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Choosing a Publicist (Again): Assessing Your Changing Needs

Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels

Today’s post is by author Barbara Linn Probst. On Sept. 17, she’s teaching an online class in partnership with me, Hybrid Publishing 101.

Should I hire publicist?
How can I choose a good one?
Is it worth it?

These are questions that many new authors ask, regardless of their path to publication. I did too. In fact, a year before the launch of my debut novel, I wrote an article that offered guidelines for choosing a publicist, with an emphasis on personal fit, based on factors like temperament, communication style, and how involved you like to be.

The 2019 essay grew out of my own experience selecting a publicist for my first novel, Queen of the Owls. The choice I made was perfect for my needs at the time. I wanted impressive announcements to share on social media—national hits that would enhance my bio, build credibility, and gain followers. I understood the warning that all publicists issue, if they’re candid: “Publicity is not sales. Publicity is buzz.” That was fine with me. I wanted buzz, and I got buzz.

Two and a half years later, however, as I look to publication of my third novel in fall 2022, I’m in a different place. That realization has come to me gradually, since it’s natural to assume that one ought to keep doing what’s worked. But the situation can change, and I had to stop and examine what I need and want now.

A major difference between spring 2019 and fall 2022 is that I now have experience to draw on. Although every book has to be viewed in context, and it’s tricky to apply “lessons learned” from one launch to the next, there is still a qualitative difference between no experience and some experience. As a third-time author, I have a better sense of what to expect. I also know what didn’t feel “worth it” to me, personally, and what did.

Since I’m no longer a debut author, it means that my forthcoming book is not a debut novel. This may sound like two different ways of saying the same thing, but it’s not.

A debut author is a greenhorn, dependent on the advice of others—and thus at a disadvantage.

A debut novel is a mysterious package—which can be an advantage.

A first novel will attract attention, precisely because it’s unknown.

There’s a sense of curiosity, of limitless possibility, of uncovering something that might turn out to be important. A second, third, or fourth book doesn’t typically have that mystique. On the other hand, there may be a ready-made audience of readers who’ve enjoyed the author’s previous books.

With a debut, you’re announcing your arrival as a writer, and you want the world to know. For that reason, it might make sense to go big and spend big on a first novel. You might want to cast your net as widely as possible and test a range of waters, since it’s hard to know where a cache of interest may lie. You might also want to collect some stellar media hits that will always be part of your track record and can be incorporated into the “praise sheets” and press releases for future books, as well as permanent fixtures on your website.

For a later novel, a different marketing strategy might make more sense.

You might want something more targeted and strategic, aiming at sales rather than buzz. That could mean allocating a larger portion of your resources to “hard” marketing (that is, paid advertising) rather than “soft” publicity, or narrowing your outreach according to geography or demographics—or simply spending less because there are things you’ve learned to do yourself or have decided you don’t need.

The best way to figure out which PR firm, package, or combination of a la carte services will meet your present needs—e.g., if you want to hire a separate social media consultant or someone to create and manage a newsletter—is to do a forward-leaning assessment based on where you are now, as an author, and where you might be able to go next. As hockey great Wayne Gretzky is famous for saying: A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.

How to do a forward-leaning assessment

This assessment starts from the understanding that, as a second- or third-time author, you have a history and are no longer an “unknown voice” for whom all things are—or seem—possible.

If your first book did well, the stakes may feel higher, bringing pressure and the expectation, perhaps unrealistic, that subsequent books will garner or even surpass the kind of high-level interest that your publicist was able to secure for your debut. You may be fearful of making any changes in what seemed to work, even if the strategies used for your debut are no longer be the most appropriate.

In contrast, if your first launch felt disappointing, there can be pressure of another kind—a doubling-down of the stakes, leading to a “grass is greener” hope that a new publicist will deliver the kind of high-level results that the first one did not.

Both attitudes have their pitfalls. There’s no general principle about the merits of staying with the same publicist (consistency of relationships and approach) versus changing publicists (a fresh perspective)—and there can’t be, given all the factors such as timing, context, genre, budget, turnover, and availability.

All that can really be said is that your goals, as an author, will likely be different over the course of your career, and thus the strategies for achieving those goals may be different. Strategies and strategists are not the same thing. It is certainly feasible to switch strategies while utilizing the same publicist.

At the same time, any new arrangement, by definition, will be unknown. It’s natural to wonder if it’s worth the risk. That’s why the process has to be undertaken thoughtfully, beginning with a realistic self-assessment.

Here is a four-step approach that can help you identify your needs and goals—which, in turn, will help you find a publicity firm or combination of services that can help you achieve them.

Prioritize your goals for this particular book—just the goals that are reasonably achievable right now, not your long-term goals. It’s helpful if there are one or two goals that are more important to you than the others. For example: Is your priority securing reviews in top-tier media, getting into libraries, making it onto those “best of” lists, reaching a particular community, selling a lot of books even at a discounted price?Make a list of marketing and publicity strategies you are most interested in. You might want to color-code them. For example: blue for those you found to be effective in the past, red for those you never or barely tried but find intriguing, green for those you’re on the fence about due to cost or other factors.Place your two lists side-by-side and (literally) map out the likely relationships. For example: if one of the strategies you want to utilize is “podcasts,” draw a line from podcasts to the goals that podcasts might help you achieve. Reaching a particular community—yes. Getting reviewed by Booklist and Library Journal—no.Examine the density of connections, and circle the strategies that offer the highest potential for helping you reach your top two goals. These are the strategies you want to use. That means you need to look for people or services that can provide them. Forgo the bucket-list items that would give you the greatest thrill but are unlikely to contribute to your goals. Be a pragmatist.Here’s the tough part

You might have a publicist you feel loyal to and guilty about “abandoning.” There might be a publicist your friends swear by, who seems to have achieved enviable results for them, or one whose high-profile client list you’re longing to join. But are any of them the right fit for you, at this particular time, with this particular book?

Perhaps you can stay with your current publicist, but renegotiate your arrangement. Can you use her for certain things, while outsourcing some of the services you now want that she can’t provide? Or do you need to thank her for her help and move on?

This attitude is likely to feel different from the one you had as a brand-new author who didn’t really know what she needed. Born of experience, it is more collaborative and empowered. Choosing a publicist for a second or third book, even if you end up re-choosing the same person you used before, is a choice based on knowledge, not just on hope.

To return to the questions at the beginning of this essay: Should I hire publicist? How can I choose a good one? Is it worth it?

“Should” and “worth it” are personal judgments that can only be assessed in relation to your aims and resources (e.g., time and money), as well as the larger context in which you are publishing. What others have done might not be relevant; as I’ve tried to indicate, what you did earlier might not be relevant either. Among the questions to ask yourself now:

What can you do yourself to promote your book (without paying someone else to do it), and do you want to?Are you willing to spend more than you’re likely to make in royalties for the sake of a long-term aim?For a second- or third-time author: do you feel differently about this book (or yourself as a writer) than you did about your previous book/s?How comfortable are you with risk and change?

As with everything in the world of publishing, there is no formula. Sometimes we grab on and sometimes we let go. We make the best choices we can—remembering that what we really want, at heart, is to reach people with our words and offer something that matters.

How to Turn Trolling Into a Fine Art

Illustration by Javier Olivares

Today’s post is excerpted from Catherine Baab-Muguira’s Poe for Your Problems: Uncommon Advice from History’s Least Likely Self-Help Guru, published by Running Press.

From his earliest days on the Southern Literary Messenger, Edgar Allan Poe reviewed books the way Jack Torrance swung an axe.

Take Norman Leslie, a novel written by Theodore Sedgewick Fay, a popular associate editor at the New York Mirror, which was then one of the most respected publications in the country. Poe didn’t give a damn. In his 1835 review, he screamed that Fay’s style was “unworthy of a school-boy,” the larger novel “full to the brim of absurdities,” “gross errors in Grammar,” and “egregious sins against common-sense.” In a subsequent article, Poe struck again, labeling Norman Leslie “the silliest book in the world.”

These attacks did not go unanswered. The staff of the Mirror swung back, gleefully informing their far-reaching audience that Poe’s own work had been turned down by Fay’s publisher and sneering at the Messenger for “striving to gain notoriety by the loudness of its abuse.” Other magazines joined in, too, calling Poe a quack, a jumped-up faux expert who couldn’t, were there a gun to his head, produce one good page himself.

This was the exact fight Poe had been seeking, and—more or less—for the reasons his enemies identified. He didn’t care how his nasty reviews unnerved his Messenger boss, T. W. White. Instead of backing off, he doubled down.

Over the next fifteen years of his career, Poe’s criticism remained so caustic and hostile that one victim would characterize it as “generally a tissue of coarse personal abuse.” Poe leaped between professional and personal grievances, then back again, not only inveighing against bad writing, but heaping scorn on people whom he disliked. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, another of Poe’s victims, observed: “The harshness of his criticisms, I have never attributed to anything but the irritation of a sensitive nature, chafed by some indefinite sense of wrong.”

