Of course, you want to sell books; why would I make such an obvious statement?!

Isn’t that why you went after a traditional publishing house deal?

Because you need to cover your advance by meeting the projected numbers, or, if you don’t, pay back a portion of that advance to cover the shortfall. 

(This is where an agent is invaluable because this kind of stuff gets written into book deals every day of the week. A good agent can ensure you don’t have to relinquish money if the book fails. But if you don’t know what you’re looking at, you can get royally screwed.)

I shall expound.

For the sake of this exercise, let’s say you hit the jackpot and get yourself a $100k book deal. That means you will have to sell a set # of books to make back the publishing house investment. These numbers are established during the contracting phase with the help of your agent, but I’m going to spitball it here. Your hardback book will sell for $27. The raw cost of producing said book runs about $10. Leaving a profit—which must cover salaries, so it’s not really all profit–$17. This means you will need to sell 6000 books, plus or minus.

If you think selling 6000 books sounds easy, know that the average book sells about 1000 copies. To sell more, you need to market like it’s your job because it is. (See why they pay such close attention to the marketing section of your proposal? No joke!)

Now, if you intend your book to serve as the gateway into your world of products and services, this means that you must put those primary sources of income on the back burner in favor of marketing your book, which will not yield you money (beyond the advance) for quite some time.

Instead of marketing your $3000 membership, for instance, you’re driving your followers to that book. Buy the book, buy the book, buy the book. This will go on for the preorder phase, which is roughly 6 months, all through the initial release, which is another couple of months, and well into the subsequent year. 

If you manage to hit your number and avoid writing the publishing house a check for some differential, you’re still losing money.

During that year-long period, when you’d typically be running campaigns to sell your products or programs, how much money do you stand to lose by not doing so?

$100k, $200k, $1M?  If the publishing house offered you that kind of book deal, it’s somewhere in there.

If you’d like to better understand the traditional publishing industry, rife with pitfalls, check out our free resource, 12 Horrific Things About the Publishing Industry You Need to Know to Safeguard Your Wallet.