Do You Think This Is True? (Article)

Margarita Skies · Apr 9, 2010

Hey.

I just read this article about self-publishing and promotion, etc. Here's the link:

http://www.writerswrite.com/selfpublishing/approachingagents.htm

My question is... is it true that a traditional publishing house won't promote the author's work and that the author has to work just as hard to promote his or her book, whether it is self-published or traditionally published? I am not sure if this is the right message board for this question. I will be waiting for your responses.

Love
Magali.

Jess Haines · Apr 10, 2010

Hi Magali,

Your source appears largely biased and isn't entirely accurate. I've got a few disagreements with it.

I'm not going to go into figures, but it doesn't have to take 18 months to go from sale to print. It does happen in many cases -- but the reason for this is that you have a lot of steps to the publishing process when it is done professionally. Upon acceptance, you usually have initial edits suggested by the editor. This can sometimes be extensive and take some time. There may be quite a bit of back and forth on this. Next, you have copy edits, which is a process that can take a few months to complete. The publisher has to make arrangements to fit your book into their list, work out a promo and marketing plan, and put that plan into action. Let's not forget the design and planning of the cover art and the layout of the book itself. Then you have printing and distribution. Does it take a while? You betcha. However, the quality of the finished product is generally far superior to what you'll find in a self-published book.

Sending a pre-printed/bound book to agents and publishers is not the way to get their attention unless you want to cheese them off and waste their time. The way to get their attention is to follow their submission guidelines. Most of the time, that means sending them a query, possibly some sample pages, and, most of all, providing them a good, compelling, salable story.

The part about "those with a book..." is a blatantly false statement in this case. Those with a professionally published book (not self-published) have a little more weight behind their queries, particularly if they have a proven sales record, but that's about it. The story you're querying is what the agent or publisher is looking at and going to be selling. Self-publishing does not impress agents or publishers much unless you've sold a ton of books. If you mention that you have published in your credits, the first thing they are going to do is Google it and check, if at all possible, the sales figures, if/where it is available, and who the publisher is.

The thing about publishers not promoting books is also a generality and a falsehood. If you're not Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, or Stephanie Meyer, you may not see your book being promoted in the NY Times. However, that doesn't mean your publisher isn't doing anything for you. Depending on the size, they do anything from giving away advance copies for reviews to internet ads to giveaways to radio/magazine/newspaper spots. It behooves the author to get off their butt and do some of their own promotion, but to say that the publisher does nothing... Sorry, that's a falsehood. Why would they pay money for your work if they didn't expect to make some money off of it to begin with? They HAVE to do some work to make sure it's known, even if it's minimal, otherwise they're simply wasting their investment.

Consider articles like this and what you can find in the Snarkives on the subject before going the self-publishing/POD/vanity route. Research what the AGENTS and EDITORS are saying. (Google Nathan Bransford, Janet Reid, Evil Editor, Editorial Ass, Editorial Anonymous, The Rejectionist, The Intern, Pimp My Novel, and many more, to find the truth on the subject -- straight from the source.) Don't take the word of an author -- not even me -- without doing some research of your own. When doing said research, be sure to consider your sources carefully before taking what is said as gospel.

None of this is to say self-publishing is bad or wrong. For some people, it IS the correct route. I suggest you read this as food for thought.

If you still have questions, let me know.

Marian Perera · Apr 10, 2010

MagaliFuentes said:
My question is... is it true that a traditional publishing house won't promote the author's work and that the author has to work just as hard to promote his or her book, whether it is self-published or traditionally published?

I think it's a lot easier to promote a book with a publisher's marketing department behind you.

As for the article, this quote pretty much summed it up for me.

You can print 500 copies very reasonably (144 pages, 5.25 x 8.25, soft cover for $1,500). Then you can send the (example) book to agents and publishers.

I've had agents request fulls without my having to send them a book. I've also had a publisher offer me a contract without my having to send a book. Or, for that matter, having to spend $1500.

Margarita Skies · Apr 10, 2010

Thanks for your help, guys. I've decided to put all my self-published manuscripts away and work hard on my unpublished manuscripts. You guys are the best.

ChristineR · Apr 10, 2010

The average self-published books sells 75 copies, not 500 copies. All 75 are to people author knows. To sell 500 copies would require many hours of promotion.

You can print 500 copies very reasonably (144 pages, 5.25 x 8.25, soft cover for $1,500).

That's kind of a suspicious number--you should be able to do this for less. But let's assume that's what you do. You shouldn't price a skinny little book like that at $20, which is what is implied earlier in the article--that you get to keep all but $3 of a $20 cover price. If you sell in in bookstores, the bookstore will want about half. So let's price it at $7, $3 for the bookstore, $3 printing cost, and $1 profit. Whoops, we now need to sell 6000 books to make as much as that (completely hypothetical) advance he was complaining about.

