Excellent article on book publishing industry and BEA 2009

Kudos to Elisabeth Eaves and her article, "Why Write Books? Notes on BookExpo America," published on Forbes.com."

Along with discussing the current state of the book publishing industry from a refreshingly optimistic perspective, Eaves makes a spot-on observation about the futility of trying to predict book sales. She says in essence, that "a team of blindfolded monkeys throwing darts" could predict book sales as well as any individual or philosophy or theory could.

Which (because I'm always on my soapbox about this topic)leads me back to the point I so frequently make: while book promotion may be tangentially related to book sales, it's impossible to predict how closely related even a highly successful book promotion campaign will be to an increase in book sales, nor is it reasonable to ask a book publicist to guess at the number of book sales that might be generated by a successful book publicity campaign.

That said (over and over again), authors and publishers are always asking me to "sell" my book promotion services by answering, to their satisfaction, the question of how many books they might expect to sell if they invest X, Y, or Z in a book promotion campaign. The question drives me crazy, as does the corollary, which is that certain unscrupulous (or inexperienced or naive) book promotion firms out there to attempt to answer the question -- which, of course, always has the effect of disappointing the author and publisher when the predictions made about book sales fall flat.

"I hired a book publicist, but I was very disappointed in the campaign," is the way authors and publishers typically open their conversation with me after such an experience -- and, as I've said, it drives me nuts, because it's so unnecessary. As Eaves says, books are a creative endeavor, and no one can accurately predict what the demand for creative output will be -- whether it's a book or a song or a painting.

I guess some people feel uncomfortable responding "it's impossible to know" when they're asked, point-blank, to predict the impossible. But I do have a favor to ask of the authors and publishers who set off book publicists to begin with. Please stop asking us to try to predict the effect that book promotion campaigns will have on book sales. We can't make that type of a prediction, because there's simply no science behind such a prediction. I can't answer the question, and my colleagues can't answer the question. Only time, and the book promotion itself, can answer the question of what effect the book promotion campaign will have on book sales.

And that, unfortunately, is that.