Five things you need to know about getting your book into indie bookshops:

1. Your book must have an ISBN number and barcode and be Nielsen registered.
2. Be prepared to give 35% – 40% wholesale discount off the cover price.
3. You need to phone first then ask if you can send a sample to them (be prepared to lose this stock if they don’t want to order more).



4. If they do stock your book they’re not likely to take more than a handful in the first instance.
5. Terms offered should be 30 days.

For more on publishing your own book and getting it to market, read Anna Crosbie’s How to Publish Your Own Book.

Related posts:

1. Co-publishing – pros and cons
2. Independent publishers – an author’s perspective
3. Book Club: The Book Thief

David and the Hairy Beast

David’s dad gives him a very important job to do. But can the shepherd boy overcome his fear of the Hairy Beast to save the flock?

Written by Fiona Veitch Smith.
Illustrations by Amy Barnes.

Drop by Crafty Publishing now to order your copy.

Related posts:

1. The David Project
2. David and the Kingmaker rules
3. Getting your book to market

Let me introduce myself. I’m Tambra Kendall, owner of Daughters of Avalon Publishing. Some of you may be considering self-publishing and for others it is merely curiosity. Technology has now made it possible for a writer to produce a quality product. Back in 1990 when I first dipped my toes into the waters of self-publishing this was not the case.

Self-publishing doesn’t mean slapping a cover together for a manuscript that hasn’t been polished within an inch of its life. As with all areas of business, the crap will sink to the bottom and the good will rise to the top. Hire an editor, a writing friend you trust or a beta reader – someone who reads your story as a reader, but can tell you where things don’t work. Readers don’t forget the name of the author who disappointed them.

Why self-publishing?

I’ve been previously published in small press and three electronic publishers but have had to wait a year for royalties, endure cover art with my name spelled wrong which I had to fight with them to change, and been cheated out of royalties as an author and editor. Tired of the unprofessionalism and unethical mores, I’ve returned as an independent publisher. I went into self-publishing with the idea that I was going to make my company the best I could, and that meant as professional as possible. My mission: to provide quality books in ebook and print formats.

Keeping more of the profit from your work is one of the main reasons to self-publish: you know you’re not going to cheat yourself from the money you earn. Also, if you are with a traditional, small press or an e-publisher you don’t know the information you’re being given is accurate because the publisher is the only one allowed the statistics. By becoming a publisher, you’ll have an accurate count of how many books you’re selling and what genre is popular with readers. In the future if you have plans to submit to a literary agent or publisher, you’ll have good solid data to back you up.

Why e-publishing?

The popularity of e-books continues to soar and not just in the U.S. XinXii is an e-book marketplace based in Germany, offering a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction. Australia is another country that is quickly discovering e-books and self-publishing. The price of e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle is dropping, giving people easier access to electronic books.

Setting up your business

If you’ve decided to come over to the self-publishing side, take the time to work out a business plan, starting with the name of your company. The company name is something I didn’t just pick off the top of my head. It was carefully chosen to highlight what I do. It’s vitally important. A name immediately evokes a feeling and visual to readers and anyone else connected to you. Most of my romances are Celtic mythology inspired; Daughters of Avalon is a name that is female empowering and magical.

To brand your business you need a logo that grabs the attention of people. My company has a professional logo, business cards and stationery created by a graphic artist, Kath Urbahn, who will create my book covers as well.

The website for Daughters of Avalon is easy to navigate and provides all the information a reader needs for purchasing my books – as shown by the positive comments I’ve received about the site. You don’t want to frustrate your potential customers; make things as easy for them as possible.

I purchased a DBA (Doing Business As) and a sales and use tax permit. Belonging to professional organizations such as Romance Writers of America and SPAN-Small Publishers Association of North America are ways that show I am serious about my career and my business. If you are considering self-publishing, it’s a good idea to have a separate business account for the monies you receive. This will make things easier when tax time comes around and to tell at a glance where you are financially.

The importance of book covers

If you can’t create a quality book cover, invest in a graphic artist who knows what they are doing. The cover is the first thing a potential reader sees; a bad cover will hurt your sales, especially in electronic publishing. If you have an unprofessional cover, the first thing people will think is that the work is just as terrible. A good first impression counts. You need a cover that makes a reader want to investigate the story further. Take pride in the product you are selling – if you don’t care, why should the reader?

And remember, the cover must also work well in thumbnail format as this is likely to be the first view potential customers have of your book.

The bottom line

By self-publishing, you must be author, editor, marketing staff and publisher. What do you get in return for all of this work? Higher profits, hopefully. In some cases, 70% of the profit goes to you, the author/publisher. This is a huge boon for a writer! The going percentage rate for an e-published author ranges from 30-45% of the net price of the book. For third party sites, you receive about half of the amount of your percentage; many times, it is less than that.

Self-publishing vs conventional publishing

Now more than ever an author has the tools and the opportunity to take an active role in their career. Self-publishing isn’t for everyone, but for some of us it provides a niche to showcase our dreams exactly how we envision them. Also note, just because you choose to self-publish doesn’t mean you have to shy away from traditional publishing. My goal is to do both. JA Konrath, Amada Hocking and John Locke are three authors who have made it big in self-publishing. John Locke has made it into the million dollar club at Amazon.com for his e-book sales – he explains how he did it in How I Sold One Million Ebooks in Five Months.

Traditional publishing and self-publishing each have their strengths and drawbacks. In today’s world, you have more opportunities than ever to reach readers and boldly forge ahead with a career pathway paved with hard work and planning.

I wish all of you the best in your writing journey.

Tambra Kendall
Daughters of Avalon Publishing

Related posts:

1. Co-publishing – pros and cons
2. Kindle – an author’s story
3. Crafty Publishing

I have recently published my book through Amazon Kindle. My choosing to go straight to an e-book format was simply based on there being a large enough Kindle marketplace to make it worth my while. To date Kindle, Nook, iPad etc, account for 20% of the book buying market. Naturally I wanted to follow my heroes Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clark and get into print, seeing my books on the shelves of traditional bookshops, but there are other options available and I decided to give it a go.

How much does it cost?

Amazon Kindle has zero up-front costs. There is no charge to get your book on Kindle other than what you may have spent on having your cover designed. But even that is not necessary. I designed my own cover but if you aren’t able to do that and don’t want to pay someone else to do it, Kindle have some generic covers you can use.

So if there’s no up-front cost does that mean everything you earn is profit?

Not exactly. Amazon take a cut of your profits. For books priced $2.99 – $9.99 they will take 30%. For books under $2.99 they will take 65%. [Compare that to a conventional print publishing deal where the author gets on average 10% - The Crafty Writer]

Quality control

So now you’ve got your book published you simply wait for the dosh to roll in? Not quite. Firstly, a word of caution. It is very easy to get onto Kindle – in some ways, too easy. On one hand, that’s good, but there is a sting in the tail which could potentially discredit the e-book as a quality item: it takes less than an hour to have your novel up and out there on the internet. While this is amazing considering the traditional publishing route could take over a year to get off the slush pile from first submission, there is an inherent danger of assuming your book is good to go. Remember there is no professional editor to hit the brakes. You will have to trust someone to honestly proof your work with an objective eye. I had to fight the temptation to put out my novel on Kindle straight away and looking back I’m glad I did now. The whole point is to create a book to as professional a standard as one can muster, despite circumventing the publishing industry gatekeepers.

The blow-back from this easy publication method is some cowboys are going to flood the e-book scene with sub-standard work. One should approach writing an e-book as though it was meant for print publication so as to maintain credibility. Not doing so will bring the e-book scene into disrepute and eventually the market will move away.

Marketing

Secondly, you are alone so have no publicity machinery to kick into gear. I’m learning as I go and so have a somewhat ad-hoc approach to drawing people’s attention. For me, social media networks were the first port of call, going by the saying that there are only six degrees of separation between people around the world.

The other aspect of getting people to talk about my book is pricing. Not being a former contestant of Big Brother, and hence lacking “product recognition”, I had to price low enough for readers to take a chance (99 cents current introductory offer). And if they are reading it then they are talking about it. Word of mouth has to be the oldest way of publicity. Of course you could also pay for advertising space on print and electronic media.

