One Author's Publishing Success: An Interview with Autumn Dawn

Author Autumn Dawn, a former student from North Pole High School.

Like many writers, I was a teacher first. Following a news article on my latest novel, I received an inspiring email from a former student, now a fellow author who writes under the name Autumn Dawn.

“I wanted to thank you again for teaching my North Pole High School class,” she said. “I’ve made good use of it. It makes me emotional thinking about what I would have done without teachers like you. So many stories would have gone untold, and I have over twenty works published now. Two were published in NY, two are with Amazon’s publishing arm and the rest are self-published.”

As teachers all over the country prepare to start a new year, I hope they’ll find encouragement in this example of what a difference they’ll make in the lives of their students. Not every one of them will find the success Autumn has, or take the time to acknowledge how you’ve helped them along the way, but your creative efforts in the classroom do have an impact.

After reconnecting, Autumn and I thought it would be fun to swap interviews; you’ll find her interview with me on her blog.

You pointed out that the two of us had something in common: school counselors/academic advisers told us that we’d never make a living as writers. How did you get past that?

I’m stubborn and competitive, and I like a challenge. Writing made me happy, and the stories didn’t stop just because someone disapproved. For the record, I was almost forty before my parents saw any sense in it. My father admitted he thought I was wasting my time with writing, which I knew, but at least he didn’t say it out loud.

Also, my husband and high school sweetheart, John, is extremely supportive. We’ve been married since 1994 and every day is a blessing.

You’ve not only made a living as a writing, you’ve also earned a six-figure annual income from your books. Tell us a little about that journey, and what the money does and doesn’t mean to you as a creative individual.

It was a huge validation, of course. Someone wanted to read my books! We’d just moved to Washington and I hoped to make some money to help with groceries, and suddenly my sales numbers shot up! We watched in amazement, and all the guys at John’s work were cheering like it was a sports event as John shared the latest stats. I could say “HA!” to all all the doubters.

As for the money, I had to find a good accountant to help with that. We did our best to be practical, opened a Roth, bought our first new car ever and paid it off quickly. I also got some professional book covers and editing, which were a huge part of my success. It paid for plane tickets to see family in Alaska, things like that. I’m a practical girl, and did my best to bring value to our lives. 

You’ve managed to write twenty books while raising three active children. What advice do you have for other moms who write?

A book is a good place to hide when the toddlers are running rampant. Invest in a set of headphones and place the computer so you can see the kids but not the TV. Also, I’m not a soccer mom. We keep things simple and relaxed here without a lot of running around. I simply don’t have the temperament for it. Sports are fine and every kid should learn to swim, but there should be balance. We eat dinner together every night and the house is clean. We talk about our day and if one of the kids is having a problem, I notice and we talk about it. I can’t do that if everyone is running full tilt at all times, and I can’t write if I’m stressed.

Honestly, housekeeping, cooking and dealing with teens is a big job, so I have to stay organized if I want to write. And sometimes, John cooks.

You said, “I didn’t know until I was an adult that I was a gifted person, but writing was always an outlet for a kid that wasn’t quite in sync with the others.” What encouragement do you have for other kids who aren’t “quite in sync” with the rest?

Skip childhood. Kidding! Best case scenario, I’d love to see gifted kids discovered in school and given the help they need. To my school’s credit, I believe they tried. I actually needed counseling as an adult, and once I suspected I was gifted, I devoured books on it and haunted websites. I read things and think, what? That’s unusual? I could do that, why didn’t someone tell me? My mother said I was a weird kid, and she hated to see me “waste all my time reading”. Little did she know I was preparing for my future job.

If your kid gets a 99% verbal on the PSAT, she’s probably gifted. It won’t matter if she doesn’t know how to sew. You should discuss college or a good tech school, however.

I didn’t realize it was odd to carry books from the library stacked to my chin. I finally learned to drive at seventeen so I could spend time in the bookstore. I didn’t know how to talk to kids my age, and later Mom told me that they wanted to skip me ahead a grade. She refused that and the gifted program because she didn’t want me to feel “pressured.” ARRRGH! I wondered what happened to my friends; they seemed to all disappear from my classes in middle school, and now I know they were in the gifted program.

I saw some of them again in the AP and honor classes, but by then I hated school. High school was a prison sentence and I wanted out. Being an adult was much better.

I don’t regret not attending college. If I want to learn something, I pick up a book and read. While you can’t learn to dance that way, it’s great for teaching yourself website design, Photoshop, computer stuff and gourmet baking. We tell our kids that apprenticeships, tech school and the military are excellent ways to get an education that won’t put you in debt for years, but never stop learning, and never give up. You were custom made for a job, and if it doesn’t exist yet, create it! 

