The business of books is big business with 172,000 new titles released in 2005 and sales in the United States of about $40 billion. But what makes a book successful? Are there any common characteristics that can spur on sales? As part of the research for “The Making of a Bestseller,” Dee Power and Brian Hill, the authors, surveyed over 100 editors and agents to answer those questions.
*Previous Success is the Key Indicator of Future Success *
Editors and agents agree that an author’s previous bestselling book is the key factor determining future success.
*Quality of Writing is Paramount*
For writers yet to produce a bestseller, comfort can be taken in that both agents and editors rank the quality of writing highly. Great writing wins out. However, there are no hard and fast criteria about what constitutes “great writing.” It comes down to subjective judgments made by individuals. Book reviewers may argue that a successful book by the very virtue of its success can not be considered great writing.
*Reviews, Whether Good or Bad, Don’t Count*
And speaking of reviews, the survey participants discounted the importance of reviews to nearly last place in sparking book sales. This contradicts the advice given to “new” authors that they must get their books reviewed. These results could also indicate that as an author becomes more successful, has built a fan base, and has had previous bestsellers, reviews decline in importance.
*Timeliness of Topic is of the Essence*
Old news is bad news when it comes to the subject of a book’s topic. Common sense dictates that there isn’t much interest in topics that the daily news media have already hashed over. Since book production takes from six to 12 months, it’s an amazing feat to get a book on a hot topic out to the market at just the right time.
*Word of Mouth and Fan Base*
Readers telling other readers about a fabulous book they’ve just read has a tremendous impact on success. Book buzz is priceless in the publishing industry. Authors on the upward sales track take their fans seriously.
*What’s Not As Important*
Reviews have already been mentioned as not having as great an effect on success. Promotional efforts, whether those of the publishing house or the author’s, fall toward the lesser end of the scale in importance. Advertising doesn’t seem to be as important either.
*Money Doesn’t Count*
Contrary to popular belief, or perhaps it’s just wishful thinking on the author's part, the size of the advance paid isn’t a significant factor to success.
The most important factors in a book’s success,
in order, are:
The previous book was a bestseller
Quality of writing
Timeliness of topic
Fan base
Word of mouth
Author’s promotion
Publicity
Reviews
Advertising
Brian Hill and Dee Power were inspired by their own publishing experiences to research and write “The Making of a Bestseller: Success Stories From Authors and the Editors, Agents and Booksellers Behind Them,” 2005, Dearborn Trade. Hill and Power have also co-authored two other nonfiction books and a novel, “Over Time.” The drama of high finance, hostile takeovers, and vicious venture capitalists is interwoven with an emotionally engaging, nostalgic football story about friendships that last forever.
As a successful author interested in building a business of your book, you must understand the difference between features and benefits. Features are tangible, and benefits are intangible.
Features describe what a product is or has based on physical/tangible characteristics. On the other hand, benefits are feeling-oriented.
Remember that people come to the Internet because they have wants and desires and want to be satisfied. This is the *sole* reason that people come to the Internet. The key for you is to market to people’s problems and present yourself as the only credible solution.
Once you know your market’s problems, you will create a list of benefits that they will experience from dealing with you. You want to distill this list of benefits down to their very essence, which gives you your key benefit. You do this by playing the Which Means What? game with yourself (choose a benefit and ask yourself Which means what? to get down to the base benefit)
Your assignment is to record all the features and benefits your product will provide to your target audience.
What is the difference between Features and Benefits? Here are some Definitions to help!
Definitions
Feature = What a product IS or HAS
Advantage = What your product DOES
Benefit = How your product HELPS you
Example
Let’s look at the example of a pen. Let’s say you design a new-fangled pen using a proprietary ink formula that you have developed.
Feature: Has non-blotching ink
Advantage: Won’t leave blotches of ink and hence smudge marks on a page
Benefit: Saves you the frustration of making a mess by smudging blotches of ink. It saves you the frustration of trying to get your ink to flow properly. (Which means what?) It saves you money since you don’t have to purchase pens as often.
You are now going to create a Benefits vs. Features comparison for your book.
An Exercise:
List every possible feature and benefit that your product offers your target group. Make sure that includes everyone. The key to successful marketing is to focus on the benefits, especially those that make you different in the marketplace while meeting your market’s needs.
Remember, the most successful marketers in the world sell feelings. This is because they know the secret to make money from other people: People buy based on the emotional experience it creates for them and then justifies their purchase rationally.
Position all the benefits of what your book, product, or service does for someone. Then distill the key benefits that you offer the marketplace.
When you discuss your benefits, use lots of subheads and bullets in the copy that you use to position them powerfully.
In fact, if you can get testimonials from people you have helped, have them list all of the problems you have helped them resolve and them look at the benefits of solving each of those. Have those writing testimonials for your key on the problems and the corollary benefits.
This is the best way of selling feelings. Please focus on the benefits of your book, product, and service and let others tell stories about how you solved their specific problems.
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