How many books have you sold?
Sure, even count friends and family. I was just wondering how other blurbarians are doing out there… those marketing their books, tell us your story? Professional, artistic, informational… what are the books selling the most from Blurb?
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OK
I will jump in here. I have 20 books sold. I have 2 books in production and two other book in the planning stage. I love blurb books!!!:)
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I have three books for sale here, one is a wedding book with limited customers, so I won’t count that one.
The first book I did sold 2 copies.
The second book I did sold 36 copies and there are more people wanting to order.
I do theatre production photography. The difference between the two books is that I did the first one, made a couple of copies and then tried to sell them by giving people links to blurb. The second book, I had postcards printed up in advance announcing the book and took pre-orders for it and ordered them all as soon as I uploaded the file. That worked out much better.
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I don’t know exactly, but more than fifty and less than a hundred. The reason I don’t know is I gave so many away. Anyway, exact numbers, who cares. I have six books for sale. Two of them sell well (Czechoslovakia in Transition and In Your Face) the others do not.
Books for sale are not the only ones I make. For my clients in need of hard copy proofsheets, I now make Blurb books instead of home made and ring bound ones. Before Blurb, I used my Epson for that. Not anymore. Blurb is more economical, time and money wise, and magnitudes more professional, in appearance.
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What kind of mark-up do you typically put on them? I know I just ordered a 116 page book (that frankly probably wouldn’t be too commercially viable given its personal nature) for $69.95. I can’t imagine too many people wanting to pay even that much for a coffee table book, let alone a mark-up from that. I do have many ideas for commercial books however; what size books do people find profitable?
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My price rule is, Blurb gets half, I get half. Seems fair to me.
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I mark up my books to reflect the time it takes to make the book. I have to sell 1 book to cover my out of pocket expenses. Then I need to sell a few more to get my digital enhancement time out of the process. I don’t begin making money unless I sell a fair amount of books. The up side here is having those books rambling around town in a beautifully bound volume is nice. I get all kinds of feed back and it helps to create hype.
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I only mark mine up $10, but I need to re-think that.
Wedding books are marked up a lot more.
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I still have yet to get an answer on what people think is the most profitable book size in terms of dimensions and page numbers. Anyone?
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Profitability is determined on how you price yourself. What is your personal "perceived value"? Presentation is all part of the package. I know I cannot mark a book up to its actual value. I have an arbitrary amount that I feel that I must make per book considering that I am gambling that I will sell several copies. I also mark up my books considerably. My 13X11 books are in the bookstore for close to $200.00. I have sold several. It takes me about 2 weeks to edit and design a 13X11 storybook. The 10X8 books are considerably less. I still have a minimum amount of $ that I feel that I must make. I market the book using the image count as an enticement to buy. I find that I make more selling a book than I would make selling individual stills. For some reason the book has a greater "perceived value". What type of book do you intend to make. Is it a family anthology where the outcome is a labor of love? Is a book that you want to use for self promotion? It is a give away or to be sold inexpensively as an add on to other photographic packages??? There is no answer to your question. The answer lies somewhere in the phrase "perceived value". I believe that all of my books are profitable. I make an aproproiate amount of $ on each book. The mark up is different on each size and for different reasons. I have limited the page count during the design process to meet a price point. I will do so again in the future. Design a test book. Figure out the time involved to digitally enhance each photograph and add the book design time. Look at your market. You will now see why my 13X11 books are as expensive as they are, and you can see why I have to sell so many to turn a profit. BUT I have these beautiful books floating around town,... creating buzz,... my phone is ringing more and more…and more. I figure I am doing OK on the book end. I now have a couple of books that are all pure profit. You only have to order 1 book (personal copy) to keep the book on the blurb book store for a year. I show these personal copies to EVERYBODY that enters my studio.
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I just ordered my first book. I have some sales waiting on the wings to be purchased from me, not the blurb bookstore as of yet. I have a marketing concern and that is that those who would purchase my book thru the blurb bookstore can also see my cost if they go to the pricing link. We all know ,that those of us who are also wanting to make a profit from our books, even though there are other costs to consider in our pricing strategy, may not want buyers to see so readily what the publishing cost are. Does any one share this concern? Shouldn’t the pricing and "bookstore" be a separate thing to those who are not in the blurb comunity?
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fxpichardo What’s to keep anyone from joining the "Blurb community"? Even if bookstore and book pricing were separate what’s to keep your customer from joining up just as you did? The whole point of buying a book is to partake of the talent that produced it. Your value added is your time and talent. People will pay for that if it’s good enough or interesting enough … just like books sold elsewhere.
