I laughed myself stupid over this tale of woe from John Warner of TOW Books. Nobody ever made failure sound so bloody funny.
How badly are we struggling? Well, we’ve released four books. Their Amazon rankings at the time of this typing are:
170,374
388,165
706,198
1,033,377The most distressing part is that last number belongs to a book I wrote, So You Want to Be President? — a book that should have been especially relevant and timely given that it’s a guide to running for office when totally unqualified. I hope it’s in Governor Palin’s briefing materials.
But there’s a hopeful ending. John has actually hit upon a fantastic strategy for attracting new readers and spreading the word about TOW Books. It’s so appealing, in fact, that I’m heading over to the site now to get my free book. Who knows if it will help, but Warner doesn’t sound particularly worried:
When asked about how he intends to generate revenue under this new model, Warner scoffed. “Revenue! This is publishing we’re talking about. Everyone says we’re going down the tubes anyway. I’m just delaying the inevitable by having us lose less money more quickly … or something like that.”
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6 March, 2011 at 4:18 am
Free publicity: give your books away
[…] certainly been paying dividends for some publishers. Now I just wish TOW would go ahead and publish Kevin Federline’s Guide to Sudoku, which mysteriously never […]