traditional publishers need to clearly define what role they actually play in the world of books.

The bottom line: They invest their experience; time; effort; and, most importantly, their money to publish books well.

Book publishing is a business segment like no other, where real-life money and creativity work together, with the iceberg of financial loss awaiting every new book launch.

 

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Category: Book Business

Food vs. Medicine Books

By Dan Balowon September 7, 2022
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Even though this topic could be applicable to just about any type of book, we’ll be looking at those in the Christian publishing category today. Categorizing books has been part of publishing for a very long time. Officially, there are over four dozen primary book categories designated by the BISAC coding system, which spin off to thousands of subcategories. For example, one of the primary …

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Category: Book Business, Christian, Creativity, Theology

The Mystery of Book Data

By Dan Balowon August 25, 2022
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The book-publishing market has an element of mystery to it, and not only in the category of books called mysteries. Many things are not as scientific as you might think. Prominent book-bestseller lists are based on data from a sampling of booksellers, rather than comprehensive information outputs from all channels. Industry-status reports from publishing trade associations use a similar sampling …

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Category: Book Business, Technology, The Publishing Life

Just the Facts

By Dan Balowon August 17, 2022
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With the omnipresence of social media and other ways for people to directly express opinions, Christian writers should take extra care to be aware of the facts when it comes to both theology and society. Since Christians actually believe there is truth and it is knowable, Christian writers should be a lot more like classic journalists, researching, studying, and reporting truth, rather than simply …

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Category: Reading, The Writing Life, Trends

Theology for Writers

By Dan Balowon August 4, 2022
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Spoiler alert: God’s nature never changes. His truth is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. While Christian writers seek to write in a compelling, engaging manner, seeking to pull readers through their books from paragraph to paragraph and page after page, the foundational theology of which they write never changes. You might write about the need for someone to make Jesus the Lord of their …

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Category: Theology

Bestselling Books in 1997

By Dan Balowon July 14, 2022
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Today is a look back twenty-five years and the books selling well in 1997. Often, this type of exercise puts the present and future in perspective. You can draw your own conclusions about what any of this means. First, the July 13, 1997 New York Times Bestseller List: Fiction PLUM ISLAND, by Nelson DeMille (Warner) SPECIAL DELIVERY, by Danielle Steel (Delacorte) FAT TUESDAY, by Sandra Brown …

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Category: Publishing History

Make the Right Media Choice

By Dan Balowon July 6, 2022
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The study of communication through various methods fascinates me. Some media share audiences with other media and others have very select audiences. Each person consumes content differently. Those in education know students do not all learn at the same speed using the same tools. Fortunately, good teachers recognize those differences and adjust their methods. In the 1970s and 80s, educator Neil …

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Category: Pitching

Newbery @ 100

By Dan Balowon June 23, 2022
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Some rather significant publishing-related anniversaries are coming in the next week. First, the Harry Potter book series turns 25 years-old on June 26. After a dozen publishers declined the first book, Bloomsbury Publishing saw some potential in it and published Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The rest is history. Next time your writing is rejected, just remember: A dozen people …

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Category: Publishing History

Roundabouts

By Dan Balowon June 15, 2022
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I like metaphors. I like everything about them. Analogies and similes are cool too. Today’s post extinguishes the notion that writer’s block is actually a thing. Every day, topics to write about are screaming at you. Writer’s block is simply a failure to pay attention to them. Almost everything makes me think about something else. In fact, baseball and driving a car in traffic are two general …

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Category: Book Proposals

Could You Translate Please?

By Dan Balowon June 2, 2022
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What many U.S. Christian authors write about today has little or no application outside of the U.S. It’s why the majority of Christian books are not exported or translated into other languages. Most often it is not the theology holding it back, but the theme of the book. A simple example would be homeschooling. It is illegal in quite a few countries of the world. (Germany, Sweden, and many other …

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Category: Book Business, The Publishing Life, The Writing Life
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