Dear Pennies & Pens,
So it’s my birthday yet here I am inkin da page. It never ends. If you’ve been following me and my work for awhile, you know that I have two businesses, ISLP + 8515. In this post, we’re going to talk about why I want to quit my job and raise capital for ISLP.
ISLP is a creative production company and lifestyle boutique based in Dallas. We create books, magazines, travel guides, films, music, art, clothing and accessories. At ISLP, we use our ink to create high quality, original products that are affordable so we can inspire and empower our audience of multicultural millennials + creatives to ink the life they’ve always wanted.
Why ISLP needs startup pennies
As far as why we need capital for InkBooks, it’s so we can invest in product development, advertising and PR. My main goal is to create more books so that we can increase revenue. So that also means that I need to invest in advertising and PR because I need to promote our current books as well as the ones we’re working on.
With InkBooks, the biggest costs come when it’s time to publish. Writing is clearly cheap since all we need is a pen or laptop and boom, the page is inked up. But once that page is inked up, there’s cover design, interior formatting, the ISBN and printing. Not to mention advertising and PR.
Pennies for Cover Design
Cover design means hiring a graphic designer or doing it myself. For #MakeUrPenLoud, I designed the cover. But even though I designed the cover, I hired a photographer to shoot the cover image. So even the DIY option has costs associated with it.
For The Loudest Pen Ever, I hired Michelle Fairbanks and she did an amazing job with the cover design. Especially the print edition. That took so much stress off of me because I didn’t have to dedicate time to that and could work on other things. Michelle’s prices were also extremely reasonable so this particular project didn’t break the bank. But I should mention that I provided the image used for the cover so Michelle didn’t have to design it from scratch which made it a simple and cheap project. As ISLP grows, I’ll definitely need to have a designer to do our book covers.
Pennies for Interior Design
Interior formatting is about creating the interior layout of the book. Oddly enough, I really enjoy doing this although I’ll admit that it’s time consuming. So as ISLP publishes more books, I’m gonna have to outsource this.
Pennies for ISBN Numbers
The ISBN costs are literally killing my vibe. It’s $125 for ONE ISBN. For those that don’t know, an ISBN is the 13 digital number that appears above a book’s barcode. You need this to sell your book in bookstores, libraries, etc.
With both books, I was scrambling to buy the ISBN number. I clearly need to get the block of 10 ISBNs for $295 or 100 for $575. But since I also have to cover printing and shipping, I always end up buying just one which puts me back at square one with each book.
Pennies for Printing
That leads me to my next point. Right now, I’m using Amazon’s KDP to print our books. It’s significantly cheaper than most printers but the costs are still there. It’s about $114 for a print run of 50 books.
Now that I’m focusing on selling via our Shopify store and participating in events like the National Black Book Festival, I need to keep an inventory of books. This means I’ll be ordering books so I need cash flow to be able to do that.
Ink With Us Not Amazon
I love our site because the design is simple and on brand. Selling our books via Shopify as opposed to Amazon has proved to be the best fit for us overall. It gives us a chance to control and customize the reader’s experience. I think the Amazon sales page is way too busy and distracting. There’s just too much to look at.
I believe that’s because Amazon is looking out for Amazon. They don’t care if the reader buys your book, they just want the person to buy something hence why they have the “related products” and “people who bought this, bought this” feature. For indie authors like me, this is a dealbreaker. I can’t afford to have a reader get distracted and not even complete the purchase. My sales page (link) completely avoids that issue because the visitor has two options: buy or not buy. If they don’t buy, I still got traffic to my site but if they don’t buy on Amazon it is a complete and utter waste.
My other major gripe with Amazon is they don’t give you ANY customer data. So you have no idea who is buying your book. I think they give you the country the reader lives in but that’s it. So it makes it impossible to remarket to that buyer. This fades my ink because clearly when the reader buys the book they have to input the shipping and billing info so why doesn’t Amazon provide this info to KDP authors?
My last and final gripe with Amazon is the inability to customize the reader’s experience when receiving the book. Since KDP prints and ships the book for you, you can’t add a business card, use branded packaging, etc. As an avid online shopper, I’m more impressed by brands who take the time to make me feel like getting their product in the mail is an experience. It makes me excited to use their product. So I want to create an experience for Pennies & Pens who ink with us.
Pennies to sell more InkBooks
Lastly, I need capital for advertising and PR. I want to run more ads on Instagram and Facebook. By checking my analytics, I have seen that organic posting doesn’t drive real traffic but ads do. So I need about $500 a week for ads.
Facebook and Instagram ads really do help you reach new customers because the ads are shown to people who don’t follow you. And right now, ISLP InkBooks need more brand awareness. I have found that once our target reader finds us, they buy within minutes.
Public relations aka PR would help with our crediblity as far as getting people to take us seriously. Think about it if you see an author being interviewed on the news or by a magazine, you’re more likely to buy their book because they look like an expert. I can do my own PR, but I need capital to distribute press releases via PRWeb, Cision, etc
So as yall can see, ISLP needs some pennies. Lots and lots of pennies. And in order to oversee all of this, I need to quit my job. Do you know someone with lots of pennies? Comment with their email addy below. Sike nah! Lol.
I’m going to wrap this ink up now. But yall see why I want to quit my job and raise capital for ISLP.
And there it is. de la Pen…All Pen Everything. With us, keeping it real never goes wrong.
