Why have you decided to offer free postage and packing to anyone in the world? I believe so many of companies on the internet are ripping off customers. They are being charged more for the 'convenience' of shopping on the web. It's a cruel trick because any company on the web can deliver their products and services at a fraction of the cost of doing business in a conventional bricks and mortar store. It's fully automated (or should be) so you could go so far as to say that some on-line businesses are profiteering. That's quite an accusation - how can you back it up? Retailers may have to compete with other retailers but they all beat up their suppliers to get the best deals. There are more products than available retail shelf space so if you want to get on the shelf, you've got to be prepared to pay the retailer a fee just to be given space on the shelf. This happens in the food and the electrical appliance business. With limited shelf space, a retailer will argue, why give that space to an untried product which could sell less well than the existing products they sell. To hell with what the customer wants - they don't come into it. I believe the retailers are heading for trouble. This won't happen for much longer once e-commerce becomes commonplace. More and more manufacturers will bypass the retailer and sell direct to the customer. It's already happening - look at Dell. It costs less to do it, manufacturers can sell what they like and keep all the money they have been used to handing over to retailers. Part of that money they save will go towards offering superlative customer service and paying the shipping directly to the customer. The customer gets more choice, a better deal and they are less likely to get ripped off. Retailers will have an even harder time in the 21st century, and ultimately pay for their greed in the 20th century. It will also have a negative impact on employment - here in England the retail sector employs about 17% of the entire workforce. The internet will put a lot of people out of work. The likes of Amazon and Barnes and Noble are HUGELY successful - how can you compete with them? Obviously I can't but that's not the point. Mass production depends on selling lots of products, reaching millions by having wide distribution. That way of doing business is changing. It is now possible to sell LESS but make more profit!! By using a combination of existing technology and the web you can eliminate so much of the costly waste. This will have a profound effect. It turns everything on its head. The big on-line booksellers may be using the internet but they are OLD style businesses. Amazon are more entrepreneurial because they have already realised that they can even cut out the publisher by offering books directly to their existing customers. From their databases they can analyse what books sell the best – then go out and ask unknown or celebrity authors to write a book just for them. Before its been written they can know roughly how many they will sell. So who needs the publisher? But suppose you are writer John Grisham, or singer George Michael - what if you could only buy their work on the internet at their own websites. I’m not saying this will happen, but suppose…. They may sell a lot less product, but they would keep ALL the profit from each book or CD (or MP3 disk). They could quite conceivably sell less but earn more. Non-celebrity writers and musicians with one book or one CD stores can do the same. This is incredibly exciting. One title stores will increase. The internet is about niche marketing. I know a man who was asked for the world publishing rights to a book on a hearing disorder. He let the guy have it for next to nothing. The next thing he heard, the newly published book sold over 100,000 copies on the internet. In the book trade I was amazed at how little it can cost to print a book - on large print runs it can be less than a 10th of the price it sells for. That's amazing. The cost of production is even lower when you buy music and even lower still when you pay for computer software. No wonder Mr Gates is doing so well! His margins are PHENOMENAL! I realise you aren;t just paying for the paper or the CD - the value is in the intellectual copyright of the material. Well, any writer will tell you that they earn a tiny fraction of what their publishers will earn. As a journalist myself - I have first hand expereince of being exploited by publishers - I'm sure I needn't say any more to any journalist! But let's stick with books. Firstly, book retailers have got book publishers 'by the balls' so to speak. Retailers demand MASSIVE discounts. What other businesses can get away with that and then take months to pay their bills? They can then return any unsold books for a full refund at just about any time. Then some retailers don't even send the books back. Instead, they just rip out the first pages of the book, return that and claim their refund. They actually destroy the book and then have the gall to insist that you give them their money back. They do this to avoid the postage charges for returning the book. I had a situation earlier this year, where a leading bookseller returned three copies of my book for a refund and two days later I received an order for four copies of the book from the same branch. When you add the cost of the product and the shipping you can end up paying more than if you went to your local store. By writing, publishing and selling your own book, you can afford to do this – make a profit and offer a better service to the customer. Interestingly for me, a major US publisher declined to publish my book in North America and very rudely wrote to say that there were already SO many similar books on the market. Its funny, but people who have actually read it, say that there is nothing like it. So much for big publishers. I don’t have to take that crap from big corporations. On a trip to Canada recently, I had a copy with me (of course!) it was mentioned by my host. The book was then passed around the table, everyone took turns to flick through it – three people took out their money and said they’d like to buy it. I didn’t have enough with me, but they were shipped at no extra cost. It was probably illegal for me to trade in Canada without the right permit anyway! On-line merchants make a big thing about the internet being global but penalise customers for where they live. Someone is Australia shouldn't have to pay more than someone in North America, Asia or Europe. If someone in the United States wanted to buy my book, it would certainly cost me more to deliver it to them - but that's my problem- it shouldn't be an added cost to the person who wanted to read it. But this is the nub of the issue. The book business is SO antiquated, even though conventional publishers and bookstores like to think that they are not. What advice would you give to any author? I can't speak for authors who write fiction, although Charles Dickens and Mark Twain are just two enterprising authors who published their own work at some point. There are many more. Non-fiction writers should seriously consider doing it themselves. A conventional publisher rarely prints more than 4-6000 copies of a non-fiction book. You could print half of that and still earn more money than going through a publisher. These days there are digital printers who can print you any number of books on demand. You want to print one book - they can do that. The unit costs are higher but you don't have any of the problems associated with storing the books. Before you embark on publishing your own book, it is crucial that you have a means to reach your targeted market of customers. For me, I speak at many conferences all over the world. The people who attend