You’re incredibly imaginative and prolific. How have readers discovered you and your books? After twenty books, do you find you still have to work to promote your new titles, or do your fans find them?

Thank you. I’ve always enjoyed creating worlds no one else has dreamed of, and I’m very careful not to repeat myself. I like to keep things fresh, and my readers appreciate that.

I post new books on my site, blog and Facebook. That’s it. I should have a mailing list, but I don’t. I find that frequent releases are the best way to generate sales, and I usually have at least one ebook free. I think happy readers are the best word of mouth.

Autumn Dawn
autumndawnbooks.com

Autumn is a professional writer and stay at home mom with three kids, a dog and an active imagination. She’s married to her high school sweetheart, John, who is known to bring her flowers "just because.” After 34 years in Alaska, she moved to Washington with her family to enjoy a state with actual seasons. She started self-publishing in 2010 after a string of rejections that read, “We love your writing, but we’re not sure how to market it.” She published on Smashwords, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, which lead to a number of bestsellers. After The Charmer hit #1 on Barnes & Noble for fantasy romance, she threw herself into editing and uploading her backlist.

Her income for 2011 was $100,000, far exceeding her best year with traditional publishing. In 2012, Amazon acquired Dorchester Books, which had picked up two of her books, and Autumn gave Amazon the rights to publish When Sparks Fly and No Words Alone (from the Sparks Series), believing that diversification is good business. While Autumn is grateful for the opportunities traditional publishing provided, she remains passionate about self-publishing. Keep an eye on her blog for news about upcoming books!

Iron & Hemlock

Life can change in the blink of an eye.

It was just an ordinary day when lightning struck and sent Jordan spinning back in time. Trapped in Victorian England, practical Jordan will have to abandon her disbelief in magic. Pursued by a sexy golden griffin and a dark fae who wants her blood, she just might rediscover the thrill of falling in love.

Smashwords I Amazon I Barnes & Noble I ibooks

Ways to Self-Publish: An Interview with Tanyo Ravicz

Traditional publishing? Author services? “Vanity presses”? Self-publishing? The options can be overwhelming.

When author Tanyo Ravicz of the independent author cooperative Running Fox Books wrote to tell me he’d left an author services arrangement to release fully independent editions of his books Alaskans and A Man of His Village, I asked if he’d be willing to share his thoughts on that experience in this Q & A.

What motivates you to write?

An irrational drive to give lasting and meaningful shape to the experience of life is what motivates me to write. The satisfaction comes from engaging other people with the result of the effort, or, failing that, or in addition to that, in the consciousness of having written the best prose I can. If my words cause people to smile or grit their teeth or anxiously knit their brows or to ponder, that’s a rewarding engagement. Still, apart from that, it’s satisfying to see something in your own way and to crystallize that vision in penetrating prose.

What made you decide to forego traditional publishing?

That feels like a trick question. Honestly, whatever I offer about publishing has to be understood as coming from someone who’s had the experience several times repeated since the late 1980s of trying to “get” a literary agent and “get” a publisher. From the manila envelope to the iPhone, I’ve seen the changes in how things are done, but I’m not well qualified to speak about traditional publishing from the inside. By the same token, of course, you wouldn’t expect me to greatly lament the disruptions to the industry.

The first editions of your books were published through one of the larger author services companies, one that’s sometimes called a “vanity press.” How did you choose this particular service? How did it work out for you?

In 2006 I published the novel A MAN OF HIS VILLAGE through iUniverse, which was then a young company and still independent. The results were excellent. I was in my 40s, we had settled down in California after the years in Alaska, and I had been having the unpleasantly familiar experience of not being able to convince anyone to take on a manuscript of mine. There was a difference this time, though, and it was called print-on-demand technology.

Absolutely revolutionary. I went with iUniverse because I’d seen one of their posters in the Barnes & Noble window and I liked the concept. They were also running an effective whole-page ad series featuring pictures of Virginia Woolf and Walt Whitman and other literary lights who had published their own work — effective, I suppose, in normalizing, if not romanticizing, the idea of self-publishing, or at least diminishing the lingering stigma, though speaking for myself I never felt much of a stigma. To my mind, the scores of literary agents and small presses I had tried with the book had made a mistake. A MAN OF HIS VILLAGE went on to win the top prize in its category in a couple of open national contests and by publishing it I was able to get out and do events and sell some books.

