Chickens in the Headlights

[EUOL]

Mustard makes a good point.  I would like to note a few things, however.

Amazon sells about six times as many books as bn.com.   And, the way the Amazon (even more than bn.com) system works, it is a great equalizer.  It promotes books based on customer preferences, which means that little-known and hard-to-get books can get offered as recommendations quite easily.  Especially if a person has bought previous books from that publisher and in that genre.

In general, indy and small-press books go much higher on the Amazon sales rank than their real-world companions do in sales.  It is the ultimate marketplace for smaller books, as it makes them just as easy to buy as the best sellers.  

Amazon also sells at discounts off cover price at its own loss.  The Seagull-Covenant relationship makes me think that when Seagull discounts, Covenant is taking part of the hit.  (I can't remember--do you get paid royalties on cover price, or point-of-sale price?)  

But, everything that Mustard says still holds.  Covenant likes their little racket far too much to rock the boat.  However, the way they work makes me feel a little apprehensive for their authors.

[Mustard in Denver]

I get the percentage off cover price.

The big problem with the Covenant-Seagull pairing and the Deseret Book-Deseret Book pairing is that books are promoted based on publisher preference, rather than quality.  The biggest hits at Seagull -- bestsellers -- may not even come close to the top ten list at DB (and vice versa).  They push their own stuff.

Granted, like I've said many times, it works out nicely for me.  All my books do very decent sales.  However, if you're with a smaller publisher, you're toast.  Also, and more importantly, it's extremely hard for a book to "take off".  If promotion of a book is based on contracted marketing plans, rather than market-wide sales numbers, it's very hard for a book to break out.

[EUOL]

Which situation puts their authors in a very good position, as far as Covenant is concerned.  They can pay you around $7,500 a book, which is a big enough dump of money that nobody would sniff at it.  However, it's not enough to make a living on, and certainly not enough to let you start getting grand ideas about your own value.  If you do, for some reason, leave, you're easy to replace--because most of their books sell around the same numbers.

Makes me think of that scene at the beginning of Three Amigos where they try to stand up to the movie company.

[Parker]

Mr. Flugelman: Do you know what "nada" means?
Ned: Isn't that a light chicken gravy?

Three Amigos

Oh wait--sorry.  Wrong forum.  

[Firemeboy]

This is a very good discussion, I hadn't thought of many of these aspects before.

I have always felt that my book could have a larger audience (Though that may just be delusions of grandeur).   In fact, when I sent it to Covenant, they originally turned me down because my book didn't have anything LDS in it.  I added a 2 page introduction that mentioned Family Home Evening, and that was all they needed.

But, as MSID said, Seagull definitely pushes Covenant's books.  I'm in four different spots in Seagull, probably 50-75 books total.  But when I went to a Deseret Book in Las Vegas, there were only four books total.  

However, I would still like to be on Amazon for the reasons EUOL mentioned.  I wasn't on Seagull online until a few days ago.  Most of my sales are going to come from in-store sales.  I wager that few come from seagull online.  I'd rather be on Amazon and be possibly reaching a nation wide audience, because there is probably no way that I can reach a wider audience than those Utahns who happen to shop at Seagull.

Is it possible for me to open up an account on Amazon?  Eat the $65 and just sell my book for the price I can get them at Covenant?

There is a thought...

Oh, and by the way.  Thank you to the powers that be for giving me a corner of this site.  I will link to here from my web site (the link from here should be working now... )

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I think the thing to do would be to have Covenant/Seagull agree to allow amazon.com too. I will probably never go to seagull.com or whatever. Never. At all. I'm amormon and read a few LDS fictions though. I would probably do more if I could get them from Amazon.

[House of Mustard]

You guys make it sound like the books aren't available on Amazon.  I just hopped on and searched for a handful of new covenant authors.  With the exception of anything that's come out in about the last six to eight weeks, every book I looked for was there.  I'm sure that, soon enough, Chickens in the Headlights will be there too.

[Firemeboy]

If a Covenant author were to hit the big time, and by big time I mean national exposure, rather than just Utah exposure, the Seagull Book stores would sell more copies.  I was reading an article by a Covenant author who was doing a booksigning right in front of a The Davinci Code display.  He said more people came in to get that book than to get his.  If a book made it big, Seagull would benefit from the national exposure.

It's a non-zero sum game...

[EUOL]

Wait,

Seagull sold the Da Vinci Code?

Also, Mustard:  Amazon lists your books, but doesn't stock or sell them.  What they're doing there is listing third-party vendors, often used bookstores, who have an agreement with Amazon.  

People are more hesitant to buy books only listed that way.  There is no cover art, you can't always depend on the vendor, and they ship a lot slower.  It's like buying off of ebay more than it's like buying off of Amazon.

[Firemeboy]

Hmmm, maybe it wasn't Seagull.  Here is the quote.

"I was doing a signing at an LDS bookstore", says Nelson. Beside me was a rack of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. I'd only sold three of my books that day. Dan Brown, who wasn't even there, not only outsold me, he outsold Gerald Lund and Dean Hughes as well. I thought to myself, the LDS market needs a Dan Brown, someone who writes well and has a strong story to tell. When that happens the market is going to break wide

 And I got that from here:

http://www.latterdayauthors.com/wforum/viewtopic.php?t=756&start=30

Mustard, it looked like it was $65 to open an official account on e-bay.  Maybe we, and a few other covenant authors should either push Covenant a bit harder, or band together and split the cost/headache, to have our books listed.

Here is some more info...  You have to have distribution rights, and maybe we don't have those.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/partners/direct/direct-application.html/ref=gw1_mm_3/002-0554067-7056827

[EUOL]

That seems like a silly comparison to me.

Da Vinci Code is a mainstream thriller backed by a major publisher.  That's very different from anything Covenant could put out.

If it were that easy to create a phenomenon like the Da Vinci code, then publishers would like to know what they're doing wrong.  Spotting the book that will become the strange mega-bestseller in fiction is ridiculously difficult.  

I believe that good writing rises to the top.  However, books like Da Vinci Code or even Harry Potter can't be treated in the same way as regular books.  Once they reach the point that they have, they don't sell books because of good writing or story, they sell books because they've become a fad.  I wonder if half those LDS people who were buying the Da Vinci Code had any idea what its content was.  (I didn't.)

[Firemeboy]

Very, true.  However, I think if a book were to make it nationally, even if it didn't make it to the extent that Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code did, the local bookstores would benefit from it.  If Wake Me When It's Over had a national audience, people would hear it's from a local author, and about LDS culture, and many would probably go to a DB or a Seagull to buy it.  But we don't know if WMWIO would have a national audience, because it's only pushed to a Utah audience.

I guess I'm saying that Seagull doesn't have to fear competition from Amazon, and Covenant should welcome the opportunity to market outside Utah.  Both would benefit.  A good example of this might be The Chosen, a Jewish book about the Jewish culture, but a book that was excepted by many, many people outside the Jewish faith.  

We're just starting to see movies about LDS folks start to have a market outside Utah, and I think books could do the same thing.

[Parker]

We're just starting to see movies about LDS folks start to have a market outside Utah, and I think books could do the same thing.

So maybe we should have someone write about a gay Mormon greenie missionary's love affair he had in World War II while trying to solve a murder mystery in a small French town.  We could call it Latter-days Soldiers in Brigham City's Army.  It'll sell . . . tens of copies.

[Firemeboy]

You may be on to something...  Do you have a working screenplay?  

[Fellfrosch]

Why bother with that? No Mormon movie so far has had a screenplay that worked.