Research and Sell

By Bill Stephens - May 12 , 2008

OK, here’s the problem:

You are an unpublished author, and an editor has requested a complete manuscript of your novel. They read the manuscript, and they “just love it,” BUT they’re not sure of the market for the book. There is something a little quirky in the book that the editor likes because of its originality, but will it sell? So they take a pass rather than assume the risk on your work.

Why not head this problem off by including two additional items with the manuscript: a “Competition Survey” and a “Market Survey”?

Nonfiction book proposals have traditionally included a “Competition” segment, but Fiction submissions have never included “Marketing Plans” or “Competition” information. Here’s the difference:

In nonfiction book proposals, the “Competition” segment includes examples of books similar to the submission, but shows there’s nothing out there that addresses your thesis as completely and accurately. The fiction “Competition Survey” needs to be an in-depth study showing that there is a large number of readers that have purchased novels with similar style and content to your manuscript.

My thesis is that if a first-time author can attached to a manuscript a “Competition Survey” showing that a list of authors with similar writing styles and content sold “X” number of books over “Y” time period (this being ‘hard data’ of established numbers), an editor can make a more informed decision concerning a manuscript. He or she can take the “Competitive Survey” to the Editorial Board along with the manuscript to support their belief in the project. The base problem is that editors do not have time to do this survey themselves, even though most publishers have the necessary data available.

What I can tell you from personal experience is that developing hard data on book sales is quite difficult for those outside the publishing houses. After spending a week on the concept, I now am beginning to get the feel for computing book sales from Amazon.com Book Rankings. I’ve been told that Nielsen BookScan is the best source for this data, but it is available only to publishers.

As I develop these ideas further, I will share my information with you on the “Competition Survey.” In the meantime, anyone with ideas on how to develop good data on specific genre book sales is welcome to share them here.

The “Market Survey” will be conducted among demographically random volunteer readers, but I will address that issue in my next article.