The Profitable Publisher

I have some very hard-to-hear advice: not all manuscripts are meant for publication. There’s no way for me to know if yours is or is not, but you can do some things to determine whether it is or not. There are other things you can do to try to get traditionally published. I’ve blogged before about those issues.

Lately, you’ll hear a lot about self-publishing. It may be something you should consider, but it may not. What questions should you ask?

1. Why am I publishing this book, and what does that imply about the best path?

2. If a mainstream publisher is your first choice, why are you reading this post? Go read some of my others, and at least a couple of the agent blogs.

3. Your market:
–Who is my book designed for?
–Why will they want it?
–What else do I know about them?
–Where can I find them in large groups, and how can I market to them through those clusters?
When you can answer those questions, you can estimate the likely sales of your book. And yes, this is your problem, ultimately, no matter how you publish. If your books don’t sell, you’re going to have a very hard time accomplishing any goals with them.

4. Should you use a self-publishing service? If your likely sales are more than 50 to 100 copies, then you should probably avoid so-called self-publishing companies. Why? I discussed it here. (These services are also called on-line publishers or POD publishers, by the way.) Using one of them will limit your potential sales in most cases. (I have several other posts on estimating sales, and add more regularly. Walk yourself through them, if you’re not experienced in this industry.)

5. Can I run a business?
5a. Can I sell my book to others?
Being an author is being in business, but the penalties for ignroing most of the implications of this are relatively small. When you self-publish, that’s no longer true. And you’re going to have to be responsible not only for the back office nitty gritty, but also for the marketing. Many authors have a hard time accepting that necessity or performing in those roles. If you’re one, don’t even try self-publishing. It’s not going to make you happy.

6. Do I have the time and energy to learn a lot of new things? Publishing is complicated, and it’s very easy to make expensive mistakes. After your first book, things do get less confusing, but it’s not going to stop being a learning experience. After 18 years in this business, I’m still learning something every day.

7. Do I have enough money to do my book justice? Trade publishers spend about $20,000 or more to launch a single title. You don’t need anything like that much, but you do need some money. You’re going to need to buy ISBNs, and register your copyright. You’re going to need some software, and a lot of books on the various disciplines of design and marketing and production. You may need to pay for a print run, etc.

NB: You do not need a so-called POD publisher in order to print POD. You can directly approach any printer, once you have established your own publishing identity. Buying the ISBN and learning something about the business are more or less prerequisites.

8. Do you really understand what you’re getting into? Publishing is addictive, and most people who try it do get hooked. Before you start, do you have permission from
–your spouse or significant other?
–your immediate family?
–your accountant?
–your mental health professional?
I’m joking, of course, but it’s also true. This will drain your bank account, absorb your time and attention, and generally take over your life. You’ve been warned!

I keep hearing writers say that they can’t get their manuscript published. On closer examination, most of them haven’t tried the right way or they haven’t tried enough. What’s the right way? How much is enough? Here’s my take on it:

1. Start with a manuscript that’s good enough. How do you know if yours is ready? Get a critique of it from an editor, bookstore buyer, or someone else in the business who has worked with that kind of book. Don’t ask an English professor or someone who has worked on self-help books, when yours is science fiction. Don’t rely on the opinion of anyone who is fond of you, and never trust the opinion of anyone who’s related to you!

2. Know the market. Writing a book is only part of the author’s responsibility. The rest of it involves promoting that book. Know who your ideal reader is, with great specificity. Understand why that reader wants a book of this type, and what needs that book should fill. Know a lot about the other books available to meet those needs. How is yours better for that reader? (Yes, this applies even to fiction, and no, writing with the reader in mind doesn’t have to mean becoming a hack. Literature reaches deep into our psyches and fills our most important needs.)

3. Know the market even more. Figure out where these narrowly defined ideal readers hang out, and what else they may be doing (besides reading books). Think about how you might help those who will most want it to find it. This may entail blogging, participating in listservs, or writing for magazines that are read by your target reader.

4. Write a pithy sentence or two that captures the essence of what makes your book distinctive and appealing and to whom. (It’s called an elevator speech.)

