So, you want to be published. What now?

Sometimes folks ask me about my publishing experience. Generally, I say that it is fun, but there is no money in it, which really does reflect my experience. There is much more to tell, but Voltaire once said that the secret for being a bore is “to tell everything” so I usually keep it brief. However, some people want more information and ask. In that case, I’ll gladly tell all, and after six years I have a good bit to tell. Recently, erotic romance writer December Quinn, who has published more books than I have, and who has many “coming soon” titles, has done an exemplary job of explaining what to look for when seeking a publisher on her blog. This is multi part series which will run this summer, and I am linking to the first post. Once you are on her blog, you’ll no doubt find the other posts in the series, which I can’t recommend enough. She has covered almost all the bases and promises more to come.

If you are in the early stages of writing or are just beginning to explore publishing what you’ve already written, a writer’s conference can be a great help. Some of these offer agent evaluations of your work. If there isn’t a conference near you, or you don’t have the money, an online writer’s conference such as Muse It Up might help. I’ve heard some good things about this one.

I’ve mentioned some other resources for writers in previous blogs or on my website, including the Writer’s Beware blog and HiPiers.com, science fiction author Piers Anthony’s site, which has an informative section on internet publishing. When looking at internet sources such as forums and blogs, do be aware that some writers, for reasons I can’t fathom, are “cheerleaders” who will refute any negative information which is posted about their publisher, even if the negatives are accurate and should be considered by authors prior to signing a contract.

Anyone who asks me about my publishers will get straight answers, since honesty was drilled into me at Papa Dodd’s knee. For POD, Booklocker tells you up front how much it is going to cost. They charge out the ying-yang for corrections, but they never lie about it. The biggest downside is few reviewers will accept a POD, so it is hard to publicize these books outside the writer's circle of acquaintances. WCP is a mixed bag, wherein some authors are happy and others have paid or begged out of their contracts to seek better distribution and higher royalties. Gardenia Press, which once had a contract on The Gift Horse, was a publishing nightmare, but even they had some cheerleaders.

There are many opportunities for those who want to be published, via print on demand, ePublishing, and small presses, but be careful out there. As the old saying goes, it’s a jungle.

Facts About Publishing

A recent National Endowment for the Arts survey reveals that reading is going the way of the cassette tape. Oh, books will be around for a while longer, but it’s probably not a good time to get into the publishing business. According to the NEA, only 47% of adults read any sort of literature at all. Just under 90 million people in the United States did not read a book— any book— in 2002. As a classroom teacher, I can remember being told that when school was over, so was reading.

Today’s average book buyer is a woman, not a young woman. Younger women are more likely to read a magazine or look at the internet when they want to read. Sixty eight percent of book buyers are women. That average book browser will spend eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds scanning the back cover. What is absolutely unfathomable to me is that this same so called average bookbuyer gets to page 18 before she quits. Now maybe I’m just cheap, but I don’t buy many books that I don’t read. And 52% of all books are not sold in bookstores. Instead those buyers get their reading via mail order, online, in discount or warehouse stores, through book clubs, or some other venue.

Book publishing is a weird business in many respects. It’s almost like buying and selling produce, because so many of the products are thrown away. Yep, it’s true. Go strolling down the aisles in your local bricks and mortar bookstore looking at the mass market paperbacks. About half of all of those books will be destroyed, their front covers ripped off to send back to the publisher, indicating that the book was never sold. Customers pay $7.99 for a paperback with tiny print on cheap paper because half of all the ones printed are never sold, so they have to charge twice as much to make up for it.

Despite the shrinking market, more than 150,000 titles are published each year. Bigger publishing houses are bringing out fewer books these days, so 78% of all books published are put out by small publishers or self-publishers. Quite a number of small publishers are using POD, or “print on demand” which makes a lot of sense to me. Books printed via this method are quite similar to conventionally printed books. Often the quality of the printing is better, just as the output from your laser printer is better than a newspaper’s printing. This method isn’t quite as cheap as conventional printing, so each book may cost a couple of dollars more.

Most POD books are trade paperbacks, which are a bit larger than those mass market paperbacks, but far fewer of them will be used to line landfills or make recycled newsprint. Both of my books are produced via this method. If lots of people like my books, then several will be printed. If there is no market for my POD books, or anyone else’s, then they just don’t ever have many copies in print. Indeed, the average self-published book sells seventy-five copies, which means The Gift Horse is well above average, so I can take heart in that.

