Writer's Grove

Tour math

Piggybacking here on an excellent post by Chuck Wendig about why we gotta have bookstore events. It’s a great dive into the whys and wherefores and you should definitely give it a read—I nodded and said “Yep, yep, yep” though the whole thing.

Chuck’s main argument is that publishers might not be supporting bookstore events because they’re not mega profitable in the immediate spreadsheet sense, but they are actually profitable in many ways that aren’t obvious to a bean counter looking at one night’s event sales.

To be fair to the bean counters—they are correct in that events are often not immediately profitable. You have to sell a fairly large buttload to make events profitable on one night’s balance sheet. So let’s MATH a bit, then circle back to why we have to look beyond that.

A Curse of Krakens, when it comes out November 7, will be going for $32 in hardcover. It’s a big chonker of a book with a spiffy map on the endsheet. Retailers like your local indie plus bigass megacorporations buy the books from the publishers at a discount, of course, and then they sell them for cover price and have to make their payroll and such and hope there’s profit when that’s all done. This can vary a bit depending on the retailer—discounts from the publisher start at 40% but can go higher depending on volume and other stuff. But let’s imagine a new indie store that hasn’t really earned big discounts yet called Taco Bout Books. If Taco Bout Books wants to stock A Curse of Krakens, a 40% discount means it’s paying $19.20 to the publisher. So if it sells a copy to you at cover price, Taco Bout Books makes $12.80 per copy. A large amount of that is going to pay for labor and insurance and rent and utilities and shipping and such and then, if there’s any profit left over, maybe they have taco money. If you are getting any discount from the store, that’s all on them—they’re reducing their profit margin.

(Let me say right now I’m not discussing ebooks or audiobooks—they’re not usually part of bookstore event math because while some indie stores offer both, it’s not, to my knowledge, a huge slice of any pie. We’re dealing with paper copies here.)

Margins are of course slimmer on mass market and trade paperbacks because the price point is smaller to begin with. An $8.99 mass market paperback costs the store $5.39 to stock. They therefore make $3.60 per copy sold, and after you pay for overhead, there’s not even taco money left unless you are selling a huge buttload of them. There’s one indie store I know of that’s very transparent about their costs: They have to sell 3200 books a month to break even. And they often don’t make it for most of the year; they wind up depending on the holiday season to have a ridiculous couple of months that make up for all the shortfalls. Most indie stores are in this boat. Months of panic and fervent prayers that the holiday season will allow them to stay open.

But one thing—a huge thing—that helps smooth out those troughs and meet payroll is store events. Because a good event brings in a bunch of readers who might not normally walk in, and they often buy more than just one book while they’re there. That part is like, TURBO CRUCIAL. Virtual events, from all I’ve heard, don’t cut the mustard; people might buy the book that’s being promoted but they don’t buy a lot of other stuff. At in-person events, folks might buy other goodies with higher profit margins than books, too—which is why you see so many weird tchotchkes in bookstores. And then those new customers might come back again for more events and become regulars. Events are, in many ways, key to an indie bookstore’s survival. Which is why bookstores are really worried that authors aren’t having as many events, that publishers aren’t sending them, and some events are sparsely attended—events are not only what make a bookstore profitable, but financially possible. And COVID wrecked a lot of that.

More math, but from my side: Publishers pay authors a 10% royalty on the cover price for hardcovers. (Yes, there are variations in this rate, but I’m using a very common one.) So, if you buy a hardcover copy of A Curse of Krakens while I’m on tour, I’ll get $3.20 regardless of any discount you get when you buy it (because the discount is coming from the retailer’s profit margin, not my royalty.) You will, in effect, have bought me a street taco. Thank you. (Usually—again, there are variations—authors get 8% for mass market and 12% for trade paperbacks, which doesn’t quite equal a taco, but if you buy a couple of those then we will unlock the achievement: Taco.)

