In January 1996 I attended a parenting class to learn how to deal better with
the challenges my two young sons were presenting (especially my oldest, who was
working on his Ph.D. in sibling rivalry). My chance meeting with Arizona-based
school psychologist Dr. Sal Severe -- the real Ph.D., who was teaching the class
-- has transformed my life in many ways.
I was so impressed with the practical and humorous guidance of Dr. Severe
that I walked away from a business that was doing $1.5 million a year, "jumped
on the grenade," and became a publisher.
My goal was to republish Dr. Severe's self-published book, How to Behave So
Your Children Will, Too!, and to create an industry around the book and the
author. (At that point, about 2,500 copies of How to Behave had been sold at Dr.
Severe's workshops.) I established Greentree Publishing in Tempe, Arizona, soon
after going to one of Dr. Severe's parenting classes. Between April 1997 and
December 1999, the book (mostly distributed directly through Greentree
Publishing) sold more than 340,000 copies.
Building Success One Brick at a Time The success of this book is an example of what a single-title publisher can
accomplish. I had previously worked for a school and corporate book fair
company. Thus I had some knowledge to apply to testing the book, via a greatly
revised version of the original powder blue, 100-page self-published edition.
Together with Denise Pias, my only full-time employee, I created a Web site (www.howtobehave.com)
and the quarterly Parenting Today newsletter. Both served as promotional
vehicles for the book. The newsletter now has more than 16,000 subscribers. Our
most productive effort came from setting up an impressive media schedule for the
author; more than 1,500 media segments in the last 40 months have aired on over
2,500 stations.
We used begging, groveling, and pleading, combined with a sophisticated
broadcast fax system, to alert thousands of media and bookseller contacts to new
author appearances or other updates on the book. We sent out at least 2,000
faxes per month every month for 18 months.
We made more than our fair share of mistakes that are typical of first-time
publishers. While we wisely got positive blurbs from New York Times best-selling
authors John Bradshaw and Jack Canfield to put on the book, we didn't get any
pre-pub reviews in publications like Publishers Weekly (PW), Library Journal,
Kirkus, etc. I didn't learn that I should do that until after the book was
already out. Although we did not get reviewed in PW, we did get three different
write-ups in it that were very beneficial and probably did more good than an
actual review would have.
I had the pleasure of meeting the Chicken Soup team of Jack Canfield and Mark
Victor Hansen and spent time talking with each of them. They know how to inspire
someone to set really outrageous goals. I was very encouraged by them and set a
goal of selling 250,000 copies in our first 16 months. We actually did not hit
our goal until 28 months had passed, partly because we had a hard time
convincing the big chains that we were real and were here to stay.
Pursuing Special Sales Was Essential Early on, we decided to go after special markets (non-bookstore sales).
Initially we worked with a dozen brokers that sold books to the special markets
and foreign rights, but this method met with little success. They had many
products to present, and buyers generally would give them 20 to 30 seconds per
title. These brokers really did not know how to present our product as well as I
did because I lived the book. Eventually I decided to do this work myself. I had
a hard time getting the attention of the various buyers at first, but with time
we were able to identify the right companies and show them that the book was a
good fit for their market. We ended up generating sales of more than 350,000
copies to special markets.
One of our biggest supporters in the special markets was BookSpan/Book-of-the-Month
Club (BOMC). BOMC bought rights to the book and still features the title in both
its regular club and the Children's Book-of-the-Month Club. Our title has been
one of the most successful parenting books in their 75-year history!
Selling How to Behave to BOMC was an extreme long shot. The company almost
always buys from galleys. We were an exception, having a book that was already
selling very consistently and being heavily publicized. I presented the book on
January 31, 1997, and we got a contract on June 19. We presented sales data once
a month to their editor, demonstrating the consistent sales of the book. I would
follow up every other month with a very brief phone call. Moral: Never stop
reminding them that they need to make a decision.
Making a Deal with a Major Publisher & Beyond Our success attracted the attention of 60 foreign publishers, 18 literary
agents, and 16 domestic publishers, resulting in the sale of How to Behave So
Your Children Will, Too! (along with a second title) to Viking/Penguin for a
significant seven-figure advance. (The second title, How to Behave So Your
Preschooler Will, Too!, is in the final round of editing. It's due to come out
in 2002.) The revised hardcover version of the first book from Viking/Penguin,
introduced on July 17, 2000, sold more than 100,000 copies in its first 10
months. Having the support of Viking has been a dream come true for us. For
instance, our stock level for one of the major chains went from 1,000 books to
4,200.
We are by no means stopping our promotion, and we continue to generate
significant media for this author. An abridged audio of the book and a video of
his workshop are now done. The video has sold 3,000 copies in its first 12
months. This is fairly significant when you consider that its price of $49.95
can automatically shrink the market.
In October 2000 I finally witnessed our ultimate goal – the author was booked
on Oprah. The appearance helped put the book on The New York Times Best Seller
List. More recently, a relationship I began nurturing in October 1998 produced
two appearances for the author on The Today Show. The first segment, an
interview with Matt Lauer, aired on March 29, 2001. On April 17, 2001, Dr.
Severe was interviewed again for the show, this time by Katie Couric. These two
appearances did not create a significant surge in sales, but getting on The
Today Show removed yet one more item from our outrageous list of goals.
As of this writing, the book has made more than 48 trips to the press,
generating over 500,000 copies in print in more than 20 languages. We anticipate
that it will pass the million-copy mark before the end of 2002, as the release
of the paperback version is scheduled for July 2002.
All of this has been accomplished with a book that we were told would never
make it in hardcover! And accomplished by someone (myself) who knew little about
publishing, and who did not actually read the book until we were on vacation
over the 1998 Christmas season (Yes, that was 18 months after I published it!).
Tim McCormick is the Publisher at Greentree Publishing of
Tempe, Arizona. The New York Times Bestseller How to Behave so Your Children
Will, Too! is his company's first book. McCormick now divides his time between
continuing work on this first book, looking for the next book project, and
consulting with small to mid-sized publishers as well as authors regarding
publishing and special market sales. Visit the company's Web site at
www.howtobehave.com.
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