I was at a conference and an author was presenting a question to a panel of publishers. She wanted to know if more self-promotion on her part would increase her print run.
They looked confused. They had no idea what she was talking about.
That’s because she was asking a question without using the proper lingo, which made her come across as a rank amateur.
Let’s back up. When a book is about to be published, the sales team goes out to sell it to the accounts. Naturally, they push it as hard as they can. They offer discounts and incentives. They do whatever they can to get that number up. The accounts order what they want, and the books are shipped. The amount that is shipped is often referred to as “what they got out”. The publisher does not send more than what was ordered, because it would just come right back. Booksellers can send back whatever doesn’t sell. Once the books are on the shelves, all kinds of promotion and publicity may occur, and the books will sell however they sell. The amount of books that sell vs. the amount they got out is called the sell-through. If you get out 100,000 books and sell half, you have a 50% sell-through.
The print run refers to how many books are actually printed. They try to keep that close to the real number they will get out, and may print a little more. That decision is made by someone in Operations. The publisher doesn’t know or care what the print run is, because they know it will be based on what they got out. That’s the number they want to know. And even more than that, they care about the sell-through. A strong sell-through is a green light to do more. That is why they would never ship more than what was ordered. A poor sell-through is deadly. For that reason, they may undership what was ordered, hoping for reorders. If they need to go back to press, that is a very positive sign. It shows that things are moving.
So, when someone asks if self-promotion will increase the print run, they are asking the wrong question. A better way to phrase it would be “If I do more self-promotion, is that likely to increase what you get out?” Now you’re talking business.
The answer is that of course more self-promotion may help to sell more books, which is the goal. But trying to connect self-promotion to the print run doesn’t really sound like anything.
Back at that panel, but publishers did eventually figure out what she was asking. But if she had asked the question using the lingo they could understand, it would have been a lot easier and she would sounded much more professional.
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