How to get started

The following is a link to guide you through Kindle Publishing It took me less than an hour to work through it and get my book from a simple text document into an e-book format. The guide is pretty easy to follow and you do not need to be an expert in computer technology.

See you on Kindle!

(Please note: The Crafty Writer does not review books other than ‘how to’ books on the craft of writing. This is not a review of Chak Chak the Last T-Rex. See here for a further discussion of the pros and cons of self-publishing and co-publishing).

Related posts:

1. New novel on Kindle: The Peace Garden
2. An e-book story
3. Going Indie – starting an e-publishing company

Simultaneously, Craig Gailbraith from Drawbridge Productions in Cape Town, is making a film about Yookie’s incredible journey. I’m sure it will be a box office hit!

If you would like to develop your own skills in writing life stories as well as other non-fiction writing, why not work through the Crafty Writer’s free non-fiction course

Related posts:

1. Short Story Film Festival: ‘Enemy Lines’ in New York

Journalists

Full-time journalists can expect to earn a living wage, averaging around £24,000 a year. For a discussion of how salaries may increase over your career visit the Graduate Prospects website. Freelance journalists are likely to earn considerably less and £12,000 a year or below is fairly common (although higher earners do exist). However, what you lose in money you gain in time and freedom. For details of what freelance journalists in the UK can earn, please visit the National Union of Journalists website. Be aware however that employers are not compelled to pay these fees and that smaller media companies, where you are likely to get your first paying work, frequently pay less.

Prose writers

For more creative writing  the average annual earnings from writing alone is around £5,000. This includes average royalties from published novels and PLR fees (a small percentage you get when someone takes your book out of the library) and fees for published short stories. Most writers have to supplement their earnings with other jobs. The most common include teaching, lecturing and leading creative writing workshops. But any job will do as long as it is flexible and gives you time to write. A friend of mine has just taken on a job as a dish washer in a cafe’ while he finishes his novel. Another writer I know is a street sweeper. He says the early morning rides on his sweeping machine give him lots of creative thinking time. For a realistic overview of what creative writers can earn, visit the careers advice website. If the thought of earning so little from your writing horrifies you, then perhaps this is not the right career for you. Most creative writers write because they love to and getting paid is simply a bonus.

Scriptwriters

Writing for stage, radio, TV and film can potentially bring in more money than prose writing, but professional commissions are few and far between and it is very hard to get your first break. Earnings start at around £6,000 for a full-length stage play (which could take you quite a few years to write, get commissioned, developed and produced) up to around £40,000 for a full-length feature film script that actually gets produced (you only get the full fee if the film gets finished; many don’t). This fee is for feature films with a total budget of over £2 million. Films with a budget of less than that will pay less to the writer. For further details of agreed rates for scriptwriters, see the Writers’ Guild website. Again, most scriptwriters have to take on additional work to keep them above the bread line.

Poets

I have never tried to earn money from my poetry. The reasons are two-fold: firstly, I don’t write enough poetry to make it a serious career choice and secondly, because I know that it’s the most poorly paid of all writing ‘jobs’. Even more than prose writers, poets do it for the love of words not the love of money. Many poetry presses simply give the poet some books to sell themselves.  For a discussion on poetry and pay visit Empty Mirror Books. Poets can earn a little by giving workshops and entering competitions for cash prizes. But the poetry itself, even if published, earns them next to nothing.

Self-publishing

I can guarantee that as soon as I publish this post I will be inundated with adverts and comments about people earning mega-bucks from self-publishing their own books or co-publishing (splitting the cost of production with the publisher). This is not as wonderful as it sounds and while a few people may make the big time, most people do not. For a fuller discussion of this topic, check out the pros and cons of co-publishing.

For a very interesting discussion around what writers earn that attracted writers from all over the web and a bit of a bun fight visit Can you earn money as a writer?

Related posts:

1. Can you earn money as a writer?
2. Do you want to write full time?
3. Beginner Blogging for Writers: part 3

The company needs to sell roughly £45,000 worth of books to keep afloat for the rest of the year. Publishing director Chris Hamilton-Emery said the company had not wanted to repeat the initiative “because we thought it was unrepeatable, but we have just reached crunch time this week”. He added: “We realised if we didn’t get some sales, we would probably go bust very shortly.”

