Brother, can you spare a dime?

The theme of the blog this week is “Brother, can you spare a dime,” a song made popular during the Great Depression by crooners Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee, and showman Al Jolson. It was written by lyricist Yip Harburg and composer Jay Gorney to champion the plight of everyman in America – the millions who worked hard and yet lost everything due to the greed and recklessness of the unscrupulous millionaires who drove the country into a deep, lasting period of bankruptcy. In the song, a broke worker, hungry and down on his luck. looks for a friend who can lend him a dime. They call him Al. All the time.

Say don't you remember, they called me Al/It was Al all the time

 Say don't you remember, I'm your pal/Brother can you spare a dime?

What does this have to do with my writing a book, you ask? Well, once all the writing is done, then it is time to take the book to the marketplace. This is the point where pretty words hit the hard wall of reality known as the free market, where nothing is free, except the market, to do as it pleases.

The free market is a ruthless beast. Tame it, and you can make a fortune. If you fail to tame it, the ravenous marketplace consumes you and your little book, along with everything else in its path.

It’s not all bad news. The book is done at long last, and it looks wonderful. I’m very proud of it. Long live the book. But I learned some time ago that if the book fails to take wing and fly, it will soon die. Like a nervous mother bird, I want to push the little chick out of the nest, but I worry if it will crash.

I have been very frugal so far, spending the least amount possible to get my book to this point. Now it is time to market the book, and advertising is not free. Nor can anyone guarantee the marketing will lead to book sales, so every penny spent on promotion is a gamble. I may as well go to Vegas.

After all the hard work over the past two years, it comes down to a game of nickels and dimes. How much do Ingram and Amazon charge for printing? What is the best retail price point for my book? And how much is the difference between the two? After Amazon and Ingram take their cut, what is left for me? Why should I get paid, since all I did was write the book, which is the easy part, right?

I thought that print-on-demand was the answer to my prayers. I don’t have to buy my inventory up front. It used to be the author had to buy hundreds or even thousands of offset-print books in order to get a reasonable cost per book. Now, books are just computer files. All the printer has to do is hit a button and a book pops out. So, it should be easy now for authors to make money.

It’s not that easy to make money with POD

Not so fast.

Print-on-demand (POD) platforms like Amazon, Ingram, Blurb, and so on, charge more per book than a large offset print job, so the profit margin for the author is reduced. Ingram is the largest wholesaler and distributor to bookstores, which buy books at wholesale and sell at retail prices.

Say the retail price is $10 for a paperback. The bookstore industry standard is a 60-40 split. They buy the book for $6 at wholesale and add $4 to pay for the cost of bookstore rent, staff, utilities, etc. They don’t want to pay for my book up front, since they have no idea if my book will sell. So, they order it on consignment. I, the unpaid author, have to front the cost of printing it.

That also means that I, as the author, have to figure out how to print the book for less than $6, so I make something when the book sells. If I can print it for $3, then I might make $3 on each book. But if it costs me $4.75 to print a copy, then I would only make $1.25 on each book they sell. And, if the book doesn’t sell, most bookstores want the publisher (me) to pay to have it returned.

I can feel the hands around my neck, squeezing tighter and tighter, making it hard to breathe. They aren’t going to let go and give me a break. They will keep a tight grip on my throat the whole time.

What’s an author to do? There are few easy options. I could go to book signing events and book festivals and sell my books directly to people, but this means traveling all over the country, not knowing how many people will attend each event, and of those, how many will buy my book.

I have participated in two local author events so far, organized by local libraries. At one event, the library rented space at a convention center for 50 authors to display their books and attracted hundreds of potential customers. The attendees walk around, casting a sideways glance at each book table. As the author, I had no idea if they liked my genre, nonfiction, or not. Should I call out to them, or would that be too aggressive and off-putting? Should I just say hello and then shut up?

Author events may sound glamorous but the reality is quite mundane

At the other event, in the DC area, the local library only found two local authors, so they put us in the back of the room for their quarterly used book sale. They failed to advertise our presence far in advance. I arrived to see ravenous readers ready to pounce on the used books the minute the doors opened. They had empty cardboard boxes or canvas bags in which to haul away their purchases.

When the doors opened at 10 a.m., they raced into the room and pawed through the used books, casting only a sideways glance at me and the other local author. It was humiliating. I felt like part of a freak show at the circus. “Who are those two men in the back of the room, daddy?” “Don’t go near them, Sally, they are authors! They could be desperate and dangerous. Stay far away from them!”

I felt like a freak show attraction at the event

Sigh. I sold two books and made $1.50 on each after my costs. I had to pay the dogsitter $50 for five hours. It’s not a great business model. I dream of the day when I make a profit on my book sales.

So much for fame and fortune. Tune in next week for the next installment in the ongoing saga.

I Won’t Back Down

Paperback Writer