At some point in the last two years self-publishing became accepted as a real, and even preferable, route over the traditional path. That’s great news, but it’s only the first step. What we need now is for a self-publishing ecosystem to evolve that makes self-publishing a more efficient, enjoyable and effective route for authors of all types.
How best to describe what I mean by that? Well, let’s start by describing what the traditional route looked like during the golden years, and compare it to what the self-publishing experience is like today. Back then, here’s what an author could look forward to in a successful publishing partnership:
1. An advance to tide the author over while the book was written
2. An editor to help her improve her book
3. A proofreader to polish it up
4. A designer to package it appropriately
5. A marketing team to put together and execute an effective marketing plan, including , planning book tours
6. A marketing team to promote the book at trade shows and sign up book stores to take books
7. Reimbursement for book tour expenses
8. A printer
9. A business department to manage the printing, get an ISBN number, do the paperwork to get the product into all the right distribution channels, and then manage the delivery, sales, and returns
10. A book-keeper to plot sales against the advance, and forward royalties on regular, if lengthy, intervals
Now let’s look at the current state of the self publishing world and see how an author would go about handling the same needs. The following services are readily available in the marketplace:
2. An editor to help her improve her book
3. A proofreader to polish it up
4. A designer to package it appropriately
If you’d like to buy these services a la carte, the problem here isn’t supply, but how to go about it. The internet is crowded with people ready, willing and (sometimes) able to provide these services, and many of them can provide great results. But like all other aspects of self-publishing, it can be time-consuming and overwhelming to figure out where and how to go about signing up people who will do timely, professional work, and you may find that you’re not happy with the results (I had a great experience with my cover designer, but a terrible experience with an editor/proofreader).
5. A marketing team to put together and execute an effective marketing plan, plan book tours and more
There are endless numbers of firms and people selling services in this area, although many of them will only be helpful with on-line marketing. But it’s very difficult for an author to figure out what services they really need, which ones are likely to actually be effective, and most of all, whether the person offering the services is very good at marketing, or whether they’re just selling a package of expensive and pointless services.
8. A printer
9. A business department to manage the printing, get an ISBN number, do the paperwork to get the product into all the right distribution channels, and then manage the delivery, sales, and returns
10. A book keeper to plot sales against the advance, and forward royalties on regular, if long, intervals
At one end of the spectrum, you can decide to limit yourself to an eBook and low-end quality paperback format using CreateSpace and Amazon and accomplish the whole shebang in about an hour (if everything goes smoothly), which is nothing less than miraculous.
At the other end, however, if you want to do high quality print as well as eBook versions, and take advantage of the full range of on-line and brick and mortar distribution channels, then you’ve got two choices: either do a lot of research and go through a very tedious doing everything yourself, or figure out which among the scores of package publishers out there you’d like to use. These come in multiple flavors that have varying mixes of services and charge varying prices (you can read more about print on demand publishers here and here).
So what can’t an author obtain in the open market? That would be the following:
1. An advance to tide her over while the book is written
6. A marketing team to promote the book at trade shows and sign up book stores to take books
7. Reimbursement for book tour expenses
Happily, that’s not the end of the world. But let’s go through each of these anyway to see how the self-published author’s existence could be improved.
Number one almost doesn’t count as a differentiator any more, because only best-selling authors seem to be getting meaningful advances now. But it’s still a problem in an absolute sense, since writing a great book in your spare time is no easy task. And given the realities of self publishing marketing today, you’d better make that three or four books, and not just one. So while it’s now very possible for a self-published author to some day quite their day job and become a full-time author, there’s quite a lot of work and investment to put in first.
Number 6 does matter, since the majority of print book sales still occur through brick and mortar book stores. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t anyone you can sign up in this department, meaning that you’re on your own. Given that there’s only so much an individual author can do in this department, that means that you’ll need to hope that you’re successful enough in your own marketing that book stores begin ordering your book on their own (or their patrons ask them to order it).
Happily, with over a billion English-speaking people in the world, an author can be very successful without ever approaching the book store channel at all. This is a huge and empowering change in the publishing landscape, without which nothing would have really changed.
