I'm doing some book giveaways on my social media sites.  Here are the links...  

• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6593488087173644288/
• https://www.facebook.com/JohnnyMarsz/posts/1021907441902652
• https://twitter.com/JohnnyMarsz/status/1187728442424549376
• https://www.goodreads.com/sharings/30806

In the world of self-publishing, booksellers need to buy books at a wholesale discount.  The discount gives them the wiggle room to cover their expenses and make a profit.  So, if a book has a list price of $10 (I'm going to use $10 as the example for everything, because it makes the math easier), and the wholesale discount is 55% (the industry standard, I'm told), then the bookstore's book-buyer would pay the distributor $4.50 for the book.  If they sell the book at $10, they have a gross-income of $5.50.  When it comes to print-on-demand (what almost all self-publishers do), the distributor would then pay the publisher the $4.50 that the bookstore paid, but it first must subtract the costs for printing it.  A trade paperback with 188-pages would cost about $3.50 to print.  That turns the publisher's $4.50 gross into $1 net.

Where it gets interesting is that the publisher can control the wholesale discount, if they use a service like Ingramspark.  It can be set as low as 35% in the USA.  I set the discount at the 55% standard, because if I didn't there would be no way any bookstores would ever stock their shelves with it.  It's important to me to have my book available at some bookstores so I can visit them to promote the book.  It also doesn't hurt to have a good relationship with businesses that literally recommend to customers what books they should read.  Anyway, if the discount is any less than 55% off, the bookstores won't order it or take you seriously. If you only want to sell books online and never have anything to do with bookstores, go ahead and set the discount to 35%.  $10 list - $3.50 discount - $3.50 printing = $3 net payment.  That's 3x the profit for the publisher by choosing to reduce the bookseller's profit.  It's obvious to see why you won't make any bookseller friends this way.

But what about the different markets?  Am I honestly trying to get my book on the shelf at bookstores in countries where I won't likely travel to?  Sure, I want to sell books online around the world, but do I need to offer the 55% discount outside of the US? Regardless, I have the option to set the list price and the wholesale discount between 35% and 55% for each of these markets:

• United Kingdom
• European Union
• Australia
• Canada (I can actually go all the way down to 30% here)
• United States + Everywhere else (all set to the same price and discount)

If I set the price everywhere the same as the US, I make more profit the lower the discount.  But what if I wasn't obsessed with profits?  What if my goal was selling more units at a lower price instead of less units at a higher price?  The "fair" thing to do is adjust the list price in each market so that I make about the same profit no matter where it's sold.

So when I say I'm discriminating against almost everyone, what i'm doing is making my books "cheaper" in Europe, Australia, and Canada, while being priced "normal" everywhere else.  Not necessarily for NO reason, but because I'd rather sell more copies and make the same amount of profit as selling less copies and making more profit.  Also, it's not like I'm going on a book tour in Europe or Australia, so hopefully the lower price in those markets makes up for my complete lack of in-person marketing there.

There is some good news that is also bad news if you are a self-publisher: No bookstore is going to order your book unless you convince them to stock it.  That's bad news to anyone who thought their books would show up in stores almost automatically the way Michelle Obama's biography did.  Let me explain why that's actually good news. 
But first, more bad news:  Besides the 55% wholesale discount, it's also very unlikely that a bookstore is going to stock their shelves with your book unless it is returnable to the distributor.  That way the store doesn't take on the risk of unsold copies.  The bad news is, if you want the book returned to you, you're billed what the retailer paid, plus $2/book for shipping.  If you choose to have the returned books destroyed instead of returned, then you are only billed what the retailer paid.  In our first example, the retailer paid $4.50 for the book and the publisher made $1.  After this book is returned and destroyed, the publisher is negative $3.50.  Of course, bookstores rarely order a single book.  If they ordered 8 copies and returned all of them, the publisher would earn $8, be billed $36, and net a loss of -$28.  The natural fear would be that if 1000 bookstores all decided to order 10 copies and returned all of them, the publisher would end up in the red -$35,000. 
​And that's why it's good news that no book store is going to order your book without you convincing them to.  It puts you a little more in control of your risk.  You'll only try to convince a bookstore to order your book if you believe they'll be able to sell them... be it because you already have a base of readers in that area or because you plan to go there and promote it with an event.

