The Paris Report
Hello everyone,
I’m writing to you from London, where I’m sitting in a cafe on a surprisingly sunny day, eating some cake and getting some work done.
My world tour is almost done - after this I’ll be in Taipei and then, finally, back home. To be honest, as much fun as I’m having traveling I am feeling a bit guilty being away from home for so long. I had originally envisioned that my girlfriend would join me for some of the trip and that wasn’t possible and, to be honest, I don’t know if I’d have been away as long as I will be if I’d known that.
Anyway - how did Paris go?
Well, to be honest, it’s a really mixed bag.
The fair was, overall, not successful. I wanted to sell 40-50 books and I sold 37. About 4-5 of those were at a very steep discount as I just wanted to shift some more books and lighten my load of luggage.
Sales wise I sold around $1800-1900 of books which covers the accommodation and most of the flight.
For five long days of work it was a real rollercoaster and I found myself elated, relieved, upset, unsure and doubtful over the length of the fair.
There were, however, a few good things that came out of the fair:
It’s likely a highly prestigious gallery will carry some of our books for an upcoming exhibition
I found a great shop in Paris that I hope will purchase some books
I continued to meet new people and get to know them
I shared my table with an excellent publisher and really enjoyed chatting with them further
I was able to sell some of the books I’m carrying to a store in the UK and that’ll lighten the load further
The difficulty in being at a big fair alongside so many other publishers made me really think hard about what kind of publisher I want to be and if continuing as I am will lead me to the financial goals that I have - I think that this was a huge learning curve and challenge that I’m still grappling with - it’s a sort of tough love lesson, and I want to expand on it a bit below.
Before I do - I think it’s really worth being super clear: with both Singapore and Paris bringing fewer sales than I wanted that really challenges my ability to keep going as an independent artists/publisher exclusively. It is very likely I will need to spend December and February and maybe March working as a fill in teacher to earn some more money, but I think I will perhaps be able to then spend then next 6-9 months afterwards working independently.
At the same time - we’ve sold ~70-80 books that we otherwise wouldn’t have, met people we otherwise wouldn’t have, built potential sales channels we otherwise wouldn’t have and learned lessons that we otherwise wouldn’t have. The challenge is now to learn from this, capitalise on this and make sure that next year goes better sales-wise.
To get there I think the main question I’ve been thinking and chatting about is this:
What kind of publisher do I want to be?
To make this easier, I’ll break down publishing into three sizes: large, medium and small. What’s the difference? Volume and how each gets books to customers.
A large publisher is something like Penguin. They publish books and sell them to distributors, the distributors then onsell those books to book stores - whether that’s your local brick and mortar store, or something like Amazon. These publishers also sell e-books, audio books and a range of additional marketing materials. While they sell directly to customers they likely sell the bulk of their books via shops and distributors.
A medium publisher likely splits their sales between direct to customer sales (via website or book fairs) and via stores. These publishers likely do NOT work with distributors (because if you sell a book to a distributor you receive 40% of the RRP) but have a reasonable network of independent book stores that they sell to.
A small publisher sells directly to customers and a handful of stores. They can’t really afford to/don’t need to do more and lack the people power to expand their distribution and customer base.
One thing to note here is that I haven’t written about money. A small publisher can have a niche (eg making by hand, or a single artist who’s work is collectable) are charge a lot per book, a medium publisher may just be getting by, a large publisher might be subsidised by a University (eg, Cambridge Press) - each of these are totally different but the thing to take away is that while larger publishers certainly bring in more sales, the difference between small and medium is more in the reach not the profit.
Currently, I would say that Tall Poppy Press is a small publisher working towards becoming a medium publisher with no aspirations of being a big publisher. However, we have had a lot of challenges expanding.
In 2023 we published two books that had larger print runs, of 500 copies each. I would say that medium publishers make books in print runs of 300-1000, with 500 or 750 being the most common print run size. For us, one of these books has done reasonably well and will likely sell out in the next 6 months or so. The other book we just did too many copies and over paid for printing - had we done fewer copies, or not overpaid for printing we’d have broken even already, regardless of how long it takes to sell. Lesson learned.
This year, we’ve tried to expand not by doing more books but by being a lot more present and hoping to expand sales by increasing in-person sales through fairs. At times this has been super successful (Photobook NZ) and at other times this hasn’t worked out (Singapore and Paris).
So the question Paris is making me wonder is: has my approach to getting to a medium sized publisher and, therefore, selling enough books to earn 1/3-1/2 of my yearly income worked? The answer is, clearly, not yet and, given I really want this to work out, that’s a vital thing to think about.
Why hasn’t it worked out? I have a few ideas: firstly, I think that we publish largely emerging and smaller artists - so we can’t rely on name recognition to shift books. To get around this we either need to make things that are bargains, really cool or change who we work with. A book that’s a bargain will always shift (but then I don’t make much $), a cool book will always sell because it’s delightful, interesting, inspirational - currently I think we have a lot of potential to grow in this area. A book made by someone who is a bigger name and well loved will always sell - we don’t necessarily want to do this all the time, but I think in 2025 we will work with 2 big names and I hope that’s a really positive and profitable experience.
So, in 2025, I think that there are a few changes to make.
I think we’ll do fewer books but really make sure each one is either really well placed to sell because the artist is an established name and the way we publish the work is good value and high quality.
I think two of the three books we publish will likely be fairly remarkable/unique/novel in some ways - moving away from trying to do what others do, we’ll start pushing things in a bit more of a unique way, hoping that we will increase our audience with new folks who respond to delightful objects as well as great art as well as great artists.
I will be more choosey about the fairs I go to - prioritising ones that have direct flights from Melbourne and staying for much less time. If I’d JUST stayed in Paris for the 5 days of the fair, for example, that’s way less accommodation cost I have to make up via sales. I want to do some fairs in the USA and a few more in Asia: Hong Kong, Korea and Japan.
I think I will put a bit more effort into the education work - this is working really well and I think it’s worth pushing this further as I continue to develop the publishing side of things.
We will vastly upgrade how we photograph our products and present them online. Online sales are our most profitable sales (as in person we usually have to pay at least a fee to the fair to present) - this is a big change and I hope will allow new releases to really be attractive.
We will increase our global stocklists, focusing on a few more stocklists in Europe, Canada and Japan.
At the end of this longer email, it’s worth being clear on a few things. Firstly, my sales goals for this six-month period were always going to fail after we had to push a book project to 2025 - without the 100-150 sales I was anticipating from that we just weren’t going to make the 375 figure I had set out. However, we’re likely to sell ~150, with a lower average profit than the $25 per sale goal I had. Secondly, I am learning lessons that I wouldn’t be learning without these challenges - these lessons have the potential to really propel what I make and how well it sells IF I can learn well and implement better, but that’s a big challenge. Thirdly, while the sales aren’t going as well as I’d hope, we are still forging new connections and these have good potential as well - it’s difficult to quantify these and certainly a business card is less valuable than a sale, but if that business card leads to 10-20 sales, well, that’s suddenly very different.
Realistically, I can’t complete with European publishers at doing what Europeans do well. Realistically I need to charge more than many Singaporeans feel comfortable paying. How do I square these lessons? By prioritising customers who can pay a reasonable price and by pushing towards a different type of book that’s less European and a lot more noticeable because of it. How successful will those changes be? Well, it’s hard to say as I don’t have a crystal ball - but I hope more successful than the sales the last six months have been.
When I return to Paris in a year or two the goal is to be so good I can’t be ignored. It didn’t go my way this year, but next time I’m back I want to be presenting so much better that folks will be so keen to see what we’ve done.
Till next week,
Matt