He would know. Poe initiated his “Longfellow War” in 1845, first in the pages of the Mirror, and later in the Broadway Journal. To hear Poe tell it, Longfellow was a dastardly plagiarist: a plagiarist so devious and prolific that his plagiarisms could hardly be detected, so rife was the plagiarism, so deep did the plagiarism lie. Equally as bad, Longfellow also had a rich wife, and what appeared to be a serene family life, and a professorship at Harvard. What a jerk!

And Poe still wasn’t done.

In 1846, as a freelancer once again after the Broadway Journal collapsed, he began publishing his critical coup de grâce: a series of articles for a ladies’ magazine that amounted to a literary-world burn book à la Mean Girls.

In “The Literati of New York City,” he profiled several dozen of the writers he’d known and or just brushed wings with during his high-flying, “Raven”-fame days in Manhattan, not limiting himself to throwing shade on their work, but also repeating gossip and inserting lengthy comments about these writers’ height and weight, posture, facial features (the size of their noses, the shapes of their mouths, etc.), education (or, as he said, their appalling lack thereof), family backgrounds, intimate relationships, even his best guess at the current balance of their bank accounts.

Incredibly, some of those Poe covered so ruthlessly were friends, former colleagues—in other words, people who might still have done him favors, and this at a time when he was as about as poor as he’d ever been. When he was unemployed, unwell himself, and when his beloved wife, Virginia, was desperately sick. In fact, dying.

Such behavior may seem out of bounds, even morally revolting. And it is.

Frankly speaking, from this vantage point in history, it’s hard to see how Poe’s unfiltered criticism was a great use of his time, except to the extent that it brought him notoriety, attracting the nineteenth-century equivalent of clicks and eyeballs. I hate that it’s true, and I expect you do, too, yet trolling—the practice of deliberately provoking others in order to elicit an outsized reaction, whether through an 1840s magazine profile or the modern-day internet—is a powerful method of personal PR. A veritable dark art.

Just like us, Poe lived in a chaotic, explosive information age, and he faced the same set of problems about how to stand out amidst a constant torrent of content. To use an oversimplified example: Say you want to create a thriving YouTube channel. Helpfully, the means of video production and distribution have now been democratized, making such a path accessible at all.

At the same time, you’re competing with millions of other people with the same goal. You can’t possibly keep track of all the other content being created, while cultural trends and even whole platforms emerge and disappear with terrifying speed. Producing your videos may take days or weeks. Monetizing those videos and building your audience, however, may take years.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a YouTuber, a writer, a singer-songwriter, a comedian, or trying to establish yourself in any other field. Standing out is a near-impossible task, and you could be forgiven for trying to find ways of gaming the system—of hacking other people’s attention spans so you come to public attention, fast.

Two roads diverge before you. On the left is the Tom Hanks High Road, the virtuous route. You can be polite, even-handed, self-effacing, supportive of others, and here to make friends along the journey. Good luck.

On the right, there is the iconoclast’s path, which you will walk alone.

You can, like Poe, pose like a fearless truth-teller while letting your aggrieved psychology, your envy of those more successful, and your profound unhappiness with yourself and the world hold sway. You can seek the kind of world-leveling vengeance that Poe sought, at the same time taking advantage of the way human brains are wired to home in on threats and negative statements. Even toddlers understand that “bad” attention is still attention.

You can mine this primitive vein by being pissy, antagonistic, combative, impossible to please or placate, always operating in bad faith. If you choose this path, other people may hate you, and they may be right to.

What’s more, in strictly practical terms, this route is arguably far more crowded today than it was in Poe’s era, and even then, Poe’s peers could readily recognize and name his method. Exceptional harshness is now just as likely to work against you as for you: Users of YouTube, Twitter, and so on have necessarily learned to tune it out, given how overused and over-applied trolling has become.

What if you were to carve out a middle path?

Poe’s best criticism was more than mere trolling, and Poe himself, despite some terrible tendencies, more than a mere troll. He was also a literary expert, versed in verse, classic literature, and popular forms, and his command of his field was damn near second to none, even if he occasionally cribbed or exaggerated his knowledge.

Your task is to become an expert, too. To really stand out—all the more so now as a negative presence—your criticism needs to be on point, your blows must land. You don’t want to be a one-trick show pony, sh*t-posting only, with no original insights to contribute.

What would you think of an aspiring filmmaker who’s ignorant of film history? An artist who can’t discuss her own discipline, who by choice never visits a museum? A writer who thinks reading books is a waste of his precious time?

Such attitudes are for hobbyists and posers—not pros. It’s crucial to grasp the history of your field as well as the current landscape of what you’re trying to do—a badge of honor amounting to an urgent personal responsibility.

That does not mean you must be a slave to fashion, conventional wisdom, and elitist favor-trading, or that you should automatically accept what is popular as what is good. There’s nothing wrong with having an oppositional sensibility if you also develop mastery of the material and your own models for judging new work. In this happy case, your iconoclasm is no longer a pose, and your tendency to iconoclastic overstatement may be fun for everyone involved.

Think of Kanye West or Nassim Taleb, endlessly beefing and complaining as though their careers depend on it, yet still being wildly entertaining while they’re at it, and at the same time advancing the standards by which they want their own work to be judged. [To be clear, I’m not speaking of West’s politics or his comments on vaccines.]

This is elevated trolling, trolling as a fine art. Well educated, well executed. Canny. Worthy. Frequently very funny, too.

We might call this middle way The Path of the Pain in the Ass. Trolling for its own sake, when you have no original thoughts or contributions yourself, is just a way of being mean. Aim to be more of an articulate pain, someone for whom others can feel at least a grudging respect. The game’s no fun for anyone without worthy combatants—and you will have more fun when you know what you’re talking about, too.

So, what’s the Poe tip, the takeaway?

Develop a grasp of your field’s history and cultivate your own keen critical sensibility. In other words, become a giant pain in the ass.

Amazon / Bookshop

Another benefit: by becoming an expert, you’ll know whom to suck up to, which is every bit as crucial as being able to call out your chosen discipline’s sacred cows. You want the people you admire to admire you, don’t you?

Poe did, too. Just as he insulted his overly successful, under-talented peers, he craftily cultivated his literary heroes—particularly Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning—sucking up to them privately as well as writing public paeans to their work.

In the process, he turned them into advocates for his own work. This strategy can work just as well today, for you. It costs you nothing to send a flattering, even fawning, email, while the upside of doing so may be virtually unlimited. And my email address is on my website for whenever you’re ready.

Excerpted from POE FOR YOUR PROBLEMS: Uncommon Advice from History’s Least Likely Self-Help Guru by Catherine Baab-Muguira. Copyright © 2021. Available from Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

I Like Substack. But the PR Is Getting Ridiculous.

I subscribe to more than 50 Substacks. I even pay for a handful. I think it’s a great platform and I recommend it often to clients. That’s not so much because I love Substack the company, but because I believe in email. And Substack, if anything, makes it easy for non-tech people to harness the power of email, whether free or paid.

I myself have published a free newsletter for a decade (Electric Speed); it now has 24,000 subscribers. In 2015, I launched a paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet, before Substack existed. I had to roll my own tech for it, which I’ve been using for six years. (I stack ChargeBee, WordPress, and Mailchimp.) The newsletter grosses about $75,000 per year. In 2022, if I put more effort into it, I’ll get into the six figures.

So I have a lot of reasons to believe the hype around Substack. But the PR and media coverage it’s getting is all out of proportion to reality. Journalists are falling for Substack’s PR machine without an ounce of critical thinking. Let’s take a look.

Serialized books are a burgeoning business at substack (Publishers Weekly)

This article is about a nonfiction book traditionally published in 2014 that the author wants to revisit and re-promote. The publisher, Norton, doesn’t see sufficient benefit to releasing a new edition or designing a new cover. So to pacify the author, Norton has granted the author permission to serialize the first two chapters on Substack.

That’s it. A “burgeoning business”? No. As Guy Gonzalez tweeted, Publishers Weekly confuses a story about a traditional publisher not knowing how to market a minor backlist title into a story about Substack.

So let’s move on to the next article; this one’s about an author who is in fact serializing a new, original work.

Substack signs ex-Forbes writer as it seeks to disrupt book publishing (New York Post)

Substack paid an advance to author and entertainment writer Zack O’Malley Greenburg to serialize a book, We Are All Musicians Now, on Substack. Each week a new installment drops to paid subscribers. Greenburg told the New York Post that he opted to go the “Substack route” because it offered him more financial upside, although the terms of the deal were not disclosed. He said, “All in all, with the advance money being in the same ballpark, I’d rather go to a place where I can be my own boss with a higher upside than try to force it through an old business model that I think is broken.”

The New York post headline claims that Substack seeks to “disrupt” book publishing, but later the article acknowledges that serialization isn’t a new model. In digital media, for 20 years, authors have serialized and market-tested their work on blogs, podcasts, and email newsletters; on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook; through creator platforms like Patreon, Kickstarter, and Wattpad; and even through Kindle, particularly when Amazon Publishing had a clunky serials program (nothing like Vella) in 2012.

There’s also nothing new about a startup luring a creator away from an established player with cash and/or freedom. Lots of Internet companies, established businesses, and startups have done this. Amazon. Spotify. Apple. Etc.

