Some thoughts on marketing and publicity

I can write about this from two perspectives: as a published writer and as a publisher. I have almost finished completing a proposal for an academic book. It is actually finished but festering on my computer while I get some distance and revise once more before I send it off. As with all non-fiction, you write a detailed proposal before you write any of the book apart from maybe a sample chapter or two.  And yet still more of the questions were about marketing strategies and how I would self-promote than about the content I was going to produce.

Those of us who write fiction are only too well aware that our publishers expect us to get involved. In fact, successful writers can become so caught up in a whirlwind of book signing, local newspaper and radio interviews and readings - and for children’s authors also school visits - that they don’t have time to work on the next one.  

Shouldn’t the publisher be organising all of that? Yes, of course, to a certain extent. Yet there are only so many hours in the day and pennies in the budget. There is actually only a small window of opportunity. A publishing house, big or small, has to at some time move on to the next book and the next author. The budget only goes so far: review copies, a book trailer, and submission for prizes. Which is best? Small press or the Big Six?  The former has fewer overheads; the latter has a higher profile. Word of mouth is the most effective tool in both cases.

Sadly, the Beatles weren’t the only rock band who were that good in the ‘60’s, much as I love them. Some serendipitous circumstances came together.  I’ve read some work submitted for university assignments that is far better than some published work and I’ve read some published work that has made me cringe. There is a lot of subjectivity in this business.

On a personal note I’d like to say that I find it far easier to promote other people’s work than my own. This is where word of mouth – or word of Twitter, Facebook or Amazon review and even words in blogs come in. Quality will out but must be seen. The biggest favour we can do ourselves and each other is to shout about something we find good. Yet, if I shout about my own work too hard, or about what I’ve published, it might not quite be believable. Maybe a way forward is for us always to proactively flag up quality when we see it in others.               

        

Can we stop this snobbism about print-on-demand, please?

We have twice been approached by a bookshop recently asking us to confirm whether a certain title was “a print-on-demand” title. Aside from the fact that they were asking about a book that was not one of our titles, nor did it carry one of our ISBNs and neither was the author anyone we had ever published, I found the question a little insulting.
We do not publish “print-on-demand” titles. We publish anthologies of short stories, novels, cookery books and language learning books. We do use print-on-demand technology and we also publish on Kindle. Some booksellers and award givers seem to equate print-on-demand with self-publishing. We’ve recently not been allowed to enter a very good novel for an award because the committee do not accept “print-on-demand” titles. Yet we put our work through all of the usual editorial processes and we’ve published – and rejected - some prestigious people.
Most publishers of school text books use print-on-demand. Why on earth should they print the books until they have sold them? Print-on-demand orders are usually fulfilled in about 48 hours. The customer gets a brand new book where the white pages haven’t burnt and the book has not got dusty sitting on a shelf. Print-on-demand avoids waste of paper, ink and manpower. Unit cost is higher, but a publisher can still make a respectable profit per until sold and there is still room to give the author a respectable royalty.

Print-on-demand is a real boon for the small independent publisher. There is little financial outlay and overhead in getting a book ready for distribution. There is no need for warehousing and the print-on-demand company will often waive shipping costs as they have so many books going out to the same distributors and wholesalers. It allows the publisher to take a risk on a book that is perhaps less commercially robust but has something important to say.
And surely it’s good for the environment?

The trouble with Amazon is that it sells books

There’s a lot I like about Amazon – particularly as a reader and book buyer. Sometimes it serves me well as an author, though not always. It’s good free advertising / distribution for me as a publisher. What we have to remember, though, is that it is a business that wants to make money by selling books. And hooray. It supports books. It could probably make tons more money if it sold something else. Well, of course it does, but even selling electrical equipment has not stopped it giving enough attention to the books.  

It does mean as publishers we can’t dictate what it puts on its site. We would like it to put correct and full information. It doesn’t always. Goodness knows why, but sometimes it fails to add an image even though the image was supplied at the same time as the ISBN to Nielsens. It picks up what it will of the blurb and that might not be always the choice morsel you yourself would have picked.

