Backlist or not?

A poet friend of mine is on the editorial board of an online poetry publication. Such publications are pretty well there forever, though earlier works gradually disappear from the search engines. One poet asked if their work could be taken down. The publishers didn’t want to do this. They took the view that this was art of that poet’s work and should stay.

Arguably the same can apply to print-on-demand. The book need never go out of print.  However, that may not necessarily be an advantage. In my area of expertise we’re plagued with constantly changing technology. Books date very quickly. They could become historical fiction but they don’t date quite enough for that. One solution here is to keep the book in print for four years and then re-edit and re-title it. In fact, we’ve just launched a new imprint that does exactly that: Renascienta. 50% profit share with the author.  

Here are some other strategies we use:

• We ask for exclusive rights for one year on stories in our anthologies though are open to them being republished before that.
• We keep books in print until they stop making a profit.
• E-books never go out of print – except single author titles at the author’s request after four years.  
• We’re happy to take down online publications after one year at the author’s request.     

New titles can help to sell backlist. Backlist is part of the author and actually makes significant contribution to an author’s income though sales, PLR and ALCS payments.   

           

      

Managing events

I’ve realised recently that I enjoy creating and managing events. I find this a very creative act. Recently I’ve been involved in organising:

·         A conference about the young adult novel

·         A celebration for all of our authors

·         A re-launch of one of my books

All of these activities are quite creative and up there with writing and editing books and creating lesson plans.

I see these events as going through various stages:

• Deciding what is to be achieved.
• Finding the right venue.
• Thinking about the needs of the guests – charge a ticket price, make it free, supply food and drink, have books on sale?
• Getting out invites and general publicity. You’re usually okay, I find, slightly overbooking. There’s always someone who has to cancel at the last moment.
• Checking over the logistics – again and again and again  
• On the day just enjoying it. Be prepared for the worst case scenario and know how to deal with it, keep a vision of the best outcome and know that your event will be somewhere in between.

It is just such fun seeing the acceptances coming in. I usually use Ticket Source or Eventbrite. Both are really useful.

It’s also really important to send a follow up and get feedback.

And the next one will be: 3 December 2016, London, for Bridge House, CafeLit, Red Telephone and Shelagh Delaney writers.       

   

The mystery of marketing and publicity

All writers these days need to be involved with marketing and publicity. As well as being a publisher I happen also to be a published author and one of my publishers is this week promoting my book along with two others.

This will actually involve me in quite a bit of activity. I shall in fact:

·         Add a few posts to my web site / blog about the book.

·         Tell people about some of the research involved.

·         Post some excerpts.

·         Post some quotes from reviews.

·         Schedule some of these as technically I’m actually on holiday this week and on one of the days I’ll be travelling. (Ah! When you work for yourself you never actually stop working - good job we love what we do, but then that is why we’ve chosen this.)

So, we all do things like this. Then odd things then begin to happen. A less frequently  visited page about a work suddenly gets a lot of likes. Sales go up bizarrely. You suddenly get a lot of activity around author visits. At least you can check out the latter but the mystery remains: each of the six schools came across you another way.

A writer I know who self-publishes and who has given up the day job reckons to work seven days a week and spends 50% of his time writing and 50% on online promotion. He’s very shrewd about his search engine optimization. Is this an artistic compromise? He’s deliberately including words that he knows will attract hits.

We all need to think about these matters. In the end, the books must sell so that both author and publisher can earn a living.            

The excitement of a new call to submissions

It’s always good getting submissions when we’ve asked for them. Like all publishers we get a lot of what we’ve not asked for. I’m afraid we simply delete those. Life is too short. Do read the guidelines carefully.

Among the various imprints for which I work there are two calls out at the moment: one is the Bridge House Baubles. This is for our annual anthology that we hope to publish on 15 November 2016. We’re looking for short, snappy, sparkly stories that brighten up the darker nights like baubles enhance the Christmas tree. We’re not talking about things that give you a good belly laugh nor anything that is overly sentimental. Feel good is fine, yes, but just a light touch. You’ll know it when you think of it. Find full details here.

Chapeltown is seeking to put together single author collections of flash fiction.  We favour the really short variety and want to make beautiful hard copy books but we will also publish them electronically. Proactive authors who will give reading and do tours can do well here.

In addition CaféLit is of course open for submissions all year round. And we put the best into an annual collection.  

This really is the fun stuff for us. We enjoy watching the submissions come in, making the selections and of course informing the successful writers.  We very much enjoy our yearly get together where we have a chance to put name so to faces.

Want to join the fun? Well get submitting!

         

Shipping disappointments

Has something gone awry in the courier world?

We have accounts with Lighting Source for our imprints Bridge House, Chapeltown and The Red Telephone. We offer our authors a discount of 25% on our recommended retail price (RRP) and free shipping on orders of five or more books. If the author can’t get free shipping, shipping costs on fewer than five books will push the price over the RRP. At this point the author is better off ordering from Amazon. We can offer this free shipping if we can use the economy offer though sometimes, especially for orders abroad, the tracked shipping is just as cheap and we still make a small profit so can still offer a small royalty. Generally, the orders using the economy untracked shipping have arrived within a few days, taking only a little longer than tracked system. We have been trading since 2008 without any problems.   

Not so this time, however:

·         One order to the Republic of Ireland never arrived at all

·         Another order to the Republic of Ireland was badly damaged

·         The re-order for the above has still not been delivered.

·         We are out of pocket as we have replaced these two orders

·         All other customers have reported exceptionally slow delivery

In addition, I am waiting for a delivery from an Amazon seller. Okay, so the delivery should be between 12 January and 2 February, but more often than not in the past the parcels have arrived sooner rather than later and often earlier that the date stated. I really could do with that book!

Yes, and a few months back a computer we ordered for our son never arrived.

What is going on?

Is it to do with the recent floods? Was there a mini-boom at Christmas and there was the backlog like the ones we used to have in the “good” old days? Are there redundancies and disillusionment in the courier world?  

It’s a serious issue for us and we may have to reconsider how we operate unless someone can reassure us that this is only a blip.