When—and How—Should You Publish?

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A short story by a relatively unknown author gets top billing with a major urban news outlet. Sounds like fantasy, right?

Last week, KGW Portland, opened 6 pm news with an author reading from his recently published speculative fiction, an unconventional short story set in the moments following a big Cascadia earthquake.

Disasters—even fictional ones—tend to pique interest, and people in Portland are understandably interested in a seismic event that could potentially destroy their city, but there’s more behind how this particular story got noticed. Author Adam Rothstein opted to publish “Five Minutes” on Motherboard, an online magazine and video channel. The first of a five-part series, the story opens on a page featuring an image that undulates the way the land does during a major quake, an effect you can’t achieve in traditional print or even in e-book format.

For the IBPA Independent, I’m working on an article called “Updates from the Digital Frontier.” As I interview publishing experts, it’s clear that much conventional thinking about when and how to publish needs to be refreshed.

When the meteoric rise in e-book sales slowed, sighs of relief sounded from many corners of the industry. Revolution over, frontier closed. We could all go back to business as usual.

According to digital publishing experts, nothing could be further from the truth. When pondering how to publish, these experts say, we should be thinking beyond the traditional book, either print or digital. We should be thinking beyond containers. We should be thinking instead about purpose and audience, and then about seeking the best means of reaching these, regardless of how unconventional. Rothstein, it seems, did exactly that.

What Marshall McLuhan asserted decades ago—that the medium is the message—applies now more than ever. But even as options expand, certain aspects of when to publish—and how—remain evergreen. The ability to view your work with a certain degree of objectivity is one indicator that you’re ready to think about publishing. Another is that you have a good understanding of your audience and purpose, allowing you to assess which formats and approaches to publishing will be most appropriate for your project.

Long ago, we used to say that when you could envision your book on a shelf, you might be ready to pursue publication. These days, that visioning might not involve a shelf at all. Instead, the best way to reach your audience and achieve your purpose might be via an app or an enhanced website. It might even be a short story that turns up on the evening news.

For authors who want to know more about their publishing options and how they can know when their projects are ready, Deb has written What Every Author Should Know and Write Your Best Book. She hasn’t yet figured out how to get these projects top billing on the 6 o’clock news, but she’s working on it.

Sell That Book!

Image source: wikihow.com

Do you dream of selling your book to a big New York publisher? 

I’ve done that, but the market is ever-changing, and so it’s always nice to get an update on what counts most in today’s acquisition decisions.

Here, a few items of note from a recent session on the subject with literary agent Jeff Kleinman:

• A manuscript must deliver. That means an agent or editor can’t put it down. It’s gush-worthy.
• Want to impress a big publisher with your social media presence? You’ll need at least 25,000 followers—and that’s just in one spot, not combined across platforms.
• Publishers want big books, the ones that will generate big sales.
• If you write fiction, agents and publishers most want your first novel.
• If you write fiction or memoir, your manuscript must have narrative urgency.
• If an agent or editor tells you that she didn’t fall in love with your manuscript, that generally means the characters aren’t strong enough.
• Your log line, or sales handle, is crucial. It should represent your core understanding of your book. Drill it down. It has to travel, meaning that it’s pithy and repeatable.
• You should know exactly where your book would be shelved in a bookstore.
• You should know the audience for your book, not in general (i.e. middle-aged women) but in terms of clearly delineated groups.
• When your book goes before a publisher’s sales team, it’s good to have two noteworthy authors lined up endorse it—not at the meeting, but in cover blurbs if the book is accepted.
• A huge problem: authors send out their work before it’s ready.

Co-founder of 49 Writers and founder of the independent authors cooperative Running Fox Books, Deb Vanasse has authored sixteen books. Her most recent are Write Your Best Book, a practical guide to writing books that rise above the rest; What Every Author Should Know, a comprehensive guide to book publishing and promotion; and Cold Spell, a novel that “captures the harsh beauty of the terrain as well as the strain of self-doubt and complicated family bonds,” according to Booklist. Deb lives and works on Hiland Mountain outside of Anchorage, Alaska, and at a cabin near the Matanuska Glacier. A regular contributor to the IBPA Independent, her views here are her own.

Ten Truths You Need to Know about Publishing, No Matter How You Do It

I want to speak a moment to those of you who aren’t “making it” in publishing the way you’d hoped. J.A. Jance, Dan Brown, James Patterson, J.D. Robb: you can quit reading now.

For the rest of you—those who’ve been struggling to place your book with an agent, those who’ve placed a book but suffered disappointments when it comes to sales and readership, those who’ve published on your own but aren’t finding readers—these ten truths are for you:

No one way of publishing is better than the rest. Each route—Big Five, small press, self-publishing, hybrid blends—has its own advantages and disadvantages. Inform yourself of the options and choose the path that’s best for you and your book.

Finding readers isn’t easy. To upload an e-book or a print-on-demand file to a vendor and hit “publish” is simple. But if you want readers, you’re going to have to do a lot more, which is why authors continue to publish through traditional channels.

There’s a content flood, and it’s not going to recede anytime soon. As reported by author William Dietrich in a piece published by the Huffington Post, an estimated 130 million books have been published throughout human history. That number is growing by the minute—and with e-books, titles stay in print forever. Bottom line: the supply of books far exceeds the demand.

Statistically speaking, your chances of “making it” as an author are small. Dietrich cites a 2004 Nielson Bookscan report which found that of 1.2 million books tracked by Bookscan, only 2 percent sold more than 5,000 copies. And that was before the digital publishing revolution set off the real content flood.

Trying to second-guess the market can be frustrating—and unproductive. It’s great to know your brand and your niche, but don’t try to remake who you are to fit someone’s ideas about what’s selling and not.

Real advertising takes money—lots of it—and the returns may be slim. Publishers spend big money advertising books by celebrity authors, and not so much on the rest. The small budget they have for your book—or the little you can afford, if you self-publish—will do little to generate sales if the book isn’t one that captivates readers.

There’s no gaming the system. Yes, it helps to have connections if you’re trying to publish through traditional channels. Yes, getting in on the ground floor of the self-publishing revolution was wonderful timing. But as far as what you can do right here and now to get noticed, there are no “tricks.” Learn what you can, but don’t believe anyone who claims to know the secret to becoming a bestselling author.

Wonderful books are overlooked, and some that aren’t so wonderful sell more than anyone could have predicted. As they say, there’s no accounting for taste. But if sales are steady, and if a title stays in print long enough and is popular within a niche market, it may in the end outsell certain flash-and-burn bestsellers.

We all measure success a little differently, and that’s how it should be. Don’t appropriate someone else’s idea of what makes you successful. If your primary aim is to make money, there are better ways to do it.

Write what you love and make each book the best it can be. That’s the one aspect of publishing over which you have complete control.

The author of sixteen books with six different presses, Deb Vanasse is co-founder of the 49 Alaska Writing Center and founder of Running Fox Books, an independent press and author collective. Her most recent books are What Every Author Should Know, a 5-star Readers' Favorite, and Write Your Best Book. While Deb is a regular contributor to the IBPA Independent, the opinions expressed here are solely her own. A sought-after teacher and editor, she enjoys writing at her mountain home in Alaska. This post also ran at www.selfmadewriter.blogspot.com.

Publishing: Do You Want to Grow Your Business?

(Credit: iStockphoto/stokato)

I’ve never had any formal management training. Yet I’ve ended up running more organizations than I ever intended.

It started when I was a first year teacher, age twenty-two, and I took over leadership of a small school as a principal-teacher, which entailed doing everything that a principal does plus teaching a partial class load. From there, I developed and ran a new program at a community college—the college president even said he’d help groom me for his position, but I declined. I led a high school language arts department. I ran a real estate brokerage. I ran a writing center. I run an author’s collective.

I’ve also run a host of small businesses: educational supplies; a bed and breakfast; educational services; writing and editing services; a book publishing venture. In each of these, the only person I supervised (and answered to) is myself. That’s how I like it. Despite (or because of?) my experience, I don't enjoy running things, especially when it involves supervision.

When I started publishing on my own, I vowed from the start that I wasn’t going to get sidetracked from my creative work. I wasn’t going to start acquiring books by other authors and dealing with all the hassles that come from growing into a bigger operation. Personalities. Expectations. Production schedules that affect anyone besides me.

For me, it feels like the right decision. But from a business standpoint, it may not be the smartest.