Sources for this article include Tom and Marilyn Ross’ site, which is on my links in the sidebar, and John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your Book, which is one of the best books on marketing ever written.

The Gift Horse

In the two plus years it has been available, I have had quite a bit of feedback from The Gift Horse, far more than I’ve gotten from Trinity on Tylos, and much of it has been positive, but not all, of course. At the end of each calendar year, I think about canceling my contract with Booklocker. Oh, it isn’t really expensive to keep it up— less than the price of a meal at a good restaurant— but having my “self-published” title still in print sometimes makes me feel like a lesser author. While I believe that there are some really good self-published books out there, the stigma does exist.

However, the business person in me insists that as long as there are people interested in buying it, I should go on another year. A fellow writer suggested that I get the rights back to The Gift Horse and market it in tandem with another suspense story, a Work in Progress, but one fairly close to being finished, to an epublisher. Since it only sold two copies in eBook form (and one of those was to me) that would be a new audience, I suppose.

I’ve been fortunate, in that the owner of a gift shop here in town bought twenty five copies of The Gift Horse early this year, and Living Jackson Magazine chose to review it recently. For whatever reason, this somewhat outlandish but very suspenseful tale continues to be read, enjoyed, and occasionally spark controversy.

More than once, I’ve been asked what these books have in common, since they do reflect differing genres of literature. Both of these books have heroines who are willing to sacrifice something of themselves to be what someone else wants them to be. In our society, people profess to be liberated and self-motivated, but that is a fallacy. If you don’t believe me, go to any place where young people gather and watch them act like the folks they see portrayed in various media. Some will play sluts, some act and dress like rappers and pimps. Oh, the gods of our age come to us via small rectangular boxes— television, computer screens, and the like. But they are perhaps more demanding than those who dwelt on Mount Olympus in the days gone by, who only wanted an occasional sacrifice. Nowadays, bowing to the god of media is a 24/7 duty.

Eating my Royalties

I seldom eat fast food. That’s not to say that I don’t eat out— I sometimes do, but I don’t usually eat at fast food restaurants. Typically, the only reason I choose one is if I am by myself, and then I almost always choose Chick-Fil-A.

This past week, however, my Epson CX6400 printer laid down and died. It was only a couple of years old, but it was good and dead, so I went shopping for another printer, and by gosh, I didn’t want an Epson. I bought an HP, because we still have a couple of those which function, but they are so old that they have serial connections, and I only have one Mac old enough to have that, and it is a computer that I don’t really use. However, this entry isn’t really about printers.

After having bought the fancy HP all-in-one at an office store near the Mall of Georgia, I looked around for something to eat, and there was a Burger King right on the corner. I went in and let someone else go ahead so I could read the menu. Wow, are there a lot of new things since I ate there last. That guy didn’t take long, so I had to decide on something, so I picked a Whopper combo. I’d heard of that. And it only cost $4.23 (taxes included), which is about what I got in my last royalty check.

"Want cheese?" The clerk asked.

"No, that has a lot of fat."

"What size fries did you want?"

"What’s the smallest?" I asked, knowing that they are filled with fat, too.

"Medium." The clerk replied, bored.

I got medium fries and a medium diet drink, which I had to get for myself from a machine along the wall. The sandwich was huge, and the fries were okay. I thought I had managed pretty well until I went into a bookstore. When I picked up my wallet at the checkout counter, it was wet. It seems I managed to get some ice in my purse when I was getting my own drink.

That wasn’t such a big deal, as I threw the ice into the trash outside of the bookstore and laid my things out on the car seat to dry while I drove home. No, the worst part was learning via an internet site called CalorieKing that my fast food lunch had a thousand calories in it. What a bargain!

This is a hoot!

Usually, I write my posts off site, doing a spell check and some reasonable editing. In fact, I have my next post already written, but I came across something I wanted to share.

Over at the side, I have some links for folks interested in self-publishing, which I don't consider to be the fate worse than death that some people do. One of those is to the PODdy Mouth blog, an anonymous writer who has a hobby— searching for good books which were produced via POD.

One of her recent entries was just great. If you want a laugh, take a look at her random notes....

POD revisited

If you're looking for info on buying my latest book, check out my website and click on the Events button for upcoming booksignings and a link to my publisher's website.