Most important, the market for a serialization and the market for a book are not the same. I learned that when talking to Amazon years ago about their serialization program. More than half of the revenue arose from book sales after the fact. And I’ve seen that same dynamic play out for other authors in both nonfiction and fiction. Some people like the serialization experience, and some people like books—and the overlap between the two is smaller than you might think. So I hope that Greenburg negotiated his deal carefully.

Why writers are turning down lucrative deals in favor of Substack (The Guardian)

This article was written today, now that Salman Rushdie was lured in by a Substack offer. Yes, Salman Rushdie! So what will he do there? He says, “Just whatever comes into my head, it just gives me a way of saying something immediately, without mediators or gatekeepers.” (Wait, is he not on Twitter?) More formally, Rushdie says he will serialize a 35,000-word novella, and I have to wonder if his publisher refused to take it.

I find this akin to Margaret Atwood working with Wattpad some years ago. Sure, it was neat. But it did not change the fortunes of Wattpad. A bunch of A-list writers didn’t migrate over to the platform as a result. Wattpad’s business model remained the same. Is Atwood doing any work now on Wattpad? No. I doubt Rushdie will continue on Substack in any meaningful way beyond his first year.

Substack is clearly trying to spread its wings, but will it work?

After getting $65 million in funding in March, Substack must be under pressure to grow. With its focus now turned to fiction as well as comics, Substack may be trying to compete with the likes of mature and developed creator-publishing platforms such as Wattpad, Tapas, or Webtoon.

But this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, given what really stands out right now on Substack: political commentary, opinion, and various types of journalistic content. Perhaps they can honestly be called disruptors for a certain type of writer: op-ed columnists, professor-pundits, political journalists, or people in news-adjacent industries.

I’m the least surprised by its success in that realm. When I worked at the Virginia Quarterly Review (a very literary journal), I learned something critical on the first day of the job: fiction and poetry sank like a stone in terms of online traffic. Only nonfiction gained traction. Our audience simply did not read fiction online. They read books—usually print books.

Who does read fiction online, particularly on mobile devices? If you look at the established demographics of Wattpad, Tapas, and Webtoon, they’re all quite similar: young, diverse readers who consume comics, manga, graphic novels, and genre fiction. There are also sites like Radish and Royal Road (and now Vella), where you’ll find troves upon troves of genre fiction—lots of romance, science fiction and fantasy, and RPG stuff. It is possible to make money on those sites, but you are writing in established corners for established interests. It is not the same as going off to your Substack garret to pen the Great American Novel.

As far as I can tell, Substack has a different core audience than Wattpad, Webtoon or Tapas. They currently reach the type who also visit independent bookstores, probably know about LitHub and Bookshop, and prefer and maybe fetishize print. We shall see if Substack can successfully push beyond this literary type.

That brings me to Elle Griffin, a writer who has spent this past year analyzing how writers make money by publishing fiction, through her own Substack newsletter (but of course). She started a Discord server, Substack Writers Unite, where people gather to talk about how to build their author platform and get subscribers. Her work has garnered a lot of attention and sharing, as it should—it’s valuable insight for anyone who wants to know how authors today earn a living outside of the traditional publishing path. But her primary goal, as she’s made clear all along, is meant to accomplish one thing: support her paid Substack serialization of her upcoming novel.

I wish Griffin every success and I hope it works out. But so far she has established an audience for writers who want to learn how to make money writing. And that is not the same audience who reads fiction online. Sure, there could be some overlap, but it’s a well-known problem among writers that blogging about writing and becoming an expert on publishing doesn’t translate into readers for your fiction. You end up in an echo chamber.

The gritty reality for Substack’s middle class (Simon Owens)

Here is an article that speaks the truth, finally. Journalist Simon Owens has been trying to achieve lift-off on his own paid newsletter effort. He harbors no ill-will toward Substack, but like me, he’s a little tired of the hype.

Many aspiring creators have this fantasy that they’ll be able to work on their newsletter as a side hustle and then quit their full-time jobs at the exact moment that the newsletter revenue replaces their full-time income.

This scenario is known to happen sometimes, but it’ll be difficult to achieve for most. Why? It all ties back to growth.

While we’d all like to say that content quality is the biggest driver of growth, the truth is that publishing consistency often plays a much bigger role. You can produce the most brilliantly-research[ed], well-written newsletters, but if you’re only publishing twice a month, you’re not going to grow very fast, at least without a large following on some other platform or a sizable marketing budget. All things being equal, a daily newsletter will grow much more quickly than a weekly newsletter, even if the daily newsletter is slightly lower in quality.

What does this mean in practice? That embarking on a newsletter career requires a leap of faith — a departure from full-time work so you can increase your content output, even though you’re not yet generating enough income to replace your salary. In other words: you need some sort of financial cushion.

For my own paid newsletter, it took me a couple years to hit what I’d call “salary replacement income.” And that was with (1) 100,000 visits to my website, (2) more than 20,000 free email newsletter subscribers, and (3) 200,000 followers on Twitter. Now that I’m six years in, I might be able to hit six figures if I put aside other work in favor of it. As of today, the majority of my income is from online classes.

None of these projects I’ve discussed here are foolish or bad—nor am I against people using Substack. I applaud innovation and experimentation. I love seeing new paths and opportunities open up for writers. But Substack is just one option among many. And let us not forget Substack is a VC-funded enterprise, just as Medium was. Remember The Atavist? Byliner? Vook? Pronoun? Oyster? No? That’s because they’re buried very deep in the graveyard of publishing “disruptors.” Keep your eyes wide open.

That Second Book: To Write, or Not to Write?

Today’s post is by Rachel Michelberg, author of the memoir Crash.

In my writing feedback group recently, I was complaining. Kvetching, my mother would say—the whiny, petulant kind of grumbling that’s really annoying for those subjected to it.

I was stuck—for blog topic inspiration, put-your-butt-in-the-chair-and-write motivation. Still well within the post-pub-honeymoon period of publishing my memoir, Crash, I had an excellent excuse so was heartily forgiven by my teacher and group-mates. It’s normal, they said. Give yourself a break. You’re in a kind of withdrawal, happens to lots of writers. (I wrote about that here.)

But it leads to a bigger, more existential question: Am I a one-hit wonder?

Not that Crash is a hit—yet—but it’s gotten a better response than I ever imagined. Is it a one-off? Or, as I’ve affirmed in so many interviews, do I really have a second book in me?

Writing a book is a herculean task. I don’t have to tell you that. This is a writer’s blog, I’m preaching to the choir here. Blood, sweat, tears, time, energy, and money—lots and lots of money. I suppose there are authors that just need a working computer, God bless them. Not me. I’ve lost track long ago of how many dollars flew out the door for classes, feedback groups, retreats, editing services. And that’s before a publisher accepted me. Since then, it’s payment for the hybrid publisher, publicist, social media coaching, contest entry fees. Yes, you have to pay to be considered for all of those book awards. Those little stickers for the book when you win? Those too.

Luckily, despite my kvetching, I’m in a comfortable financial place in my life so it’s really not about the money (though that’s always a consideration, isn’t it?). I can afford to follow my passion. But is it a passion?

I started writing Crash because I had one of those you-don’t-make-this-shit-up kind of stories, not because writing is a profession. I had no real idea what I was doing when I started. Do I really need to keep writing?

Who am I kidding? The real question is—do I, deep in my guts—my kishkes as my mother would say (don’t you just love Yiddish?), really want to write another book? Or am I feeling obligated, to please my friends and readers? Am I still that little girl wanting to make mommy and daddy proud?

No one’s pushing me. My husband would probably be relieved if I didn’t (see above, re: $$ and energy) but he’d support me. As I brood, a pro/con list emerges:

Pro: I have a career and some status as a voice and piano teacher and singer. I don’t need to prove myself or carve out an identity. Or do I?Con: $$. Knowing how I work, I couldn’t resist attending retreats, conferences, classes, etc. Ka-ching ka-ching.Con: The constant pressure. How many pages have I written today? I need to put my butt in the chair, but I don’t wanna.Pro: A great way to avoid feeling like an imposter. Calling myself an author after writing one book feels…sketchy but acceptable. Working on a second? Definitely!Pro: Feeling like a valid, relevant part of the author communities I’ve joined, not a has-been.Con: Writing fiction. My idea for book #2, historical fiction based on fact, is terrifying. For my memoir, I was there. I didn’t have to make anything up, be truly creative.Pro: Who knows? I might really enjoy the process.

For now, I’ll find some contentment in my vacillation. After all, Crash took me eleven years to write, so what’s the hurry?

How to Make Six Figures Self-Publishing Children’s Books

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Today’s post is by author and indie publisher Darcy Pattison (@FictionNotes). This post has been edited and adapted from a presentation delivered at the SCBWI’s Big Five-Oh! Virtual Conference.

Let’s talk about making money as a self-publisher of children’s books.

I bet you think that I’ll start out with something like running a Kickstarter campaign. This year, I did indeed run a campaign for The Plan for the Gingerbread House, but it was my first Kickstarter campaign ever, and it was a minor project for my company.

Instead, I’d like to walk you through some of the issues of self-publishing by looking at one of my books, Nefertiti: The Spidernaut, which was published on October 16, 2011.