I’m working on a series articles for The Independent, the monthly magazine of the Independent Book Publishers Association. One of them is on self-published authors who grew their own highly profitable publishing companies. Like Dominque Raccah, who founded Sourcebooks in a spare bedroom back in 1987, most of these incredibly successful businesses started with a single title.

I’m interested to discover how—and why—people like Raccah made the leap into full-fledged publishing. Who knows? Perhaps what I learn will change my publishing vision.

What about you? What sort of nudge would it take for you to expand your publishing reach—and increase your profit potential—by handling titles other than ones you’ve written yourself? If nothing could convince you to expand beyond your own work, why not?

(Feel free to leave your name and a book title with your comment if you’d like me to consider it for the article).

Co-founder of 49 Writers and founder of the independent authors cooperative Running Fox Books, Deb Vanasse has authored sixteen books. Her most recent are Write Your Best Book, a practical guide to writing books that rise above the rest; What Every Author Should Know, a comprehensive guide to book publishing and promotion; and Cold Spell, a novel that “captures the harsh beauty of the terrain as well as the strain of self-doubt and complicated family bonds,” according to Booklist. Deb lives and works on Hiland Mountain outside of Anchorage, Alaska, and at a cabin near the Matanuska Glacier.

Publishing 2015: Forecast from the Trenches

I’ll begin with the same disclaimers as last year: I have no crystal ball. I’m not clairvoyant. And I live in Alaska, pretty much as far as a writer can get from the Right Coast publishing industry without needing a passport. But I’ve published several books in a variety of ways—mostly traditional, but also independently and in hybrid arrangements. And I try to keep up where I can, believing that the view from the trenches is sometimes the clearest.

So, from here in my mountainside office, where fingers meet the keyboard, I offer my for-what-they’re-worth thoughts on trends in publishing for 2015:

·         Amazon still rules—and they’re changing the rules: Traditional publishers don’t like Amazon making the rules, especially when it comes to e-book pricing. Now indie authors are complaining too. Quoted in a recent New York Times article, one author complains that Amazon is “recreating that whole unfair bogus system where they make the money and we authors survive on the pennies that are left.” News flash: Amazon has always been in this for the money. A specific indie author complaint has to do with Kindle Unlimited, a new (in 2014) subscription program that features only title by authors enrolled in the KDP Select (Amazon-exclusive) option. KU titles get more visibility than others on Amazon, but the payment per download is less, sometimes substantially, than it is for straight royalty sales. (For details, see the most recent Author Earnings Report.)

·         As an author, the numbers aren’t in your favor: Simple math demonstrates that it’s not only the KU effect that’s causing indie author income to slide. There’s also way more inventory than ever before, partly because books no longer go out of print. By the numbers: In 2010, there were 600,000 Kindle e-books; four years later, there were 3 million. The net result is that it’s exponentially more difficult for new work to get noticed, no matter how you publish.

·         There are new gates: As evidenced by the recent kerfuffle between Kindle Direct and an author over the number of hyphens in his book, Amazon is increasing its efforts to make sure the book products it sells (yes, dear author, you are a supplier, nothing more) have some quality. Amazon also promotes book from its own imprints over other titles, and some of its most lucrative categories, such as Amazon Short Reads, are by invitation only. Amazon's not the only game in town, I know, but their domination of the market continues (see "Amazon rules" above).

·         Entrepreneurial fatigue will have a natural winnowing effect: In traditional publishing, there has always been a hefty attrition rate involving those who want to be published but get discouraged before the right combination of talent, luck, and determination gets them through the gates. That same fatigue will permeate the ranks of indie authors as well. In the end, those with a combination of perseverance and proper motivation (read: not solely for money) will remain, easing the numbers problem a bit.

·         The author services boom will moderate: One of my forthcoming books deals with the Klondike gold rush, so I speak with some authority on this: there’s always lots of money to be made “mining the miners.” A similar phenomenon occurred with the indie publishing revolution, in the form of all sorts of author services companies. Already some are going by the proverbial wayside as authors grow weary of dishing out lots of cash and getting little back in terms of sales.