I've been doing a bit of research and I ran across a simply wonderful blog. It's by an anonymous published author who is on a quest to find the very best print on demand (that's POD) books. Since there are many, many such books being printed, and lots of them are really bad, this person has some work ahead. Unfortunately, the low costs associated with producing these books means that almost anyone can get into print, and quite a few of them don't deserve to be there. But there is some buried treasure, and this site has 50 books with detailed reviews to explain why they're great books.

In the opening entry, Pod-dy Mouth explains that the five big New York publishers aren't interested in books which sell in smaller numbers. So what's an author to do if a really good book is rejected by larger publishers or the agents who can get it there? Throw it in the trash? The alternatives fall into three vague categories. First, try a small (maybe really small) publisher. This can take years and years, b/c most of publishers take a few months to respond to a manuscript, and if it isn't accepted, then it has to move on to the next one. Second, try an e-publisher—and some of these also offer paperbacks, so they sort of blend into the first category. Or, third, cut out the middle guy and do POD. More and more folks are tiring of the shop it around for a few years approach and accepting the trade-offs associated with being "self-published."

When I decided to use Booklocker to publish The Gift Horse, it was a little like having a baby and abandoning it on the steps of a church in a basket. I felt that I sentenced it to the stigma of POD and low sales. However, the doggone thing continues to sell after two years in print, and some of the mass market paperbacks from two years ago are selling for .o1 at the used booksellers who list their wares on Amazon. So, as I concluded in my previous post on this topic, I can't say the decision was all bad.

My second novel, Trinity on Tylos, is published by an eBook publisher, but they do offer the paperback option to authors who are willing to pay a small set up fee. I gladly wrote that check in order to have books to sell locally. Since my first novel sold two eBook copies—and one of those was to me!— I'll be curious to see my sales figures. WCP does list their books with Fictionwise, and I've heard that greatly increases sales of eBooks.

Time will tell. In the meantime, do check out the Pod-dy Mouth blog. I've spent some time there this weekend, and I will be returning, because there are reviews, interviews, and the blog entries as well. It's lots of fun for struggling authors and readers looking for something different.

POD or iPod

Hi there!

As I'm mulling over a contract for my new novel, I can't avoid thinking about my first one.

After Gardenia Press contracted for my debut novel, The Gift Horse, and then went bankrupt prior to publication, I felt pressure to get my book out. I was aware of the risks associated of going to print without the prestige of a “real” publisher, but I also knew that finding a publisher could literally take years. I used Booklocker, one of the more discerning print on demand publishers. I still wonder if I made the right choice. Not about using Booklocker, but going POD. Maybe I should have gotten an iPod instead.

Oh, the novel is exactly what Gardenia Press would have published, albeit with a different cover, and I had many readers tell me how much they enjoyed it. Indeed some people finished the same day they bought it, and it’s 296 pages long! Readers don’t seem to care who printed the book, as long as it is a compelling read and free of distracting errors. Locally, I received several invitations to speak and sell books, and my hometown newspaper gave me some wonderful publicity. No way was this venture a failure.

But using POD curtailed the audience. As far as I know, no one bought a copy from Amazon.com, or from any other online booksellers. Barnes and Noble has a “small press program” which is supposed to give such books a chance to get onto their shelves, but all I got for my efforts from B&N was a form letter. Online and print review sites either refused to review the book or ignored my submission altogether. So once the local readers got their copy, sales became sluggish. After this year, I plan to let it go out of print, although one reason for using POD is to give books longer to build readership.

I’ve been told that big publishers have to remainder close to half of the books they print. What that means is the publisher or distributor takes them back and either sells them for nearly nothing, which is where all those “bargain books” come from, or shreds them to create recycled paper. From a purely business stance, POD makes lots of sense— only print books which have been sold, thus no waste. Unfortunately, several such publishers will print anything at all; therefore, booksellers and book reviewers give these books no respect. That’s too bad, because authors whose story is too “different” to win a contract with a big publisher, may never get published, or if the author chooses POD, then comparatively few readers ever see them.

The Gift Horse sold well for a POD, but not well enough to be picked up by a “real” publisher. Which is sad, not because I wrote it, but because this story was worthy of a larger audience. So the venture can’t be labeled a success either.

That’s why I’ve waited patiently to find a small press willing to publish my sophomore novel, Trinity on Tylos. I hope this new novel finds that larger audience.

As for the iPod, I don’t listen to music enough to really enjoy one, but my teenage daughter loves hers, and this trendy little devise has made our Apple Computer stock worth lots and lots more than when we bought it. Now, that’s a win-win scenario.