Hamilton-Emery said a number of factors had contributed to Salt’s financial woes, including the recession, the World Cup and the demise of Borders UK late last year. “They were a good customer of ours, so that was a real blow,” he said.

The Crafty Writer’s guest poetry tutor, Andrew Philip, is published by Salt.  He says:  “It’s harder and harder these days for authors – début authors and mid-listers in particular – to find publishers. The big houses are taking on fewer writers and concentrating their marketing power on certain titles in their lists. So writers need publishers such as Salt more than ever. Publishers who don’t simply bend to the howling winds of celebrity memoirs. Publishers who will take a risk on writing they simply believe in. Publishers who believe in you and give readers the chance to let your voice enter their hearts and minds. If Salt goes, we all lose.”

Writers and book lovers are being asked to buy just one book to help save Salt, Andy recommends:

• Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story, ed. Vanessa Gebbie
• The White Road and Other Stories by Tania Hershman: wonderful science-inspired short and flash fiction (read an interview with Tania on Andy’s blog)
• The Opposite of Cabbage by Rob A Mackenzie: lively, imaginative, inventive new poetry from Scotland
• Off Road to Everywhere by Philip Gross: children’s poetry from the recent TS Eliot prize winner
• Lions in Winter by Wena Poon: vivid, engaging stories that capture the true urban sophistication of New Asia

Related posts:

1. The Ambulance Box – getting your poetry in print
2. Independent publishers – an author’s perspective
3. What do writers earn?

No related posts.

RG: When I began writing, many of the poems were based on my background, growing up in a village in Co.Tyrone, N.Ireland. As I developed as a writer the themes widened to encompass ‘literary greats’ of the 19th and 20th centuries. The majority of poems conveniently fell within these two categories when thinking of publishing a collection.

TCW: What first attracted you to the theme?

RG: As a Christian I specifically targeted writers who have a Christian or spiritual dimension within their work or lives. I was interested to find out how they lived, as a kind of parallel with my own life.

TCW: How did you go about selecting the title? While it certainly alludes to the ‘literary’ nature of the poems, it suggests a volume of love stories, which isn’t the case. Do you think readers might be misled by this? And if so, does it matter from a marketing perspective? 

RG: It took a long time to finally decide on a title. A friend read through the collection and suggested that the literary lives were the ‘strongest selling point’ of the collection, and advised beginning with these poems. As the Tolstoy poems predominate within the first section, it seemed logical to choose a title containing the name.  Some people might be misled by the title, but I felt that many readers will be  attuned to the idea that a poem from a collection, used as a title, may not necessarily be representative of the whole collection.

TCW: Did you consciously play on a reference to Shakespeare in Love?

RG: No, but one or two people referred to the Shakespeare connection when I had published the work.

TCW: For me the most satisfying thing in reading this volume was the way you get right into the skin of your characters. Do you have any tips on how developing poets can do this?

RG: A very helpful book is Writing Poems, by Peter Sansom. It includes a number of useful exercises which get the reader to examine a subject from varying points-of-view. [I can also recommend this book - Ed]
 
TCW: I loved the way you play with point of view, shifting between subject and viewer. In ‘Tolstoy in Love’, for instance, the great man tells us of his love for Sonya. Then in the next poem, ‘Sonya Tolstoy’, you shift to her POV which is very different from that of her husband’s. We then feel compelled to re-read the first poem in light of the second. Is writing from a poetic character’s point of view something that has always marked your work or is it distinctive to this collection? What interests you in playing with POV?

RG: For many years I used to write only from my own perspective. However, on finding the possibility of writing from other viewpoints, I was able to write through Tolstoy’s voice, his wife’s or other characters. This can, if successful, give a multi-layered picture of the main character, his strengths and flaws, his inconsistencies.
 
TCW: When changing POV you also change the ‘voice’ of the poem. Could you explain to new writers what an editor means when they refer to ‘voice’?

RG: I suppose each person has a unique voice, but there are certain characteristics which we have in common with other people, background, job etc. A medical doctor, for example, has to sound authentic, particularly if you place him in a medical situation. You don’t need a doctorate in medicine to get the voice right, but it does require some background reading and research if you propose to speak in his voice.  

