How To Sell A Book

September 6th, 2006 · No Comments
by Booksquare

Cover of Family and Other Accidents by Shari GoldhagenThe BS household is celebrating a return to a life of DSL and electricity today. It is a thrilling, thrilling morning. You don’t realize how much you depend upon, oh, lights until you don’t have them. Turns out they’re quite useful, and the little pluggy thing that goes into the laptop serves a purpose. It is a magic device.

We feel that we have learned so much — with more to go. But let us get into why you’re really here. You want to know how to land a book deal and an agent (not necessarily in that order). Let us assure you that the process is easy: education (does not have to be of the formal variety), hard work, a few lucky breaks, and subletting your apartment.

Hmm, that’s the kind of formula we should patent. We would make a fortune. In the second installment of MediaBistro’s new column “Book Keeping”, author Shari Goldhagen describes how she followed our soon-to-be patented process and made it big. What? Who is Shari Goldhagen? We are sure you’ll be hearing about her book, Family and Other Accidents, soon — but let us focus on how you can apply her learned lessons to your life.

So Goldhagen wrote the book, found an agent, ended up selling her story for a goodly sum (goodly sums are always a nice thing). It will be a hardcover release. Everyone’s happy. The book is going to sell like gangbusters. But wait! Hardcovers don’t sell like gangbusters, Harry Potter excepted. What can be done?

I think that the idea was that some of the chain bookstores had read it and they thought it had a much bigger audience as a paperback than as a hardcover. I actually read something in the [New York] Times the other day about a couple of books that had come out in hardcover and sold 10,000 copies, but then when they come out in paperback they just really took off. I think the idea was to get that take-off earlier. Then of course you have the hardcover for the people who actually want the hardcover. And for author vanity, I suppose!

We like that. We know someone who is into the hardcover thing in a big way; she won’t read paperback. She can have the hardcover; we stuff enough into the purse — the less bulk, the better. And there you have it. Success in a few easy steps.

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