There is a rather quirky thing that happens with some of our anthologies. We have a lovely author, Sally Angell, and Amazon often make it look as if the whole book has been written by her. It is of course because they put the authors in alphabetical order for as much space as they have. I occasionally I get lucky with the surname James and the other Bridge House partner, Debz Hobbs-Wyatt gets lucky even more often. But it makes you feel for the Smiths, Thomases, Wilsons and Wrights.

“They’ve left my name off. Please rectify it,” they cry. But we can’t. We can’t put anything on Amazon other than what it allows in the publisher’s space. And no, we are NOT going to start posting reviews under false names. That is totally unethical.

When a book first comes out, Amazon will often claim it is going to take three weeks to get it, or it is an unusual book that is hard to find. Other online stores don’t tend to do that. When we used to do all our own distribution, they would sometimes even say we were out of print. Now that we are hooked up to about 30 distributers and wholesalers, they don’t do that. But it stays with the three week message until one person has ordered a book. You see, it is protecting its relationship with its customer. It usually actually delivers well with the three weeks and delights the clients. It’s a “just in case” message.  

We could give a much bigger discount. We give booksellers 35%. Amazon would really like 55%. They’d risk keeping a stock form the word go with that. Because we are a small publisher we just can’t do that – we can’t buy or distribute the bigger print runs that would bring the unit cost down enough. But 35% is perfectly respectable as are our prices compared with other indie publishers. And Amazon still works for us. It does offer purchasers a small discount on the RRP usually.

What authors and publishers must realise is that Amazon is not designed as a marketing tool for us, even though we can, with a bit of care, use it quite effectively as such. It is designed as a marketing tool for itself and we have to respect that. And I wouldn’t be without it, despite its faults, as an author, as a book-buyer or as a publisher.                                 

The new professional self-publishers co-operative?

There was some discussion again yesterday about self-publishing. There are a lot of issues that self-publishers face that are also concerns for the small press, such as the three imprints I work with.  

It’s relatively easy to produce a book, especially if you have the experience to edit it well, if you actually know how to write and if you know a little about how the industry works. Marketing it and distributing it are hard work and for many writers these are thankless tasks. You probably need to spend about 75% of your available time on these activities. The small press and self-publisher alike lack the resources that the big publishing houses have at their fingertips. Poor self-published books have put even the independent booksellers off. So, even though you still are expected to get into promoting your book if you’re published mainstream, you have a bit of a head start because of the contacts the publisher has built up over the years.

Eyes light up and cash registers ring in heads when one thinks about a print on demand 130 page book that can sell at least £5.00 costing just £2.00 to produce and an e-book published on Kindle or with Smashwords with no upfront costs. However, there are still set up costs for the print book – about £50.00 -,  ISBNs for all books,  copy to British Library for the print book, cover design for all books (minimum £250 – artists have to live too and even stock pictures can cost a fair amount if you do sell well) editing and copy editing. Yes, the latter two are important. The author is the last person who should do this for their own work. Editors and copy-editors have to live too. If you do everything properly, perhaps throwing in a few review copies – and many self-publishers are beginning to do everything that professionally – you’re rapidly approaching £1000 set-up costs. And you risk, unless your marketing is brilliant, not selling a single copy.

You can keep control of the finances – you can vow not to publish a second book until you have recouped the costs for the first. So, small press and self-publishers can avoid the commercial pressures that the big guys face. They don’t  have people on salaries and grand offices in London to support. A professional small press may or may not have offices – many don’t – and their only overhead might be membership of the Independent Publishers Guild. Many self-publishers find it commercially advisable to create themselves as sole-trader publishing houses and therefore face exactly the same issues.       

So might it be canny to team up with a business expert and agree to share the profit? That seems a good idea. There is, however, a snag. Business experts can make tons more money for the same amount of effort promoting other businesses. You really need either a business guru who has a love of books or a writer who has also got a good business head. Both creatures are rather rare.

At Bridge House and The Red Telephone we’ve worked on a profit share basis. Editors, copy-editors designers and publicists have worked really hard for 10p an hour (ish) - we’ve had one or two books that have not gone into profit. Chapeltown is operating in a slightly different way – a mixture of buying in services and profit share amongst the family members that run it. GoldenfordPublishing, a small press based in Guilford, is a type of cooperative, though not quite. Read up about them – they are really interesting!  But at least all of these small presses have absolute freedom in their creative choices. No need to have “fart” in the title of a children’s book – that was part of the debate yesterday.

