In my 20 years as a publishing sales professional (and if my boss is reading this, he's laughing hysterically at my use of the word “professional”), I've sold books to every kind of account there is. From independent bookstores to wholesalers supplying truck stops, I've seen it all. Until it happened. A first-time event for me. Selling my own book.
Along with developing a patent for a cordless extension cord, being a writer was one of my life's goals, and I took a meandering path to get there. When I started working in publishing, I found the very definition of my dream job. Selling thousands of books, I've learned that being a rep is a lot like being an offensive lineman on a football team: you toil in obscurity, and no one really knows who you are or what you do until something goes wrong. Then you become the dreaded “rep” problem.
One of my colleagues coined this phrase during a distribution review meeting. That's where we sit around a table and review the numbers, title by title, for all accounts. (I said I loved the job; I never claimed it was exciting.) When sales of a title in one of my accounts is judged to be low, all eyes in the room fall on me. We go down the list, striking off possibilities of what might have been the problem. Cover? No, excellent cover. Credit issue? That's not it. Did they hate the read? No, they loved it. With no answer but a shoulder shrug, my colleague says: “Then it must be a rep problem.” Ouch. Did I say I loved this job?
When I finally started writing books, I was familiar—some could even say too familiar—with the details of how a book gets published. (Never is that old cliché about not wanting to see sausage being made so applicable to a situation.) I had already had the experience of writing children's books, but for a different publishing house, so I'd never been in the somewhat awkward position of selling a book with my name on the front cover. Then the zombies came shuffling into my life.
Sometimes, if you're me, these ideas just stick in your head. And rewriting traditional Christmas carols from a zombie point of view was one of those ideas. Thus was born It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies: A Book of Zombie Christmas Carols. Trust me. You'll love it. I know these things: I'm a sales rep. But I also knew it was not a children's book.
Through a long and somewhat arduous process, of little interest to anyone but me, my agent secured an offer from... HarperCollins. And things really got interesting when he revealed the offer came from Harper Paperbacks, an imprint I sell.
Being the rep for your own book inspires many feelings. Most of them induce nausea. With my other books, I had sweet distance. My rep friends at the houses publishing my books would kindly fill me in on how the sell-in was going and keep me blissfully unaware of any criticism. Now I was going to get all the buyer feedback, either good or ill, right in the kisser. I wondered, what if there was a “rep problem” with me? On my own book? Thoughts like this kept me up nights.
But thankfully, my worries were unfounded. The cover design was fantastic. The illustrations by Jeff Weigel were better than I could have hoped for. The whole project came together beautifully and it was reflected in the response the book received from booksellers. At last, I could sleep again!
The time arrived to take Zombies out into the world and see what worked. And what worked best in the marketing copy was pre-empting all the fun buyers would have at my expense. I found myself agreeing to things like: “Yes, this author is a total diva.” (Okay, maybe a little true.) Or, “He's very well connected in the publishing industry.” (Not so much.) And “He's going to go everywhere, making sure the books are visible.” (Too true.)
But the biggest advantage came when the book went on sale three weeks ago. Now, if I can't find the book prominently displayed in stores, I can just call myself to complain.