Two years later, in 2008, still working with iUniverse, I brought out ALASKANS to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Alaska statehood. It was good timing: I got a bump in interest in my book with the ascent on the national stage of Sarah Palin. ALASKANS is a collection of ten stories, two of them Pushcart-nominated and nine of them previously published in literary magazines, a circumstance I mention to help to dispel the stereotype that self-published work is unvetted and unprofessional.

Do people use the term “vanity press” anymore? This is archaic terminology rooted in the protectionism of the legacy publishers. It makes me think of those black-and-white ads discreetly tucked in the back pages of print magazines in the late 1900s. True, since the early days of print-on-demand publishing, an industry has sprung up around peripheral marketing services for authors, many of which play to our vanities; but what’s really happening here is a further closing of the gap between self-publishing and traditional publishing, which after all is hugely dependent for its advantage on its marketing machinery.

Recently, you’ve re-released your books on your own. What prompted you to do this?

Yes, I’ve broken off with iUniverse and I’ve brought out A MAN OF HIS VILLAGE and ALASKANS in new authoritative editions under the Denali Press imprint. It’s a way of taking ownership of my work and moving forward from here.

iUniverse has changed a lot since 2006. Actually, I hadn’t been entirely happy with the contract to begin with: I had agreed to a lesser paperback royalty percentage after iUniverse had represented to me that the discounts would be passed along the distribution chain. This was something it turned out iUniverse had no control over. It was a misrepresentation I wouldn’t forget.

 

Meanwhile iUniverse was swallowed up by Author Solutions, which in turn was acquired by Pearson, a division of Penguin, which has recently merged with Random House. This phenomenon of the old guard publishers getting into the author services business is interesting. Authors should be aware of what’s going on here structurally. A company of course wants to claim a share of the sales earned by the best-selling self-published books, but the ironic bread-and-butter truth is that these old publishers are partly evolving into “vanity presses” themselves, establishing divisions to encourage and profit from the “vanity” they earlier derided.

It’s not as though iUniverse did a good job anyway. They mismanaged the rise of ebooks, and speaking of my books in particular, iUniverse botched the ebook conversions. A reader took the trouble to inform me of this, and this was really the last straw as far as my attitude to iUniverse goes. Times had changed — the rise of ebooks, Amazon, Apple, Smashwords — and it was time for me to examine my options and to move on.

Personally, I needed to take stock anyway. Every now and then we look around and consider where we’ve come from and where we’re going. Finding myself again in the position of finalizing a new book and reaching out to literary agents, I wanted to have a strategy in place for averting the negative emotions that can come with the process.

Denali Press (“founded in Palm Springs, California, a publisher of quality fiction and nonacademic nonfiction”) is the result. Going forward, this is the rock under my books. I now have a direct relationship with Amazon, Apple, B&N and Kobo, a list which may grow as I choose. I register my own titles and I set the look and prices of the print books and ebooks. With drop caps, a matte cover finish, and a 5.25 x 8 trim — my choices — these print books are beautiful products that physically rival (at a more affordable price) the trade paperbacks of the big players.

The transition has cost me some months of concentrated effort, but I’ve become an exacting writer and so I didn’t mind the labor of one last time editing these two books. Also, the process of establishing a sole proprietorship, designing a logo, setting up vendor accounts, and so on, teaches valuable lessons. Financially, I’ve incurred switching costs — for example, I paid a pro to do my ebook conversions — and I’m in the red again with my writing, but I expect in the long term to recoup the losses.

Still, we all know how hard it is to sell books. One-book and two-book authors might be better advised to just stick with Amazon or an author services outfit and not to bother with setting up their own imprints.

Let me say too, Deb, that I had noticed what you were doing with your books over at Running Fox. You cared enough about your out-of-print books that you weren’t going to let them stay out of print. Emerging authors can look to you for an example of the nimbleness and adaptability of today’s writer who doesn’t necessarily reject tradition but isn’t bound by it.

What publishing advice do you have for emerging authors?

By all means try to work with a traditional publisher. A writer isn’t just a witness but also a participant, and your story as a writer, not the one you write but the one you live, becomes a part of the record of your time.

Remember that the established book world, from its editorial reaches to its diminished infrastructure to its far-flung superstructure (including bookstores and print journals) has never been especially friendly to self-published authors. In my experience, there are wonderful exceptions to this rule, but by and large I find it true. Small publishers face very large hurdles in bringing serious attention to their titles.

A third reason, if you’re an emerging author, not to hasten into do-it-yourself publishing is you’re probably not as good a writer as you’re going to become. Look at your finished manuscript two or three years from now; I guarantee it won’t seem so finished.

