Ordinarily when I write my blog posts, I do so because I’ve thought of something funny. The germ of an idea is surfacing, and I want to explore it, to see if there is some funny there or, because I haven’t yet had my morning coffee, that idea is in fact shite and brain shouldn’t be trusted out on his own without first having his morning pick me up…or maybe rather I should have the morning pick me up. As much as I’d be interested to see if brain would function better if he was the one drinking the coffee, it doesn’t work that way and I’d scold my ear trying to get the caffeine sludge to him.
I write my blog posts to entertain myself, but more and more I found I’ve been ranting about issues which have pissed me off. Readers often email me when I’ve put out a post saying how they spat their coffee all over their children at the breakfast table, or that there was a crazy person on the bus on the way to work laughing like a demented sheep (not sure why a sheep, their analogy not mine), and when they looked around they found it was in fact them. That’s great. If my scribbles entertain and make you smile I’m very happy I’ve done that for you, but there is always a point to my rants.
Today I’m going to be talking about publishing.
So you’ve done it. You have finally written THE END…at the end of your first book (it works better that way).
You breathe a sigh of…of relief? No, you’re not relieved that your book is finished, it has been your baby for the past months, maybe even years. It is more a sense of accomplishment than relief. A feeling which lasts about as long as it takes to type the words THE END, because almost immediately after that final fullstop has been put in place, brain asks you, ‘What now host? You’ve written it, now what are you going to do with it?’
Your second thought, after this one is, ‘Shut up brain, I knew I shouldn’t have fed you coffee this morning, my ear is still red raw. Let me have five minutes to rest on my laurels, bask in the achievement of actually finishing writing a book.’
Because it is an achievement. It has been a hell of a ride from the first time you sat down to write that book to now, having finished. Even now, with many novels under my belt, I still enjoy that few moments before brain gets all mouthy. You get to feel proud of yourself, and for good reason. You’ve done it. You set out to write the book and here it is, the finished product. Well done you. Big clap. Get the you a gold star…because unless you start agreeing with brain, that gold star is all you’ll will ever see for the hours of blood, sweat and apostrophes you’ve put in.
It is time to take off the arty-farty writers hat and start thinking what next. Brain was right when he spoiled your moment.
There are now things you can do with that manuscript. You’re at a crossroad my friend. I’ll list them first and then we can go into more detail.
1. You can leave the book to gather e-dust on your computer, never again breathing the light of day.
2. You can decide you want to see your book on your bookshelf, so you can show all your mates how clever you are when they come around, that you’ve written an actual book, with words and everything!
3. You can start thinking about trying to get a literary agent who will in turn secure you a publisher.
4. You can indie publish.
Each of these points have their merits…well, perhaps not point number 1. It all depends on what you want to achieve with your writing.
Ok. Lets go down the list.
1 - Do nothing
If your only aim was to be able to see if you had it in you to write a book, then congratulations, you’ve written a book. Have a nice life and don’t bore everyone by telling them how you’ve “written a book” because the next question they’ll ask is, ‘Is it published?’ And you’ll say no and that will lead to you either boring them even more with made up reasons why you haven’t had your scribbles published, or there will be a moment of awkward silence and they’ll then leave, realising you are a really boring person and they have other friends who don’t talk about books they haven’t had published. Look on the bright side though, that’s money saved on Christmas cards because you needn’t bother send them one ever again. I guess your “book” was good for something.
2 - Bookshelf Fodder
You’ve written your story and now it is only natural you’d like to have the physical copy in your hands. We’ve all been there. I recall the first time I held a copy of The Race. It was in hardback form, had cost me ten million pounds to have published and a further five billion pounds to have shipped over from the states, but oh how it was worth it. Even with a few more titles under my belt I still get excited when the postman comes delivering one of my new books in physical, tangible, in your hands, form.
