174: How To Use BookBaby To Grow Your Print and Digital Book Sales with Steven Spatz

Steven Spatz is a writer, marketer, and president of BookBaby, a distributor of ebooks and print books. He started his writing career at age 13 and worked for several major newspapers after graduating from university. Steven got a job as a sportswriter when he was 13. His journalistic heroes were Walter Cronkite and Howard Cosell. He did that for a little while and then went back to the family business, where he learned direct marketing. Steven’s family had a food catalog they grew to be one of the largest in the United States. Through that experience, he really learned about direct marketing, and bringing the right products and services to the right people at the right time. That’s what Steven has done with most of his career. He’s worked for Mattel and Hasbro Collectibles. About 15 years ago, Steven became interested in the music business. His parent company, CDBaby, still manufactures custom-made CDs and DVDs. Yes, there’s still a market for that! They also work in digital music. BookBaby started seven years ago. BookBaby’s mission is to help authors get their work out into the marketplace. The BookBaby motto is “We make the little guy look big.” Steven is using his talent for writing and his knowledge of direct marketing to help indie authors be successful in the marketplace. In this interview, we talked about the factors every indie author needs to consider, how BookBaby can help you achieve your goals, how the marketplace has changed in the last eight years, and the benefits of using BookBaby to help launch you onto the world stage. Starting Up BookBaby BookBaby grew out of CDBaby, which still sends a lot of music to iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify. Through these existing partnership, Steven had a great opportunity: when Apple created the iPad, they were looking for companies that could make ebooks. They knew CDBaby already created music files for them, so Apple asked if they could make ebooks. The people at CDBaby had to quickly learn how to make ebook files that would work on the iPad. Since then, the business has exploded. They added ebook distribution to Amazon, and now they’re in 59 other digital retail stores around the world. BookBaby quickly realized that if authors were going to succeed, they would need to give their readers the book in the format the reader wanted. That’s why they started offering print distribution. They began by partnering with a printer they knew. Two years ago, they started printing some books in house as a test, and now they print all their books in house. At this point, BookBaby is a one-stop shop for everything an indie author needs. They provide: Editing Ebook production Cover design Book formatting Print distribution Electronic distribution “Our goal has been to help authors not have to make many decisions. Authors need to spend time writing, and then hand over all the details about their books to experts. You used to have to go to many different places to get all of the services authors really need; now you can just come to BookBaby.” – Steven Spatz Five Things You Need to Consider as an Indie Author BookBaby offers a simple five-step guide to self-publishing. There are five decisions you need to make b