Okay, lets make it a $20 book. Printing cost is now more like $6. Bookstores get $10, we get a profit of $4. Now we're aiming to sell 1500 books to get that $6000. That's suddenly a lot of work. How many people can sell 1500 books by driving around to bookstores, selling out of the trunk of their car? You'll be lucky if you sell three per store. Five hundred bookstores? You need a distributor. Whoops, money!

Well, forget the bookstores. If you can sell directly to the consumer, you get to keep $14, not $4. Now you just need to sell 428 books to earn that $6000. How do you plan to sell 428 books?

Maybe it's a religious book. Church socials? Way too time consuming. You'll be lucky if you can average one book an hour.

You could sell them online, but why would anyone buy from a random website? Maybe if the book is about something specific, like model train repair, and you have the web's best site about model train repair. Well, now you have to spend hours making a terrific website. Or maybe you can pay somebody to do it for you--oops, there goes the profit.

But a novel? Who buys novels sight unseen off the web?

Believe me, if this worked, far, far, more people would be succeeding at it. As it is, almost nobody wins this game.

veinglory · Apr 10, 2010

The bottom line is a self-publisher author works ard and sells maybe 200 books. A conventionally published author works exactly as hard and sells mayby 5000 books. How hard you have to work is not the main issue, the work to money ratio is

Margarita Skies · Apr 10, 2010

Once again, thank you so much. You guys have helped a lot. I'm off to work in my unpublished works now. I have put my self-published works away on a CD-R just to have them in there somewhere, stored for the memories, but I'm not going to do anything else with them.

Old Hack · Apr 10, 2010

Dan Poynter is in the business of selling his "how to self-publish" books (which he self-published) to people who are thinking of self-publishing their own. So he makes self-publishing look as enticing as he possibly can.

His website contains all sorts of misinformation: I think it's the origin of the myth that John Grisham self-published his first book. And this article is full of such misinformation.

As for publishers not promoting any more: last week, my friend Sally Zigmond had her first novel (Hope Against Hope: historical fiction) published by Myrmidon, a tiny independent publisher in the UK. She has spent the last month giving radio interviews, and has a few more ahead of her; on Friday she had a book signing in Waterstones, in Harrogate where her book is set, and she has half a dozen more signings booked; there was a launch party, too, attended by the local press, the Mayor of Harrogate, and me (of course!). All this at no cost or effort on her part. Her transport is arranged for her, paid for by her publisher: all she has to do is turn up.

In her book's first three days it sold over 200 copies. So there she is, with all this promotion ahead of her, already having sold more copies than most self-published titles will ever sell. Nice, eh? And all this from a tiny, but good, independent publisher.

Marian Perera · Apr 11, 2010

Magali - glad to help. And I found a series of articles on self-publishing that you might want to check out - not only do they contrast self-publishing with commercial publishing, but they give good advice on what self-publishers can do to improve sales.

zpeteman · Apr 11, 2010

I "self" published my novel and have been very successful with it but I'm also certain that it wouldn't work for most people.

My initial print run of 1500 trade paperbacks cost me $3500. I was lucky enough to have pre-sold enough books to pay for that without dipping into my own bank account. The book has been out for four months now and I think I've sold just under 1000. Most of those sales are from my own website were I don't have to split the profit with anyone. I also sell them through Amazon who buys at a 55% discount and in the last couple of weeks have just begun distributing through Ingram (also a 55%) discount.

There are a number of reasons why this has worked. For one, I spent a couple of years building a readership via blog writing such that when the time came that I had a book to sell, people trusted that it would be well written. So I was able to make the bulk of my sales directly to my established reader-base, therefore making the most sales where the profit margin was highest. Once that reader-base was exhausted, most sales began to come from reviews and word of mouth so I needed to make the book more widely available. That's why I brought in Amazon and lately, Ingram. Fewer dollars per sale? Yes. But I'm reaching folks that otherwise wouldn't buy it off my own website and it's beginning to show up on bookstore shelves.

By far, though, the primary reason this has worked for me is that I've been blessed with word of mouth and great reviews. People have even been buying the book in bulk orders just so they can give them to friends as gifts. That kind of marketing can't be bought. And even when you've written a great book, it's no guarantee. So I'm enormously thankful to my readers for spreading the word.

So, all this to say, it's certainly possible to be successful in self-publishing fiction. But--HUGE but--it requires a lot of work and more importantly it requires that you do not try to go it alone. You need critical people around you throughout the entire process to ensure that the product you are putting all this time and money into is worth the effort. You need to find people that will tell you your book is awful and then listen to them very closely. You need to hire an editor that believes in making the book great, and doesn't care when she gets paid. You need to hire a cover artist that is a fan of the book, understands the underlying themes, and is a great artist herself, and will work for half of what she's worth because she simply must design your book. And then you'd better spend a whole lot of time in prayer and be damn sure that you'll be okay if it all comes to nothing in the end.

