Capstone
I wanted to share the full message from Capstone that I alluded to above, but wanted to touch bases with them first for permission. Jeff Nesbit said it would be fine. So, for anyone who may consider Capstone Fiction as a potential publishing source, below is the message in its entirety that Jeff sent me regarding their maturity, approach, etc.
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Bruce,
We've had a chance to look at A Prophet's Tale, and it's a good novel. I do think that we'd likely be interested in publishing it. However, I'd like to be really clear about what Capstone is -- and is not -- able to do. I've copied below a fairly standard note I send to folks explaining what we're doing at this stage of our company (the start of our second year in existence). Ramona and I never try to over-sell or over-hype what we're capable of. I also noticed that you've submitted your manuscript to other houses. If you'd like to wait for awhile and see how others respond, that's fine with us.
Jeff
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Capstone is a new, independent publishing house in its second year. As such, we have a limited marketing budget. We hope it will grow over time – and we are trying to position Capstone to become a highly successful publishing house – but, for now, here’s what we do:
- We send our title list to religious magazine editors in North America and offer to send review copies. For those that respond, we send review copies.
- We also send press releases and our title list to online blogs and podcasts that write book reviews and offer the same thing.
- We offer our catalog and title list to the top 7 Christian retail chains - to date only two have shown an interest. The others still consider us too small for now to deal with.
- We send our catalog and title list to more than 1,200 independent Christian bookstores.
- When local and regional bookstores are identified near authors, we work with them to place author’s copies, consignment copies or sales.
- We send releases and review copies to key influencers within networking niches (if such a niche makes sense for that title).
- We include selected titles in Ingram’s marketing materials.
- We've also been able to generate bulk buys for corporate giveaways.
Ramona and I never try to over-sell Capstone and its capabilities. It is precisely what it appears to be – a new, independent house (with a limited budget) using state-of-the-art technology to make books from first-time authors available, and to test leading-edge fiction from established authors that might not appeal to bigger houses. None of this guarantees sales, which can range from several thousand sales for some authors to just a handful of sales for others.
In the past few months, we’ve signed contracts with six best-selling, award-winning CBA novelists and non-fiction writers for new Capstone Fiction titles – Doris Elaine Fell, Jim and Terri Kraus, Carl Lawrence, Jack Cavanaugh and Mark Littleton. We’re going to announce this news in the near future. Carl, for instance, won the Gold Medallion for his ground-breaking non-fiction work, The Church in China. We also just brought on a marketing director with 20 years of marketing and start-up sales experience at the largest Christian publishing house in the U.S.
We are testing the waters with sales to bookstores. But, for small houses, these can be treacherous waters and we are extraordinarily careful in this regards. With book returns sometimes running as high as 80% on titles, returns can put a small publishing house out of business immediately.
As you know, most of the book review sections in print publications have vanished. For those that remain, they don't seem to generate many sales. We've had incredible reviews in major newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and other major daily newspaper book review sections. They did not generate any additional sales.
Only a PR/marketing campaign that commits several hundred thousand dollars to a comprehensive marketing plan for a single title (which we clearly can’t afford to do at this stage) guarantees results. Paid marketing on a limited scale doesn’t work, in our opinion. Reviews (and limited, single ads) don't work nearly as well as old-fashioned networking. We generally don’t run print ads, and we also cannot afford to purchase placement in bookstores (which is standard practice for large houses).
The Capstone titles that, to date, have had success were books that were "marketed" through niche networks (e.g., through the prison fellowship movement, the romance novel blogosphere, or the home-school network). That sort of "network" marketing works much, much better, in our opinion, for new authors. But it is just our opinion and we're always open to other suggestions, criticisms, comments, etc. If you have an innovative or novel marketing idea in this very uncertain time for book publishing, we're certainly open to it.
We’re doing everything we can in a smart, timely way to grow and succeed. But there are no guarantees in life -- including book sales. We have high hopes, and we’re obviously planning for a bright future. We can’t predict how long it will take for Capstone to succeed in a big way, or if it will succeed in that way. What we can accurately predict is that we will do our best.
Jeff and Ramona
Way to go!!!
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