During the summer of 2010, I heard a radio interview with Astronaut Sunita Williams, Captain U.S. Navy about a live animal experiment on the International Space Station (ISS). She was the astronaut who dealt with Nefertiti, a jumping spider who was sent to space.

Most spiders spin a web to catch food. But jumping spiders actively hunt, leaping to catch their prey. What happens when a jumping spider jumps in the microgravity of the ISS? It’ll float away. Would Nefertiti be able to adapt and hunt? Or will it die?

Williams said, “It was a suspense story for me as it happened. I didn’t know if she would survive when I unpacked her for the first time, or when I packed her up and sent her back home to Earth.”

I knew it would make a suspenseful book for kids to read, too.

Here’s the question, though: why self-publish THIS book?

It helps to publish a series

One reason I decided to publish Nefertiti is that I already had the makings of a successful picture book series of animal biographies.

Wisdom: The Midway Albatross won the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Award for picture books, a $1,000 prize, and subsequently received a starred Publishers Weekly review.Abayomi: The Brazilian Puma was named a 2015 National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) Outstanding Science Trade Book.

Self-publishers know that publishing in a series makes a lot of sense. You don’t have to recreate the audience for each book. If a reader liked a previous book in the series, they are more likely to like this one, too.

So, I decided to publish the book.

Publish in multiple formats and distribute wide

I decided early on to simultaneously publish hardcover, paperback, ebook and audiobook versions of each title. Because I use print-on-demand services, instead of offset printing, I made about the same profit on each version. I decided to let the customer decide on the format they preferred.

I also distribute widely, refusing to limit my books to any exclusive agreement. Readers can find the books wherever they are accustomed to shopping, in whatever format suits them best.

I also send books for reviews, just like any other publisher. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of discrimination in the industry about self-publishing, but I ignore all that, and my publishing company submits books anywhere the book belongs. However, sending books out for reviews is risky!

School Library Journal gave Nefertiti the worst review I’ve ever read: “Skip this bland treatment and share the news clippings instead.”

I don’t know. Maybe the reviewer’s opinion really was that the writing was bland. Perhaps she just hated spiders. Or maybe she knew this was a self-published book and slammed it for that reason. Who knows?

I was upset. But not very upset—yet. I knew the conversation wasn’t over.

Live and die by your opinion

Publishers live and die by their opinions. I once talked with a Dial/Penguin editor who said that for their fall list of 25 titles, they knew that half of them wouldn’t earn out. The problem? They just didn’t know which half would perform? The professionals—the publishers with a long track record of producing children’s books—they didn’t know what would succeed and what would fail.

The editor said, “In this business, you live or die by your opinion.”

In my opinion, Nefertiti was a great book. Ultimately it was named a 2017 NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book. One judge told me later it was his favorite book of the year.

Now, here’s what I know. If I’d been traditionally published, the book would never have won the award. First, it likely wouldn’t have been accepted for publication. Second, it would never have been submitted for that award. Traditional publishers will only submit a season’s lead book from their most popular authors. Mine wouldn’t be submitted!

My book would’ve failed because it was ignored.

The only reason it received the NSTA recognition is because I care more about my work than anyone else. I submitted. And the book did its work.

Network your way to special sales

Because Nefertiti was named an NSTA book, when I attended the Arkansas Reading Association convention later that fall, I contacted the NSTA representative to tell her I’d be attending. I stopped by her booth and visited. She recommended that I meet Emily Morgan and Karen Ansberry, who were working on Picture Perfect Science workbooks, which provided elementary teachers with lesson plans for teaching science using picture book texts.

A couple weeks later, Emily and Karen were presenting at a school district just an hour away, so I attended and stayed to eat dinner with them.

The result was that two of my books, Nefertiti (space & spiders) and Burn: Michael Faraday’s Candle (light and fire), were included in their next volume of Picture Perfect Science STEM Lessons, Grades 3-5.

I was thrilled when the NSTA decided to create a book bundle of all the books recommended in the Picture Perfect series. They ordered thousands of copies of Burn and Nefertiti to include and sell to teachers and school districts in the book bundle.

Special orders are an important addition to a self-publisher’s income. These sales came from networking. (Don’t you dare call it luck. I networked!) But you can also go looking for special sales. In fact, traditional publishers have whole departments dedicated to special sales.

The key is to learn the basic business of the sales process from purchase orders to invoices, not something I can teach you here. But something to investigate and learn.

More paths to special sales

Nefertiti also caught the attention of the subscription box service Little Passports. A box service offers a monthly box filled with—in this case—children’s books about traveling the world. Their flagship box promised a tour of the world for kids. But they decided to add STEM boxes, too.

They contacted me first about CLANG! Ernst Chladni’s Sound Experiments because it was an NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book, for a box about sound experiments. But they quickly became interested in Nefertiti as a fun way to talk about space.

They asked if it was possible to change the trim size from 8.5” square to 8” square, and they wanted to co-brand the books. That is, they wanted their logo on the book cover’s corner. That meant I couldn’t sell these books anywhere else. Apparently, some traditional publishers stumbled over that request, but it made sense to me. I was glad to accommodate them. I negotiated a reasonable price, did offset printing for the special orders, and received a nice profit on each book. In return, I’ve sold tens of thousands of copies of both books to Little Passports.

Think like a publisher, not like an author

Bulk or volume sales is thinking like a publisher. An author says, “I want to do school visits and sell books to kids afterward.” There’s nothing wrong with that idea in the early years. In the first few years of your business, do anything you must to stay afloat. But eventually, you’ll learn that you can’t scale up author visits. Your time is too limited. You may sell a couple thousand books in a year that way. If you really travel and work it, it could be very lucrative.

But that meant you weren’t home writing the next book. And eventually, you run out of days in the year to present. After a certain point, you can’t scale up.

Instead, think like a publisher. I want to wholesale the books to someone like Little Passports because they work to acquire the end customer, not me.

Pursue international sales

So far, the Another Extraordinary Animal series hasn’t received any solid offers for international translation deals. I’ve done well with the Moments in Science series, which sold a four-book deal to Dandelion Children’s Books in China, and a six-book deal to Dabom Publishing in Korea.

The feedback, however, on Another Extraordinary Animal has been that the series is too focused on American animals. Calaveras County, California holds an annual frog jumping contest based on Mark Twain’s short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” Over 30 years ago, Rosie the Ribeter set the world-record for the longest triple-jump, a record that still stands. Yes, it’s an American story.

But next year, I’ll add a new title to the series, Diego: The Galapagos Giant Tortoise. This is the amazing true story of saving a species from extinction. Sixty years ago, scientists thought the tortoises from Española Island were extinct. They only found 14 individuals, 2 males and 12 females. And then, they found one more in the San Diego Zoo, whom they named Diego. For 60 years, the scientist worked on a breeding program, figuring out what the tortoises needed in a breeding ground, protecting the hatchlings until they were big enough to survive on their own, and eventually reintroducing the tortoises to their home island.

In 2020, they declared the breeding program a success, with over 2,500 tortoises now on Española Island. And in June 2020, they loaded up the original 15 tortoises and returned them to the island of their birth. After being gone for about 100 years, Diego came home.

I am hopeful that this book will expand the series into a stronger international focus and will find interest in other markets. In other words, Nefertiti remains part of that series has a bright future!

Value your copyright: rights and licensing

As a self-publisher, I know the value of my copyright. Each right (hardcover, audiobook, merchandising, etc.) has potential for income. I didn’t sign away all my rights in a single contract.

A website that teaches reading to kids needed some solid nonfiction texts. They licensed the right to display on their website Nefertiti and another book, Pollen. Both contracts were for text-only and for a five-year period. After that, they would have to come back and negotiate a new contract.

Traditional publishers’ contracts ask for all rights, which limits my ability to make money on a project. As a self-published publisher, I can extend my income by marketing each right separately.

Nefertiti has sold successfully in these formats.

HardcoverPaperbackEbookAudiobookBook bundle from NSTASubscription box serviceText only to a website that teaches reading

What formats will sell in the future?

Foreign rightsT-ShirtsPlush animal

OK, some of these are far-fetched. I’m not sure who would buy a plush toy of Nefertiti. But you never know!

Your backlist is gold

One main reason my income has topped $100,000 is that I now have 55+ books out. Each book needs to contribute something to my income. But this year, the highest grossing book may be Nefertiti and next year, it might be When Kittens Go Viral. On average, each book needs to pull in less $2,000 per year for me to earn $100,000. That’s vastly different from having only two books out and each book would need to contribute $50,000. The math tells you, publish more books!

With such a strong backlist, it’s also easier to be found. There are 55 chances for my publishing company to be noticed, instead of just two. Once a reader visits my website, will they purchase other books? Some will!

A final thought

I never apologize for the business decision to bring a book to market yourself.

My goal for the future? Watch me!

I’m going to win a Newbery or a Siebert. Or both.

The Art of Endlessly Revising a Memoir

Today’s post is by writer, editor and teacher Anne Liu Kellor (@anneliukellor), author of the new memoir Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love, and Belonging.