·         Pricing will level off, with lower per-book returns for the author: A few years back, indie authors could increase their visibility with aggressive pricing. Now, KDP only allows free e-books for five days out of every ninety, and then only for titles enrolled in Kindle Select. 99 cents may be the new free, but readers aren’t as excited about 99 cent books. At the same time, there’s a glut of newsletters alerting readers to discounted titles, diluting the effect even as more and more of them require authors to pay for their listings. Adding to the bottom-line woes of independently published authors: traditional publishers are discounting their e-books more than ever before, offsetting to a certain extent one marketing advantage indies once enjoyed.

·         In this settling-out period, traditional publishers will continue to take few risks: Modest advances will continue to be offered, even for some authors who used to get big ones. The midlist author will continue to get squeezed out—and almost every author ends up at midlist eventually.

·         When it comes to discoverability and visibility, there’s no gaming the system: In the beginning (circa 2009-2011), there were tricks indie authors used to get their books noticed, especially on Amazon. Reality is starting to settle in; see the first bullet point about Amazon making the rules.

·         Readers want to be able to trust what they’re getting: Especially in children’s books, literary fiction, and nonfiction (except self-help), readers want to know that the books they’re getting are actually good, so even if they read on e-devices, they discover books in much the same ways they always have, with online reader reviews as a means of reinforcing their buying decisions.

Though this may all sound discouraging, it’s in fact nothing more than a natural correction in the marketplace, similar to what went on when the music industry went digital. As with musicians, the authors who make it will be those whose primary motivation is passion, tempered with enough good business sense to diversify their incomes from related enterprises that reinforce their branding.

Overall, it’s still an exciting time to be an author. Revel in what you can control: the joy of the creative process; the marvel that you—yes, you—can write and publish a book. Just don’t set yourself up for failure. Now more than ever, you need to educate yourself on your options in publishing and decide what’s best for you and your book.

Options in Publishing: What's Best for You and Your Book?

Quite a lot is written (by the minute, it seems) on publishing. What's tough is sorting through all of it, to compare and contrast and decide what will work best for you. 

While there are numerous variations, you've got basically three viable options for getting your book into print. Having done all three, I'm positioned to give you the low-down on each. You can take it from there, deciding which way to publish is best for you and your book. 

Let's start with traditional (legacy) publishing, which involves placing the book, usually with the help of an agent, through a publisher that restricts acquisitions based on quality and their best guess at sales potential. The exchange of money is strictly from publisher to author (via the agent, assuming there’s one involved), generally in the form of royalties (though some projects are contracted on a flat-fee basis), including (usually) an advance on royalties. Royalties vary, but in general you might expect between 5 and 10 percent of the retail price (the best arrangement) or net (after the publisher subtracts expenses). The agent’s share of the author’s share is generally 15 percent.

The publisher typically prefers to acquire all rights (print, digital, foreign, audio, film, etc.), though if the agent has the wherewithal to place some of those rights, she may negotiate to keep some of those and attempt to place them on the author’s behalf. In all cases, rights may revert to the author if a title goes out of print, but with the advent of digital publishing, books need never go out of print, so rights may in fact remain indefinitely with the publisher.

The benefits of traditional publishing are many. You get the confidence that comes with passing through an increasingly narrow gate—agents typically receive hundreds of queries per day; of those, an individual might take on two or three new clients a year. If your agent places your book with a traditional publisher, you generally get money up front. Your book benefits from professional (those not always top-notch) editing, design, production, marketing, and distribution. It’s more likely (though not guaranteed) to get noticed in the traditional ways—through reviews and other industry “buzz.” The publisher’s sales team will work to get it into bookstores and libraries, though shelf space is limited, so again, there are no guarantees.

But there are downsides, too, beginning with that narrow gate. In all but the rarest of cases (my first book was a happy exception), expect much waiting and disappointment as you work to acquire an agent and then as the agent works to place your book and then again as it gets queued up in the publishing cycle, which in most cases is at least a year or two out. And while your publisher cares about all its books, some books and authors are pre-selected each season to get a lot more attention than others; statistically speaking, odds are that your book will get less rather than more. 

This can be especially frustrating once you realize that if your book doesn’t make a big splash before it enters the market, in the form of pre-orders, you’ll be relegated to the dreaded category of “midlist,” meaning that your book wasn’t a bestseller; thereafter, you’ll find it harder to publish the next book and the next, because those average (or less than average) sales figures will hurt your prospects. In general, publishers are a lot more excited about discovering a brand new author with bestseller potential than continuing to publish an author whose sales record is mediocre. 