Margarita Skies · Apr 11, 2010

Old Hack said:
Dan Poynter is in the business of selling his "how to self-publish" books (which he self-published) to people who are thinking of self-publishing their own. So he makes self-publishing look as enticing as he possibly can.

I read the article once again yesterday and I've just noticed that.

Old Hack said:
His website contains all sorts of misinformation: I think it's the origin of the myth that John Grisham self-published his first book. And this article is full of such misinformation.

Thank you so much. I didn't know anything about this guy.

Old Hack said:
As for publishers not promoting any more: last week, my friend Sally Zigmond had her first novel (Hope Against Hope: historical fiction) published by Myrmidon, a tiny independent publisher in the UK. She has spent the last month giving radio interviews, and has a few more ahead of her; on Friday she had a book signing in Waterstones, in Harrogate where her book is set, and she has half a dozen more signings booked; there was a launch party, too, attended by the local press, the Mayor of Harrogate, and me (of course!). All this at no cost or effort on her part. Her transport is arranged for her, paid for by her publisher: all she has to do is turn up.

Wow, that is amazing!! Nice publisher!! Doing all of this for their author, huh?

Old Hack said:
In her book's first three days it sold over 200 copies. So there she is, with all this promotion ahead of her, already having sold more copies than most self-published titles will ever sell. Nice, eh? And all this from a tiny, but good, independent publisher.

I must say that if they've done all that for her, they are not so tiny. They are good people. They deserve to be recommended to other aspiring writers.

Queen of Swords said:
Magali - glad to help. And I found a series of articles on self-publishing that you might want to check out - not only do they contrast self-publishing with commercial publishing, but they give good advice on what self-publishers can do to improve sales.

Thank you so much, Queen of Swords! I will check it out!

zpeteman said:
I "self" published my novel and have been very successful with it but I'm also certain that it wouldn't work for most people.

My initial print run of 1500 trade paperbacks cost me $3500. I was lucky enough to have pre-sold enough books to pay for that without dipping into my own bank account. The book has been out for four months now and I think I've sold just under 1000. Most of those sales are from my own website were I don't have to split the profit with anyone. I also sell them through Amazon who buys at a 55% discount and in the last couple of weeks have just begun distributing through Ingram (also a 55%) discount.

There are a number of reasons why this has worked. For one, I spent a couple of years building a readership via blog writing such that when the time came that I had a book to sell, people trusted that it would be well written. So I was able to make the bulk of my sales directly to my established reader-base, therefore making the most sales where the profit margin was highest. Once that reader-base was exhausted, most sales began to come from reviews and word of mouth so I needed to make the book more widely available. That's why I brought in Amazon and lately, Ingram. Fewer dollars per sale? Yes. But I'm reaching folks that otherwise wouldn't buy it off my own website and it's beginning to show up on bookstore shelves.

By far, though, the primary reason this has worked for me is that I've been blessed with word of mouth and great reviews. People have even been buying the book in bulk orders just so they can give them to friends as gifts. That kind of marketing can't be bought. And even when you've written a great book, it's no guarantee. So I'm enormously thankful to my readers for spreading the word.

So, all this to say, it's certainly possible to be successful in self-publishing fiction. But--HUGE but--it requires a lot of work and more importantly it requires that you do not try to go it alone. You need critical people around you throughout the entire process to ensure that the product you are putting all this time and money into is worth the effort. You need to find people that will tell you your book is awful and then listen to them very closely. You need to hire an editor that believes in making the book great, and doesn't care when she gets paid. You need to hire a cover artist that is a fan of the book, understands the underlying themes, and is a great artist herself, and will work for half of what she's worth because she simply must design your book. And then you'd better spend a whole lot of time in prayer and be damn sure that you'll be okay if it all comes to nothing in the end.

Thank you for sharing your self-publishing experience and for your wonderful advice. You rock.

8thSamurai · Dec 3, 2010

Magali, the stuff that Old Hack mentioned is STANDARD for commercial publishers, whatever the size.

So is an advance, thorough editing, copy editing, cover design, and distribution channels. I don't doubt that the writer had a bit to do with the radio interviews - which honestly aren't hard to get with a local radio show as a local writer.

Do You Think This Is True? (Article)

Margarita Skies

Jess Haines

Boldly going nowhere in particular.

Marian Perera

starting over

Margarita Skies

ChristineR

What happened?

veinglory

volitare nequeo

Margarita Skies

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

Marian Perera

starting over

zpeteman

Natural born...

Margarita Skies

8thSamurai