those conferences are prime candidates to buy my books and are often given the opportunity at that time to do so. Although I had an interesting experience in America earlier this year. There were 800 delegates and my client was keen for people to be able to buy my book. They had a local deal with Barnes and Noble the largest book chain in the world. They politely told me that they were unable to sell the book because the book’s ISBN number did not come up on their computer. As far as they were concerned, the book did not exist and therefore they could not sell it. They said that all books had to be on their system because the entire business was computerised. I had to smile when I saw people buy books, the staff put the money in a little metal cash box - no computers there! Amazon.com market themselves as the largest on-line bookstore in the world. They won't sell anyone's book unless you have a US distributor. They may have global customers but they don't encourage international niche publishers because most distributors won't bother with small volume publishers. How feasible will it be for people to create their own publishing companies? Its not only feasible – its already starting to happen. As many of the larger publishers are merging to create gigantic global corporations, tiny publishers are springing up everywhere. As I discuss in the book, a combination of inexpensive technology and an increasingly flexible workforce allowed me to do it to a very high standard. It isn’t that difficult. In the past, you had to have large funds in order to embark on a project like this. But not any more. In the future, more and more authors, musicians, software developers, designers and film makers will bypass conventional publishers. This is really exciting. Publishers and retailers have traditionally received the most money from the work of these creative people because the publishers and retailers owned the distribution channels. But in only a few years the internet has changed that. You don’t necessarily need the distribution channel any more. The music industry is a great example – years ago, getting a recording contract was the major aim of any budding musician. Record companies were very selective. But its very different now. Record companies know their entire industry is under threat from new technology such as MP3 which allows people to download very high quality music from the internet at very low cost. This probably why record companies are offering contracts to almost anyone who can sing or make music. These contracts are often for many years. Some musicians think this is a reflection of how talented the record company thinks they are. Its nothing of the sort. So, why are the record companies offering so many recording contracts? Many of them just want to tie in as many musicians as they can to stop them from becoming competitors in the future by recording their own music and selling it directly to their fans on the internet. Some musicians are being shafted big time. But musicians will never be able to sell high volumes of CDs and tapes without the support and expertise of the marketing departments at the record companies? That’s absolutely right – but you won’t need to, simply because when you publish and sell your own product you can make far more profit by selling less – I think that is a major development made possible by the use of high quality but low cost technology. Are you saying that every author or musician should publish their own book or their own music? No. It wouldn’t suit everyone. For writers, I’m talking mainly about people who write non-fiction. If you have valuable information to share with readers this approach has its merits over the conventional publisher/bookseller approach. And it really doesn't matter if you live in an out of the way place - I've escaped the rat race myself and now live in a large 350 year old country farmhouse. There are a few caveats;
No one is more passionate about your work than you are – whether it’s a book or an album of music - after all you invest a huge part of your life into writing it. I’m not a registered charity –I write for money. People are only prepared to pay you money if you offer information that they know you have, they are satisfied that you know what you are talking/writing about and it will be worth their cash investment. Will they get a return on that investment? All my hours of researching, writing and editing is geared towards delighting my customers with what they buy and read. Isn't this just a way to satisfy your vanity by publishing your own book? No way. I am a professional author and writer and have made a commercial decision. This is the better option open to me. This is definitely not a case of vanity publishing. Yes, it's always nice to see your name in print and it provides your mother with an opportunity for her to be proud of you, but in this case it is part of my business. It's not my entire business, it just represents a proportion of it. So what is your business? I used to work in television and radio as a presenter and journalist. I left TV 8-10 years ago to work in the live events and conference industry. These days I work with some of the largest companies in the world (for list of clients www.RoySpeaks.com/clients.htm ) as a communications consultant and moderator for their staff or customer's conferences. It's rarely done in North America. There, conference organisers tend to favour the 'motivational experience' for delegates - but so many US executives who have attended my conferences say "Wow, I've never seen this before, it is so effective." As a conference moderator I chair complex business discussions with senior global executives on behalf of their staff. It's a particularly challenging job and differs from my TV function in that when I worked in television my responsibility to the producer was to ensure that the programme was interesting, informative, entertaining and ran to time. At conferences I have additional repsonsibilities - namely to help my clients improve the effectiveness of their communication and resolve any communications issues which are having a negative or destructive impact on the way the business functions. In television, you don't have that responsibility. The other part of my work, is as a business speaker. I am paid to be opinionated in public! There's a great deal of cynicism about consultancy. All joking aside, some consultants offer a very valuable service to their clients. Perhaps one of the reasons I'm effective as a consultant is because I have strong opinions and I'm not afraid to express them. Sadly, too many businesses are run by fear, staff are afraid they will lose the job if they are negative. In my book some tough issues are addressed. So many people prefer not to face reality - but they always end up paying for it at a later stage. There's a wonderful story of 2 zookeepers at the bear enclosure where they see one of the bears making a lot of noise and generally demonstrating that it is very unhappy about something. The inexperienced zookeeper turns to the wise old zookeeper and says "What's his problem?" The old guy replies "Oh, he's broken his climbing frame and he's sitting on a piece of wood and a nail is sticking into his backside." "Then why doesn't he get up?" said the new guy. "That's easy" said the wise old zookeeper "It doesn't hurt enough yet!" That's how so many people go through their lives. Sometimes people will benefit from being pushed down on their nails! Courage to face unpalateable possibilities is a key survival skill - certainly in business and in life generally. If you have any questions for Roy please email Roy@RoySpeaks.com His personal Tel/Fax number is; 00 44 1761 414676 Return to previous page |