TCW: The second section of this collection is entitled ‘An Emotional Map of Belfast’ and while similar in style is very different in subject – your personal reflections on your own life and relationships in Northern Ireland. In a sense you become the ‘writer’ as subject and viewer. Why did you decide to have what John Wakeman describes as ‘two books for the price of one, both worth having.’? Did you ever consider that they should be separate collections and whether or not readers would feel the two should not be together?

RG: I suppose I could have waited and developed the work into two separate collections. However, as I was trying to get a full collection accepted for thirteen years, this did not seem an option. Writing about characters, at a distance, in the first section, perhaps allowed me to address the reader through my own voice in the second section.
 
TCW: You started gaining attention as a poet through winning competitions. How important are compeitition wins? Should new writers enter them? Can you recommend some competitions to Crafty readers?

RG: The winning, or in most cases, being short-listed or commended in a poetry competition can help to promote your name in writing circles, but I would always look to see the judge of the competition. Is he a recognised poet whose judgements you can respect? For example, last year I entered a relatively small competition held in Wells, because the judge was Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate at that time.

I think new writers might try small or local competitions first, but the small press magazine is a better option at the start to help build a good CV of publishing credits to eventually work towards being published in pamphlet or book form.

The new writer is probably best advised to steer clear of poetry competitions which offer prizes such as £5,000 to the winner. An example would be the annual National Poetry Competition, organized by the Poetry Society. As it attracts upwards of 10,000 entries, many by established poets, your chances are virtually zero. (You might be better putting the exorbitant entry fee on the 3:30 at Wincanton!)

There are dozens of competitions each year, some specialist (focused on a particular form or line length) or perhaps on a theme. It might be best to research these and see if your poems fulfil the criteria, such as ‘poems under 30 lines’. Two of the best online guides to competitions (and poetry magazines) are: The Poetry Kit and The Poetry Library.

TCW: Thanks Ray. We wish you well with the sale of your book and strength to your pen for the next collection.

Related posts:

1. The Ambulance Box – getting your poetry in print
2. Atrocious teenage poetry
3. Poetry: are you listening carefully?

It’s not vanity publishing

Well firstly, let me say that it is not vanity publishing. In fact, since the self-publishing revolution, brought on by Print on Demand (POD) technology, the charlatans who preyed on desperate writers seem to have scurried back into their holes (although I fear, some of them may have re-emerged as ‘co-publishers’). Vanity publishers will print anything.  They claim to be ‘real’ publishers but there’s no editorial input and, apart from a post on their website, no marketing or distribution either – and you of course foot the whole bill. In addition, you have to buy your own books from them, albeit at wholesale discount or ‘cost’. For more information see this article by the Society of Authors.

Disadvantages: no bookshop will touch a vanity published book with a bargepole, you will never recoup your money, you will be bitterly disappointed and possibly be turned off publishing for life.

Advantages: errrrr none.

It’s not self-publishing

Self-publishing is what it says on the can. You become the publisher. You arrange the editing, design, printing, distribution and marketing. You may use a publishing service to assist you in this, but they should not ‘pretend’ to be a publisher. See my article on authors Sue Brownless and Eleanor Patrick who used a publishing service to help them self-publish. Sue and Eleanor still had to edit the book themselves, but the publishing service arranged for the printing and warehousing of the stock, plus handled orders and payments. Sue and Eleanor still have to market the book but they’re doing an excellent job. 

Other publishing services include the online giants Lulu and Lightning Source who use POD technology, which means you don’t have to warehouse stock, This, on the surface, appears to bring down the costs; beware though that postage cost per unit is very high and this will need to be added onto your cover price, which may turn off potential buyers.  It is still cheaper, per unit, to go through a conventional printer. The problem is though that you may be stuck with 1000 unsaleable copies.

Advantages: you can potentially make more money than with a mainstream publisher, as you get all the profits. If you thrive on the business side of writing, you will find self-publishing deeply satisfying.