Writing a memoir is a process of deciding what should go in and what you must leave out. You cannot possibly include everything. Instead you must focus on one period in your life, or one theme or thread, or sometimes several, woven together.

The problem is, even when limiting the scope, not all memoirs easily lend themselves to a typical narrative arc: problem —> quest to solve the problem —> emerging wiser or healed. In fact, the longer one lives, the more one realizes how what may feel like resolution at one point will later reveal itself as only a resting place, a temporary completion of one cycle—before the same questions and themes arise. Or, in my case, by the time your memoir finally comes out, the man you ended up with at the end of the book you’ve now divorced, fifteen years later.

Let me be clear: my story, at heart, was not about wanting to win a prize of happily ever after. Instead, it was about multiple layers of searching: searching for my once-abandoned mother tongue of Chinese; searching for my connection to Buddhism and Tibet and China; searching for my own sense of purpose and voice. Although the white-dominant publishing industry might not deem it “universal,” it is a classic coming-of-age memoir—for, aren’t all of us, in our twenties, seeking to understand what we are meant to do with our lives or where we belong? My story had multiple layers, multiple resolutions, and meeting my future husband was only one of them.

But here’s the thing: if I started writing that memoir today, focused on that same period, it would be a very different book. Motherhood, therapy, divorce, the pandemic: all of these things have changed the way I would tell my story. Therapy especially helped me to question and reframe how much of my early spiritual searching—my desire to find my Path, to humble myself, dissolve my ego, and to serve the world with my life—was in fact tied to ego and the sense that if I didn’t do something big and “worthy” with my life, I myself was not worthy; my own life, my own intimate stories and questions, those by themselves were not enough.

If I were to write my memoir today, I might reflect more clearly from the onset about how beneath all of my grander spiritual questions at the time, I was, at heart, simply trying to find my voice—as so many of us are. Yet because I was quiet, shy, and lonely, I gravitated instead towards spirituality—a different kind of intimacy, that didn’t yet necessitate that I speak to others.

If I were to write my memoir today, instead of ending with the man I met, I would end with how I gradually stepped into my vocation as a writing teacher and learned to create community for others—a less dramatic ending, but a more deeply redemptive one. For despite considering other potential redemptive “endings” along the way (marriage, motherhood, etc.), I have never felt my life come as full circle as it has now, as a teacher, and as a woman who is finally launching her book. So, in a meta sense, the deeper story that I am now embracing is the one that involves me putting my book out in the world after twenty years of writing, editing, submitting, and waiting.

But, on a practical craft level, what do you do if you find your voice, your writing chops, or your perspective on your story keeps changing? It’s relatively easy to keep editing on a line level and tightening your prose, etc. But what about the problem of where in time your voice is writing from, and where in time your memoir ends?

In my case, I decided to end the book’s narrative well before motherhood—so, over eleven years ago. I also locked the memoir’s voice and perspective in the past by changing it to present tense. Present tense memoirs can be challenging because there is less room to reflect from an older, wiser place, and as such you must rely heavily on scene and transformation that happens in the moment. However, I was able to weave in some backstory chapters with a more reflective voice, as well as some more lyrical chapters that deepen the resonance of the book beyond what my present tense voice of my twenties could access or say. But overall, I stayed true to writing from the crafted perspective of who I was then, not now.

Amazon / Bookshop

Sometimes I think I could write a wiser book if I were to start it today from the vantage point of a woman in her forties versus in her early thirties. But what I’ve also realized is that whatever layers I wasn’t able to express or get to in this book, I will carry forward into my next. In fact, I do also have a newer unpublished collection of essays written, much of which revisits the same themes from my memoir through a wiser, more lyrical place. A place that already understands more about myself and my core weaknesses, gifts, and wounds. And this will always be the case: we will always be revisiting the same core themes in our work. We will always be deepening, or widening, our perspective.

So while some may advise to not write about stuff that is too fresh and instead wait until you have years of hindsight—if you are someone who must write now, and trusts that you will always be writing, your story may well need to live in the world through the lens of multiple perspectives: the one that is living it now, and the one that will look back in another five, ten, or twenty years.

Here’s the thing: we are never truly “done” with making meaning from our stories. There is never one “perfect” version. Instead, we must keep rewriting them over and over, and in turn, they will keep rewriting us.

How to Market Your Book Without Social Media

“Switch off” by Insight Imaging: John A Ryan Photography is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Today’s post is by Carol Michel, an award-winning author of five humorous gardening essay books and one children’s book.

I gave up social media in July 2020.

I did what the computer scientist/author Cal Newport calls a 30-day digital detox. I signed out of Facebook (2,200 followers on my business page, 750+ friends), Instagram (1,100 followers) and Twitter (7,000+ followers). I removed the apps from my phone and other digital devices and stopped using them for 30 days.

Those accounts don’t have great numbers, but they aren’t trivial either. Some people thought I was crazy for doing it. Other people were envious and wanted to do it too. Another friend told me she would love to do a digital detox but thought her publisher would freak out since she was just getting ready to promote her new traditionally published book.

Fortunately, since I self-publish my books, no publisher was leaning over my shoulder telling me to get back on social media before I lost my followers.

Instead, after 30 days, I decided I liked my new digital-light world. My next brilliant marketing move was to winnow my Facebook friends down to a manageable 75 people, mostly relatives, and continue to ignore it and Instagram. Then I deleted my Twitter account.

It’s been over a year now, and I have no regrets about junking the big three—Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—though I keep my accounts on Facebook and Instagram for occasional visits. I also kept LinkedIn, which technically falls under the umbrella of social media. (I never used TikTok and I have a Pinterest account I ignore.)

Social media has a shelf life

Recently I ran across some information about the shelf life of a social media post that has given me the courage to keep moving forward without social media, even though I now have a new book to publicize. Most sources credit an IT services company, Mamsys, for these stats. In ascending order, the shelf lives are:

Twitter – 18 minutesFacebook – 5 hoursInstagram – 21 hoursLinkedIn – 24 hoursVideos – 3 monthsBlog post – 2 yearsHow I’m promoting my book without social media

We all know that my smug feelings about being one of those people who broke their ties with social media (I refuse to say I was addicted) won’t get the word out about my books. But there are still many avenues on and off the Internet to help drive book sales. Here’s my first dozen.

An author website. My books are featured on the main page of my author website. I’m searchable on the web and try to have everything anyone needs to know about me and my books on my website.A blog. I’ve had a blog since 2006, if you don’t count those three posts I attempted in 2004 and 2005. That blog, which I started on Blogger, now lives on my author website under WordPress. I try to update it at least once a week. I also set up MailChimp to send an email to those who subscribe to my blog.An email newsletter. Once I gave up social media, I found I finally had the time to write and publish monthly newsletters. I always include something about my books, plus other tidbits about gardening and life. My subscriber base is currently around 375 with a few new subscribers added each month.Guest posts. If you don’t have a blog, are just starting a blog, or want to see if you can reach an audience beyond your blog, offer to write guest posts for others. People all over the Internet are looking for good content to share with their readers. Ask them to include a link back to your website.A weekly podcast. I record and publish a weekly podcast with another garden writer. It brings in readers and book buyers who might not otherwise find me. What’s the shelf-life of a podcast episode? I’d guess around one week or longer. We get most of our listeners the first week after publishing the episode, and then the number of listeners per week for that episode tapers down quite a bit.A YouTube channel. From personal experience, I can tell you that you can waste as much time on YouTube as you can on any social media platform. I have a small (micro) channel with per video views measured in double-digits. Why bother? Shrug. I enjoy making the videos. A video might reach another dozen people.Professional organizations. Most writing genres have a professional group you can join which puts you in contact with like-minded writers. I belong to Garden Communicators International (GardenComm) which puts me in contact with hundreds of other writers and garden communicators who are looking for gardening related books to review on their own platforms, which include newspaper columns, magazines, radio shows, podcasts, etc. And when they publish something about my book, they are likely to promote it via their social media channels. I also belong to a local writing group which helps me keep track of local opportunities for promoting my books.Guest appearance on a podcast or radio show. Many podcasters rely on guests for content, and radio shows usually like to feature guests on their programs. Everyone is looking for someone interesting to feature. Be interesting. Ask to be a guest and tell them what great information you have to share.Review copies of my books. I freely send out review copies of my books to anyone who might have an opportunity to tell someone else about it. I just published a new book this month and have already sent out close to 80 copies, many to people I know through the professional organization, GardenComm. Right along with review copies I occasionally offer to provide copies as giveaway prizes on radio shows and podcast episodes when I’m a guest.Speaking. I sell copies of my books when I speak to groups about gardening. I include information on my author website about how to hire me to speak to a group, plus I am registered on a site called Great Garden Speakers where I’m found by people who otherwise might not know anything about me.A LinkedIn presence. I remain on LinkedIn and try to keep my professional information up to date. I’ll occasionally post information about my books or other achievements related to my writing.Local bookstores. I shop at a local bookstore and the owner is more than willing to purchase copies of my books via IngramSpark to sell in her shop. (I use IngramSpark as my book distributor instead of Amazon.) Another bookstore a bit further away takes a few books on consignment and has hosted me for a book signing, which they promoted. And don’t forget author fairs sponsored by libraries, historical societies, and others where you can set up a table and sell your books.

