How are Books Sold? – Edmund Wee, Epigram Books

Epigram Books, Singapore’s largest independent trade publisher, outlines how it successfully markets and sells its books to international and local audiences. Founder Edmund Wee shares his thoughts about the publishing industry and Epigram’s plans for the near future.

What’s in this article?

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About Epigram
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Epigram Books, Singapore’s largest independent trade publisher, specialises in fiction ranging from literary novels to short story collections, plays, graphic novels, chapter books, and picture books.

​It is best known for its middle-grade series, The Amos Lee Diaries and Sherlock Sam. Its most famous title is the triple Eisner Award-winning graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, which has been translated into eight languages and released in many countries around the world.
 
It is also behind the Epigram Books Fiction Prize which awards total prize money of $40,000 to four authors from Singapore every year.

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Balancing Local and International Values​

​Since its incorporation in 2011, Epigram has grown into a successful independent publisher with an impressive range of literary titles. Having published everything from literary novels to children’s picture books, Epigram publishes about 50 titles a year in Singapore, and approximately eight to ten literary titles a year in the United Kingdom.
 
Although Epigram has established its roots in Singapore, it aims to spread Southeast Asia’s culture to the rest of the world. Whilst many of its stories promote Southeast Asia’s cultures and values, they feature relatable characters that international audiences will enjoy.
 
“In Singapore, we position ourselves as the champion of SingLit. In the UK, we bring Singaporean and Southeast Asian literature to the world.” Edmund explains.

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Selling to International and Local Audiences

​Challenges of Promoting Local and Foreign Titles
 
Along with striking a delicate balance between local and cultural values, Epigram ensures that its sales process is coordinated across multiple territories. It acknowledges the difficulty of marketing a local publication overseas, and manages each book’s marketing process to maximise its success.
 
“These are the usual activities involved in selling or marketing a book—press reviews, author appearances and publicity events or tie-ups. The UK releases are re-publications of those titles we deem suitable for UK audience. The authors are mostly Singaporeans living in Singapore. But it is not viable (financially) to fly an author from Singapore to the UK for these things. Harder still to impress the media overseas.” Edmund describes.
 
Sales Strategy for Foreign Publishers
 
In order to maximise the success of its local titles, Epigram collaborates with foreign publishers without forfeiting the fundamental rights to their books. According to Edmund, its strategy involves keeping the initial rights for local titles, and selling their translation rights to foreign publishers.
 
“We do not sell the 50 books we published in Singapore overseas. What we do is to sell their foreign language rights to foreign publishers who will then translate the novel into their language and sell their version.” Edmund states.
 
Selling to Different Customer Bases
 
Edmund also highlights that an independent publisher’s audience is multifaceted, and that it needs different strategies to deal with different customers. For example, Epigram’s sales strategy involves the following approaches:
 
1. B2B Approach
 
Epigram’s B2B approach regards bookstores and retail outlets as its primary customers. Epigram’s distributor issues its titles to bookstores and other retail outlets, and it doesn’t meet their readers directly at bazaars and pop-up stores.
 
“We have a distributor in Singapore who represents us in Singapore, Malaysia and the other major ASEAN countries. At this moment, we do not have an overseas distributor for our books from Singapore. For our London operations, where we published about eight titles a year, we have a UK distributor who handles our warehousing and fulfilment for sales to bookstores in the UK.” Edmund explains.
 
2. B2C Approach
 
Epigram’s B2C Approach regards its readers as its primary customers. According to Edmund, transactions are primarily electronic, as local customers would directly visit its webstore to purchase their titles. Furthermore, “the books published in Singapore are not sold to international audiences except the few that buy them from [its] webstore.”

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​Traditional vs. Self-publishing

According to Epigram, the publisher is primarily responsible for turning a manuscript into a book.
 
“The traditional publisher usually has a large team of technical and creative persons to do this. For the author to do this transformation himself (which is what self-publishing is), he would have to be multi-talented.” Edmund explains.
 
Self-published authors may find this process relatively tedious, as the process of formatting and publishing a full manuscript includes several complex steps. The author would have to:

• Create: Write the manuscript
• Refine: Edit, proofread, and index (for non-fiction) the manuscript
• Design: Pick a font, lay out the copy, design the cover
• Print: Understand paper types, printing specifications and book sizes to get it printed
• Market: Promote, market and launch the book; distribute it to bookstores and retail outlets
• Account: Collect the revenue due.

 
“After that, there is also the problem of selling to foreign language publishers, movie directors, and television producers. Examples of self-publishing success are real but widely exaggerated.” Edmund admits.

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Digital Publishing

​Due to the accessibility and affordability of e-books, digital publications are becoming more popular amongst modern readers. According to Edmund, Epigram acknowledges this trend, and has embraced digital publishing by turning their p-books (physical books) into e-books about 18 months after they are first released. These books are sold on websites around the world through an aggregator.
 
However, he also acknowledges that an e-book’s success may be limited: “Not surprisingly, the sales are disappointing. We plan to release both the p-book and e-book at the same time in the very near future.”

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Future Plans

​In the future, Epigram aims to make groundbreaking steps into the publishing industry. It hopes to establish a non-profit literary foundation to extend the Epigram Books Fiction Prize to authors and translators from the other ASEAN countries. After that, they would like the foundation to run a literary festival that would focus on authors and novels from the ASEAN countries, and they are also looking at retail possibilities.

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