Second only to typing THE END, this is the best feeling ever, and another pat yourself on the back moment which can last a little longer because you can take selfies with you holding up the book, get on social media with actual proof you are oh so amazing and clever, and akin to your brethren Shakespeare, Chaucer, Hemingway, and…errrr, the author who wrote those Spot The Dog books you grew up reading.
After the ego has deflated a little, and you’ve told the world (your mum and your best friend) about your transition from mere mortal into some sort of literary Demi-god now you have the book in front of you, you will find a nice place on your bookshelf for THE BOOK and sigh an empty sigh of relief. You did it, it is there in front of you. So what? Now what?
Vanity publishing can takes on several forms. It has derived from the ego of the writer who neeeeeeeds that book they’ve written in front of them. There are plenty of companies masquerading as “Publishing Houses”, whose only purpose on this earth is to help the clueless first time author realise their dream of adding to their bookshelf fodder. These selfless individuals should be given sainthoods, win Nobel prizes for their author humanitarian efforts, and…and fucking roll over and die in house fires.
Vanity publishers are the scum of the literary world. They are bottom feeders…no, they’re not even bottom feeders, they’re the bacteria on the shit of bottom feeders. No, they’re virus on the bacteria on the sh…you get the idea, they’re no good, and here’s why…
In my time in the indie publishing arena, I have made every mistake someone can make. I’ve come up against every hurdle and I like to think learned from those mistakes. I’m not going to name any names, Author House, because new vanity publishers are springing up all the time. I’ll tell you a little story which happened to me about a year ago. A lady I had gone to school with many many moons ago, contacted me quite out of the blue asking for my advice on publishing. They had been writing poems for years and now wanted to put them in a book and weren’t sure what to do. They had considered sending the manuscript off to an agent but then after some research (not a lot by any accounts) had opted to go the indie publishing route having secured a publisher who we will call Bullshit Press for this particular example.
I immediately asked what they were offering and how much they were charging. They sent me a screen shot of the payment plan. The original price was £948 for publishing this book, but because they’re oh so amazing, our would be poet was eligible for a discount and would only have to pay the bare bones, stripped down, amazing price of £699 over three payments (plus £60 admin fees because it costs £60 to transfer £699 into their bank account it would seem).
As soon as I saw these numbers I died a little bit inside because, they’re fucking sharks these people. Undeterred I asked for a link to their website so I could investigate, knowing already what I would find.
Bullshit Press offered a whole array of publishing options and packages for the first time author, and these packages started at the quoted and “heavily discounted” £699. Next there was the Professional package (£1099), then the Custom (£1799), then the “Most popular” publishing package at £3099, but it didn’t stop there. An newbie author’s needs are plentiful and Bullshit Press wanted to offer all that they might need in their new career as a potential best selling literary genius. The Executive package cost a ridiculous £5799 and it ended with their Platinum publishing package for an eye watering £12,699.
Over twelve and a half grand to publish a book? What the hell did these people offer for this? For twelve and a half grand I’d expect a publishing executive to come around to my house every morning and toss me off, whispering how great I am before I got up and on with my day. This was not in fact one of the options in the list of things they offered in the Platinum package. I was dubious about the whole enterprise.
I am going to dissect this list now, to show what you did get for your money. This is for a black and white interior with colour cover package. They offer other things, of course they offer other things, they’re here to cater to an author’s every need. We’ll go through those after.