Number 7 is less important than it used to be, since there are far fewer independent radio stations and newspaper book reviewers than their used to be, but it highlights the fact that you will need to do all of the new types of promotion yourself. And that is a very, very time-consuming process.
<@Carradee reminds me in the first comment below about something that I should have added, so here’s an addition to address that miss:>
In fact, an enterprising author may actually be able to cover at least their expenses to create a book using KickStarter or one of the other quickly-multiplying “crowd sourcing” sites that have sprung up, many of which have been used by authors to raise $5,000 to $15,000, or even more. An already successful author might be able to pull in an advance as well.
More importantly than the money, however, may be the market boost that you can expect to receive from those that buy into a successful campaign. Not only will they receive free eBook copies of your book if they contribute at the assigned level, but you can ask them to write a review, tell their friends, post to FaceBook, and anything else they can think of to spread the word about “their” author. When they do, you may get a larger boost from their efforts than the money you raise from them to spend on paid marketing services.
That said, of course, there’s more to running a successful crowd sourcing campaign than simply throwing up a page, so take a look at how many such efforts hit their numbers (some), how many fail (many), and what the differences appear to be between the two.
<End insertion>
So where does that bring us out? Clearly, the most important changes have already occurred, with the result that just about anyone has an equal shot at becoming a successful author, which is rather amazing indeed.
So, notwithstanding the intro graphic, clearly we’re not in Best of Times/Worst of Times territory. But it’s also not yet good enough, due to the following;
1. Figuring out how to self-publish takes a lot of time and effort. There’s lots of information, but much of it is a mile wide and an inch deep. A lot is also unrealistic and makes it sound easier than it is.
2. Putting out a quality product is going to cost you a few thousand dollars. But putting out a CreateSpace version using a template cover and skipping a proofreader will likely cost you your chance of ever being taken seriously.
3. If you want to write something other than genre fiction in volume (and multiple volumes a year), then your chances of success are drastically reduced. How reduced? Take a look at the genre column in this list of 804 successful, self-published authors.
4. Most importantly of all, you will be a customer, rather than a partner, of everyone you work with. If you are successful in locating experienced, professional people, you should get good service (e.g., from an editor, cover designer, or proofreader). On the other hand, when it comes to a package publisher, a social media consultant, or a promotional firm, you may find that you’ve spent a lot of money and gotten very little of value at all.
So here’s what I think needs to evolve so that authors – and readers – can enjoy a robust marketplace of quality, creative work:
1. A more ordered marketplace whereby authors can find and purchase the quality services they need.
2. A new breed of service providers that provides real and savvy marketing value, rather than people who just go through a punch list of often outmoded standard items (the most notoriously useless of which is the press release, which isn’t even worth lining a parrot cage with).
3. A new breed of publishing partners that would take all the burdens off the shoulders of authors again, allowing them to get back to writing. These publishers would have fair contracts, and would share in the risks once again with authors.
Next time, I’ll expand on each of these topics. See you then.
Have you discovered The Alexandria Project?
That’s a great post. Thanks. In eager anticipation, I await the next instalment. Meanwhile, back to your book (which I am thoroughly enjoying)!
Marcus,
Thanks for the double compliment, and I’m greatly enjoying your book as well; I hope to finish it and post a review soon. By the way, here’s the relevant part of a comment I left at someone else’s blog, referring to your book and my reaction to it:
“I’m reading a first thriller by another author (it’s called The Bomb Makers) and it’s taking my breath away – every page is unstrained forward motion – very tight, very compelling, very believable. Then I think about my writing, and it’s much more mental than kinetic. More what you’d expect from a mystery than a thriller, but even then, it doesn’t hesitate to be atmospheric for it’s own sake when, purely from a plot perspective, it should be getting on with it.
The contrast between The Bomb Makers and The Alexandria Project in marketability, I expect, is therefore rather stark. The other book is right in the groove of what’s supposed to sell and I expect and hope it will. But I’m not sure that this is the way I would enjoy writing. Perhaps I should give it a try and see what happens.
But if that style doesn’t work for me, what then? Try and re-teach myself how to write? Continue to write the way I enjoy writing but switch to a more sympatico genre? Or just say the hell with it, since people have enjoyed my book even though it doesn’t fit neatly into a standardized slot?
