On Publishing

There are many tens of thousands of writers, many of them have books. I’m one of them, I thought I had a great book until I tried to get someone to take notice. Then I discovered that I was one among a vast ocean of writers trying to get someone to notice their work. 
After failing to get a publisher to respond to my requests (probably far few attempts) I researched the publishing business. 

The numbers of books writers are trying to get published far out numbers the capacity of the publishing companies to get them into print. This is not the fault of the publishers but a fact of life. Publishers all have a finite capacity; some publish hundreds of titles and have many divisions. Most publish much fewer, all publishers have to balance what they publish, say 10 novels 3 cook books, 5 nonfiction, 5 photo collections…you get the idea, they have a menu or shopping list that they work from. 

The publishers have a limited printing and marketing budget and have to choose carefully which titles to accept. Choosing which titles to accept may be influenced by what titles they already have accepted, for example the publisher would want to compete against themselves by publishing three or four novels around the same theme. And a publisher may have agreements with already published authors that they must honor. This results in many excellent books being turned away, not because the book is bad but because they just don’t have room on the menu or selection being offered by the publisher that year. 

Another consideration deals with gambling on the market. The publisher needs to predict what will be popular and guess how many books to print and when and how much to spend on marketing. It is a very risky business for the publisher and that risk gets put off onto the author, by way of how much the author gets in royalties. Using very rough numbers that vary year to year and publisher to publisher only 10% of the books that a publisher publishes makes any money. It is the money from the successful books that must pay for the money lost on the 90% of the books that lose money. When you consider that maybe only 1 percent or less of the books some publishers are offered by writers get sent to the printing presses to begin with it really begins to look dismal for the thousands of authors out there in the world. 

What are the writer’s options, there are vanity publishers or publishers that take really no risk and charge the author the cost of editing, typeset, printing and marketing. There are subsidiary publishers or publishers that share the above costs with the author and there are others that vary in the ways that they get around these obstacles.  

Then there are literary agents, which act as an intermediary between the publisher and the author. They help with editing, marketing keep track of publishers and what they need and when, literary agents can be a god send. They can help the author turn a lemon into a cherry, but agents are yet another limited resource and sometimes difficult to catch the notice and of course will want a portion of the earnings. 

Self publishing is a huge amount of work I’ve probably spent at least as much time publishing my own books as I have spent in writing them. There is so much to learn, typeset, fonts, layout, cover design, printing, pricing, all these things can impact each other and have to be worked out then sent to a printer. If you thought it ended when you have printed books, you’re wrong. Then comes distribution and marketing, publishers can spend more on distribution and marketing than on editing, typeset, layout and all the rest. It’s no wonder that often times the author only gets 10% royalties (sometimes on the net price and not the gross), a beginning author may only get much less than a dollar for a ten dollar retail book. And unless it’s a best seller the book might only sell few thousand copies. 

Now that I’ve got everyone depressed and I’m on the verge of being banned from the writing groups I’m member of, there is hope. Of course everyone thinks that their book is that 1 in 100 (or 1000) that will make it big and I hope you’re right. But for the rest of us first let me say this, I feel a true writer must write because they love it and would write even if their work never gets published. These are the writers I feel a special bond with. Next the good news, technology has now made it extremely easy to get into print and into a distribution system (some more limited than others). There are now companies that work with writers who want to self publish. These new companies exploit an on demand print system where no inventory is kept and each book is printed as it is ordered. This is relatively new to publishing and how I published my books. To find one do an internet search on “on demand book publishing” and you’ll find a dozen or more companies out there. They will vary but most will rely on the author doing most of the work, some will help but not for free. The company I chose to work with allowed me to have my own imprint, so my publishing company is the “publisher” I had to do my own editing, copy right, ISBN, cover design, layout, font selection, type set, and submit a high resolution pdf file that would get printed exactly how I created it. For me it was almost a dream come true, I had total control of everything and it cost me very little out of pocket. That said, my books have more type-oh’s and grammar problems than I care to admit. When I wrote them I didn’t have the editorial help or advice that I should have had, now I’m working on revisions where I plan on doubling the content of each and on the second try really turning out a fine product. It is part of learning the business. 

Back to publishing, now I’ve got books and they’re available on amazon.com ((shameless plug), feel free to buy them, please) but how do you get people to buy them? Marketing…marketing is becoming complicated, expensive, unpredictable and difficult. There are many books written on internet marketing and I won’t attempt to cover it all here, (I’m not an expert, yet). But a big part of it is getting acquainted with your peers, networking, learning and putting much work into it. I’ve added all this part of the business to my overall plan, I’ve learned to enjoy all the parts of this process so far and am beginning to think about publishing other people’s books. It might turn out to be a quicker way to generate income than from the books I’ve already written and published. Then with income coming in from helping other people that I can identify with, I’ll be able to get back to writing. Self publishing is a sure way of keeping you from writing, it is making a deal with the men in grey from Michael Ende's Momo.