The sales
department has a crucial role in publishing companies. It is well worth
taking time to understand how it works. This is the department which
will have a crucial effect on the sales of your book. Their involvement
and support are key to its success.
Big publishers
The sales department
The large publishing groups work rather differently from smaller
firms. They are likely to have large sales departments with substantial
central sales support and administration teams under the overall
direction of a Sales Director (in the UK) or Senior Vice-President
(Sales) in the US. In many publishing houses the same senior person will
be in charge of both sales and marketing. The sales department is
further divided into home and export (see below).
The home sales teams are usually managed by field sales managers
covering regions of the country. Naturally a very much larger field
sales force is required to cover the US than the UK, but the
concentration of bookstores in cities on the East and West Coasts means
that sales efforts are focused there. In the same way sales operations
in Australia and South Africa are concentrated on the cities where the
big bookshops supply substantial book-buying populations, whereas the
United Kingdom is more like other European countries such as Germany,
where high population densities support a network of smaller bookselling
outlets.
Sales conferences
Regular sales conferences, twice or sometimes three times a year,
bring the sales force together to hear about the next season’s books.
These are often very glitzy affairs, with audiovisual presentations, key
authors invited to present their books and grand dinners, all with the
intention of informing the sales teams and enthusing them to go out and
sell. In the States there are often regional sales conferences. Some
publishers have regular monthly one-day sales meetings to focus the
sales people on the key books in the new selling cycle. Technology has
helped to keep everyone in touch with head office (as well as focused on
their sales targets) and some teams are now equipped with laptops to
enable them to feed orders straight into the system.
Selling cycles
Sales people work on selling cycles, with the largest and
fastest-moving accounts having weekly or even twice-weekly visits,
whereas small bookstores might be called on once every three or even six
months. In many cases smaller independent bookshops are no longer
visited by the big publishers’ sales teams, but will order their stock
through wholesalers, using publishers’ catalogues and advance
information sheets. Although this is the trend, many people in
publishing feel that nothing can replace the sales person’s enthusiasm
and skill in ‘selling in’ the books.
Targets
The sales team will be targeted to achieve a subscription of a
certain number of books on the more important ‘targeted’ titles,
together with overall targets for their territories, sometimes broken
down into accounts. The ‘subscription’ is the pre-publication sales
orders, which will be supplied to the bookshops for the publication
date. The publisher will hope to get the subscription figure for the
bigger accounts before finalising the print run.
Central buying
Publishers’ sales departments have over the years learnt a great
deal about modern selling methods and are undoubtedly very much better-organised
than they used to be. The difficulty is that the chain booksellers have
increasingly moved to central buying and often do not want their shops
to buy individually. Central control means they can impose a uniform
approach and also carry out most effective discount negotiations with
publishers.
As a result publishers have developed head office key account teams
which deal with the big chains’ central buyers. These relatively small
teams are usually responsible for an increasingly large proportion of
the company’s sales. In some cases the head offices have made it clear
that they do not want their shop buyers to see sales people at all. The
decline of the traditional sales force is well under way, as publishers
cut the number of people on the road to control costs and enable them to
have money in hand for tough terms negotiations with the big chains.
Small publishers
The sales operation
Smaller publishers have often had a rough ride in recent years. In
general their books are likely either to be sold by the sales force of
one of the big publishers, or to go through a team of commission reps.
These are freelance sales people who work on commission (generally a
percentage of sales value) and who sell books for a number of
publishers. The dangers of being ‘last out of the bag’ and the least
important list being sold are obvious. Whether the small publisher’s
books are sold by another publisher or by a commission sales team makes
no difference. It is still important that the other lists being sold by
the sales team are not so big that no attention is focused on the
smaller publisher’s books, so different that they do not focus on the
right accounts, or so similar that they will dominate and take up all
their time.
Epos and reordering
It’s not easy handling your sales if you are a small publisher.
They have suffered from increasing focus in the book trade on ‘big
books’. The results of the introduction of epos (electronic point of
sale) has meant that it is difficult to get a large quantity of books
subscribed into the book trade unless there is a big promotion
supporting the title. This often means that the publisher has to ‘buy’
their way into a particular promotion or space in the bookstore, which
the small publisher cannot afford to do. In theory, if the book sells,
the system will reorder it, but in practice it is all too often not
reordered unless there is substantial demand for it. Each book has only
a few weeks to sink or swim and this has been exacerbated by the book
trade’s increasing efficiency about returning unsold stock.
Export
Export sales teams tend to work quite differently, often through
local agencies within each country, which represent many different
publishers. Because of the relative importance of export sales to
British publishers (see The English
Language Publishing World), they will have a
team of export managers covering different markets and travelling
regularly throughout the year to subscribe the new books. Export is less
crucial as a proportion of overall sales to American trade (or general)
publishers than it is to British publishers, but many American academic
and scientific publishers do a lot of international business and have
therefore to focus on it. The growing international demand for books in
English has presented a wonderful opportunity for all English language
publishers.
The sales department and the author
As you contemplate the fate of your precious book and how it will be
dealt with by the sales department, you may well be asking is there’s
anything you can do to give your work its best chance. Frankly, there’s
probably not a lot you can do except to make yourself available as
requested for sales conferences and any other activities. One point in
favour of small publishers is that you can sometimes have more influence
on how your book is sold. Be as pleasant and co-operative to the sales
people as you can. Many bestselling authors have had their careers
buttressed by the fact that the sales force loved them. Ensure that any
sales ideas or contacts you may have are passed on. Make a point of
co-operating with any local initiatives, even if they seem a waste of
time, as the support of local reps and bookshops can be crucial. But,
remember, it’s your book and you should do everything you can to
support your publisher in selling it.
Chris Holifield