An interesting question. I like new challenges, but if writing in a more typical thriller/action mode doesn’t click, then I’d rather enjoy my writing rather than write merely for sales. Especially since the odds of building a big fan base are so long to begin with.”
As you can see, I’m extremely impressed with your talent and your delivery – I think you’ve not only nailed the thriller genre cold, but you carry it off in a way that makes for not just a fast-paced read, but one that allows the reader to appreciate your skills as a writer as well.
A self-publishing author can actually seek their own advance or book tour reimbursement through clever use of things like Kickstarter or Patreon, and they can hire their own marketing team. I’m not in a point in my career for that, yet, but Lord willing, I’ll be there eventually. 🙂
That’s an excellent point – I should have thought of that and will go into it in my follow on post. I’ll also expand on the marketing team point. In my observation, the current categories of marketing folks fall into a few different categories, none of which (IMHO) really provide the ideal package that I have in mind. Usually they’re traditional promotion houses, OR social media folks, OR traditional collateral and press release folks, and so on.
When I do, perhaps someone will point out a couple of teams that already are filling the bill I have in mind. If so, I’ll be delighted to hear about (and hire!) them when my next book is ready to go.
It is actually possible to get your self-published book into bookstores, see http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/killing-the-top-ten-sacred-cows-of-indie-publishing-1-cant-get-indie-books-into-bookstores/ for one writeup, but also early in 2013 there was a breakthrough in getting PoD publishers listed in the bookstore catalogs. I don’t remember the details, but I rememger Kris Roush doing a post on it, She had started a business to do exactly that and folded it (I remember either April or July being significant dates in the story), because the service was no longer needed as the PoD publishers were getting listed directly.
David, my apologies for not clearing your comment earlier; I didn’t notice it in my email queue till just now.
You’re absolutely correct, and thanks for pointing that out and providing the link. I was being a bit shorthand there, meaning that while you can get your books visible to book stores, there’s no way they’re going to order any until someone asks them to, or your book gets to be so successful they notice it themselves.
The easiest way to get your book available to bookstores is as part of a POD publisher package, where they all typically handle not only getting your eBook files to the major outlets, but into the catalogs as well. From there, a lot of smaller on line outlets will pick it up, by the way (or at least I assume that’s how it gets there; it may be that some of them screen scrape the Amazon site, or perhaps they just enter the catalog itself into their databases. I expect some other reader knows the answer to that one, but I can’t myself recall reading the details on that one.
I’ve also service providers that will submit files for you to all the right places as an a la carte service.
Some very good points in this post, I’m reblogging if you don’t mind. I have to agree that everything is a bit chaotic on the internet at the moment for a self publisher. I can be difficult to decide on how much help you need and where to look for it. A lot of trial and error takes place and, although everything is a learning process, it would be a lot more efficient use of time if there was more order.
I don’t mind at all, Jean, and I’m glad you found this piece worth sharing.
What I’ve found is that the flow of information in self-publishing is very inefficient. Everything you need to know is out there – somewhere. But first you need to know where to look, and then you need to know what to take seriously, and what not. I began learning about self-publishing four years ago, and there’s still too much I don’t know. Worse yet, some of the things I did learn have now changed – in such a dynamic, evolving landscape it’s a time-consuming task simply to keep up.
I think that the challenge is particularly acute in the marketing department, where there’s a lot of common knowledge (e.g., regarding using social media) that simply won’t work for a lot of folks, although it may work very well for others. What I’ll be writing my next post about will be the role of what I’ll call a “marketing agent,” that could help you hit the ground running, telling you what to prioritize, how to stage everything, and how to roll it out in a coherent campaign. And also they’d be compensated partly on a success basis, rather than simply for going through a punch list. That way the interests of the agent and the author would be aligned, rather than incidental to each other.
Traditional book PR firms used to do a pretty good job of helping an author get exposure, although of course they could never gather results. But a lot of those firms are still just doing it the old way – trying to set up radio interviews, book signings, and trade shows. That used to be a good plan, but primarily in a brick and mortar world. If the main action is on on-line sales, the impact isn’t going to be what it used to be.
Or at least, such is my belief. More on this in a few days.