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I made a photo book of my very small (500) town…just for fun. 80 pp. Ordered 30 copies, took them to the local bank to pedal and they were gone in 3 hours! Holy cow! Just ordered 70 more and most of them are spoken for. The high cost of shipping scares folks away from web ordering, but they certainly like the Blurb product….and I do as well.
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kbradbury, Wow. Thanks for sharing your great success story with the community. You should post a link of your book here in the Forums to inspire others. We wish you continued success with your book. – Kathy
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Forever Home: adopted dogs and the humans who love them has sold over 25 books in two weeks. Shipping is expensive to Alaska but we did a bulk order. Also can use a shiptoalaska.com and save 2/3 shipping charge. I think if you look into options for the objections to the cost it will help sell your book. I also had interviews with the newspapers with Photos!, the chief of animal control sent an email out to all the borough employees, I contacted the animal hospitals, presented at my chamber of commerce. You can set up your own web site for free throught MSN Office Live or if you have a site make sure you have links to blurb. I had 1300 hits in 3 days last week. I loved this project and cant wait to do more. www.imageworkspub.com or www.aklurcher.com Linda 
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About clients seeing cost … I really don’t have a problem with this. I expect to make a profit and seeing the end product, people would be hard pressed to deny it’s worth or the amount of time and energy that goes into creating a book. Not just the computer work, the days or weeks spent shooting, editing etc. The more likely question is "How can you do this for little profit?" ... response "I can’t so buy more books !!!" Scooter
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No one mentioned the fact that non-U.S. citizens cannot sell anything through the Blurb Bookstore, except at the cost price!
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Perhaps Keith should stop complaining on these posts.
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As to chdants comment, I think a review of my posts on these forums shows that I have been largely POSITIVE about the Blurb experience. Seems to me that it was chdant who was doing the complaining.
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all i was complaining about is you, keith.
i might suggest you kick back and have some drinks. surely, you have plenty of time on your hands.
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C’mon you guys, knock it off.
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I agree with drupnow…...let’s knock it off. One thing I D’ont have time for is the kind of posting I get from chdant- not helpfull….;.....
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Sold over 100 copies….about half hardbound.I’m an artist and had an oen studio and this did the trick for me as I ordered them and sold them at the studio sale. I’ve had about 6 sold through Blurb’s bookstore. Originally I mailed out overf 400 postcards announcing the book and the open studio. Got almost no direct orders but it gave people a heads up about the book and they bought it at my studio.The ordering process for people trying to order through Blurb’s bookstore at the time was very confusing and I’m hoping they’ve simplified it.
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Teresa, LOVE your book. Beautiful.
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Thanks…yours look beautiful too!!
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I have had so many issues with local people not understanding how to click on a link, not wanteing to be a blurbarian, not understanding the internet, that I I think I’m going to give in to collecting bulk orders and keeping a few books on hand. I sold all 5 extra copies out of my car on Christmas Eve as I was delivering them. I was shocked that people I did not know would hand me $40 dollars or a check. I really did not want to get into fulfillment but I dont think there is a way out of it. One good thing is that I control the profit money. I can even cut some of the shipping cost by shipping to www.shiptoalaska.com adding a few extra dollars per book for profit. . If you think about it, selling copies on hand does a few things. It gets the impulse purchase, (the tourists are coming soon!) and you control the money. No waiting 45 days. We are going to build bulk orders. The larger the orders the more money comes to me and the more money I can send our Dog & Puppy Rescue. Announcing books on hand or a pending bulk order keeps the book LIVE in the community. Another advantage, you can keep tweeking the original book. I have made 3 corrections or alterations so far. I found out one dog, that I thought had died, is alive and I can get a better photo of her (with my camera). The best feeling was selling those extra copies personally, the day before Christmas – a real ego boost. Any suggestions on the book or the promo. You can start here www.imageworkspub.com and click on Forever Home
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I have not had any sales. I thought I would have some books sold by now. I have a link to the book on all my webpages and I have told people about the book. I have a handfull of photographs that are only available in the book. I thought that would help sell it. I marked my book up $25, for 106 pages, 8×10 size.
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I live in London and have one book published but cannot make a profit out of it due to living in Europe and, therefore, do not qualify. I hope Blurb open a European office so we over here can share in the profits.
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I hadn’t thought about buying in bulk and then selling on my own. Great idea. Very inspiring stories here! Thanks for posting your experiences. Good stuff.
