–The Publishing Game: Bestseller in 30 Days - Fern Reiss
Review Date: 9/11/2007
Rating:
The Publishing Game: Bestseller in 30 Days - Fern Reiss - published by independent publisher, Peanut Butter and Jelly Press - 208 pages.
Market Analysis:
Amazon retail price: $13.57. Total retail cost per page: $0.065.
If printed on demand: cost per page: $0.013 = $2.70 to print + .90 per cover = Total print cost of $3.60. The List price is $19.95 - 55% discount Amazon receives on purchasing = $8.98 - total print cost of 3.60 = $5.38 profit margin per book.
Book ranking as of day of review: 323,180, which tells me she is probably selling about 20 to 30 books a month if this remains consistent in that ranking area. So her net income is between $100.00 and $160.00 a month through Amazon. This of course does not include books sold through other outlets.
Review:
This is a good little book for giving you an OVERVIEW of different marketing strategies and ensuring that you don’t miss a trick. However, I stress the word overview because that is all you are really going to get. I found myself wishing that the author had titled the book The Publishing Game: Bestseller in Six Months or even . . .in One Year.
It reminded me of a tour bus we were once on at Niagara Falls. We hit every attraction: American side, Canadian side, behind the falls, gift shops, etc., but we were positively rushed from site to site. At no point could we ask the bus driver to slow down, let us spend more time at a certain place, or enlighten us with further information, because he had a schedule to keep. Fern Reiss is by no means an amateur, and the theme of her book is packing a lot into 30 days, but I was left with the feeling that she wrote, edited, formatted, obtained the cover artwork and uploaded the book to the printers in 30 days also. Which is a shame, because she has a lot to share and I’m sure she could have gone into a great deal more detail.
Why I would recommend it: it’s great as a checklist. Read it, make a chart of her step by step recommendations and mark them off as you complete each step. It will ensure that you don’t forget anything along the way, even stuff you may already know.
What I didn’t like about it: although she took great pains to include a lot of contact information (and even offers a free contact sheet at her website simply by subscribing - http://www.publishinggame.com/) much of the information was outdated. Four out of five of the links I tried no longer existed. I haven’t tried her contact sheet yet, but I am assuming that as it is a more ‘fluid’ medium that it is more current. I understand that this publisher uses traditional off-set printing to do print runs of 500, 1000 or more books. In certain instances she may wish to more seriously consider POD. It would allow her to update her text and reupload to the printers at a minimal cost and not eat 500 outdated books in the garage.
All in all, I don’t list this as a ‘must have’ for anyone getting into publishing, but it certainly doesn’t hurt, if for no other reason than scaring off those less than serious by the summary of the sheer volume of marketing and organizational skills you have to have to even begin to compete.
As Fern Reiss also has several other books on the market about publishing in 30 days, finding an agent in 30 days, etc. I look forward to the day when she sits down, takes her time, and really delves into the publishing game from the very beginning to the very end. She could easily charge $40.00 or $50.00 for such a book (assuming it’s more than 208 pages) and I, for one, would be willing to pay it.
As for her writing style, she’s straight forward, easy to read with a nice, brisk tempo. The formatting was simple with plenty of margin and space between lines for writing in notes. A good, handy book made to be abused by notations, underlines, arrows and dog-ears.