Reblogged this on The Writers' Workshop Blog and commented:
For anyone self publishing or thinking about it, this is an interesting post from Andrew that will give food for thought.
Very good points. It’s great that self-publishing in now an avenue open to authors, but it does have many drawbacks as well.
I’d probably say “hurdles and pitfalls.” I say that because there are ways to address the great majority of a writer’s needs, and “drawback” implies a comparison to an alternative. Since the alternative of traditional publishing is largely unavailable (and diminished for those that are successful in landing a contract), for the great majority of authors, it’s self-publish or don’t publish at all. So the challenge, in my mind, is to make it easier and better.
Not sure if you are aware of our service, Writer.ly. It’s a marketplace like the one you suggest where writers can find editors, designers, marketers, etc by posting a job and choosing among bids. It may fill a small portion of the type of services you seek.
Thanks for the great article. I agree completely.
Abigail,
Thanks for the comment and for the pointer to your site. I agree that a site like yours that helps authors find free lancers in those categories is exactly what writers need. The concept of a reverse auction is a popular one on line, but I think that without being able to tell how good the freelancer is, it may still lead to unhappy results.
I see that there’s a way for writers to rate the freelancers that they had worked with to meet this need, which I think is essential, although it appears that most people haven’t landed a job and/or a rating yet. I think the service will become more useful when that starts to fill out.
Andrew, do you have a Twitter account?
I do, and I tried to give it a decent shot for a few months: you can find me @adversego But what I found didn’t interest me. The character limit is too short, and the number of people that provide value by it is too small. Some people are non-stop promoters; and some link to just about everything. Even though you can set up lists so that you can narrow down your feed to just those you follow who reliably provide value, the amount of traffic is still large, so I’ve found that other means of getting information prove to be more efficient and worthwhile. The most valuable, in my experience, is the daily email you can sign up for at thepassiveguy.com. It’s by far and away the best aggregator I’ve found of news about self-publishing.
In the other direction, Twitter seems like a very inefficient way to promote a book. To avoid abusing people, you need to pump out a lot of unrelated links, and when you do send out something related, it seems like a poor tool for the job (and in fact studies show that very few people rely on Twitter for book recommendations).
While obviously Twitter works in both directions for c. 100 million people, it just doesn’t turn out to be something that I find a useful or enjoyable way to spend my time. That said, I still send a few tweets a week on news as it strikes me, and I do send out a tweet every time I publish a blog post here, so I haven’t abandoned it entirely.
What has your experience been like?
Oh, my. I asked if you had an account so we could connect there and because when I tried to share your post, it credited some other Andrew! You should check your Settings>Sharing settings on your blog and enter the right name…
Since you asked, I don’t like Twitter much for promotion of anything, really. It’s a zillion Tweets of everyone screaming, “Look at me! Buy my book! Read my blog!” and it is sickening. However, if someone uses my name (which is @lorrainereguly, btw) then I’m more than happy to have a conversation with them.
I’m, of course, joining the crowd and post links to my blog and my book. 😉
And I also get paid to post links to Greg’s stuff. But I believe in all of it, so it’s not like I’m promoting garbage. Plus, I write for him, too. So it’s all gooood. 🙂
Going to look for you there now. See you later!
That’s very odd; I just checked and it is set as @Adversego. Thanks for letting me know, and I’ll keep an eye on it.
Well, this is what I am still seeing when I click the Tweet button:
Self Publishing is Real! (Now what?) http://wp.me/p2GO2a-hp via @Andrew Updegrove
See??? You’re getting @Andrew mad and confused on Twitter… not to mention, you’re giving HIM credit for this post. Geez. I’d take another look, Mr. Updegrove!
Thanks; I guess I’ll have to consult the WordPress helpdesk to try and figure out how to fix this.
Go to your dashboard. On the right side, under SETTINGS, select the SHARING option. then look for where it says “Twitter username to include in tweets when people share using the Twitter button.” Then put Adversego there, and click “Save changes.”
You should be good to go after all that!
🙂
Ah – there was another box farther down the page. Towards the top there’s a section showing your sharing services, and the right address was showing there for the Twitter connection. Go figure. Thanks very much for helping me get that straightened out.