We do pay royalties but they’re peanuts. That doesn’t preclude getting a best-seller one day. And of course loads of peanuts make a feast, which could also be the business model for the self-publisher. If you can make the promotional side of it palatable, you would at least be spending your time doing what you love until the feast appears.

Is there a way around some of those extra expenses? I’m thinking here of the old baby-sitting circles. Could those of us who wish to self-publish, edit, copy-edit, design and promote for each other? Could we even get artists involved?

If anyone is interested in this idea, email me at editor@chapeltownbooks.co.uk. I’m going to be away 24 August to 15 September, so I’ll collate any responses after that.    

A book promotion policy

Authors have to get behind their books these days. So, I’m taking some of my own advice and getting behind Hipp-O-Dee-Doo-Dah.

I’m offering:

-          Free school visits – up to 90 minutes. Brief talk about Children’s Hospices UK – brief talk about writing. Readings. Q & A. Book sales and signing.

-          Talks to other groups along the same lines as mentioned above.  

-          Signed copies via my web site

-          Support to a more general fund-raising event for Children’s Hospices UK – I’d donate a further £1.00 per book for any sold at such an event.

And now a plea. If anyone has any connection with Daniel Radcliffe, who supports a sub-group of Children’s Hospices – please point him my way.  

Fascinating projects – where love is more important than money

You don’t get rich in publishing. Mind you. Some do okay. Or they wouldn’t have posh offices on the Strand or in other locations in London. Even so, compared with other big companies and multi-nationals, publishing houses are the poor cousins. Most of us are in the industry because we love books and writers.

I went to a seminar on design yesterday at the InternationalAnthony Burgess Foundation, run by Literature North West. Talks in the forms of Power Point presentations were given by David Pearson and Alistair Hall.

Pearson designs for Penguin, mainly covers. He knows his stuff, and as well as showing us many beautiful examples of his work, he talked with enthusiasm about how he worked.

Hall, equally talented and very diverse in the projects he undertakes, showed us some of his work but talked at length about a project that is run mainly by volunteers.

Pearson has also set up his own publishing company with a partner. They don’t make much money but they do publish exquisite art-rich books.

Both designers have to work on spec as well as on commission. They obviously do manage to make a living by their art but because they do so much and to such perfection, the hourly rate is not good.

But do they care? I suspect not. Goodness, I work all hours God sends on writing, publishing and promoting them both. I do have to ensure that I get paid properly so that my work is valued correctly. Often that is not easy. But it is a vocation, not a job, in the end. The days and weeks whizz by. I no longer feel the need for holiday or retail therapy, though relaxation and inspirations is important and attending this seminar was a form of both.  

Perhaps Hall’s project demonstrates very well what I’m what I’m saying. Check out http://www.ministryofstories.org/news/hoxton-street-monster-supplies-needs-your-product-ideas/                 

Story is king - but alone does not make a good book

I’m reading a self-published book. It was sent to me because the author wanted a mainstream publisher to take it on. Very flattering: our little indie has been labelled “mainstream”.

There is a lot wrong with the book, and I hope my publishing company would never publish anything as bad. Lots of run-on sentences. Punctuation all over the place. Chapter titles in the wrong places. Even hideous mistakes in the blurb. Overwriting. Wasted words. More legal information than a lay person can cope with.   

And yet: I keep on reading. The story is gripping. I’m a just a few pages from the end and there are still twists and turns. I’m resisting the urge to look at the last page. I’m sure this would make an excellent six-part drama.  

The book has sold 500 copies on the efforts of the author. It has a good endorsement from a person in the same trade as one of its main characters.

Sadly, though, it makes a fool of its author.

It should have been edited.

Self-publishers must get their work edited. Unfortunately, this is one of the major costs in publishing a book. The most successful self-publishers do this. I’m about to self-publish a book and I am paying an editor. I’m fairly certain they won’t have too much work to do, but they’ll spot any incongruities, things that aren’t clear and the odd typo or grammatical mistake.    

Sadly, the book I’ve been asked to read would take so much fixing that a publishing house hasn’t got enough editor hours to do that. A free-lance would earn quite a lot editing this book, but can the author afford to pay? The editor would have to rewrite the book, in effect. So, it would be rejected by a publisher. Shame! It’s a great story.