Ok, so for your twelve and a bit Gs you get: Paperback Format, E-book Format, Basic Interior Templates, Basic Cover Templates, Author Photo and Cover Art, Author Homepage and Book Page, Online Sales and Royalty Accounting, ISBN and Books in Print Registration, Worldwide Distribution and Online listing, Google Books Preview, Amazon Look Inside, Electronic Galleys, Paperback Copies (125 copies), Business Cards (300), Bookmarks (300), Postcards (300), Posters (30), Hardback Format, Professional Interior Templates, Professional Cover Templates, Consultation with a Bullshit Press Designer…and then there is an add on for their award winning (maybe) Cover Designing Service, Library of Congress, UK Legal Deposit, Data Entry, Copy Editing, Indexing, Citations - Footnotes & Endnotes, Author Alterations Sevice (2 rounds), Paperback Galleys, Hardback Copies (30), BookStub Cards, a potential add on for Leather-bound Hardcopies, Set Your Own Price, Advanced Web Design Services, 100 Press Releases, and a half page spread in BookMad Magazine. Then they go onto list other add ons you might like if you really are serious about having your book be all it can be. These include Social Media Setup Guide, Book Video with Voice Over, Google Search Engine Mar…it just goes on and on and on.
Looking back at the above list this is what it feels like to a more experienced author like myself. It’s like going into the supermarket to buy some porridge and seeing a sign advertising Oats, Oat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Niacin, Iron, Riboflavin (B2), Vitamin B6, Thiamin B1, Folic Acid, Vitamin D, Vitamin B12, and you get all of this for just £1.99! Hows that for a bargain? Look at all those things we include as part of your morning porridge, I know, I know, we are all about the giving.
But all of the above ingredients is what makes the porridge. If you want an add on (honey or jam) you won’t see it advertised on the porridge box though, because they don’t care about you like Bullshit Press does.
Skimming down the publishing package list it just makes me mad because through trial and error on my part and having published seventeen of my own books, the list is bullshit. It is used as a ploy to confuse the newbie author into thinking they need all these things and will start to worry that if they don’t have these things their bookshelf fodder will not be a success.
But did they want it to be a success before looking at the list of things they “Need”?
This particular group of authors just want their book on their book shelf and to be able to send a copy to their gran at Christmas. They don’t need the platinum package, but they do want a quality job to be done on their book and so they choose the “Most Popular” Package at £3,099. It doesn’t include everything Platinum does but that’s ok.
NO
IT
FUCKING
ISN’T
Yes, the caps have come out now because this is how much the cancer of the literary world winds me up.
Anyway, going back to our poet who had decided on the Basic package for the bargain price of £699. I replied to them telling them to run, as fast as you can, get out of there, exit the webpage, delete all your browsing history, reset your computer, and also burn your hard drive just to make sure. They didn’t take my advice on the burning of the hard drive but they did exit from the site and I explained to them from the list of services they had put up, all of the things which were free anyway.
To start with, Paperback Format and E-Book Format might sound like it is all terribly complicated and important but in its most basic terms it is merely a different file type. For publishing e-books you have the K-pub epub file for Amazon, and the normal E-pub file for Apple, Barnes & Nobel…every other digital store. It is easy enough to have your word document changed into these files online, for free, but Bullshit Press knows you don’t know this. Paperback Format is a PDF file…again, you can do this for free.
Basic Interior Templates…well this again is just nonsense because in converting your word document into an ebook or paperback version, you are in a sense supplying your own basic interior template. Again, there are plenty of free places to find interior templates…but who is to know? Certainly not the newbie, and Bullshit Press knows this.
Author photo (which you have to take and send them, thus doing the work yourself and paying them for the privilege) and Cover Art (which you have to send them, thus doing the work yourself and paying them for the privilege) is next on the list.
Author Homepage and Book page is a page on Bullshit Presses website which receives no traffic and no one will ever visit.
An ISBN is an International Standard Book Number and yes if you are publishing paperbacks then you need one, but guess what? If you publish your paperback on Amazon or via an aggregate like Draft 2 Digital, they supply you with one for FREE or you could buy your own.
Worldwide Distribution and Online listing, Google Books Preview, Amazon Look Inside, Barnes and Noble Read Instantly are all free as soon as you publish your book online…which is also free once you have your free K-pub, E-pub and paperback PDF files.
So, so far we have spent nothing. All of the listed services a newbie author can do themselves if only they’d have gone on to YouTube and typed in Step By Step Process For Publishing My Book. But they didn’t and Bullshit Press are laughing all the way to the bottom feeder shit bacteria virus bank…or something.