Except in those rare cases of instant success, you’ll find a fair amount of disappointment among published authors: they expected more marketing, more books in bookstores, a longer attention span from their publishers, larger royalty checks, more accurate sales data (because of the traditional system of returns, publishers themselves can’t really tell for a year or two whether the pre-orders actually resulted in sales).

Another option is independent, or self-publishing, done with or without the assistance of an author services company. In any case, the author generally keeps all rights, but she also bears the responsibility (and cost) for all editing, design, production, marketing, and distribution of the book. Editing, design, marketing, and some aspects of production (such as generating validated e-book files or professional recordings for audiobooks) are generally handled on a fee-for-hire basis, either through the author services company or through independent contractors.

 In exchange for certain aspects of production (physical printing, for instance) and distribution, authors split royalties with distribution companies like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Lightning Source, with the author’s share generally in the 60 to 70 percent range for e-books, depending on cover price. For print books, independent publishing can be accomplished either through print-on-demand, in which books are printed as they’re ordered, or through offset printing, in which the author orders and warehouses a large number of books. Print on demand arrangements involve a set fee for printing and distribution (the cost varies greatly depending on the physical format of the book) that’s generally paid on a book-by-book basis (though there’s also a set-up fee). In an offset arrangement, the per-book printing price will be cheaper, but keep in mind that there’s no distribution, and to get the best prices, you’ll need to order thousands of copies up front. In either case, if you’re able to get bookstores to carry your books, they’ll expect a 40 to 55 percent discount off the cover price.

By publishing independently, you'll receives more revenue per book sold, and you'll retain control of the entire process, bypassing many of the frustrations of the traditionally published author. Your rights are always yours, to place as you like—if you can generate interest. But independent publishing also has its drawbacks. There’s no money up front; in fact, unless you’re doing the barest of bare-bones efforts, or you’re amazingly talented in every aspect of publishing, you’re going to have to pay - sometimes handsomely - for professional editing, design, production, marketing, and distribution. 

Unless you already have a large and devoted following, you’re going to have to work (and work and work) to get your book noticed among the 3000 or so books that enter the market each day. You'll have no professional sales team to encourage booksellers and librarians to order your book. You’ll get reader reviews, but good luck getting traditional reviews, because there’s still a stigma to self-publishing, a stigma that won’t go away completely until the truly fine books released every day outnumber the bad ones. Figuratively speaking, your book is swimming in an ocean of crap. And unless readers reward you with glowing reviews (no, your momma’s review doesn’t count) and you get the sales figures to match, your confidence starts to feel false.

The third way to publish is less common and harder to pull off: the hybrid arrangement, where some rights are handled independently and some are placed through traditional avenues. My novel Cold Spell is one example. Without an agent, I sold the print English language rights to a traditional publisher. I contracted with an agent to represent the foreign rights. I produced and marketed the e-book through my own press, independent author cooperative Running Fox Books. For the audiobook, I contracted a royalty split with a producer.

A cautionary note: when it comes to publishing, there's a lot of choosing up sides - authors who advocate strongly for the avenue they've chosen. While it's natural to defend one's position, the noise isn't all that helpful when you're trying to make up your mind. Shut it out, study the pros and cons, and choose what's best for you and your book. 

Author Tips: How to Get Your Books into Libraries

If as an author your goal is to reach readers, you want your books to be in libraries. In fact, much of what happens in the new digital marketplace is a revamping of what libraries have been offering for ages: no-cost book sampling; a discovery point for readers to find books and authors they love; and book borrowing as one finds it in programs like Amazon Prime.

Librarians help readers discover books, but how do librarians themselves find the books they’ll acquire? Much depends on the type of library and the librarian’s role within the organization. From a session I attended at a recent conference, some general tips for authors and publishers:

·         Via web searches and telephone queries, find out who’s in charge of collection development/acquisitions at the libraries where you’d like to see your books. Invite these librarians to subscribe to your newsletter. (Need we say it? Don’t spam them.)