At a certain point, though, a pile of rejected manuscripts is toxic for a writer. If you don’t look out for your writing, no one will. Act. Act. Act.

If you’ve internalized the misconception that traditional publishing is somehow synonymous with literary quality and that the rest is dreck, you need to get past it.

Don’t fear Amazon and Apple. If as an author you’re a free agent, Amazon is your ally.

If you’re young, you probably don’t sit around longing for the lost simplicity and glamor of an earlier publishing era you never knew anyway and which may or not have existed. Considering our relative freedom to write what we want and the digital technologies that enable micropublishing, America in 2014 is a pretty good place to be a writer if you really have to be a writer. And like I always say to my friends who lament being overweight, don’t let them tell you that you take up too much of the world. It’s the world that takes up too much of you. 

Tanyo Ravicz grew up in California. He attended Harvard University and settled for many years in Alaska, mainly in Fairbanks and Kodiak. In Alaska he worked as (among other things) a wildland firefighter, cannery hand and schoolteacher. His novel-in-progress, Wildwood, draws on his experience of homesteading with his family on Alaska’s Kodiak Island. Tanyo’s classic short novel Ring of Fire, which explores the conflict between an Alaskan big-game hunting guide and the Crown Prince of Rahman, will be released in a new digital edition in 2014. His books include A Man of His Village, relating the odyssey of a migrant farm worker from Mexico to Alaska, and Alaskans, a selection of his short fiction.

Is Self-Publishing Right for You?

Following my post on “The Way In: Where to Publish,” a reader wrote with questions so well-articulated that I asked if I might answer in a more public forum. Here, our Q & A:

Q: I am so disappointed I can't be there for your self-publishing seminar. I just read your piece on what happened with Dana (Stabenow) after she decided to re-issue her own out-of-print titles. It certainly helped that she had a big name and a built-in following. What I'm curious about are NEW novelists who don't go through gatekeeping but who decide to digitally self-publish (the ones who do actually have their work proofread first!). How do these authors fare financially?

A: According to recent data, it’s true that hybrid authors who have already established a following among readers fare better than authors launching a first title on their own. But keep in mind we’re talking averages here. Some traditionally published authors have no idea who their readers are or how they would reach them through even a basic tool like an e-newsletter. Others, like Dana, have been effectively connecting directly with readers (hers call themselves “Danamanics”) for years.

On the other hand, there certain books from newly published authors that surprise everyone by breaking through the clutter and noise to achieve phenomenal sales. The odds are very much against this, but it does happen, for both self-published and traditionally published books. The difference, of course, is that traditional publishers do their best not only to predict the books that become big hits but also to try to make them hits by throwing lots of money into creating buzz about those titles. Increasingly, however, publishers are less likely to have such confidence (as demonstrated by large marketing budgets) in brand new authors.

                                                   

Q: Without a built-in audience for your work, self-promoting is a LOT of work, whether you use social media as your main marketing reach or not. It's still tough to get peoples' attentions, and when books aren't reviewed, either, well...

A: Even as the market shifts and fewer publications are doing formal reviews of new books, reviews still matter within the “literary community” — that is, for librarians and booksellers and what we might call, in perhaps a snooty way, “discriminating readers.” For these readers, reviews provide social proof; that is, the book is acknowledged as having merit by “smart” readers who move within their cultural and intellectual circles.

But of course readers choose books for many reasons. The so-called “beach read” is a great example. Even readers who care deeply about the social proof of reading well-reviewed books will choose something lighter and more entertaining in certain contexts in which reader reviews in online venues may play more directly into their choices than reviews in places like Kirkus or Booklist.

All of that being said: yes, it’s tough to get people’s attentions. When if you land a book deal with a traditional publisher, you’re going to be expected to self-promote; in fact, in weighing their publishing options, some authors have chosen the independent route because they understand that, either way, they’ll have to do most of their own marketing. Why not have control of the process while earning substantial more on each sale, these authors reason, which means of course that they need fewer sales to generate the same income.

Q: I have met someone in Europe who recently published her novel on Amazon's self-publishing division (my understanding is that Amazon also has its own imprint and that they have an editorial staff in-place for those who go through the Amazon gatekeeping route, but maybe I'm mistaken about this?)

A: Amazon is a living, breathing animal that’s always prowling new territories and adapting to market changes even as it helps create those changes. As they monitor the market and look for opportunities, they are experimenting with imprints that operate like traditional publishing, with editors and a selection process, but which also have the advantage of working outside some of the usual industry practices, incorporating strategies such as flexible e-book pricing, for instance, and print-on-demand instead of warehousing large numbers of books. Within the traditional industry, Amazon still gets branded as the evil empire, and that may potentially affect whether titles from some of its imprints get featured in bricks-and-mortar stores, but in terms of overall sales, I’m not sure how much that will matter to Amazon’s bottom line.

