Skip to main content

Tremble - it's sales conference time

Many newbie authors think that once they've got a contract with a real publisher, they can just sit back and wait for their book to become a bestseller. Only it's not quite as simple as that.

Leaving aside all the contributions the author still has to make, there will be an event on the horizon where arguably the success of your book is dependent on the presentation skills of your editor. You might imagine that once a publisher takes on a book, they simply instruct the sales force to SELL, SELL, SELL. However, the sales people don't know anything about your book. Enter the sales conference.

As an outsider I have always seen this as a bizarre process. The in-house sales staff sit in a room and along troop the editors, yours included. Each editor has to pitch their books to the sales people. Depending on how those few minutes (seconds?) go, the sales staff will decide if this is a book they are going to get wholeheartedly behind or give the sink-or-swim treatment to.

I have never been to sales conference, but speaking to editors, some find them quite intimidating. I have known editors plan dramatic stunts, like switching off all the lights, leaving the room in darkness and silence for as long as they dared, to demonstrate how dependent we are on electricity. Others have requested powerful images, soundbites and factoids - anything to grab the attention of those butterfly-brained sales people.  (I'm sure they're not really butterfly brained. It's just the concept of the sales conference is so alien to me.) A great book cover design helps a lot, too.

So next time you are moaning to friends that your editor never seems to do anything, give them a thought as they line up like lambs to the salesforce slaughter.

If my subtle subliminal sales tool has got you wanting to buy a copy of The God Effect, pop over to its web page.

Comments

  1. Last week I visited London (Science Online conference), and I tried to buy Ecologic. But I couldn't find it in any bookstore (most of the visited ones were Waterstones).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry to hear that Victor - it's not in the shops too much now as it has been out over a year, but you can find it at www.brianclegg.net/ecologic.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope