Don't Overuse This Word and Get Blacklisted

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

Words have incredible power to influence and affect our life and work in the publishing community. There is a common word which authors will often use but in this article I want to give specific examples and discourage you from overusing this word and having the retailers blacklist your book.

Years ago when I was on the faculty of the San Francisco Writers Conference, I spoke with a bookseller and learned not to use this word in my conversation. I showed this retailer the first edition of Book Proposals That Sell and in my pitch I told him the book had over 100 Five Star Amazon reviews. Instantly he frowned and told me that he didn’t care about Amazon reviews. Yes the single word not to overuse is Amazon.

Instead of touting that you have an Amazon bestseller, you can say your book was a bestseller in _____ category. Instead of saying you have 56 Amazon reviews, you can promote your book has 56 Five Star reviews (or whatever number of Five Star reviews you have received). It is a slight revision but a significant one.

Amazon is a large player in the book retail market but many bookstore people believe Amazon has destroyed their business. The book market has made dramatic shifts and Amazon has been a factor in those changes. For example, at Morgan James Publishing, Amazon accounts for about 24% of our overall business. When I meet an author who has only published on Amazon, I tell them they are missing 76% of how Morgan James can distribute and sell their book. Our books are in 98% of the bookstores in North America including the brick and mortar bookstores. Recently I was looking for a book cover image on one of our novels and the first place I located it was at Target.com. Morgan James sells our books at Target along with over 180 other online retailers.

Give Your Readers Options

When you set up your website and the page to sell your book, what link or links do you include? I was looking at the books from a long-time author friend. He writes a new blog each week and sends it like clockwork. I admire and respect this type of consistent action from any author. Today I checked his book sales page. Each book had a single button that said, “Click Here to Buy on Amazon.” He used a publishing company to create his book and I didn’t recognize the name of his publisher. Yet he was giving his readers one option to buy the book: Amazon. As I’ve been saying in this article, it’s the one word you don’t want to overuse. 

Instead of sending your readers to a single place like Amazon, I encourage you to give them options like Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, their local independent bookstore or getting it directly from you (even encouraging readers they can get a signed copy from you). It’s how I set up my sales pages and here’s a couple of examples for some of my books. The sales page for Book Proposals That Sell is here. The sales page for 10 Publishing Myths is here. The sales page for Billy Graham, A Biography of America’s Greatest Evangelist is here. The reader is going to buy the book where they normally purchase books. As an author, you want to give them options and don’t just send them to a single place. 

A Little Known Bookselling Fact

While on the surface, the community of booksellers looks large with thousands of bookstores from chains like Barnes & Noble and independent bookstores. Most of the sales people for these chains have been in the book business for many years. As a part of their work, they cultivate and maintain relationships with owners, authors, editors and many other people in the industry. These sales people know each other and have developed friendships. On one level they are competitors but on another level they are colleagues. These colleagues speak together and share information. When an author is only focused on sending readers to Amazon, these sales people notice and can blacklist your book from the brick-and-mortar bookstores. According to my recent conversation with David Hancock, the founder of Morgan James Publishing, such a blacklist practice is happening.

Sometimes You Can’t Avoid the Word

In 2019, Morgan James Publishing released Steve Anderson’s book, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business like Amazon. Even before the release date, this book garnered a great deal of attention. The Morgan James foreign rights person sold the book into multiple languages including the highest advance received in this area for a book in the 21-year history of the company. The Bezos Letters has hundreds of Five-Star reviews and a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller. It’s unusual for a book to achieve this level of success which translates into many book sales. 

Yet this book could not avoid using the word Amazon. According to David Hancock, “The brick-and-mortar bookstores blacklisted The Bezos Letters from the release in 2019 until this year. Now in 2024, the brick-and-mortar bookstores began to order and sell this title.”  The success and continued sales of this title eventually removed it from the blacklist. At the end of the day, retailers want to stock and sell books which will move off their shelves and into the hands of buyers. The steady and continued sales of The Bezos Letters eventually won over the retailers who want to serve their customers and sell books.

What actions will you take?

I’ve written this article to encourage you as an author to take action for your website and sales pages. Will you remove the word Amazon in your social media and promotion efforts? Will you give your readers a wide variety of bookstore options to purchase your book? What actions are you going to take? Let me know in the comments.

 

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The Unexpected Discovery of My Book

Last weekend I was in Hershey, Pennsylvania at the Hershey Lodge for a conference called Writer to Writer. It was a terrific event which will be repeated in the fall and I met some new writers. Also I got to hang out with a couple of my long-term friends. Jerry B. Jenkins taught the fiction track and Cecil Murphey taught the nonfiction track of the conference. I had the opportunity to speak at a breakfast to the group and also to teach a couple of workshops.

After the conference was completed, the Hershey Lodge was hosting a regional Christian bookseller conference. On Sunday afternoon, I signed over 125 copies of my Billy Graham biography as a way to introduce the book to these retail stores. The experience was a terrific way to help retailers know about the book and its availability. Also it gave me a chance to tell them about the benefits and distinctions of my biography for their customers. My biography is an easy-to-read 172 pages and in a couple of evenings readers can gain an overview of Mr. Graham's life. I included a number of new stories and the book is completely up-to-date.

If you don't know, I worked for Mr. Graham about 20 years ago as the Associate Editor at Decision, the official publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. I gathered endorsements and a foreword from Luis Palau for my book. You can see these endorsements and a short book trailer on my website. You can order it different ways from my website—even get an autographed copy if you want.

Depending on the time of year, traveling can be challenging. It's exactly what I found on Monday when I traveled home. I was on the early flight from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. I had an hour and a half to change planes but my flight was delayed for over an hour. Supposedly it was because of weather—some other place than Harrisburg where the sun was shining with a blue sky. I missed my connection from Philadelphia to Denver and the next flight was about 6:30 p.m. Yes, I was stuck all day in the Philadelphia airport. 

