Going Global: How to Take a Local Publishing Company to International Heights (PART ONE)

Part 1: Introduction to International Sales

Level: Introductory

Duration: Approx. 60 minutes

Learning Objective: To understand the broad concepts and partners related to international sales, and exploring Print Book, eBooks and Audiobooks formats in international markets. An overview of the main bookfairs around the world and making meaningful market partner connections.

• Segment 1: Understanding International Sales
  • Largest Book Markets & Consumer Markets
  • The Open Market, The Commonwealth & Sub Rights
  • Market segmentation: Behavioral, Demographic, Psychographic, Geographic
    
    
• Segment 2: The International Partners
  • US, UK, Europe, China, India, Latin America
  • E-commerce Players
  • Amazon around the world
    
    
• Segment 3: Consumer Preferences, Print, eBook and Audio Book formats
  • US & UK, Western Europe, China
  • Print, eBook & Audio Books Format Preferences by Region
    
    
• Segment 4: The power of bookfairs around the world
  • International Bookfairs
  • Developing International partner relationships and who to meet
  • Leveraging relations and expanding connections

Optional practice assignment: Please see descriptive course content.

Recommended articles/readings: Please see descriptive course content.

Create a sales plan targeting specific international markets for your books. The sales plan should outline how you would take your books into a specific overseas market, including editorial, sales, marketing, and organizational structure to expand your global reach. Consider the following for your sales plan: Sales channels for each market, your book categories, formats, budgeted costs, projected sales, distribution strategy, proposed deadlines for accomplishing each task in your sales plan and performance indicators to analyze and review your strategy.

Glossary of common terms

• Acquisition: purchasing most or all of another company's shares or assets.

• Analytics: The discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data.

• Agent: a book industry professional who represents the author and illustrators, to place their work with publishers, negotiating royalty calculations, collecting royalties, and performing other duties on their behalf.

• Globalization: the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.

• High Context Culture: Messages carry implicit meaning that goes beyond what is actually said.

• Intellectual Property Rights: are legal rights that provide creators protection for original works, inventions, or the appearance of products, artistic works or scientific developments.

• Content Licensing: is a publisher’s distribution of its intellectual property to any third party. This distribution is exchanged for some sort of value. On the legal side, both parties to a license agree in a contract to the usage of rights for a certain piece of intellectual property.

• Low Context Culture: Messages have a clear meaning with nothing implied beyond what is actually said.

• Market segmentation: The process of dividing a market of potential customers into groups, or segments, based on different characteristics.

• Metadata: a collection of attributes—ISBN, title, author, copyright year, price, subject category, author bio, etc. that describe a book.

• ONIX: ONline Information eXchange is an XML-based standard created by a consortium of publishers, wholesalers, retailers, and data aggregators.

• Partnership: is an arrangement where parties, known as business partners, agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests.

• Print on Demand (POD): is an order fulfillment method where books are printed as soon as an order is made, most often without order minimums.

• Sub Rights: This is the right to produce or publish a product in different formats based on the original material.

• Translations: translating words or text from one language into another.

• The Open Market: This refers to the entire world except the United States and The Commonwealth.

• The Commonwealth: This refers to all parts of the current and former British Commonwealth. The UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India are the largest parts of this market.

Websites

• International Publishers Association: https://www.internationalpublishers.org 

• Association of American Publishers: https://publishers.org 

• American Booksellers Association: https://www.bookweb.org 

• Association of Publishers in India: http://www.publishers.org.in/

• The French Publishers Association: https://www.sne.fr/

• Publishers Association of South Africa: https://publishsa.co.za/

• Börsenverein Germany Publishers Association: https://www.boersenverein.de/

• Cámara Nacional de la Industria Editorial Mexicana: https://caniem.online/

• Open Books China: http://en.openbook.com.cn/

• Book Industry Study Group: https://bisg.org 

• Bookscan: https://www.npd.com 

• Publishers Association: https://www.publishers.org.uk 

• Better Reading Australia: https://www.betterreading.com.au 

• Der Spiegel Best Sellers Germany: https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/

• New York Times Best Sellers US: https://www.nytimes.com/books/

• WIPO: https://www.wipo.int 

• WTO: https://www.wto.org

• Statista: https://www.statista.com

Blogs

• LitBlog Germany https://litblog-convention.de/blog

• BookGeeks India https://www.bookgeeks.in

• Dublin Review of Books Ireland https://drb.ie

• A Little Blog of Books United Kingdom https://alittleblogofbooks.com 

• The Idea Logical Company: https://www.idealog.com 

• The Book Designer: https://www.thebookdesigner.com 

• Jane Friedman: https://www.janefriedman.com 

• The Creative Penn: https://www.thecreativepenn.com 

Newsletters

• Publishers Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.com 

• Publishing Perspectives: https://publishingperspectives.com 

• The Bookseller: https://www.thebookseller.com 

• Shelf Awareness: https://www.shelf-awareness.com 

• Publishers Lunch: https://www.publishersmarketplace.com