Wordcraft – Self-publishing? It takes more than a click

The question left hanging at last Tuesday’s discussion of self-publishing, from a panel discussion by Sandy Steen, James Gaskin, LaReeBryant and Susan May at the recent Southwest Chapter of Mystery Writers ofAmerica, was: how does an author determine how much to charge for her (or his) book? And the still more urgent question of how to induce customers to buy those books, no matter what the price? Because writing a book and preparing it for publication is only part of the story.

The CreateSpace option at Amazon for paper copies of self-published books informs the author of the print cost (which will be primarily for paper). According to the panelists, all veterans of both traditional and self-publishing, this cost typically runs from $7-$8. Without taking into account the author’s time in writing the book and preparing it for publication, any price of more than $8 a copy should be gravy, right?

Except “you won’t sell many paperbacks,” May said, “because most people who read voraciously use e-readers.” (She prints a few paper copies of her books for signings, which she can buy at a, yes, discounted price from Amazon.)

Or say you’re publishing your work as an e-book on Amazon’s Kindle, with the 70 percent royalty option. Although Amazon’s maximum price for most e-books is $9.99, “Amazon can discount the price without asking you,” May said, with royalties based on the sales price, not your list price.

“The good news is, as a self-published author, you have total control,” May said. “The bad news is, you have total control.” And in most cases, that means total control of the marketing of books. (Relative newcomer to self-publishing, Booktrope, offers a team model of publishing, including a marketer as well as editor, cover designer and proofreader in addition to the author, with royalties being divided between all team members.)

How much time should a self-published author expect to spend on marketing, compared to writing?

“Probably 50-50,” Bryan said, “if you’re really doing it well. If you’re going to do it yourself, you need to be sure you’ve got the aptitude to do it.”

“You’ve got to brand yourself,” Steen said, remembering “to add blogging, tweeting, and all that in your time budget for marketing.” May, for instance, guest blogs regularly, multiple times per month, at three separate sites.

What other marketing venues are available to self-publishers beyond Internet sales and limited personal signings, an audience member asked. Although panel members warned that self-published books had no chance of gaining a foothold in most brick and mortar bookstores, is there a way, an audience member asked, to get self-published books into libraries?

Basically, Gaskin said, only by donating them, and even then libraries may refuse to accept them for shelving. Besides continuing prejudice about the writing quality of self-published books, “Many self-published books,” he said, “are not ‘libraryized’ – not tough enough to hold up to repeated lendings.”

What about crowd-funding, an audience member asked, both to raise money to pay the cost of editing, cover design, and publishing? Won’t such funding not only save the author out of pocket costs but also provide a guaranteed audience?

Gaskin’s opinion is that most such efforts actually are under-subscribed, but “I can give you some good news. There’s a formula, that if you have a thousand fanatic fans, you can make a living as a creative artist, because they will buy your book and proselytize for you.”

However, once the market for one book has become saturated, fans will require the author to keep writing more books. “The more books you have, the more presence you have,” Steen said. “The basic problem is, you have to write the book, and you have to write a good book.”

Wordcraft – Publishing: getting our books out there

It was the Fourth of July, early on a beautiful Saturday morning of a holiday weekend. So why was a room full of people taking a break from the holiday at the monthly meeting of Mystery Writers of America’s Southwest Chapter? We’d come to hear four longtime writers, veterans of the business, talk about the topic dear to all our hearts – getting published.

Fiction writers Sandy Steen, LaRee Bryant and Susan May, and computer how-to guy James Gaskin (who also dabbles in fiction) found most of their audience’s questions were about self-publishing, which was OK, because they’ve gone both ways, self-publishing as well as the traditional variety.

Although audience questions started with how to format books for self-publishing, panel members emphasized that the quality of the writing has to come first. “There’s one thing I see about self-published books,” Steen said, “it’s that there’s a lot of dreck out there. Anything you submit, from a query to a full manuscript, needs to be as clean as possible.”

Bryant, who is a professional editor as well as author, agreed. “If you’re going to do it yourself, you need to be sure you’ve got the aptitude to do it.”

So just hard is it to prepare a book for self-publishing, an audience member asked. Is it worth doing yourself, or is it better to hire someone?

Susan May: “I’m a firm believer from many years in business, that you do yourself what you do well. Otherwise, hire it out.”