So here’s what’s happening: Travel is ridiculously expensive and daaaang does that eat into everyone’s taco money. You have to plane, train, or automobile to the city the event is in. You have to rent a room to sleep in. You have to eat a food or three, and it all adds up. So let’s look at what it’s gonna take to get me to my first event in Ft Collins, CO, on Nov. 7:
Flight from Montreal to Denver: $390
Rental car to get my butt to Ft Collins: ~$100
Hotel: ~$130
Three Foods for the day, keeping it cheap at an average $20 each, so call it $60
Total: $680

Who’s paying for all of that? The publisher, the author, or some combo of the two? Let’s say it’s all me (it isn’t) just to do the math on my side because I can’t even begin to do the math on the publisher’s side (I have no idea what their overhead is. Out of the $19.20 they get for a copy of A Curse of Krakens, they pay me $3.20, so they are really working with $16 to pay for their overhead, which is in New York and involves numerous editors and an art department and accounting and shipping and warehousing and printing and marketing and so on). If I am paying all costs for the trip and make $3.20 per copy, I’d have to sell 213 books in Ft. Collins to break even on my travel costs. I would be delighted, of course, if that happened, but it’s unlikely, y’all. I’m simply not that big a deal. But that math right there is why bean counters are looking at events and going, you know what? Events aren’t profitable. You have to be a pretty big deal to move 200+ books at an event. (Bookstores on the other hand are delighted with an extra 50-100 books sold on any given day.)

Lowering travel costs obviously helps—I’m keeping the rental car to get to my subsequent dates and avoiding the expense of airfare until I leave San Diego—but still. I’m not going to be swimming in tacos at any point. I’m giving away my tacos by touring. So why do it?
1. Because of all the stuff Chuck said in his blog, and it was a lot
2. Because I like people who read and want to meet them. They’re the best people
3. I love bookstores. The way they look and smell, the sheer monument to human achievement and creativity they represent, and some of them have shop dogs and I get to pet them. (Shoutout to Fern in Capital Books on K in Sacramento, CA! She is a very good dog and has her own account on Instagram, @bookstorefern)
4. I’m still amazed that people want to read my books and have me sign them. It gives me warm fuzzy feelings that counterbalance the months of existential dread and self-doubt one feels while working alone. Plus it’s good to get out of the house. Events are necessary for my well being.

I’ve been touring since 2011. Last year I did four tours—three in the US and one in Europe—and not a single one of the tours was profitable to me personally or my publisher if you look at just the event sales in isolation. Travel costs always eat up the sales. But every tour was worth it to me and definitely to the bookstores—and therefore to the publishers, if they’d like to continue to have bookstores in which to sell their products. (Every indie shop that shuts its doors is one step closer to a giant anti-union megacorp running everything.) Hopefully these tours were a good experience for readers, too—happy readers keep reading and buying books on other days than the event days, and they spread the word and more sales are generated down the road because of the events, but just because that’s impossible to track, we shouldn’t conclude that it’s not happening or that events aren’t worth it.

All of which is to say: I hope you’ll go to events. Because they’re fun, and bookstores are rad, and money isn’t the only thing we should be considering here. COVID still exists, so wear a good mask for safety. And if you can’t go to events, you can support the stores (and the authors) by preordering signed copies to be shipped to you. That helps everyone because you get a signed book without moving from your reading chair and the stores who host authors can keep the lights on and maybe buy a taco.

My tour schedule is below, and I’m super excited to see everyone. I’ll point out one event in particular—Nov. 10 in Scottsdale. A couple doors down from The Poisoned Pen is a pub called Cornish Pasty with a large outdoor seating space. I’ll be there at 5 pm before the event and there might be Irish wolfhounds there too. So please drop on by and say hi, let’s have a drink and a pasty and chat if you feel like it before we go get bookish at 7.

And go see Chuck on tour if you can! And any other authors coming to your local indie or your local B&N. Stores often have event calendars and email newsletters telling you who’s coming in the next month. Become a member of the literati illuminati! It’s fun for the whole family.

Regardless: Thank you for reading (or listening if you dig audiobooks). People who read are the bestest peeps.