But first you must drill one thing into your head, again and again and again: You will not make much money.

In fact, you probably won’t even get paid minimum wage for you efforts.

Heck, you might end up losing money on the project!

If you look at industry statistics, you’ll be amazed at the odds that are stacked against you.  Just read Steven Piersanti’s post, “The 10 Awful Truths About Book Publishing.”  Keep in mind when you read it that he is the president of a publishing company.  Fill the bucket with cold water now, because it’s heading your way!

According to Piersanti, the average nonfiction book in the United States sells less than 250 copies per year.  On top of that, if you are successful in getting your book published through a traditional publisher, you have a 1 in 100 chance of getting your book into a brick-and-mortar bookstore (1 in 1000 anyone?)!

A few years ago some staggering statistics were published by Bookscan, and they’ve been oft-quoted.  As jaw-dropping as these stats may seem, keep in mind that book sales have declined since these figures were published, yet the number of books being published has greatly increased.

So, based on this outdated data, we know that:

80% of published books sell less than 99 copies
96% of published books sell less than 1,000 copies
98% of published books sell less than 5,000 copies

So you spend hundreds of hours writing your book, yet the odds are that you will sell less than 99 copies.  And hey, if your book sells over 1000 copies, it is time to cheer: you are in the top 4% of all books sold in the country!

My work is non-fiction, so I’m less familiar with the process to get a novel published.  That stated, here’s a shocking statistic for all you aspiring novelists:

3 in 10,000

That is apparently your odds of getting a novel published if you have not previously been published.  Wow!  Glad I write nonfiction.

The publishing industry is much like the music and film industries … a small percentage succeed, and succeed big, covering the losses incurred by the majority of books or albums or movies.  To whit: the top 30 bestselling books account for somewhere around 15% of all book sales in a given year. 

Some more industry stats:

Books published in 2009: 1,052,803
Books sold in 2009: 282 million

If you back out the 15% for which the top 30 account, that means that everyone else is fighting over about 240 million books, so if you do the math you can easily see how the “average” book sells less than 250 copies.  Of course, these figures for books sold include both traditionally-published and self-published (e.g., Author House).  In reality, most self-published books sell less than 100 copies – or as many copies as the author is willing to purchase to give to family and friends!  And if you want to get technical, there are somewhere around 3,000,000 books in print in the U.S. right now, all fighting for that 240 million books annually sold. 

Here’s a little perspective: according to Hubspot’s January 2010 State of the Twittersphere report, the average Twitter user has 300 followers.  Your 40,000 or 80,000 or 100,000-word book will be read by an audience of 250 people, yet your 140-character Tweets will be read by 300 people. 

Then there is the whole issue of royalties.  Paperback royalties can range between 5% and 10% of the publisher’s net sales (not the retail sale price), while hardcover royalties can range from 10% to 15%.  But there are variations outside the norm as well as sliding scales.  For instance, most of my publishing contracts have given me a standard royalty rate (e.g., 15% for a hardcover), plus a second royalty rate that kicks in once the publisher has to discount beyond 45% of retail price in order to get a distributor or big online store or big chain store to carry it.  When that happens, my royalty is halved, so I only get 7.5% of publisher’s net.

It can be very confusing, but here is a really simple example.

You write a book and a publisher agrees to publish it!  (Congratulations, you’ve beaten the odds.)  There is an 80% chance that your book will sell less than 99 copies, so let’s just say it sells 100 copies to keep things easy.  The cost of the book is $20 (more likely: $19.99, but we’re doing math here!), and the publisher’s discount to the retailer is 44% (phew, your royalty wasn’t cut in half).  Because the book is paperback, you get 10% in royalties.  Here’s your earnings:

$20 retail cost x 44% discount = $11.20 publisher’s net earnings per book
$11.20 x 100 books sold = $1,120 total net earnings
$1,120 x 10% author’s royalty = $112 in income

Of course, your book took 500 hours to write (average for nonfiction, compared with over 700 hours for fiction) so:

$112 income / 500 hours = $0.22. 

There you have it.  You earned 22 cents per hour to research and write your book.

Don’t quit your day job!

The publisher is often seen as the bully when it comes to looking at author income.  Maybe it is because I come from a business perspective, but I’m often shocked that the publishers can afford to stay in business.  If we look at the example of a $20 book sold to a retailer or through a wholesaler at a 44% discount (keeping in mind, the discounts are often larger), the publisher is looking at a net earnings of only $11.20 per book.  And what does the publisher have to pay for? 

