Why Airing On Oprah Doesn't Sell Business Books, An Interview With Chip Bell

When writing a business book, it is imperative that you are clear in your goals. Are you publishing a book to establish your expertise, to gain new clients, and to grow your business overall? Or, are you publishing a book for your ego, and to get on Oprah? Whatever your motivations are, it is critical to recognize that different forms of marketing and publicity will move you closer to different goals. Expert author and consultant Chip Bell shares his experiences and advice...

Learn more about publishing business books with RainToday's research, The Business Impact of Writing A Book and The Ultimate Guide To Publishing And Marketing A Business Book.

Current Position:	Chip R. Bell is the founder of The Chip Bell Group and works from the Dallas, Texas area. His consulting practice focuses on helping organizations build a culture that supports long-term customer loyalty.
In The Public Eye:	His work has been featured on CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, NPR, Voice of America, and Reuters, and in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, USA Today, Washington Post, Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Business Week. Additionally, he has hosted four major training films on service leadership.
Author Of:	Chip is the author or co-author of over 300 articles and sixteen books, including: Magnetic Service: Secrets for Creating Passionately Devoted Customers (with Bilijack Bell), Service Magic: The Art of Amazing Your Customers, Customers As Partners: Building Relationships That Last, Managers As Mentors: Building Partnerships For Learning, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service (with Ron Zemke), Dance Lessons: Six Steps to Great Partnerships in Business and Life (with Heather Shea), Knock Your Socks off Service Recovery (with Ron Zemke) and Beep-Beep: Competing in the Age of the Road Runner (with Oren Harari).
Also Known For:	Prior to starting a consulting firm in the late 1970s, he was Vice President and Director of Management and Organization Development for NCNB, now Bank of America.
Website:	http://www.chipbell.com

RainToday: How strongly has writing business books impacted your practice?

Chip Bell: Writing books has had an extremely positive impact on my practice overall. It has had a very strong impact in helping me to generate new, more desirable clients, charge higher fees for my services, and generate more, quality speaking engagements. It has also greatly improved my brand and helped me stand out against my competitors through all of the publicity and PR I've received due to my books.

RainToday: Did you use a ghost writer to help you write any of your books?

Chip Bell: My goodness, no! That's like going fishing and letting someone else use your pole! I did use a great editor to help with the broad construction functions of the book, though, and that was helpful.

RainToday: What about a PR service? Did you hire any kind of professional marketing provider besides the help you received from your publisher?

Chip Bell: You should always have a publicist -– preferably your own publicist. If you rely on the PR from a publisher, they'll typically only give your book attention for a few months. For a typical business book, it takes much longer than that to get good traction and have the book take off.

Plus, a great publicist has great media contacts that can get you quoted in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal. Getting quoted in the right places is critical. Getting on Oprah doesn't really help, because your target audience -- business leaders -- aren't watching Oprah at 2:00 pm in the afternoon. You have to think about what radio and television programs the business buyers are listening to -– like late afternoon drive time radio or early morning Bloomberg, CNBC, etc.

Other helpful publications to get coverage in are the major business media. USA Today, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Inc., and Fast Company. Those are the media outlets that can really help push book sales.

RainToday: Do you have any advice on marketing directly to bookstores?

Chip Bell: For bookstores, you need to get a distributor to talk to them -– and distributors only talk with publishers. So you need to get your publisher (probably through your literary agent) to work on targeted marketing to bookstores and negotiating the details for coops, end caps, and special promotions. For instance, when books are placed with their face out on a shelf, they sell about 60% more than when they are placed with their spine out.

It is also very important that you push sales in the first 90 days to empty the bookstore sales because they impact their reorder formula. If a bookstore orders six copies of your book from the distributor, and at the end of 90 days only three are sold, they will not likely reorder any more, thinking three will be the quarterly demand.

If your book then takes off in the second 90 days after being released, and ten could have been sold, they will only have their stock of three. Now you will have lost seven potential sales. Few people order from the bookstore if they are sold out…they just buy a different book. 

