{"id":805,"date":"2011-08-08T16:57:28","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T21:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/?p=805"},"modified":"2014-01-18T08:23:56","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T13:23:56","slug":"the-smaller-the-ball-the-bigger-the-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/?p=805","title":{"rendered":"The Smaller the Ball, the Bigger the Sales"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/t1.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ-4u0Nw6aVPc1MTrQjnlHBDmoiVWBCZ-tRmJDR58mjybUHIR2Z4Q\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>An old adage in publishing is the smaller the ball, the bigger the sales. This is traditionally true but there are, of course, exceptions.<\/p>\n<p>A look at four sports that proves this statement:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Golf<\/strong> &#8212; Sales of golf titles generally back-list very well. This is dominated by &#8220;how-to.&#8221; As with the enormous sales in golf\u00a0equipment\u00a0illustrate, people are always trying to get better. Many of these books are by golf coaches as opposed to the celebrities. There are also a few successful books about the Masters, US Open etc. But overall the instructional books dominate. I wonder how eBooks and websites have changed this?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Baseball<\/strong> &#8212; The sport that has the most literature devoted to it. Historically baseball writers were considered a step above the other sports. Baseball has a tradition like no other and Biographies of the stars seem to have the best sales. Sales also that follow a specific\u00a0championship\u00a0season and team can be very\u00a0appealing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Football<\/strong> &#8212; Although football dominates television and mind-share of sports in America, the book sales generally lag behind baseball. Successful football books generally are around a single player or coach (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/When-Pride-Still-Mattered-Lombardi\/dp\/0684870185\">Maraniss&#8217; book on Vince Lombardi<\/a> is classic). College football has some success too but it is highly regional.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Basketball<\/strong> &#8212; Few books on the NBA or NCAA basketball sell that well. <a href=\"http:\/\/sports.espn.go.com\/espn\/page2\/simmons\/index\">Bill Simmons<\/a> recently hit #1 with his NBA book but that was more built on his celebrity through ESPN, his blog and Twitter. Overall basketball books don&#8217;t sell very well.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>There are other sports books that do sell but many <em>transcend<\/em> the sport. Examples of these include <a href=\"http:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/w\/open-andre-agassi\/1100258900\">Andre Agassi&#8217;s OPEN<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Its-Not-About-Bike-Journey\/dp\/0425179613\">Lance Armstrong&#8217;s IT&#8217;S NOT ABOUT THE BIKE<\/a>. These highly successful books sold outside of the sports demographic. Both of these men had stories to tell that had universal appeal.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>One area of sports books that has basically been eliminated by eBooks and websites is Sports Reference. I grew up scanning my Baseball Encyclopedia every day looking at past stats. Today it is all online. I prefer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/\">Baseball-Reference.com<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; An old adage in publishing is the smaller the ball, the bigger the sales. This is traditionally true but &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/38enso.com\/?p=805\" class=\"more-link\">Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}