Book Reviewer Finds Money In The Stacks

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Oh my goodness, the holidays are really kicking in with full force here. We had the whole Black Friday thing. You notice I didn't talk about it very much because I figured you're hearing about it from all kinds of sources. Nothing for sale here, nothing even on Cyber Monday. Nothing for sale on whatever the Tuesday is called or whatever the Wednesday the 4th of December adjective is in the world of holiday sales.

None of that here. But like you, I have definitely noticed that there's a lot happening and a lot of emails going out, a lot of messages being sent and so on. Let's get away from that for a moment and talk not about spending money because with a holiday sale, even if you're saving some money, you're actually spending it to save it, right? That's the whole premise. But let's talk about making money.

That's what we're all about here. In today's story, an author and librarian creates a free video archive of book recommendations and then funds the project with her own publishing imprint. It's a little bit of a roundabout way to do things, but nothing wrong with roundabout. And also, as we've seen from time to time, you might pursue one idea only to be inspired to try something else or to learn through your research and experience that another approach might be better. It's not called being indecisive, it's called adapting.

And adaptation is a strong predictor of success. So be willing to be adaptable, be willing to learn as you go because everything you learn is gonna bring you closer to your ultimate goal. So book reviewer finds money in the stacks. That's the story. It's coming up for you in just 30 seconds.

[Music]

Michelle Zafino had what most would consider a successful career in journalism, writing for high profile women's magazines. And yet, she was looking for something new. She tried freelance copywriting for e-commerce, but while creative to a point, was not challenging her in the same way her previous writing did. And so she dove into writing her first self-published young adult novel using Amazon's Kindle Publishing Services. That novel sold a few dozen copies, at least until a prominent teen lit librarian happened upon the book, bought it, and gave it a glowing recommendation on her book review block.

With that one recommendation, Michelle's sales skyrocketed. She made a couple thousand dollars in short order. Unsurprisingly, she was fascinated by the power reviews had to influence a book's success. When she shared her experience with other self-published authors, they confirmed that her one high profile book review had shattered the returns they'd found with their own carefully curated marketing campaigns and paid ads. Her book had the professional recommendation of a librarian, and that had made all the difference.

Around this time, Michelle enrolled in a master's program at the University of Pittsburgh in Library and Information Science, with a concentration in information architecture. For her thesis, she decided to merge the world of library science with digital technology and started recording video reviews of books from her new librarian perspective, calling the project In the Stacks TV. It didn't require a lot of equipment beyond what she already had. Her computer's webcam, free video editing software, and a free YouTube account. She'd post the reviews from her own library of books and then put together a website that organized those videos for people to easily find recommendations.

This meant breaking them out into categories with tags for authors and genres, and then backlinking everything together to establish an intelligent site map. Basically, Michelle created a virtual book review library, but unfortunately the site wasn't making her a lot of extra money. She set up affiliate accounts with Amazon and Powell's, the country's largest independent bookstore. And while this made her a couple hundred dollars a month, earning less than one dollar commission on each book purchased wasn't sustainable. She was still making more royalties from her own book, and that in fact is what gave her the idea for how to make more money within the stacks.

She looked into what it would cost to set up a publishing imprint, which would simply be a business entity under which she could publish her writing. This would also allow her to grow by publishing other authors or projects without giving away any of her royalties or production costs. Michelle was surprised to find that she could simply file for a Doing Business As status in her state, also known as DBA, while still operating as a sole proprietor. The registration, filing, and subsequent announcement only cost about $150. Since her previous book had already been published, she couldn't transfer it to the new In the Stacks publishing imprint she'd created.

That's because every book that's published has its own international standard book number, also known as an ISBN or an Isbin, depending on who you're talking to. Now this meant she had to get more books written, and quickly. This was all happening at the same time she was teaching herself how to code through online classes because she knew that for In the Stacks to grow, she would have to build a more robust book recommendation program. But she couldn't learn how to code a program, write a new novel, work on her freelance projects that were her primary source of income, and keep creating new content on the site. That's when she began to reach out to librarians she knew, or had communicated with online, asking them to start sharing some of their recommendations.

This was the beginning of the My Librarian portal on her site, which offers crowdsourced librarian recs. This took some pressure off, and she was able to focus on getting that first novel under the new imprint published. Being totally transparent, she shared with her community that she had written this new book, and was being published to support the site. Many people in the community banded together, not only buying the book themselves, but also sharing it with their own networks. She was able to replicate this with a second book under the In the Stacks imprint, and then a serialized story that she published chapter by chapter, making a few thousand dollars a year from each title.

Coupled with a few hundred dollars a month in affiliate sales, she finally had a business model that was making real money, and had the potential to make more. After that proof of concept, Michelle was able to build out her book recommendation program and start developing an app that will give users those recommendations from her network of librarians. In fact, that's what's coming next. The idea that if you aren't able to get into a library, to speak with a librarian in person, at least you can get their insights while staring at the shelves in your local bookstore. Michelle plans to continue building in the stacks publishing.

Now she's hoping to add new authors and titles. With her own books making such an impact on the bottom line, it seems like the next novel idea. [Music]

Awesome, well, there are a lot of different ways to make money in publishing, although I'm also the first to say as an author, somebody who loves writing books and loves everything about that industry, that the best reason to write a book, in fact, the most compelling reason by far is because you want to write a book, because you believe you have something to share with the world more than making money, more than reaching people on Instagram or whatever else. Not that those things are bad at all, of course, but I think if you're just trying to make money, there's lots of easier ways to do it. But this also means that people who are in this industry are usually in it because they want to be, because they believe in it and care about it.

So congrats to Michelle, good luck with the project. She's moving to a new iteration soon, so we shall see how that goes. I also want to give a shout out to my dad, who has written a book, a novel, in fact, about librarians. It's called "Mad Librarian," and the summary is a Southern librarian fights back when the city cuts off funding for her library in this funny, angry book. Publishers Weekly called it a comic thriller, and half of all income goes to the Austin Foundation for Library Innovation.

Again, that's "Mad Librarian" by Michael Filippo. All right, thanks so much for listening. As I said, holidays are in full force. So much is coming up. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1068. Thank you for listening. Be sure to take care of yourself this month. My name is Chris Guillebeau for "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the "Onward Project."