It may take six months for the bookstore to figure out your book should be selling well. By the time their supply matches the demand you have created through promotion, you have lost a lot of sales…all set by what was purchased in the first 90 days.

Again, the lead time on business books to take off is typically a lot longer than fiction books. These are the kind of details that publishers can best negotiate with distributors. Book stores are not likely to deal with authors directly.

RainToday: Do you have any advice regarding the process of signing a book contract?

Chip Bell: Make sure that it's written in your contract how much investment is going to be made, where, and in which markets. Also, make sure you negotiate foreign rights and retain line extension rights.

Know what kind of coverage the publisher is going to spend money on, and where. For example, for radio coverage: you need to think about the details like the wattage of the program that you will be marketing on, and the time of day your interview will be aired. Drive-time radio on the right stations, on the right shows, can often help.  It is the same with TV -- right show, right station, right time.  

And have a publishing lawyer look over the publishing contract –- it's worth $500 of your money to make sure that every paragraph of the contract is written correctly. This is especially important if you don't have a literary agent.

RainToday: How important are literary agents?

Chip Bell: Literary agents will generally know if your book will sell well. You pay them about 15% of your profits (advance and royalties), so they have a vested interest in getting you a good contract and are wired for your (and their) success. An agent can get you the right publisher –- they will shop the title and negotiate the deal. Meanwhile, the agent will help you clarify your book objectives to make your work as strong as possible.

RainToday: Can you tell me a little about the potential monetary benefits from writing a business book?

Chip Bell: If I was told I wouldn't receive any royalties from writing a book, I would not be that concerned. If you get an advance up front, it's not only great because it's money in your pocket, it's great because it will push the publisher to promote your book in order to recover their sunk costs.

In reality, the income generated most from a book is through additional work. If you're writing for royalties, you probably shouldn't be writing a business book. You are not likely to get the return on your time investment with a business book though direct income –- unless you're a John Grisham-type and sell a million copies.

But I am told that 95% of business books only sell about 5,000 copies. And, business books only represent about 10% of the titles in the book store. It's not likely to be a big direct income generator. Think about it. You spend months writing a book that sells 5,000 copies at $20 each. If your royalty is 15%, you have made $15,000. That's not big bucks for your midnight toil.

The indirect income that you can make from a book, however, is a completely different story. If you work it, you can probably make about ten times as much revenue from sources generated through your book than from the royalties themselves. For example, books can help you get higher speaking fees.

Also, you can create multiple line extensions to expand the reach of your book -- great as additional income. There are a lot of forms they can take –- from consulting tools, to videos, to training programs, to instruments. And anytime anyone buys a line extension product, it can help you sell more books. Plus, if you write a great book, it will make you more efficient with your clients -– you can help educate them through your books, and save them and you time.

RainToday: Do you have any last advice for service providers considering writing a business book?

Chip Bell: It takes practice. Early on, it takes a lot of nickels and dimes, and then you learn to go after the dollar. You have to learn not to let your ego drive what you do. We all like to see our name in print, but you have to decide what you want your book to do. 

Do you want to be rich and famous, or do you just want to be famous? You can't write with a greed mentality, because you will be investing a lot of unproductive time and energy to create your book. If you just chase after seeing your name on the third page of the Tenbucktwo Courier just so you can show your parents, fine, but your mortgage banker probably won't be happy.

For example, I have an acquaintance that spent an enormous amount of energy trying to get on Oprah to talk about his book -– and he finally did! He was on the show for about two or three minutes, and it may have sold 100 books. Getting on Oprah was really about him, not really about the book, and certainly not about generating business book sales. Before you do anything, you have to decide what you want the book to do. What is your publishing goal?

I believe you should always write a book to make a difference in the world. But to me, it's also about making some choices -- and that focus means being smart about it. If you try to maximize the book's reach -– then more people will read it, and the bigger impact it will have in the world. If you make sure it gets as broad a reach as possible, that's worth it. If you pursue fame alone, it's likely to be a short trip.