Review book proposals
Contract with authors
Edit manuscripts
Obtain rights and permissions
Layout books
Design covers
Print books (paper + printing + binding)
Transport books from printer to warehousing
Store books
Distribute books to wholesalers/retailers
Ship returns back to warehouse (yes, the publisher pays for returns)
Prepare marketing and public relations materials
Promote, market, and sell
Administrative costs

Wow, that is a lot!  And with an average traditionally-published book selling as few as 250 copies, that is a pretty significant investment for each and every book.  One statistic I came across gives it some perspective: If you pay $25 for a book, and back out all the costs and the author’s royalty, the publisher will realize $1 in profit. 

Should you give up on your dream of writing a book?  I think not!  I’ll cover that in the next post.

One of the necessary attributes for marketers of professional services is a certain level of creativity.  We’re typically not the “out there” creatives like true design architects, but are more creative than “back-of-house” engineers who happily draw boxes forty hours a week (I can say that: my father and brother-in-law are engineers!).  Personally, I try to exercise the right side of my brain through my hobby: writing and photographing local interest books.  Of course, the hobby comes in handy for my day job, too – how many of us take project photos (particularly in this time of shrinking marketing budgets which can no longer afford architectural photographers!)?  So, here are a few tips to help your project – or vacation – photography.

On my last night in Boston, after the Build Business 2010 conference had wrapped up, I decided to go exploring with my camera in hand.  I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Boston several times over the years, but never with my trusty DSLR. 

I set out from the hotel on foot, late in the afternoon, with visions of social media marketing still spinning in my head.  My goal:  photograph some of the historic buildings along the Freedom Trail, beginning with the Massachusetts State House that watches over Boston Common.

Of course, this “photo shoot” suffered from the lack of any advance planning, as evidenced by the following photo:

This is the type of photo that you might have taken, and certainly the type of photo that your technical staff provides you with when you ask them to take some photos for marketing on their next site visit.  The sun was in the wrong place.  Had I been there earlier in the day, the front of the building would have been bathed in sunlight.  Alas, I was left with this rather boring image of a building in shadow, overexposed dome fading into the washed-out sky because I was shooting toward the sun.

I continued onward, and took some nice shots of other buildings along the way.  Many blocks later, tired, sweaty, hungry, and thirsting for a date with Boston’s own Sam Adams – on tap, of course – I decided to break for dinner.  Soon it was pushing 7 p.m. and Club SMPS was getting underway over a mile away.  The sun dropped behind the skyscrapers and the sky began to darken.  Perfect, I thought: I can get some “night” photography.  I began retracing my steps.

Within minutes, tiny droplets of precipitation began to fall from above.  You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought.  Alas, Mother Nature was not kidding, and I soon found myself sprinting for the nearest canopy.  When I was safely out of the rain, I wiped down my camera and returned it to the camera bag, which I had fortunately brought with me.  Of course, I still really wanted to get a few images, particularly of the domes and steeples that are beautifully illuminated at night.  So I began my pattern of duck, run, cover and shoot, block-by-block.  This entailed ducking my head as I sprinted to the next area of cover (awning, canopy, marquee, tree), then unpacking my camera and taking a few photographs before returning the camera to the bag and repeating.

This is the image I took of the Massachusetts State House.

As my young son would say, “It’s not so bad.”

The image above is exactly as I took it.  The only thing I did in Photoshop was (1) rotate it, and (2) downsample and reduce the image size to post online.

So here’s a few tips about how this photo was taken – maybe they can help you on your next photo expedition.

First, look at the sky in the photograph.  There is still color in it.  “Night” shots are actually best taken at twilight, because there is still some light in the sky and texture on buildings.  Second, while clear, deep blue skies can often enhance the drama of a daylight image, cloudy skies can often elevate the appearance of night photographs, providing detail and texture around your subject.

Third, rain can further enhance a photo at night.  Streets and parking lots often distract from a building photo, but the wetness creates reflectivity and adds visual interest.  Plus, light rain is often not visible in an image, particularly if you are using a slower shutter speed.

Fourth, take a tripod.  I broke this rule, but it is an extremely important one.  As it gets darker you will need longer and longer exposures to record detail.  If you don’t have a tripod, however, all is not lost.  I’ve used parking meters, benches, walls, car roofs, other people’s heads and shoulders, etc. to help steady my camera.  In this case I was hiding under a large tree, which was shielding me – and my camera – from the light rain that was falling.  I was “forced” into this viewpoint to keep the camera dry, but able to lean up against the tree trunk to help steady myself. 

