Tokyo Report
Hello everyone!
Thanks for your patience as I think it’s been about two weeks since the last newsletter and it’s been a busy time for your friend Matt, the business boy.
Let’s dive in.
First - I was on a podcast hosted by my friend Pia Johnson - I’m really proud of what we made together and, if you’re interested, please listen here. And do let me know what you think :)
Second - Tall Poppy Press rebrand step 1 is complete: a brand new website that looks amazing, functions beautifully and shows what we do so well. Please have a look and I hope you love it as much as I do.
Big thanks to Benji who’s been leading the design and rebranding work. And to Simon who built the website. Rebrand step 2 is coming in July (I hope!)
Third - the first international book fair of the year is over - and it went well!
I’m in Tokyo currently and I’m pleased to report that this book fair was a big success. Over three days I sold 48 books - which is maybe our best sales at a fair ever. While one title had a deep discount, most were priced more or less at normal, so it was a pretty good fair!
In addition to that I sold 20 books to stores in Japan, bringing the total to 68.
A really nice experience and one I hope turns into further positive engagement in Japan. If I could tee up another store here that stocks some of our books I could potentially get close to 30 books socked away to stores and then we’re laughing.
But! Let’s talk turkey - did I make money? After the dust settles, I estimate that gross sales from the event, including shop sales, were about $3000. Flights, accommodation and fair participation ran about $2200 - so I’m ‘up’ $800. However, as you might infer this is not profit - after all I had to pay to make the books to sell, but I can say that ‘I had a trip to Japan and came back with a larger bank balance’.
I think, from this, I’m left with three questions:
If I want to continue to come to international fairs, how to I increase my sales? For context, every product I bring sells SOME - but it’s not as if I can just bring double the books - if I sell 5 of book a, there’s no guarantee bringing 10 will mean I sell 5 more. So, to some extent, having a larger pool of books directly results in more sales. Over time, the pattern has been - each fair I sell a larger number of books, more or less. The other tactic, which does go hard, is to participate in events or have a book that’s targeted at the fair. For example, if I had presented a talk at this fair I may have had more books sell - and every time I, or an artist I’ve published, does present a talk at a fair, there’s a noticeable uptick in sales. Similarly, coming to a fair with something brand new is also good.
If I want to continue to do international fairs, is there a way to keep costs down? Broadly the answer is yes: airline points. For years I’ve been churning credit cards and paying very little for plane tickets. Last year my trip to Singapore cost me like $300 in airfares. Lower costs means more money in the bank. I’m staying in a very cheap hotel, but I was unable to get enough points to get cheap flights this time. I think that I could potentially change that by this time next year, but I’d need steady income to get a new card and then get big points.
Are there ways to sell comparable numbers of books WITHOUT attending fairs? I think that the answer is ‘only if I work with a distributor’ but I can’t make a distributor work financially. When I sell a book to a store, I sell it at 50-60% of RRP, if I shop to that store, the store pays shipping. On the other hand, if I sell to a distributor, I sell at 40% of RRP, and I pay shipping. Most of our books cost about 40-50% of RRP to make, so, for those who are a bit lost in the weeds - selling to a distributor makes me no money on sales and loses money on shipping. Now, you might think, well you didn’t make money going overseas. Which is true. But I did make friends, connections, increased sales and built the network further, and got to spend a lot of time in an interesting and motivating place. Lots of pros for breaking even that wouldn’t take place if I just sent a box to Europe.
So, with that said, I do think that these big book fairs have an important place in my business model AND it’s also fair to say that I can do a lot better to maximise profit.
I think that there’s three things that HAVE to happen for me to say yes to an international fair:
a) I have to be able to keep costs low by staying in cheap places, not extending the trip, using airline points and prioritising fairs that have reasonable costs.
b) Maximise sales by bringing a new product, organising an event, talking at a panel or running a workshop.
c) Continue to build the catalogue out - attending fairs directly after new products come out.
In ten days I’ll be in LA at the LA book fair - I’d like to sell maybe 60-70 books there and, because the AUD is low to the USD I’m hoping I can offer a good price for the customer and a bit more profit for me than I tend to in Asia.
Something my partner and I have been chatting about is travel in my life and how that figures into our relationship, our plans and the financials. On one hand I have been invited to Tokyo, Perth and NZ this year - these are good opportunities to continue to build relationships, sell books and run workshops (in Perth and NZ), on the other hand, doing these things does come with costs. I miss out on time with friends, with family and with my partner. I miss making coffees in the morning, a good desk set up and hanging out with my peers.
After the LA book fair the only other international event I’m confimred at is Arles in July. Where we have a book launch, an exhibiting artist and a lot of press.
After that I think that I think that there are only two other times I may go overseas:
a) The International Center of Photography’s book fair in NYC - I would line this up with two new books, one of which is made with an Australian artist who now lives in NYC and we’d do a launch event.
b) The BIG Tokyo art book fair - which would happen after the release of those two books as well. It’s very close to Christmas though, so I’m unsure if it makes sense. But I could potentially grab one more store to stock at and go from there. Tokyo is actually a pretty cheap place to travel. I can stay in fairly cheap accommodation, I take the subway everywhere and, if I’m careful, food and coffee runs me less than $20AUD a day. But, for a lot of reasons that are private, I may not be able to travel in December. Which wouldn’t be so bad.
So that’s the Tokyo report - I hope you enjoyed it :)