By now, you may have decided it would be easier to just keep posting and tweeting to get the word out about your next project rather than follow some of the suggestions I’ve listed above.

Or you may be doing many of the items I suggested, plus exhausting yourself by regularly posting and interacting on social media channels.

Regardless of what else you are doing to market your books, ask yourself if that time spent on social media is really getting the word out about those books.

Or would it be better to spend that time on activities that might have a longer shelf life? Only you, with your own stats and observations, can decide if it is.

Start Here: How to Self-Publish Your Book

This is an introductory guide on how to self-publish and choose the right services or approach based on your needs and budget.

While this post was originally published in 2015, it is regularly revised and updated to reflect current services and tools. Last updated: August 2021.

This Wednesday, I’m teaching a class on self-publishing for first timers.

A Quick History of Self-PublishingThe Most Common Ways to Self-Publish TodaySelf-Publishing: The DIY Approach I RecommendHow Ebook Self-Publishing Services WorkCreating Ebook FilesHow to Self-Publish a Print BookInvesting in a Print Run: Yes or No?Print-on-Demand RecommendationsMaximizing Your Book SalesAdditional Reading<script src="https://fast.wistia.com/assets/extern..." async="">1. A Quick History of Self-Publishing

For most of publishing’s history, if an author wanted to self-publish, they had to invest thousands of dollars with a so-called “vanity” press, or establish themselves as an independent, small publisher.

That all changed in the late 1990s, with the advent of print-on-demand (POD) technology, which allows books to be printed one at a time. As a result, many POD publishing services arose that provided authors with low-cost self-publishing packages. They could be low cost because—without print runs, inventory, and warehousing—the only expense left was creating and designing the product itself: the book.

What’s changed: the shift to online retail and ebooks (namely, the rise of Amazon)

Just as traditional publishing has transformed due to the rise of ebooks, today’s self-publishing market has transformed as well. Most self-published authors earn the bulk of their money from ebook sales. Furthermore, more than 80 percent of all US ebook sales happen through a single online retailer, Amazon. Anyone can make their ebook and print book available for sale in the most important market—Amazon—without paying a cent upfront.

That means the full-service POD firms (like AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Xlibris, etc) that used to make a killing are now largely irrelevant to most self-publishing success, even though you’ll find them advertising against Google search results for “self-publishing.” Don’t be lured in; first understand your options, explained below.

2. The Most Common Ways to Self-Publish Today

There are several ways to self-publish in today’s market.

Self-publish completely on your own, hiring only the freelance assistance you need, and work directly with retailers and distributors to sell your book.Self-publish by paying a service company to assist you.Work with a “hybrid” publisher.

This post will expand on how to self-publish completely on your own, retaining 100 percent publishing control and profits. Before I explore that process in detail, here’s an explanation of the other choices you have. (You can also watch the 20-minute video below, which walks you through these choices and more).

Self-publish by hiring a service company

This is what I call the “write a check and make the headache go away” method of self-publishing. If you have more money than time, and have no interest in being a full-time career author, this may best serve your needs.

Service packages and publishing arrangements tremendously vary, but the best services charge an upfront fee, take no rights to your work, and pass on 100% net sales to the author. They make money on charging authors for the services provided (editorial, design, marketing, and so on), not on copies sold. Such books will almost never be stocked in physical retail bookstores, although in some rare cases, it may happen. Most assisted publishing services have different packages or tiers of service, while others offer customized quotes based on the particular needs of your project.

The benefit is that you get a published book without having to figure out the details of the publishing industry or finding freelance professionals you can trust. The best and most expensive services (which can easily exceed $20,000) offer a quality experience that is comparable to working with a traditional publisher. You should avoid companies that take advantage of author inexperience and use high-pressure sales tactics, such as AuthorSolutions imprints (AuthorHouse, iUniverse, WestBow, Archway).

Examples of good assisted services include Matador (UK), Scribe Media, Author Imprints, and Girl Friday Productions. To check the reputation of a service, visit the Alliance of Independent Authors service directory. Sometimes such companies call themselves hybrids, which brings me to the next option.

Publish through a “hybrid” company

Some self-publishing (or assisted publishing) services have started calling themselves “hybrid publishers” because it sounds more innovative or desirable. Fees dramatically vary and quality dramatically varies. You have to do your research carefully. I discuss hybrid publishing in more detail here. 

As with self-publishing service companies, you will fund book publication in exchange for expertise and assistance of the publisher; cost is often in the thousands of dollars. You may receive better royalties than a traditional publishing contract, but you’ll earn less than if self-publishing on your own. Each hybrid publisher has its own distinctive costs and business model; always secure a clear contract with all fees explained.

3. Self-Publishing: The DIY Approach I Recommend

Today, anyone can get access to the same level of online retail distribution as a traditional publisher, for both print and ebook editions, through services such as Amazon KDP, Draft2Digital, and IngramSpark. I will explain how and when to use these services throughout this post.

You don’t “pay” these services until your books start to sell. Every time a copy of your book is sold, the retailer takes a cut, and if you use a distributor, they’ll take a cut, too.

You, the author, manage the publishing process and hire the right people or services to edit, design, publish, and distribute your book. Every step of the way, you decide which distributors or retailers you prefer to deal with. You retain complete and total control of all artistic and business decisions; you keep all profits and rights.

Self-publishing on your own means making decisions about your book’s editorial, design, and production quality. I offer a checklist for the book publication process here.

What follows is an explanation of how to self-publish once you have a final, polished manuscript and/or printer-ready files. 

Some distributors offer fee-based services related to editing, design, and marketing. These package services may work OK for your needs, but I think it’s better to hire your own freelancers and always know who you’re working with. Also, you can take a look at Joel Friedlander’s book template system, which offers a way for total beginners to prepare ebook and print book files that are ready to be distributed and sold.

Setting Up a Formal Publishing Company

You don’t have to set up a formal business (e.g., in the United States, you can use your Social Security number for tax purposes), but serious self-publishers will typically set up an LLC at minimum.

For the basic information on how to establish your own imprint or publishing company, read Joel Friedlander’s post, How to Create, Register, and List Your New Publishing Company.

4. How Ebook Self-Publishing Services Work

The first and most important thing to understand about ebook retailers and distributors is that they are not publishers. That means they take no responsibility for the quality of your work, but neither do they take any rights to your work. Here are the characteristics of major services:

Free to play. You rarely pay an upfront fee. When you do pay upfront, usually in the case of a distributor, you should earn 100% net. If you don’t pay an upfront fee, then expect a percentage of your sales to be kept.At-will and nonexclusive. You can upload your work at any time and make it available for sale; you can also take it down at any time. You can upload new versions; change the price, cover and description; and you can sell your work through multiple services or through your own site.Little technical expertise required. Major services offer automated tools for converting your files, uploading files, and listing your work for sale, as well as free guides and tutorials to help ensure your files are formatted appropriately.

Again, it’s important to emphasize: By using these services, you do not forfeit any of your rights to the work. If a traditional publisher or agent were to approach you after your ebook has gone on sale, you are free to sell rights without any obligation to the services you’ve used.

Most e-publishing services fall into one of these categories:

Ebook retailers. Nearly all ebook retailers offer to distribute and sell self-published ebooks through their storefront or device, then take a cut of sales. The biggest and most important of these is Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. Ebook retailers do not offer any hands-on assistance in preparing your ebook files, although they may accept a wide range of file types for upload or conversion tools.Ebook distributors. These services primarily act as middlemen and push your work out to multiple retailers and distributors. This helps reduce the amount of work an author must do; instead of dealing with many different single channel services, you deal with only one service. The most popular ebook distributors in the United States are Draft2Digital and Smashwords.Book builders and distributors. These are tools that allow you to create and distribute your work all from one interface. These are most common for children’s books and highly illustrated books, such as Kindle Kids’ Book Creator or Blurb.

One popular approach for independent authors is to sell and distribute directly through Amazon KDP, then use a distributor like Draft2Digital to reach everyone else. Because none of these services demand exclusivity, that’s possible.

A note about ISBNs: While an ISBN is not required for basic ebook distribution through most retailers, some distributors and services require one. Therefore, to maximize distribution, you’ll need an ISBN for your ebook. Some self-publishing services will provide you with an ISBN, or you can obtain your own ISBN. (If you’re US-based, you can buy through MyIdentifiers.com.)

What ebook retailers pay

Pay is determined by the ebook price you set. Amazon has the least favorable terms and penalizes you for pricing outside of the $2.99 to $9.99 window. B&N (Nook) and Apple pay 70 percent across the board. Kobo has the most favorable cut under $2.99.

5. Creating Ebook Files

Most major ebook retailers and distributors accept a Word document and automatically convert it to the ebook format, but you still must go through an “unformatting” process for best results. All major services offer step-by-step guidelines for formatting your Word documents before you upload them for conversion. Here is more information on going from Word doc to ebook.