This all sounds pretty pessimistic.  It seems almost impossible for a self-publisher to make booksellers happy while also minimizing their own risk or making any profits.  It is possible, however.  That's my gameplan with the release of my new book UNCREDIBLE THOUGHTS: Essays, Spiels, and Poppycock.
​What i'm doing is encouraging pre-orders with local independent bookstores.  It eliminates the risk of bookstores overstocking their shelves and returning unsold copies.  The best thing you can do for an author and the bookstore is to pre-order your copy before it's release date.  Plus you get the book as soon as it's available.  Print-on-demand books can take awhile to print and ship, but when you preorder it, it prints and ships prior so that you get it on the release date.  It's also good for the environment.  If most customers pick up their copy at their local store, that's less packaging and shipping than boxing up each copy individually and shipping each one to a different address.

While every chapter and section is different in length, the average time the listener will hear a single voice is less than 10 minutes.
The audiobook is now available exclusively on Audible and iTunes.

Other voice actors featured on this audiobook include...​

• Mike Fontenot
• Fletcher Armstrong
• Marco Amador
• Dan Baran
• April Sellers
• Aldon Jacob

Shopping with local small businesses is very important to a lot of us.  And while BUY MY BOOK: NOT BECAUSE YOU SHOULD BUT BECAUSE I'D LIKE SOME MONEY  (by John Edward Marszalkowski) is not on the shelf everywhere, the good news that most independent bookstores can order it for you.  Or better yet, you can just order it on their website and have it sent directly to you.  Below you'll find links to every independent bookstore (that i've found so far) that has my book for sale on their website.

When I started this blog entry, I had no idea there was going to be so many independent bookstores that would have my book listed on their websites.  It would have been a lot easier to just point you toward my source on this, which is IndieBound.org.  However, only about half the shops on their list have websites that list my book.  So I figured I'd go through them all and give you the filtered list.  That was a mistake.  Just click here, type in your zip code, and find a store that actually links to the book.  Thank you for understanding.

Two thoughts just entered my head this evening:

1. I've been sending updates about the book to all the Kickstarter backers, but not to anyone else who is interested in the book.
2. Facebook intentionally buries page posts, unless ads are purchased.  So almost everyone that clicked "LIKE" (that's you) isn't hearing about some important things.

What are those important things?

• The book is edited, internally designed, and proof copies have been ordered.  Some minor revisions will likely be made after I see the printed copies.  Then I will be ordering the BULK ORDER which is all of the books that were preordered.
• I'm currently collecting recordings from voice actors for the audiobook version.
• If you pre-order before September 3rd, I'll send you your copy TWO months early (September 27th). 
• If you preorder between Sept 4th and November 4th, you'll get your copy by November 27th. 
• After November 4th, no more pre-orders... and the profit margin for me gets much worse.  So, if you're thinking about getting the book, i'd really appreciate your pre-order. 

​Let me tell you about this goal I have.  I have a feeling that if everyone on earth (7.6 billion people) read my book, 98% of them would hate it.  So, maybe 152-million people wouldn't hate it.  However, I have a feeling that about 98% of those people wouldn't be super into it.  Of the 3-million people who are super into it, maybe 98% of them would be too frugal to buy it.  Of those 60,000 people who buy it, I'm hoping no more than 85% of them wait a long time to do so.  But the 9,000 people who do buy it in its first week would make it hit gold on the New York Times Best Sellers List.  To review, if 0.000001% of the world buys my book when it comes out, it will be a complete literary success by almost any definition.
​

That's not my goal, by the way.  That's the introduction to the theory behind my goal.  My actual goal is to just get this book into the hands of as many people as I can possibly get it to, because if only 0.000001% of the people I show it to like & buy it, then I need to show it to a lot of people.

​But how many people is "a lot?"

I have no idea.  I struggle with the concept of "success" in the context of selling a book.  I've never done it before.  I honestly believe it's already a success, because I made something honest and I worked hard.  It's fiscally a success because it's already out of the red from pre-sales on kickstarter, alone.

But like I said, I worked hard.  I'm still working hard trying to figure out how to "do well" and hit imaginary milestones.  What number should I pick?  Maybe 3000 in the first week?  That seems a bit ambitious for a book that sold 64 preorders in 90 days on kickstarter.  However, 3k in a week would ensure a spot on The Wall Street Journal's Bestseller list.  But do I really care about that?  Or do I just care about socially-recognizable milestones?  If a local newspaper had a feature called "The Local Garbage" (i'm envisioning a list of books by local authors that sold at least 100 copies to date), even that would be a real thing to strive for.  But since that doesn't exist, and 3000 in a week seems a bit steep, I'm just hoping I sell any amount of copies to people that enjoy it. 

Back to the bigger question of "HOW THE HELL do I get a ton of people to know this book exists?"

My marketing research tells me it's going to be mostly word of mouth.  So here is a serious question for YOU:  What can I do for you to get you to talk about this book to everyone you know?