·         Besides the standard review journals (Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal), librarians pay attention to book buzz on social media. They also use search engines to check the general chatter around a particular title.

·         Scheduling library events can be a great way to help librarians become familiar with your book. Keep in mind, though, that a library’s charged with serving the public, not selling your books. Therefore, your event should have a hook that will interest readers. Another suggestion: propose a multi-author event.

·         Check your metadata (everything about the book that’s not content). It must be precise and focused not merely on end readers, but on the people who are trying to get your book into the right places. Even something as simple as an unintended space in your metadata entry could mean your book won’t be found.

·         Make sure your book is entered properly in the Library of Congress. If your release is through a small publisher, the PCN system must be used (larger publishers use one called CIP). The PCN record can only be created before the book is produced. The Library of Congress number generated should then be added to the book’s copyright page. The resulting record is called a MARC record. Librarians can also create a MARC record once a book is released, but the process is cumbersome and errors may happen.

·         If you have other titles, you might also check the Worldcat database to find which libraries have them; these would be most likely to purchase a subsequent title.

·         Overall, the consensus of this panel was that the most effective methods for reaching librarians are the ones that cost only time. Aggregated fliers in which authors and publishers buy ad space are more likely to be overlooked than a newsletter from an author or small press that has cultivated a relationship with a particular librarian.

·         Write a good book. If anything about it is sloppy, it’s unlikely a librarian will want it in her collection.

Where to Publish: Why Writers Might Want to Think Small

Many years ago, my first novel came out from Lodestar, an imprint of Dutton, a subsidiary of Penguin. Even then, before it merged with Random House, Penguin was one of the Big Boys. The perfect place to land your first publishing contract.

Or not. I loved my editor, but Big Boy Publisher dumped her and her imprint shortly after my novel came out. They failed to put my book in the proper catalog. They could have cared less about marketing it in Alaska, where the story was set, and where we get upwards of a million book-buying visitors a year.

A few years later, a regional press made an offer on another one of my books. I was leery. It seemed like a step down. But the publisher assured me the marketing would be good and the sales would be strong and the book would stay in print.

He was right. Not only is that book—and three others I sold to the same small press—still in print, but they’ve found five times the readers (and generated proportionately that much more in royalties) than my two books that came out with the Big Boys.

More and more, I look to small presses (including my own) not as a last resort but as my first choice. Here, six reasons why: 

• In general, small presses aren’t chasing “sure thing” celebrity deals. They’ll take more risks both in what they publish and the terms they offer. I placed my forthcoming novel Cold Spell with a small press because they let me keep all except English print rights. That means I’ll produce and market my own digital editions, which I’m convinced will result in more print sales for them. 

• While free to innovate, small presses tend to be backward-thinking in a way I appreciate: They pay a lot more attention to what’s on the pages of the books they produce than what’s on the pages of their balance sheets. Does that make publishing with them more precarious than with the big boys? Maybe. But I’d rather cast my lot with a small group that cares a great deal about good books than with a large group controlled by corporate concerns that they can’t override. 

• A small press works like a team. They know and promote their books. After hearing from so many on the staff of the press that’s handling my book, I wouldn’t be surprised to get an email from the custodian saying that he, too, loves my novel. 

• Though a small press may be as understaffed as a large one, in general I’ve found them more responsive. With the Big Boys, it’s easy to feel shuffled around like you do sometimes when you’re buying a car—like it’s a game in which you’re the pawn being nudged from one person to the next in what ends up being a long way of saying sorry, our hands are tied. 

• The pressure’s off. Small presses don’t set authors up to fail by setting bars that keep changing and in the end are impossible to reach. Midlist authors—one whose books sell steadily but don’t bust the charts—are just fine with them. And guess what? Books stay in print, so authors sell more than they would with a Big Boy who remainders them sooner rather than later. 

• Small presses are more agile, adjusting more readily to new paradigms, as with the growing trend of readers connecting directly with authors. 

All well and good, you may say, but I’ll bet she’d jump at a Big Boy deal if one fell in her lap: more money, more marketing, more bragging rights.

Consider, yes.

Jump, no.

I’d weigh everything I’ve said here against the money and the marketing and whatever short-lived fun I’d have saying a particular book was picked up by a Big Boy, and then I’d choose the path was best for that title.