Main ebook formats you’ll hear about:

EPUB. This is considered a global standard format for ebooks and works seamlessly on most devices. You can use it at Amazon and just about any retailer or distributor.MOBI. This used to be the standard file format for Kindle, but they have dropped it as a preferred format. It’s not worth preparing any longer.PDF. PDFs can be difficult to convert to standard ebook formats. It’s not a recommended starting point for ebook conversion.

There is a difference between formatting and converting your book files. Conversion refers to an automated process of converting files from one format into another, without editing or styling. It’s often easy to convert files, but the resulting file may look unprofessional—or even appear unreadable—if not formatted appropriately.

Useful tools for formatting and converting ebooks include:

Calibre : Free software that converts and helps you format ebook files from more than a dozen different file types. Vellum : popular ebook formatting software for Mac usersI’ve listed more tools here.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed at the idea of converting and formatting your own ebook files, then you may want to use a distributor or service that’s customer-service oriented in this regard, such as Draft2Digital. If your ebook has special layout requirements, heavy illustration, or multimedia components, you should probably hire an independent company to help you (eBookPartnership is one option).

But if your book is mostly straight text—such as novels and narrative works—then you should be able to handle the conversion and formatting process without much difficulty if you’re starting with a Word document.

Designing an ebook cover

There are a number of special considerations for ebook cover design. People may see your cover in black and white, grayscale, color, high-resolution, low-resolution, thumbnail size, or full size. It needs to be readable at all sizes and look good on low-quality or mobile devices. For these reasons (and many more), it’s best to hire a professional to create an ebook cover for you. One designer I frequently recommend is Damon Za.

Ebooks don’t work that well for some categories

Even though ebooks are the best-selling format for self-publishing authors (especially fiction), ask these questions before you begin:

Is your book highly illustrated? Does it require color? If so, you may find there are significant challenges to creating and distributing your ebook across multiple platforms.Is your book for children? Ebook adoption in the children’s market is in the single digits, unlike the adult market. Ebook-only work will struggle to gain traction.6. How to Self-Publish a Print Book

There are two primary ways to publish and make a print edition available for sale:

Print on demand (POD)Traditional offset printing 

Print-on-demand technology allows for books to be printed one at a time. This is by far the most popular way to produce print copies of your book because it reduces financial risk.

Pros of print-on-demand

Little or no upfront cost, aside from producing printer-ready filesYour book can be available for sale as a print edition in all the usual online retail outlets (Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, etc), as well as distributed through Ingram, the largest U.S. book wholesaler.Most people cannot tell the difference between a POD book and an offset printed book—at least for black-and-white books.

Cons of print-on-demand

The unit cost is much higher, which may lead to a higher retail price.You may have very few print copies on hand—or it will be expensive to keep ordering print copies to have around.

Most books printed by U.S. traditional publishers are produced through offset printing. To use a traditional printer, you usually need to commit to 1,000 copies minimum.

Pros of offset printing

Lower unit costHigher quality production values, especially for full-color booksYou’ll have plenty of print copies around

Cons of offset printing

Considerable upfront investment; $2,000 is the likely minimum, which includes the printing and shipping costs.Increased risk—what if the books don’t sell or you want to put out a new edition before the old one is sold out?You’ll have plenty of print copies around—which means you have books to warehouse and fulfill unless you hire a third party to handle it for you, which then incurs additional costs. 

While it can be fairly straightforward and inexpensive to get a print book in your hands via print-on-demand services, virtually no one can get your book physically ordered or stocked in bookstores. Self-publishing services may claim to distribute your book to stores or make your book available to stores. But this is very different from actually selling your book into bookstores. Bookstores almost never accept or stock titles from any self-publishing service or POD company, although they can special order for customers when asked, assuming the book appears in their system.

Also, think through the paradox: Print-on-demand services or technology should be used for books that are printed only when there’s demand. Your book is not going to be nationally distributed and sitting on store shelves unless or until a real order is placed.

Here I further discuss the meaning and value of print distribution.

7. Investing in a Print Run: Yes or No?

The 3 key factors are:

How and where you plan to sell the book. If you frequently speak and have opportunities to sell your books at events, then it makes sense to invest in a print run. Also consider if you’ll want significant quantities to distribute or sell to business partners or organizations, stock in local/regional retail outlets or businesses, give to clients, etc. I do not recommend investing in a print run because you think bookstores or retail outlets will stock your book. If such an opportunity should arise, then you can always invest in a print run after you have a sales order or firm commitment.Where you’re driving sales. If you’re driving your customers/readers primarily to online retailers, you can fulfill print orders with less hassle and investment by using POD. Ultimately, you do have to use POD regardless if you want to be distributed by the largest U.S. wholesaler, Ingram. (More info below.)What your budget is like. Not everyone is comfortable investing in a print run.

You also need to anticipate your appetite for handling the warehousing, fulfillment, and shipping of 1,000+ books, unless a third party is handling it for you, which will reduce your profit. When the truck pulls up to your house with several pallets piled high with 30-pound boxes, it will be a significant reality check if you haven’t thought through your decision.

8. Print-on-Demand Recommendations

If you choose print-on-demand for your print edition, then I recommend the following:

Use Amazon KDP to produce a POD edition to support and fulfill Amazon sales. For many authors, the majority of sales will be through Amazon, and using KDP ensures the highest possible profit on those sales.Use IngramSpark to produce a POD edition to support book sales in the market outside of Amazon. By doing so, your book will be listed and available for order through the largest and most preferred U.S. wholesaler, Ingram. (Amazon also orders books through Ingram, so you can use Ingram to reach Amazon if you don’t want to use Amazon KDP for some reason—but this will reduce your profit.)

You can use both services in conjunction; there is no need to be exclusive with one or the other. I recommend using both Ingram Spark and Amazon to ensure that no one is discouraged from ordering or stocking the print edition of your book. As you might imagine, some independent bookstores refuse to order from Amazon, who is their key competitor.

As soon as your printer-ready files are uploaded, POD books are generally available for order at Amazon within 48 hours. With IngramSpark, it generally takes 2 weeks for the book to be available through all their channels.

Example of Print-on-Demand Earnings

This is for a $14.99 standard 6×9 paperback, about 240 pages.

For more detail on book distribution, I’ve written a separate post.

9. Maximizing Your Sales

With print books, your success is typically driven by the quality of your book, your visibility or reach to your readership, and your cover. With ebooks, the same factors are in play, plus the following:

If you check the ebook bestseller lists, you’ll see that independent novelists charge very little for their work, often somewhere between 99 cents and $2.99. Some argue this devalues the work, while others say that it’s appropriate for an ebook from an unknown author. Whatever your perspective, just understand that, if you’re an unknown author, your competition will probably be priced at $2.99 or less to encourage readers to take a chance. Typically, the more well known or trusted you are, the more you can charge. Note: Nonfiction authors should price according to the competition and what the market can bear. Sometimes prices are just as high for digital editions as print editions in nonfiction categories.Your Amazon page may be the first and only page a reader looks at when deciding whether to purchase your book. Optimization of this page—the marketing description, the book cover, your author bio, the reviews, and more—is critical for driving sales.Giveaways are an important part of ebook marketing and sales strategy for indie authors. I comment more on that here.

This is but a scratch on the surface of the world of ebook marketing. Author Nicholas Erik maintains an excellent beginner’s guide.

10. Additional ReadingShould You Self-Publish or Traditionally Publish?The Self-Publishing ChecklistHow to Get Your Book DistributedHow to Quickly Create an EPUB File

Note from Jane: This Wednesday, I’m teaching a class on self-publishing for first timers.

Starting Your Novel With Theme: 3 Strengths and 3 Challenges

Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach. She offers a first 50-page review on works in progress for novelists seeking direction on their next step toward publishing.

In my work as a book coach, I’ve found that writers of fiction generally fall into three camps: those who start with character, those who start with plot or story concept, and those who start with theme.

In part one of this series I addressed those writers who tend to start with character—those who often start with a certain voice in their head, or an idea for a certain type of protagonist. In part two, I addressed those writers who tend to start with plot—writers for whom a new project may arrive in the form of a story concept, or a certain angle on a genre they’d like to explore.

Over the course of the last twelve years, I’ve worked with hundreds of writers, and the vast majority of them fit into one of those two camps. But there is a third kind of writer as well, the writer who starts with theme.

These writers tend to be driven by a desire to explore themes that have been meaningful in their lives—dreams, for instance, or the concept of generational trauma. Or they may want to explore elements of their own personal history, or their attraction to a certain landscape or setting.

Whatever the initial seed of the novel is, writers who start this way tend to proceed by feel, discovering both the characters and the situation of the story as they write. This process of discovery tends to draw on the writer’s intuition to such an extent that the writer herself often has to extrapolate from what she’s uncovered in order to figure out how everything connects.

If that sounds like a bit of a mysterious process, it is. But it can also make for very compelling fiction, for the following reasons.

Strength: Meaning is “baked in”

Writers who start with character or plot often have to look for themes that arise in their work in order to give the story a sense of being about something bigger than just the characters or the events of the plot. Those who start with theme don’t have that problem: their stories are built around themes that are meaningful to them, and therefore have a good shot at being meaningful to the reader as well.

