Have you watched episodes of
the television show, Shark Tank and
wondered what it would be like to get investors for your brilliant business
idea? How about going before such a
firing squad to get financial supporters for your book?
The television show did not
invent the concept of investors sitting around a table and weighing in on
whether to buy into a piece of a company, but it did take it to another level
by having competing investors bid against as well as with one another, and they
certainly took a business event and turned it into an educational and entertaining
moment. After randomly watching a number
of episodes I wondered what would happen if there were a Shark Tank model for book publishing.
In some ways, it exists in a
few forms. There are money-raising sites,
like kickstarter.com, that allow for authors or publishers to raise funds for
book-related projects, though there’s no firing-squad setup for authors to beg
before. But publishers, and their
editorial teams, and literary agents, each have their own way of Shark Tanking
a project. They need to evaluate how
much money or time a book is worth to them before agreeing to partner with the
author.
Book properties could be hard
to secure Shark Tank investors. For one, publishing doesn’t pay off like other
product investments. Secondly, the
profit margins are low, competition is fierce, and unless you become an
exceptional best-seller, the upside is limited while the downside can be
substantial.
Maybe instead of Shark
Tanking a single book and its sales, we do it for an author’s career – or next
five books – and throw in any services/products that spawn from the success of
these books. Would an author sell his
soul to increase his or her chances at success?
Imagine a writer comes before
a panel and stakes a case as to why investors should front her $150,000 for a
blow-out marketing campaign and to ensure some profits to the author, and in
exchange the investor gets a piece of the book sales, movie rights deals,
sequels, and any business that leads directly from the book – consulting fees,
speaking engagement fees, spin-off products, etc.?
Authors, like other would-be
entrepreneurs, have to weigh their short-term needs versus long-term
potential. Many are desperate and would
jump at the opportunity to cover costs and secure some profits for their book,
even if it means paying down the road and miss out on future chunks of money they may be forfeiting on to their investors.
How would an author go about
assessing what their brand could be worth when they don’t have much of a
brand? It’s a Catch-22 situation: trying to determine value for something that
is not yet valuable, but by assigning a dollar amount to it you begin the
process of seeing it get valuated.
Statistically, most author
brands aren’t worth much. The vast
majority of authors fail to sell more than 25,000 copies in a given year and
most die after their initial launch period.
The odds are that a book will not make much money.
But Shark Tank could still evaluate a few thousand books that could be
worth investing in. Certainly as a
brand, some authors can be worth millions, but how would Shark Tank predict such winners and losers?
Do you have a book or brand
that you believe is worthy of Shark Tank
attention? If you do- keep the project
to yourself. Why cut anyone else
in? Just take out a loan and pay it off
once, rather than cutting into your profits for your entire career
or the life of the book. But if you feel
your book is risky or not so commercial, what the heck, get investors. If it surprisingly breaks through then you
still win and if it doesn’t you don’t lose.
Good luck!
2016 Book Marketing & Book Publicity Toolkit
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