Next up is Electronic Galleys. I’m not sure what this is but what I do know is it won’t help you get that book on your bookshelf, or sell any books if that is your aim. So it’s bullshit.
30 Paperback copies. I publish my books exclusively to Amazon. They have 80% of the reading market share as of the time of writing. The readers are ferocious readers, they love books, they love reading, and so I made the decision a while back than instead of publishing to Apple and Barnes & Noble, and Kobo, etc, etc, etc, I’d stick with Amazon for the time being. An 80,000 word novel usually costs around £3 or £4 in printing costs by producing it through their Print on Demand service. But our poet didn’t write an 80,000 word novel. They had a 50 page manuscript of 45 poems. This cost £1.70 to produce via Amazon. So for the 20 paperback copies our poet was going to receive for their £699 on the Basic Package, this would cost £34. Lets double it and round it up for postage and packaging just to inflate our prices a smidge. So we’ve spent £70 for 20 copies of our book of poems.
Next up is Business Cards (50). I’ve had business cards printed before now. Yes, true I’m a whizz on photoshop and I know what I’m doing when designing my card to stay with my author branding, but even so, this only cost me £15 including P&P.
Bookmarks. No one but our grandparents use bookmarks any longer, and you certainly don’t need 50 of them. As with the 50 postcards and 5 posters you are going to receive in the basic package, this is just more bullshit from Bullshit Press. This won’t sell books if you want to, and it won’t help you put your book on the bookshelf if that’s all you’re aiming for. Two minutes of googling showed me I could design my own bookmark and get 100 of them printed for £25. Sure they’re not made from the skin of baby seals, nor do they have 24 carrot gold plating, but I doubt Bullshit Press’s do either. With posters I found a place online and opted for the largest size (1x0.7 meters) in all its glossy full colour, all singing, all price inflating dancing glory. These came to £85. I don’t know what Bullshit Press is offering but I bet it’s not anything like the premium size or quality my printers is producing after searching the internet for 12 seconds.
And that it is it. For the Basic package that is all you get for £699. To do it yourself it cost £195, but lets call it £210 if we include the waste of time postcards which will not be made out of virgin goat vulva so won’t cost all that much.
Now I realise I’m not being fair. The publishing process is a daunting thing for the newbie. They don’t know how to turn a word document into an E-pub file. They don’t know what an E-pub file is. They don’t know how to upload their work onto every digital store in the world with the click of one button using aggregators like Draft2Digital or Smashwords. They can’t create paperback cover files, or even know where to look for such a thing, and they haven’t a clue what is needed to turn their scribbles into a story they can hold in their hands.
Bullshit Press knows and will happily charge you the best part of £700 on the basic publishing package for their troubles which would literally take half a day to complete.
But let's go back to the all singing all dancing Platinum Publishing Package for a moment. That beast cost £12,699. Does it cure cancer? Does a publishing exec toss you off every morning for this ridiculous price? No.
The difference between the Basic package and the Platinum package is just stuff you do not need if you would like to begin a career as an indie author, and stuff you most certainly do not need if you just want a book to put on your bookshelf.
Skimming down the list of extras included in the Platinum Package I’ve guesstimated the extra bullshit Bullshit Press offers costs in the real world around £300-£400 if I’m being generous. True, this doesn’t include your book being featured in fucking BookMad magazine, but we’ll just have to live with that. So for all of the above, mostly stuff you simply don’t need, it’d cost about £600 for everything in the £12,699 Platinum publishing package. This, of course, doesn’t include any editing services, they’re add-ons. Now, and this is why Bullshit Press and their brethren are literary scum, charging twelve grand because you know how to do something someone else doesn’t is just not on and that is why they are sharks who need de-finning and selling to the Chinese so they can be made into soup.