This is true even when their stories simply explore time periods or landscapes, because there is always something specific in those time periods or landscapes that the author finds deeply meaningful—hence their attraction to exploring them. This sense of meaning tends to come through in the story, in a way the reader can really feel, and that’s a powerful thing.

Strength: There is no other story like this story

Stories built around theme tend to be deeply personal, and as such, unique in the marketplace for fiction.

Which is to say, there may be many novels set in the 1930s, but there is no other novel like Jess Walter’s The Cold Millions, because that novel is built around Walter’s family history and fascination with the working-class politics of the era.

There may be many novels about marriages on the rocks, but there is no other novel like Haruku Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which is built around dreams, and the question of whether we ever truly know ourselves or each other.

And there may be many portal fantasies, but there are no other novels like those of Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, because those novels were inspired by Vandermeer’s fascination with the uncanny flora and fauna of Fiji, where he spent much of his childhood.

Strength: Aesthetic appeal

Along with that sense of uniqueness, novels built around theme tend to have a strong, particular aesthetic that run through them. It’s not just about who the characters are or what’s happening in the story, it’s about how the whole thing feels.

Those aesthetics might be associated with a strong sense of place, or a particular moment in time; or they may reflect certain irreducible aesthetic attractions on the part of the author (as in Murakami’s dreams and Vandermeer’s uncanny nature in the examples above). If every story is about the ride as much as the destination, that’s even more true in stories like this.

That said, writers who start with theme definitely face a few challenges.

Challenge: A million revisions

Because writers who start with theme often have to discover both the novel’s characters and plot as they write, they often wind up having to work through draft after draft to create a publishable manuscript.

The metaphor I use for this is that it’s like building a castle in the clouds; that castle is a beautiful, unique, compelling thing, but it’s out of reach for most readers. Writers who start this way often have to do a lot of work to build a sturdy foundation under that castle in order for readers to have any hope of reaching the front door.

Challenge: Workshopping and critique

How do you workshop a castle in the sky? How do you critique it? How do you provide meaningful feedback at all? These sorts of manuscripts, while in progress, tend to present a fascinating but impenetrable exterior, offering workshop peers and critique partners very little to work with, in terms of how to offer meaningful feedback on it.

This can make the writer feel like their work will never be understood by others, and despair of getting the sort of feedback that will help them build a sturdy foundation under that glittering edifice—especially when they’re just starting out.

Challenge: Publishing

For the same reasons that novels like this are hard to workshop, novels like this can be hard to pitch, because they don’t fit into any neat and tidy categories. Describing the novel’s plot often doesn’t offer a good sense of what it’s really about, nor does simply describing the characters and their dramas. As a result, novels like this can be a tough sell, especially for a debut author.

The good news is that all the same things that can initially work against the author with a novel like this can work for them later on, because when such books are published, they tend to elicit a strong reaction from their readers. People become deeply passionate about books like this, and tend to advocate for them in a way they would not for many of the other novels they read in the course of a year.

Like the challenges faced by other types of writers, none of these is insurmountable—but as with so much of life, it helps to know who you are and what you’re working with in terms of your own process rather than expecting “one size to fit all.”

Do you consider yourself a writer who starts with character, one who starts with plot or story concept, or one who starts with theme? I’d love to hear from you in the comments on this, along with one significant breakthrough you’ve had with your own process.

The Value of Book Distribution Is Often Misunderstood by Authors

Note from Jane: Next week I’m teaching a class on How to Self-Publish for First-Timers.

During my career in publishing, several factors have led to self-publishing becoming a viable and profitable path for authors. These include:

The growth of ebook sales, which in some ways replaces the mass-market paperbackThe rise of online retail: the majority of books are now sold online regardless of format—and we all know where, at least in the USThe advent of print-on-demand (POD) technology and distribution

This last one has been of tremendous benefit to traditional publishers and authors alike. It means that no one has to take a financial risk on a print run when demand is uncertain. Nor does anyone need to worry about warehousing and inventory management. Rather, the book is printed only when an order is placed, then it’s immediately dispatched to the customer.

As of 2021, most readers cannot tell if the paperback they’re holding in their hands is print-on-demand or from a traditional offset printer. Even hardcover print-on-demand is seeing an increase in sales and acceptance by consumers. Yes, print-on-demand carries carries a higher unit cost (and thus lower profits), and it has some design and production limitations. But for the average self-publishing author, this makes publishing more accessible and affordable than it has ever been. (The same is true for small presses, of course.)

As more and more books get purchased online, it doesn’t matter if your books are available on a physical bookstore shelf or not. You don’t need a bricks-and-mortar presence for your book to be discovered and purchased. All you need is a product page at the major online retailers. Readers won’t know how the book is printed or that it’s only printed when they order it, or they may prefer a digital edition.

Print distribution using POD can be set up quickly by anyone, at no or little cost, using Amazon and Ingram. Amazon KDP is the portal that self-publishing authors use to upload their book for sale in both print and ebook formats. Ingram is the biggest book distributor in the world, and authors can access its distribution network through IngramSpark. Cost is minimal, about $50 for initial setup and $25 per year after that. Ingram sells to anyone and everyone who buys books, including your independent bookstore, libraries, chains; it also has a global distribution network that reaches just about any country you can expect to sell in. Your book is available to be ordered at thousands of retailers once it’s active in Ingram’s system.

So quality distribution is not hard. It can be obtained by anyone by simply signing up and uploading printer-ready book files or ebook files.

So why do people talk about the need for “distribution” so much if distribution is essentially free for all?

Some people conflate book distribution with having a sales and marketing team.

There are two types of distributors in traditional book publishing. One type of distributor actually sells the book into retailers, in significant quantities. Sales reps pitch specific accounts or buyers. They try to secure orders for hundreds or thousands of books prior to the publication date. This makes a lot of sense in a traditional publishing model where there’s a print run and you’re trying to generate as much interest and demand as possible in the lead up to publication, to get as many books on shelves as possible. The print run might even be adjusted based on how much accounts order.

The other type of distributor simply ships books when they’re ordered. They take care of warehousing and fulfillment. They are not selling and marketing books, but they are also taking a smaller cut of sales than the type of sales-responsible distributor discussed above.

Ingram is a bit of a confusing character in all this because it handles both types of distribution. But for the purposes of self-publishing authors, it really only serves the latter role: it makes books available to be ordered. Your book is included in its database of thousands upon thousands of titles. But they’re not actively going out and selling or marketing titles to accounts, any more than Amazon has a sales force that sells your ebook or POD book.

If you’re investing in a print run, then distribution is in fact a major challenge

Imagine spending thousands of dollars to pay an offset printer to ship you 1,000 print copies of your book. The books have arrived at your front door on a pallet. Now what? How will you get these books into retailers’ hands? Where will you store them? Who will ship them? This is a big problem and it used to be that authors relied on Amazon Advantage to solve it. But Amazon Advantage is now closed to new accounts.

It is exceedingly difficult to distribute print books as an author when you do a print run. You really need to be working with a service company of some kind, or a hybrid publisher, or someone who can warehouse the books and fulfill orders for you over the long term, who has a relationship with Ingram, Amazon, and so on. There is no realistic way for a single-title author to work directly with either of those companies unless you’re using their print-on-demand services.

Still, distribution doesn’t equal sales

Let’s say you decide to work with a hybrid publisher or some kind of publishing assistance firm. They help coordinate that print run and get your book warehoused then fulfill all the orders that come in.

But who is creating demand for that book? Who is ensuring the orders arrive in the first place? Hopefully, the company or hybrid you’re working with has a sales team or otherwise offers marketing and promotion support that ensures someone somewhere is buying, and you’re not storing thousands of copies indefinitely, hoping interest will generate out of thin air.

Even if the company does have a sales team, their sales efforts may fail. Or they may have only modest success in securing orders. Worse, books can get returned by retailers who can’t sell them. There’s a lot of burden on you, the author, to invest in marketing and publicity to ensure sales.

It makes one wonder: why not just choose print-on-demand in the first place and avoid that risk of having a bunch of copies you have to pay to store, fulfill, and ship?

The only print distribution many self-publishing authors need can be found through Amazon KDP and IngramSpark, because you don’t really “distribute” a POD title beyond those two services. The printing and the distribution are all wrapped up in the same service offering. You could order as many of those POD copies as you like, and fulfill special orders or bulk orders on your own if you like. Or you could do a print run off to the side for special orders if you have enough of them. But that’s not distribution. That’s you selling direct.

What you need to rememberAny company touting the power of their “distribution” may be focused on selling you something you don’t need. You can get the most important distribution of all by simply having your book available for sale at Amazon (use KDP). Even traditional publishers sell 60 to 70 percent of their books through Amazon. For self-publishers, it’s about 90 percent. While I don’t advocate a distribution strategy that’s all about Amazon, you can succeed with one.Be honest with yourself about the need for a print run, if you’re considering it. POD is much less risky for first-time authors or those without certain demand.If you do invest in a print run, know where and how those copies are going to sell. If you’re banking on the publishing service provider or hybrid publisher to sell those books for you through “distribution,” you may have a sad story to tell in the near future.For more guidance, see my post on distribution for self-publishing authors.

Was this post helpful? Looking for more? Join me for my self-publishing class on Aug. 25.