Here are a few other steps I took to attempt to counteract the longer exposure time that was necessary:  I took multiple photos.  I had (rightly) assumed that some of them would be blurry because I was hand-holding the camera.  But some like the one above were also sharp, not suffering from blur.  I also changed the ISO setting on the camera.  Remember the days of film?  ISO speeds of 64 or 100 gave us very sharp, grain-less photos, but required longer exposure times.  Higher speed films with ISO ratings of 800 or 1000 allowed us to shoot in very low light, but added grain to the images.  The same concept applies with digital photography.  Your camera (even if it is a point-and-shoot) is probably currently set for “automatic” ISO.  I changed mine to 400 to balance my need for sharp images with the low-light conditions in which I was shooting.

I love my DSLR camera, but it is on the lower end of the scale when it comes to bells and whistles.  Most $200 point-and-shoot cameras today are more feature-rich than my DSLR.  With these cameras you can set “night mode” for longer exposure time, adjust the ISO settings, select both the shutter speed and aperture settings, and do much more.  Most cameras (including mine) also have some sort of anti-shake technology to allow for hand-holding under low-light conditions.

My actual settings were:

ISO – 400

Shutter – 1/10 second (you used to have to use a tripod below 1/60)

f-stop – 3.5 (which lets in more light than a higher setting)

To be honest, I left the exposure settings up to the camera in this case, using its automatic settings.

I also used auto-focus, which is sometimes challenging under darker conditions.  To help my camera properly focus, I placed the brightest part of the building in the center of my camera’s viewfinder, partially depressed the shutter to “lock” the focus (and exposure settings), and then recomposed.

Finally, be patient.  Even though it was a rainy night in Boston, it was a Friday night.  There were lots of people and lots of cars.  I had to time my shots to avoid the people and cars.  Had I brought a tripod with me, I could have used longer exposure times and included passing cars – the cars wouldn’t have shown in the photo, but steaks of white light from headlights and red light from taillights would have been visible, which would also have enhanced the photograph.

Here’s the photo again, after a few very minor tweaks in Photoshop.

My “labor-intensive” photo-editing took approximately one minute, and involved the following: (1) I used the Transform –> Perspective tool to correct the parallax, which is the “sloping wall” effect that it often present in architectural photographs.  I was only worried about correcting the wall on the left side of the image because I had photographed the building from an angle, not straight on.  (2) I adjusted the levels by using the Levels (duh!) tool and setting the black and white points only.  And (3) I cropped the photo to reduce the amount of street visible.

In spite of the rain and lack of a tripod I was pleased with the end-result.  Of course, I learned a valuable tip, too.  At the conclusion of a national conference, don’t skip the party.  If you do, you never know what will fall on you from above! (I’m just thankful it was not a piano or waste from a passing commercial airplane.)  

Does this make sense?  Do you have any questions?  Is there another photography-related topic you’d like me to blog about?

Happy shooting!

Indian River Bay, Delaware

Here’s a free e-book I pulled together. It features 25 tips for photographing dramatic sunrises and sunsets.

Feel free to share, print, and post elsewhere.  Let me know how you make out!

In other words, it was not a pretty day.

State Capitol Building in Pennsylvania

Still, as I headed back to the office, I decided to drive by the Capitol, because it is quite magnificent in its architectural styling. When I passed by, a small hole opened in the gray canopy above, and the gilded statue atop the dome began to sparkle. I didn’t have my camera gear with me, but I did have a Coolpix point-and-shoot in my briefcase, so I parked on State Street, jumped out, and ran to the center of the road to take a quick shot before the unique scene abated.

The green dome is stunning on any day, but more so when framed by a deep cobalt sky. This day offered a different type of lighting – one that can be quite dramatic. The dome glistens like emeralds, surrounded by a foreboding sky.

Sometimes ugly days offer up great photographic possibilities. And as for equipment, well, sometimes a point-and-shoot is all you really need.

Author and Photographer Scott D. Butcher

Scott Butcher is an author, photographer, historian, presenter, and professional services marketer.  His books include Delaware Reflections, Gettysburg Perspectives, York: America’s Historic Crossroads, Tombstone: Relive the Gunfight at the OK Corral, York’s Historic Architecture, Lancaster County Reflections, York (Postcard History Series), Civil War Walking Tour of York, PA, Spooky York, Pennsylvania, Marketing in the Building Industry, and the upcoming Tucson Perspectives.  Over 1,400 of Scott’s photos have been featured in books and periodicals.  He is a Certified Professional Services Marketer through the Society for Marketing Professional Services, a past recipient of the Central Penn Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 award, and was recently named Leadership York’s Outstanding Alumnus of the Year for 2010.
Scott also serves as Vice President of JDB Engineering, Inc. in York, PA.