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As I live in Europe I can not only not mark up the price and get a profit from books sold, I can’t even know if anybody bought a book! In this stage (my very first book) I am not so much interested in the money, first I need to know if I did any good with this book and if anybody is interested seriuously enough to actually pay money for it…. Shame :( does anybody have a solution for this? And: how many books need to be sold for it to be a bestseller??
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Hi, I’m new on Blurb and I’m in the process of writing my first book, my question is, how to market the book within Blurb book store and how I’ll set the prices? Help please…!
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i posted on another thread -it should also be in this thread, please read it here http://forums.blurb.com/forums/2/topics/1712?page=1#posts-9637 it’s my two cents worth about making a profit using Blurb. Keep smiling
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Such excellent input. I enjoyed clicking on everyone’s link and checking out all the books. This site is such a wonderful place to get ideas and just bask in the glow of all these books.
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I thought I’d update my stats for this question: Since Feb 2007, I have printed 11 different books through Blurb. I have sold 166 copies total.
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none :( ... Do I suck or what?
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I’ve sold one copy of my first book but I suspect that the totally over the top postage prices to the UK will scupper any further sales.
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I’ve sold one copy as well
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I think we are at about 80 books sold. Due to the high UPS charges to Alaska we had to take preorders. I have another list started for another 10-20 books. We sold about 8 on line through Blurb. You have to promote your books a few different ways. You can see here www.imageworkspub.com and at www.alaskadognews.com some of what we have done. Also build a huge email list and announce it. Make friends with a local reporter, offer orgainizations special purchase prices, announce at chamber meetings, post on Craigs list, go global and find forums in your area of interest. Think outside of the Blurb site… Like this shameless post :-) Linda www.imageworkspub.com
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Ms. Henning – Why don’t you ship USPS? Can I purchase your book locally?
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yesss .. my first 1 lol … to bad I can’t see who bought it .. or where it’s shipped to.
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ValHenning- Blurb does not ship other way than UPS. It’s not Blurb it’s UPS that is the thieving villan keeping Alaskans hostage. I tell my UPS friends that every time I see them and they just smile, cha-ching$. I get my mail at a UPS Mailbox store so they have me sending and recieving. To purchase my book , what would be "locally"? Go to the web site and contact me there since I dont look at this forum very often www.imageworkspub.com
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Selling more with shamless plugs. I sent my family and friends books for Christmas. I included a request to show the book to their friends, used a classy script font and printed it on a 5 1/2×8 1/2 parchement sheet . We are just seeing some sales from that request outside of Alaska. I stoll this from a networking guru. His advice was to include business cards in all your bills and outgoing mail. Why not a book announcement? I just included an announcement for www.alaskadognews.com in all my outgoing bills. Never know who it may touch …like a message in a bottle. Linda -www.imageworkspub.com
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OK one more It would be nice to see locations from where the books are purchased. Would that be difficult?? And if that could be done a "Where did you hear about the book " space?
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Linda, that is a fabulous idea…to include business cards and/or perhaps a card with a book announcement in correspondence. I’ve got five Blurb books but so far have only sold about eight copies all together, which is a bit disappointing. And some of the books have been in the store and on my website for a year already. :-( I have a full page on my website with links to the bookstore, and have gotten "oohs" and "aaahs" when I show the books to friends and family, but I just think the price point is too high for most folks to buy "sight unseen" from an unknown person off the web. I am only marking my books up $6-8 dollars!
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None;( 1has had a lot of viewers and everbody who’s seen it is raving but as it’s large landscape and 230 pages it is too expensive, even without markup. The 2nd nobody seems interested in, but there are more books about highlights of Peru, so am not surprised. The other two I had expected more from, smaller so cheaper and thought that at least one was moderately funny. Ah well, that is life. Would though that people could leave commentaries or reviews somewhere so I’d have some feedback from all you out there what you think of the things I put together! Frances
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Hi everyone, my forst post here…. I’ve uploaded my first book 2 weeks ago and it has sold 2 copies so far (no idea to whom…). It’s a short (40p.) photobook of semi-nudes in blue jeans. What do I read in previous posts that there is no markup for non-US Blurbarians? Is that already old news? It seems to me that I could markup the books and generate a profit, and I expect the first check already… I’m now working on another photo book with nudes, documenting my experiments with what I call "LightPainting" in the years 2006 – 2008. Of course I hope that sells too …
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Digitalrebel – the posts about non-US sellers are out of date now. Blurb changed the rules a few weeks ago so us poor souls outside the US can also sell at a profit. My own book was done purely for personal consumption, so of course the answer is none!
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