Disadvantages:  You need to do everything yourself. If you don’t have the requisite skill set, you could be biting off more than you can chew and losing a lot of money in the process. It’s hard to get self-published books into mainstream bookshops as there are legitimate concerns about  ‘quality control’. The feeling is that if the book was not ‘good enough’ for a mainstream publisher, it’s not good enough full stop. This however is not always the case, but it’s a preconception you will have to deal with.

So what is co-publishing?

Co-publishing is when the writer and the publisher ’share’ the costs. This is usually done by a compulsory purchase order ie the writer has to agree to buy a certain number of units before the deal can go ahead. They do not (or should not) ask for payment for their editorial services up front, as this would taint them with a vanity publishing label at worst, or a publishing service tag at best.

However, this isn’t always the case. I entered a co-publishing partnership with Vineyard Publishing for my book Donovon’s Rainbow.  Vineyard offer both conventional publishing contracts and co-publishing deals. They usually offer the co-publishing option to new authors.  They edited, designed and marketed the book like any publisher should. We split costs 50/50 – a contract that I negotiated as I wasn’t happy with the initial compulsory purchase model. To me, that suggested that I, the author, took all the financial risk. We printed 2000 copies and I took 50% of the stock to market and distribute myself; they took the other 1000 to distribute through their chain of world-wide bookshops. I was free to distribute anywhere apart from Vineyard bookshops. I have made back my money and am now in profit – as are Vineyard.

But most co-publishing deals these days are financed by compulsory purchase orders alone. The problem is, I fear the writer is footing the whole bill.  I am also concerned that some co-publishers are either pretending to be ‘proper’ publishers or are in fact ‘proper’ publishers, using co-publishing models, but hiding the fact (unlike Vineyard who were very up-front about it). Three case studies that have recently come to my attention will illustrate this:

Case study 1: An established non-fiction author, to whose e-newsletter I subscribe, sent out a request for people to pre-purchase his next book. When I asked for more details (ie what it was going to be about) I was told that this couldn’t be disclosed as a contract had not yet been entered into. The author’s publisher was not prepared to go ahead with the book until the author could provide x-amount of sales up front. They blamed the ‘current economic climate’ for their new methodology. I recently got another email from him thanking everyone who had pre-ordered because now they could ‘cover costs.’  It’s very troubling when an author now has to guarantee sales before he or she can get a publishing deal.  I also sincerely doubt that this publisher will admit that this is in effect a co-published book as the definition of a conventional publisher, according to the Society of Authors, is that they take all the financial risk.

Case study 2: A non-fiction author whose work I critiqued some years ago through The Crafty Writer Critiquing Service emailed me to say that her book had now been published and was about to be launched. Would I be prepared to interview her and feature the book on the site. I had a look at the publisher’s website and saw that it was a co-publisher – although it didn’t say so overtly. As I’d had a positive experience of co-publishing myself, I wanted to promote it and suggested the interview deal with that subject. The author said it wasn’t a co-publishing deal, but a ‘proper’ one. I asked her for the terms of her contract and she told me she ‘only’ had to buy 800 copies of the book at 60% discount. I then pointed out to her that effectively she was financing the whole print run and then some. She didn’t disagree with me, but said the publisher would not like to be involved in an interview that dealt with co-publishing as they were not co-publishers. Really?

Case study 3: I recently had a manuscript for a non-fiction book rejected by a conventional publisher. In fact, it is one of the leading Christian publishers in the United States. So I was surprised when I received an email from them a month later asking if I would like to re-submit my book to their new co-publishing wing. They, like Vineyard, were now going down the two-pronged route. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as they are up front about it. And it seems that they are.  They will edit, design and market your book just like their ‘conventional’ books and you have the advantage of having a ‘big name’ behind you. There’s also a conventional royalty agreement that comes into operation after your advance copies have been sold. So what’s the catch? Well, again, the author has to finance the lion’s share of the deal. I would be asked to buy 1000 – 2000 units. I asked the publisher how many they would buy and she said 500. Could I sell 2000 copies of the book using my own resources? Probably not, particularly because the publisher’s own marketing will be selling their ‘own’ copies. However,  if you were going to be self-publishing anyway, maybe it’s worth it to get the extra benefits.  But that’s for you to decide.

Related posts:

1. Going Indie – starting an e-publishing company
2. Independent publishers – an author’s perspective
3. Crafty Publishing