I find it’s critical to analyze your niche, roll up your sleeves, and find out where your customers go. For example, I publish books on Lyme disease, so I went to the Centers for Disease Control Web site, learned which states had the highest incidence of Lyme disease, and targeted health food stores in those states. Since my books were refused by the primary health-food-store book distributor (NutriBooks), I was at first discouraged, but I decided to call the health food stores myself. Scary? Yes! Successful? Yes!
I spent about 20 hours per week for three months cold-calling every health food store on the East Coast. It was grueling, awful, terrible work, but it was work that sold books. I offered excellent terms to the stores (since I cut out the distributor, I had more flexibility). They could not resist 40 percent off the list price with free shipping and a minimum order of only three books. For the stores that were skeptical, I offered to send a sample copy. I kept detailed records of all the calls I made, and I was sure to follow up with flyers and phone calls.
The result? I’ve sold almost 1,000 books to health food stores now after only four months, and the stores keep reordering. The nice thing about retail stores, unlike individual customers, is that they make money on your products, so they keep buying them as long as they keep selling. I have 150 health food store accounts on the East Coast because of this effort.
Even better, because my Web site address is printed on the back of my books, many of my new readers visit my site and find that I sell a couple dozen related books, videos, and DVDs. So, a lone book sale from a health food store (or any other sales channel) may turn into a sale of five to ten, or more, products. By the way, I highly recommend selling other authors’ and other publishers’ books on subjects related to yours.
Recently I went out on a limb and spent the time and money to have cardboard countertop display cases designed and produced. I called each of my health food store accounts and offered the case for free. About a dozen stores accepted the offer. After utilizing the case, sales increased to these stores, and some of them now order by the case. Why does it work? The first and most obvious reason is that, when books are showcased in a display case, customers are more likely to see them. But the second, and less well-known, reason is that the display case itself serves as an order reminder for health food store managers. Normally, when the book sells out, the health food store may forget to reorder. But an empty display case says two things loudly: “Time to order more!” and “Yes, those books you weren’t sure about actually did sell.”
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