Q: Do we have marketing info on what genres are selling more than others in self-publishing world? Is it sci-fiction and fantasy? Or romance? Is anyone self-publishing literary fiction, for example?  And what's happening with self-published NONFICTION?  

A: Marketing data from all aspects of publishing, especially traditional, is notoriously hard to come by and difficult to interpret. Within the traditional system of distribution, this is primarily because of returns—there might be high front-end orders of a particular title, but when it doesn’t sell as expected, those “sales” are diminished by a high number of returned books, and the reporting on that comes in long after the launch.

In 2011, when the floodgates opened and the self-publishing stigma began to fade, the change happened first in genre fiction, especially romance, where readers care less about whether a title is reviewed in Publishers Weekly and more about when they can get their hands on the next book by an author they love. Nonfiction in certain categories also does well, especially self-help in various niche markets that are underserved by traditional publishers, who with their aversion to risk equate platform with celebrity status. Oddly, biography does well through independent channels; I’m not sure why.

Literary fiction, which is what I write, has been late to the party—or, if you think of it in another way, literary fiction is an area of self-publishing in which the market is less crowded and therefore offers some unique opportunities for authors who are willing to think outside the traditional boxes. Amazon knows this: they were one of the big sponsors at this year’s AWP, and you’ll also see their Kindle Direct Publishing on the masthead page of The Writer’s Chronicle.

In one sense, the literary community has been self-publishing for years; they just haven’t called it that. Literary journals don’t depend on traditional publishers. For the most part, the writers whose work they publish aren’t concerned about getting paid. And the readers are few – probably on par with the numbers who read the average independently published e-book. Yes, journals have gatekeepers, but other than that, the model is not all that different.

Another sign that writers who deem themselves “literary” are exploring new self-publishing options: an interview (well worth reading) on self-publishing in a recent issue of Poets & Writers.

Q: I know the stigma for self-publishing has greatly diminished but I am still one of those dinosaurs who is holding out and trying to get my manuscript picked up by a brick-and-mortar publisher.  This is also why it may take me 10 more years!

A: It’s true that the stigma associated with self-publishing has diminished, and it will continue to fall away as more authors of truly fine books embrace that option, assisted in some cases by forward-thinking agents like Kristin Nelson who help their clients navigate in both arenas. Within a few years, we may even find that much of this binary thinking about publishing slips away.

I don’t see authors who hold exclusively to the traditional route as “dinosaurs.” There’s a certain validation that comes from getting through the traditional gates. Authors who’ve traditionally published, as Dana and I have, enjoy the psychological advantage of our work having been validated in this way. Authors need to follow the paths best suit them and their books.

Time is certainly one factor to consider. Waiting is important to the creative process. But waiting for someone to decide your book is worth taking a chance on in an increasingly crowded marketplace? For me, that kind of waiting is a source of huge frustration.  

Q: There's this attitude from certain "writers" out there that they can just put what they want up on the Internet so that their friends and family can share in what they're doing as a kind of writing album or something, to say "I have a novel, or I have a book of poetry, and you can buy it cheap on _____."  Meanwhile, other writers are working themselves to death honing their craft, going through the submission and rejection agonies, paying close attention to language, attending writing seminars and degree programs, studying all aspects of structure and storytelling, etc. And they pull their hair out or have nervous breakdowns while they wait, and wait, and wait.

A: The floodgates have opened, that’s for certain. What I see is a distinction between writer and author—and please note, I’m creating my own semantics here; others use the terms differently.

If you’re literate, you can write. And if you have something to say, something to share, and you want your friends and family to be able to read it, go ahead and put it out there on one of the digital platforms. It can cost as little as nothing. But don’t succumb to any delusions that your work will be discovered beyond your own circles.

Authors have a different mindset. For them, writing isn’t a hobby; it’s a way of life. They care deeply about craft and recognize that they’re always learning. They aim for each book to be better than the one before. On the merits of their work, they hope to connect with readers they’ll never meet, though they understand that in today’s market, regardless of how their books enter, they’ll need to be strategic about helping that happen. Are they going to wait and wait and wait for validation? That’s up to them.

Books by all these people, books that are gems and books that are trash, these co-exist in the marketplace, now more than ever. With publishing that’s accessible to all, titles by “writers” will always outnumber titles by “authors.” But readers can tell the difference.