But I’m going to say no more of it other than I decided to help our poet and charged her a couple of hundred quid (for my time more than anything) and together we produced the book she envisioned in her head. I even edited it somewhat, and gave a shout out to my own readers to buy her book…and I’m still there for her for marketing advice and any questions she may have. That I’m happy to do for free, because do you know what? It’s fucking nice to be nice.
3 - Traditionally Publishing
So we’ve now arrived at the trad publishing bit. Now, I am not traditionally published. Way back when I was just collecting more and more manuscripts on my laptop and moving onto writing the next, I always envisioned my name up there with the Stephen Kings and John Grishams. This was before self, or indie publishing was a thing and I spent hours reading the How To Get An Agent books. Spent further more hours consulting the Writers and Artists Yearbook which contained names, addresses, and bios of Agents and Publishers, and then I’d write a synopsis, throw in the first three chapters of my manuscripts, and send them out on their merry way to the slush pile of Literary agents. Then I’d wait twenty million years before receiving standard photocopied rejection note after rejection note. It was fun. It’s nice to collect things.
At the time I wasn’t that bothered, I was in my early twenties and it was much more important to go out and get pissed every weekend. The priorities of the 22 year old. When I’d decided that I did actually want to publish my books I was already looking towards the indie publishing route anyway, but this segment isn’t about that (spoiler alert, that’s the next segment). This is about traditionally publishing and I’m going to try not to be biased…at least until we get to the next section.
To be traditionally published is to “make it”. You have sent out the query packs to potential agents and one has decided they will represent you (for 10-15% of anything you earn). Next they will tout your masterpiece around to publishers. Good Agents have good working relationships with publishers, it is their job after all. If a publisher is interested in your manuscript they may make you an offer in the form of a book deal. If you’re lucky you may get several publishers interested in your masterpiece and your agent will then take on the role of auctioneer, rubbing his hands together as battle over your manuscript commences.
Publishing houses will bid for your book, offering you a whole array of perks to win the rights. There have been rumours of Publishing Houses giving up digital rights in the past to secure you as a client, which in this day and age would sadly be unheard of. Nevertheless after going back and forth you will decide which publisher you want to go with and sign a book deal. These can take on many forms. You may get a 1, 2 or even 3 book deal for X amount of money paid in the form of an advance at certain points down the publishing chain.
You will be assigned an editor who will rip your masterpiece to shreds, but who loves books and really wants the book to be the best it can be. You will have a marketing division deciding on book covers and how they want to market your book. You still need to be doing all the heavy lifting though. Provided you are not Lee Child, nor did you write about a Girl on a Choo-choo, shouting from the rooftops about your book is still your job. Marketing budgets get spent on the bestselling authors. They are a sure thing, they have the readers, the fanbase, and publishing is a business that spends to accumulate. Suck it up, that’s the way of the world. You wanted your name up in lights, you just need to go find the lightbulbs…and electricity supply…and to make sure you pay your electric bill.
Most newly traditionally published authors, or mid-list authors as they are known, will not earn out their advances. This means if John was given a £20,000 advance for his book, he needs to earn back that £20,000 before he can receive royalties. But when you are receiving just 10% of a book’s RRP (lets call that £1.70 for a £16.99 hardback and 70p for paperback) you have a hell of a way to go in earning out and seeing any royalties given you are a new author with no track record and minimal marketing from your publisher.
But hey, you’re a traditionally published author, that’s far better than putting food in your children’s mouths.
4 - Indie Publishing (or Self-Publishing)
Right, we’re on to the last bit now…sorry about the length of this post but those vanity publishers piss me off! Anyway, indie publishing, or self publishing as it is more widely known. Indie publishing is great for a few reason but it depends on what kind of person you are.
If you love the entire process from scribbles to having your book up there for the world to see and beyond, this is the arena you should enter.
Indie publishing is vanity publishing without the dickhead literary bottom feeders and without the ego, put simply. There’s more to it. This is my home, I’m not going to leave it there.