5. Using all of the above, write a proposal that tells an agent or editor about your book, its market, and why it will appeal to that market. Include enough information that it’s clear you will be an asset in the marketing of this book.

6.Assemble a list of 50 or so agents **who handle your type of book**, and write half or a quarter of them a personalized query that encapsulates the proposal in 2 or 3 short paragraphs, all within the expressed requirements of that agent, and the conventions applicable to your type of book.

If you don’t get a request for a proposal and/or a manuscript from a good number of them, your query needs work. If after sending proposals, you don’t get a request for a full ms from most of those, your proposal needs work.

When you’ve ironed both of them out, send more queries to the rest of your list. Don’t use up the full list until you’ve got a solid query and proposal.

7. If you haven’t got 50 rejections from agents and editors, try again and again . . .

8. Work on the next book while you’re trying to sell this one. Even if this one doesn’t sell initially, you’ll probably be able to place it after you have another book that sells successfully.

9. Once your book is published, work hard, in concert with the publicist assigned by your publisher, to make your book a success. Every agent and acquisitions editor can now easily see what your past sales were like. So can the buyers who order stock for bookstores. It’s no longer enough to leave your career in the hands of your publisher’s over-worked and under-paid marketing department.

10. The book business is a very, very small one. Treat everyone well, or you’ll get a reputation that you don’t want. Treat them very well, and word of that will spread, too.

Now for the stinger: I’ve never written or published a book. I’ve never been an agent or an acquiring editor. All of the above is based upon what I’ve heard from those who are agents and editors over the 17 years I’ve been doing this.

So, all you who read this — what did I get wrong?

There’s a story doing the rounds that Amazon is telling small presses to do their POD printing with Booksurge, enroll in Advantage, or Amazon will no longer directly sell their books, leaving them to Marketplace sellers alone.

Regardless of why they’re doing this, we small presses would be better off if they stopped. Legal action takes quite some time, if there’s any legal avenue to pursue. We’d be better off if we could persuade them that it’s not in their best interest either. So, why might they be doing this?

I see a whole bunch of possible reasons, including the recent trend toward non-trade discounts on some types of books sold through LSI/Ingram, a grab for vertical integration and larger market share in an evolving marketplace, or a mis-guided bit of executive hubris.

Let’s start with the discounting: There has been a trend lately for smaller presses to take advantage of the range of discounts that LSI allows publishers to set, and still sell their books through Ingram.

Instead of using the standard 55% discount for wholesalers, small presses have begun to tell LSI to sell their POD-original trade books at 20% discount. Amazon has been buying these, but it can’t be happy about the deal. Could it be that they’re trying to force this practice to stop?

It might be easier if it simply announced that it will only purchase trade books on traditional trade terms. When you think about that, however, its current actions are having that effect. Either they print through Booksurge, which offers only trade-type discount schedules, or they join Advantage.

If this is the issue, then, if LSI forces similar terms upon its clients, Amazon will relent.

An enormous proportion of the books printed using POD are sold through Amazon. They’re generally in the “long tail” and Amazon is one of the few booksellers to have mastered the techniques and built the expensive infrastructure required to sell such small numbers of so many different products cost-effectively.

I’ve blogged before about how the book business may be about to undergo a radical shift, as mass paperbacks in some genres are replaced by ebooks on something like a Kindle. If Amazon’s vision of the future is something like mine, they may be making a bid to establish significant barriers to entry in delivering ebooks or print on demand books.

It’s already going to be very expensive to try to duplicate Amazon’s search capabilities and their branded presence in consumer consciousness. But possible competitors, such as eBay or Barnes and Noble, both of whom have much of the infrastructure already, might be tempted in the coming evolution of the book business.

When bookselling is more about moving bytes than bits of paper and binding, what is to keep Amazon on top? Perhaps if they can push most of the on-demand printers and the “publish on demand” vanities out of the arena, they can make it that little bit more difficult to attack their supply line as well as their base with readers.

If this is their motivation, they’ll fight tooth and nail, because it’s a survival issue.

On the other hand, it could just be that some new executives don’t know what they don’t know. Never underestimate the possibility of cluelessness even in a small group of otherwise smart folks.

So, what’s your pet theory?