Since I had a lot of time on my hands, I wandered into Heritage Books. As I looked around, I discovered copies of my Billy Graham biography:

I asked the shopkeeper if I could sign my books. She called her manager to check and the manager said, “Yes.” I pulled out my pen and autographed all of the copies. Throughout November, December and January, my book has been in 25 different airports besides other bookstores across the country. Here's the list:

Travel delays are a nuisance but I made an unexpected discovery of my book in the Philadelphia airport. Fun.

Choose A Different Path

I believe there are huge opportunities in book publishing for everyone who chooses a different path to get published. The path is filled with obstacles and nay sayers.

If you have been reading these entries, you know that I like to give the real scoop about book publishing. I agree when people say there are too many books out there. Each year the number of new books continues to increase. Just check the 300,000 number of new books in this article from Sarah Nelson, Editor at Publishers Weekly. In my earlier reading, I had seen a high number but never this high. Here's the reality check for you. Over the weekend, I was listening to my friend Susan Driscoll, president of iUniverse, in a teleseminar with Arielle Ford, give this 2004 book statistic: 90% of the new books published sold 1,000 copies or less. Now consider the other side of this statistic which means that only 10% of the new books published sold over 1,000 copies. In the last few days, Mike Hyatt has also written about this topic of too many books. Plus Mike has written the follow up article about the way Thomas Nelson, the largest Christian publisher is selecting the books they do publish. This article points out another challenge for any author: publishers are very selective of the books they contract and publish. Increasingly publishers are depending on literary agents to locate new authors. As I've mentioned before it is often more difficult for a new author to find a good literary agent than it is to get published in the first place. I wrote at least 30 books for traditional publishers before I ever worked with a literary agent so it is not a necessity.

Yet increasingly traditional publishers are closing their doors to unagented material. And with good reason if I think about the material that comes into my agency. If you could sit on the side of the desk of an acquisitions editor or a literary agent, you would be shocked at the unprofessional pitches from well-intending authors. Like the recent nonfiction author who sent me a book proposal for a 150,000 word project. This author had a manuscript and had picked up my Book Proposals That Sell to learn how to create a book proposal. I applaud this author's commitment to learning about the business of publishing yet he was overlooking something critical which would get his material continually rejected. I'll not say never--but it is highly unlikely that any traditional publisher will take a 150,000 word nonfiction book project. Why? Because 70,000 to 80,000 words is the normal upper limit of such a book and the author missed this critical detail to rejection-proof his submission. It's like the lengthy novels that other authors pitch to me without understanding the typical word lengths (follow this link if you don't know the typical novel lengths). Without knowing it, they are asking for rejection.

To choose a different path as a writer, learn the craft of writing. Practice it with magazine articles and shorter pieces than books. Magazines reach many more people than most books (especially with the book statistic in the second paragraph of this entry). You will learn a valuable skill as you apprentice with your writing. It's something that many writers neglect in their journey to books.

Also continue to learn everything you can about the business of publishing. How do book acquisitions editors and executives make decisions about which books to publish? What factors push them over the top about a particular book? Also how do the book buyers make decisions about a particular book from a publisher? Many of these factors shift and change and you need to be reading and learning about these elements so you can figure out how to stand apart from the typical editor pitch--in a positive way for that editor. With my pitches for Whalin Literary Agency besides looking for great writing, I'm always looking for that x factor. I'm talking about the little extras that the writer adds to the proposal or pitch which will rejection-proof the materials. The factors are different for each author but I've mentioned some of the distinguishing factors repeatedly in these entries. The biggest element is that publishers are looking for authors who understand the necessity of selling and promoting books. You'd be shocked at the resistance of some authors to work with the media or work with their publisher to promote the book. The attractive authors are the ones which understand this factor and proactively work at it constantly. Yes, I understand it's tiring but if you want to write books and stand apart then it's a necessity in my view.

Another way to choose a different path as a writer is a commitment to ongoing education. This education may come through an annual investment to attend a writer's conference. I understand it costs in terms of time and money. If you can't make it to a conference or want to try something else, get a set of CDs and listen to them. Recently I've been going through Arielle Ford's Everything You Should Know series and it's excellent with incredible insight. I've been learning a tremendous amount from these audios and the printed materials. Also Mark Victor Hansen's Mega Book Marketing University tapes. I've listened to these materials several times and notice something new each time I go through them.

The Christian bookstore near my home is celebrating their grand opening. Yesterday at church I caught a few minutes with the bookseller. One author came to their store and signed books last Saturday. This author had books from a well-known Christian publisher who enthusiastically cooperated with this bookseller in discounting the books and providing extras like bookmarks for promotion. This coming Saturday, a second author is scheduled with a book from a small press in Alaska. It was the opposite experience. The publisher refused to take the bookseller's credit card or handle the books in the expected manner. This retailer was forced to open a paypal account to pay for the books to ensure books would be in the store for the signing. Oh, and for extras like bookmarks? The second small press emailed a PDF file with a color bookmark and the retailer could print their own for the signing. I have no idea about the details of this small press (even the name) but let me suggest the author should be helping this bookseller because the experience is making a lasting (and negative) impression on this new bookseller. I applauded the retailer's energy to pour into this book signing and the unusual steps she was taking yet at the same time I felt the author should have been touching base to ease this situation. It's a mini-example of what's happening all of the time within the bookselling community. Then authors wonder why retailers are resistant to their books?

You can choose a different path as a writer. It's admittedly a bit narrow and at times lonely and ground breaking--but definitely available to you.