How an Indie Book Publisher is Commercializing Art through Social Media, E-Commerce, and Merch
T.S. Eliot, the man who has often been cited as the greatest poet of the 20th century, struggled to make ends meet even as he worked a 9-5 bank job. He had to borrow money from relatives just to buy clothes. In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway briefly describes how their expat artists’ collective came up with a plan to save him financially before Eliot eventually pulled it off himself. However, much has changed since the days of T.S. Eliot.
With the advent of the internet and social media, authors can generate massive followings and engagement without depending on traditional publishers to do the heavy lifting. Instagram, Goodreads, Wattpad, and Facebook have enabled authors to easily publish and interact with their audience via posts and even virtual book tours. Rupi Kaur, an author who rose to fame via Instagram, single-handedly accounted for 12% of the U.K. poetry market.
While Kaur with her more than 3 million person following, multiple bestsellers, and widespread acclaim, is quite easily the most successful of this new breed of influencer authors, she is hardly an anomaly. In fact, you may have heard of Atticus, Christopher Poindexter, Topher Kearby, or R.H. Sin — the only best-selling American poet in the last five years — but there’s a common denominator that links each of them. These four writing rockstars have all worked with By The Seven at some point in their stellar careers.
By The Seven is an independent publisher run by Los Angeles native digital nomads Elias Joseph Mennealy and Ryan Christopher Lutfalah.
“Growing up in the entertainment capital of the world influenced the way we run our company,” says Mennealy. “It’s a city full of disruptors and people looking to find that intersection of art and commerce. By The Seven is a product of that. It represents the commercialization of art. We fell into publishing books when we were twenty-two during film school at UCLA and the revenue we generated encouraged us to go all-in. We started B7 at 26 towards the end of 2017. We were offered an imprint with Andrews McMeel, but they don’t really have editorial. Everything is based on sales. Then there are other companies like Atria Books that have editorial for everyone of their imprints, but they’re not as careful about their advertising methods. That’s sort of where we felt like we could be disruptors.”
One example of By The Seven’s work is Regards Coupables: Volume I, which is currently #8 in Erotic Arts & Photography, #8 in Erotica Art, and #8 in French Poetry books on Amazon. Considering that Amazon is the largest bookseller in the world, to rank so highly in not one, but three categories is extremely impressive. However, what’s perhaps just as impressive as B7’s book publishing is the other half of their business. Hint: It’s the same thing that helped The Rolling Stones turn the corner financially — Merchandise.
In conjunction to the erotic book Regards Coupables, B7 has been designing and producing pillows, shirts, and other merch featuring the artists’ work. Authors and creators of all types are beginning to understand that they have the means to develop their own personal brands and e-commerce can buoy their income. Atticus, for example, has a shop called the Atticus Collective, where fans can buy a $174 talisman, massive posters, mugs, and whatever you can think of. By The Seven is in many ways looking to take this trend a step further by building out a digital marketplace for authors.
“One of our goals was to figure out how to make the merchandising as profitable as the book sales,” says Menneally. “Eighty percent of the audience is there for the quotes and the images, not necessarily just the work itself. We built our site primarily on Shopify Plus for that reason. We knew we wanted to build websites for artists and wanted to optimize the digital strategies of our releases. Online, we saw a need for a digital solution for writers — kind of like what Society6 has done for visual artists. Our cloud system also allows us to flip a switch if the main site temporarily goes down. If a site like Kylie Cosmetics crashes when they do an update, then that’s something we have to be prepared for. We’re aiming for around 100 shops in year one of the site launch, primarily for artists, but they could be YouTubers. Some of these creators are already making $28,000 per month, so they need the assurance that we have a plan B, a plan C, and a plan D.”
In a similar fashion to the way in which By The Seven is looking to disrupt the online marketplace, the elementary school best friends and co-founders have already managed to implement sales and marketing strategies used by the most innovative tech companies.
“We wanted an affiliate network of influencers, meme pages, and people who could help us disperse interactive media. If you want to sell a book, you can’t just promote a book. You have to provide content users can interact with,” says Menneally. “Establishing your demographic is crucial and you have to have great editorial. It’s also okay to start with just one idea for the marketing plans. But what’s really proven successful for us is carving out an affiliate network. Before we launch a book, we’re already looking at how we can reach over five million people instantaneously. You need to run Facebook ads, test out campaigns, don’t be afraid to spend even if it’s $100 dollar bursts, but you have to understand the exponential power of creating a network.”
While By The Seven publishes more than poetry books, it’s worth noting that the genre has become one of the fastest-growing categories in the publishing industry. More than half of the top 20 best-selling poets over the last five years rose to literary stardom by way of Instagram. According to the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 28 million Americans are reading poetry — the highest percentage of poetry readership in two decades. If you look closely across the Instagram poetry scene, you’ll begin to notice By The Seven’s work, which is defined by highly shareable, made-to-go-viral design.
“You have to also get design down to a science. Our poetry books are built in InDesign and we have editorial protocol. B7 templates are drag and drop,” explains Menneally.
The co-founders understand that the new breed of poet or author isn’t simply an artist; the new breed is also an entrepreneur. By The Seven gives them the tools to scale their personal brands at lightning speeds.
“You need the disruptors. It’s going to take someone to blow the roof off for the industry for it to change. Small publishers need to take pages out of the prestige publishers’ playbooks. Really, this info should be out there for the industry,” says Menneally. “If you have 12 books that are doing well, you deserve Big Five distribution. Run a successful campaign, send out beautiful kits, get other artists to promote. It starts small. Even if you sell 50 books, you have a baseline. Then get your cost-per-click down and make the math work for you. We’re working on interactive journals and creating custom digital experiences we want attached to each book.”
Menneally, whose original love was for filmmaking, is part of the wave of creative entrepreneurs freeing artists up from having to treat making a living and making art like double lives. By The Seven enables poets and authors to merge the best of both worlds.
“I want to build something a younger me would have benefitted from,” says Menneally.
The 28-year old innovator speaks from a place of experience that vastly overshadows his age.
“I’d like to keep growing out By The Seven and also write and make movies. Maybe I’ll be able to help others pay their dues a little faster along the way.”