3 authors on self-publishing as a business
The romantic self-image of writers doesn't always take in the business side of self-publishing
One slide in the Kindle Publishing Roadmap self-publishing seminar shows an idealised writer's desk — old-fashioned, wooden, typewriter, knickknacks and pens. It's a romantic view of how we like to see ourselves as writers — ink-stained and hidden away in a special place, creating.
I, myself, would like to write as Ian Fleming did at his Caribbean hideaway, caressed by a breeze off the ocean and cooled by a martini glass frequently topped up by lime-infused rocket fuel.
The next slide shows one of those stock-image businesswomen drawing a chart with a marker pen on a glass board. It's sterile and businesslike; there's nothing romantic about it. The slide helps me make my point that self-publishing is a business and it needs to be approached as such.
I wrote something along these lines recently when I asked whom you read to learn about the business of self-publishing. On the same day I wrote that I opened my copy of the Sydney Morning Herald to this article: New breed of writers conquering cyberspace. [Truth: I read it on my SMH iPad app but that doesn't sound as good.]
Three authors were featured and here's their advice:
Hazel Edwards
Hazel Edwards coined the word "authorpreneur" for a workshop on the "convergence of authors' creative and commercial interests". An author after my own heart, she tells the paper it's not enough just to write anymore (if it ever was):
"Writers must learn marketing, publicity, technology, and legal skills to create and maintain their self-employment in the 'business of ideas'."
She goes on:
"A professional writer is a very small business of one person; a solo trader in literary ideas. Those who are not businesslike are unlikely to survive."
(Personally I believe we're all self-employed. If you work for someone else's company, you've got just one client. But that's an argument for another time and place!)
Edwards' words here are great advice for today's authors, self-published or traditionally published. (I feel bad quoting so much of the article here so I ask you to go and read it on the paper's site so you can see the ads and everything else the SMH has to offer.)
There's a lot to learn
Edwards is quoted as saying she's had a hard time convincing other writers to publish themselves because of how much there is to learn. (Have I mentioned the Kindle Publishing Roadmap, How to Format Perfect Kindle Books, and my various seminars yet?)
Tony Park
The article also quotes Tony Park as "a model for contemporary authors".
Park is a traditionally-published author (Pan Macmillan) but he has been "tireless in his efforts to build a loyal readership". (No resting in a Caribbean breeze for Park.)
I think this is a critical point: authors with publishers still have to run their writing like a business. Unless you're Stephen King, your publisher is not going to shoulder much (or any) of the promotional burden.
Says Tony:
"You have to stay in touch with your regular customers and listen to what they're saying, and you have to continually look for new markets and new avenues to spread the word. Marketing yourself and your books is like writing, I think: you've got to really enjoy doing it and if you think it's a chore or a bore then you're possibly in the wrong game."
Khyiah Angel
Khyiah Angel, also profiled in the article, "spent long hours teaching herself how to format her manuscript" and "just as many hours following YouTube tutorials to learn to make an ebook cover".
(Sometimes people say "But you can find this all out for free online" about How to Format Perfect Kindle Books or one of my Sydney walking tours. It's stories like Angel's that I think of when they do. To me it's about whether $2.99 or $8.99 is good value for someone to come up with a structured, careful way to give you all the right information rather than you spending "long hours" hunting for clues on the web. If you save 10 minutes of my time, you're worth $8.99 as far as I'm concerned.)
Angel isn't comfortable with "blatant self-promotion" so she "focusses on conversation", which is another piece of great advice. (See Is your book promotion really just spam? and Why you should think of self-promotion as a value-added tax).
Angel says:
"I write blog posts and articles online so that people can link back to my site and my books. I have a few short stories up as e-books as well. People are beginning to engage with me as a source of information in the social media/cyber-safety area and I'm happy about that."
So what are their business practices?
Hazel Edwards is re-publishing "proven, rights-reverted print titles she believes will appeal as e-books" and selling them through her own online shop.
An author's website is their storefront and if they do it right it's as effective as any traditional publishers, she believes.
She has also:
Had her own books re-illustrated and re-formatted
Had her illustrator design some merchandise
Written downloadable teaching resources to go with her children's books
Tony Park:
Keeps a database of readers and distributes a quarterly newsletter through a third party
Speaks at Rotary clubs and travel roadshows showcasing Africa (the setting for his books)
Has led two safari tours to Africa (I would definitely like to find a way to build this into my own ebook promotion!)
Auctions character names in his books (wouldn't you like to be in a book and wouldn't you tell your friends if you were?)
Uses Facebook
Cultivates real relationships with his readers (some have gone on to help him to work on his books)
You don't have to do it alone
Notice how both Hazel Edwards and Tony Park have brought other people into their author business , e.g. to illustrate or format or maintain a database of readers. Just because you're a micro-publishing business doesn't mean you have to do it alone, you can be a self-publishing house.
A good business plan would involve working out what you can do yourself, e.g. learn to format your own book like Khyiah Angel did; and what you would be better off getting someone else to do for you (like using an ebook conversion and formatting service).
Finding someone else to do what you wouldn't be good at frees you up to do be effective in the areas where you are strong.
I, for instance, fired myself as a cover designer because I wasn't very good at it and I was losing sales both because my covers were weak and because time spent on that was time I wasn't spending on things I'm actually good at.
This was a great article in the Herald, which has had a number of good stories recently on the evolution of publishing and bookselling.
What about about you? What's your advice to authors when it comes to treating themselves as a small business?