That said, the multiple options available for self-publishing, such as CreateSpace, have made the formatting the questioner was concerned with one of the easier parts of publishing. (If in doubt while at the self-publishing site, ask for a guided tour, which will explain the concepts as the author goes along.) Pick a standard font (typeface) such as Times New Roman or Courier, in a 12-14 point size.

Steen prefers Garamond, a family of typefaces, which also have a familiar look for most readers. It, as well as Times New Roman and Courier, are all serif typefaces, meaning they have ornamental extender lines, typically at the bases of letters. An audience member asked about the use of the Arial typeface, a sans serif font. But although sans serifs have what some consider a more modern look, Bryant advised against them, finding that they don’t show up as well on e-readers.

However, panelists recommended checking any unusual typefaces to be sure they are no longer under copyright by their creators. Otherwise, authors may find themselves billed thousands of dollars for use of a copyrighted product. (And about copyrighting your own book? That’s the easy part, panelists agreed. The U.S. Copyright Office charges about $35 for the process.)

“What’s the most popular size for an e-book?” was another audience question.

Mass-market size books, the old ones small enough to fit into a pocket, are going out of style in paper because their pages are more difficult to cut. Again, to keep formatting the same for both paper books and e-books, panelists recommended what’s called “trade” paperback sizes, six inches by nine inches, or 5 ¼ by 8.

Bryant suggested that with the slightly larger 6 x 9 inch size sometimes decreases the number of pages, which in turn may decrease the publishing costs. In no case would any of the panelists recommend trying to scrimp on costs by using smaller typefaces. Bryant would never go smaller than 12 point; May typically uses 13 point.

With self-publishing also comes the need to make decisions about marketing, including how to price your own books. At this point, the discussion took a sharp turn into questions about book promotion, to be continued next Tuesday.

Wordcraft -- Publishing's imperfect storm

I leafed through Sunday’s Dallas Morning News, luxuriating in the extra hour of sleep from going off daylight savings time. And there it was, an article headlined “How to Become a Published Author,” with “published” printed in red ink. I began hyperventilating.

The next to last paragraph said, “All told, you may want to self-publish this first book.”

The hypothetical question opening the article was from a person who wrote a first book -- “a steamy romance novel” -- and asked whether she needed an agent to publish it. The answer began sensibly with “not necessarily.” Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there.

The article’s writers are from a company that distributes comic strips and syndicated advice columns. They mentioned, correctly, that agents want first-time authors to provide not only a quality manuscript, but a “platform” -- a fan base or other forms of name recognition. So far, so good. But after describing how tough it is for agents and publishing houses to sell books, the article’s writers suggested that authors may want to have a go at selling their own books.

Seriously, if people who make their living selling books can’t sell yours, how do you hope to do it yourself?

Sure, you can publish books on www.amazon.com or www.smashwords.com/. But publishing is not the same as selling books. (As I know by reading emails from editors whose anthologies I’ve sold to, and who published on one or the other of these formats.)

Of course, the article referenced the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon.

We’ve all heard the stories about people who sold thousands or millions of their self-
published books online or out of the trunks of their cars. I’ll add a couple of cautions. Whatever you may think about Grey author E.L. (Erika) James’ books, she built a formidable writing platform from her works of fan fiction based on the world of Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight series. This was not an inexperienced or unknown author.

(Interestingly, the Los Angeles Times reported earlier this year that the original fan fiction pages have been deleted from the internet. See
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2012/05/index.html/.)

Here’s a second caution. I used to be a professional journalist. And not to deprecate my former method of making a living, but I know why stories make the news -- they’re exceptions to the normal course of events. That’s why tropical Hurricane Sandy devastating the Jersey Shore at Halloween is news. And why the beautiful late autumn weather I’m enjoying here in Dallas isn’t.

The aim of this blog is to bring you accurate information about writing, such as last Monday’s post (“Publishing perils and pitfalls,” October 29, 2012) about people who write books for a living and sell over and over, think about the business.

Want to sell your book? In a quotation I didn’t use last week but will now, “write a book worth buying.” Write, rewrite, consult your critique groups, learn all you can. And keep writing.

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In the interest of learning all I can, in this case about writing steamy romance novels, I’m heading to the Readers & ‘ritas Gathering this coming weekend. Of course, I’ll tell all. To join the gathering, see www.eventbrite.com/org/771389189?s=6028956/.