If you decide to self-publish you are making the decision that you want to remain in control of you literary destiny. The buck stops here. It is all you to begin with. You are the CEO, boss, God of your books and it is absolutely terrifying in the beginning. There is so much to do and you haven’t a clue. This is why people turn to Vanity wank stain Publishers, they just don’t know. There is a huge learning curve if you decide to go the indie route, but there are plenty of people to help you along your way.
When I started playing this game I picked up a book by an author called Nick Stephenson. The book in question was called Reader Magnets and it opened my eyes to the possibilities of indie publishing. Nick went through the entire publishing process step by step in this book, but it was difficult to completely understand what the hell he was talking about half of the time. He said I needed a mailing list. This would be the bedrock of my author business. My list would contain the email addresses of readers interested in my work. Well great, but how? You give your first book away for free on all digital platforms and in the back of that book have a sign up form where, in exchange for the reader’s email address, you’d send them another book for free.
My first reaction was FUCK THAT. Two books? You want me to give away two books? I only had three books written. Now I’ve never professed to be a maths whizz but it still appeared jolly old Nick wanted me to give away two thirds of my writing for free. I laugh at this these days. I’m happy to give my work away because I know how valuable that email address, that direct connection to my reader is.
The theory behind it all is simple. Upload your freebie onto digital stores, automatically create traffic by giving your book away for free, have those readers love your work and sign up to your newsletter for another book, and hey presto you have a reader who has just read two of your books and if they stuck around is likely to enjoy your writing. Now you have direct access to this reader every time you release another book and having enjoyed the two freebies they are more likely to buy these books from the author they enjoy reading.
That it the bare bones of it. Your subscriber list swells, you put out more books, rinse and repeat you’re on your way to making money and having a tribe of adoring fans.
Nick Stephenson next brought out an online course called Your First 10,000 readers where he went into more detail, with screen flows and how to step by step videos about the whole self-publishing process from the moment you type THE END to sending out your first newsletter to your fans. There was also a Facebook group I was able to join where like minded know nothing newbie authors could chat, ask questions, talk about books and publishing.
In one of the bonus videos Nick had on the course, he interviewed a fella called Mark Dawson. Mark was killing it on Amazon. He had five or six books out back then and was doing tremendously well. This not only introduced me to an author who would in time change everything for me in the indie arena, it also introduced me to something called KPD Select. A means of earning money on every page of your book read if you decided to publish exclusively with Amazon. I jumped to it and became an Amazonian scribbler.
My novel Meat Market reached the number one spot in the humour charts on the UK, US and AUS stores and remained there for about a month. The first instalment of my novella series Checking Out did the same, but with Checking out, because I had three other books in that series I found people were buying books 2, 3 and 4, reading through the whole series. At the same time my newsletter list swelled from 100 people to over 9000, I was receiving unprompted emails from readers saying how much they loved my books, reviews were going up on amazon, bloggers were contacting me asking for interviews, it was so much fun.
Writing always takes centre stage in any writer’s life. It has to. But second only to the writing for me was the ability to be able to chat to the very people buying the books and loving the stories I was telling. All thanks to that mailing list. That is first and foremost why I am indie and proud. You don’t get that interaction if you are a trad author. You can’t speak to the people who love your work, some of who (your fans, yes you’ll get them) eventually become friends.
It is a very inspiring community the indie community. On one hand you have all the other indie authors happy to reach out to you, to chat, to give advice, to be that support network for you in what is a very solitary profession. Then you have the community you have built up yourself, your peeps, the people who are there for you to entertain them with your words, or if your are a non-fiction author, teach them.
With more and more online services and software and courses and forums for authors popping up into existence every day there really has never been a better time to tell your stories and having the ability to find people who are hungry for those stories. To quote the aforementioned Mark Dawson, ‘There’s Never Been A Better Time To Be A Writer,’ but always be mindful of the sharks in the water.
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