Another interesting point of view

I was recently reading an article by Morris Rosenthal entitled, Do Self-Published Books Sell? He makes a great point that echoes statements I've heard from agents and editors, to wit: what can you bring to the table? If you have successfully sold a self-published book, you'll have something tangible to put in your future book proposals, i.e. you have statistics to show that a) you can market and sell your work, and b) a number of people actually want to read it. Those numbers can go a long way toward interesting a larger publishing house in your material - providing that you're even still interested in selling the book at that point.

At the very least, as a successful self-published author, you may have more bargaining power and will certainly be more savvy when and if you find yourself (via agent or not) at a publisher's negotiation table.

Best tea for researching the odds: Pomegranate Oolong

What do we do first?

Well, I've got my outline of actions done. My first steps to implementing this plan involve putting the marketing channels in place to promote the book even while I'm still muddling through the final edit. I've built my author website and have begun researching additional avenues for establishing a web presence.

Getting past that non-existent feeling when you realize that basically no-one knows anything about you or your little book can seem overwhelming. Having a web presence is going to be vital. People need to be able to find you and your book easily, once they do find out about it. That's step 1 - making it easy to find you. Taking your marketing to the next level of wide promotion is step 2.

What gives the big publishers their advantage is they already have lines of communication into bookstores, convenience stores, other chains, etc. where they'll place your book in front of the nameless thousands. The downside of these avenues is bookstores and chains like Target typically want to order books in quantity at a significantly discounted price. So while you may sell more books by having them in these stores, that isn't necessarily going to result in an equal return on your investment.

The big publishing houses also have marketing channels already in place. Coming in as a new author with a new book publishing on your own, you have to create a lot of those channels. Some of the Print On Demand (POD) publishers will sell marketing packages to their authors to help with some of that.

I think it's true for any book that much of the sales will be driven by the promotion each author creates on their own. There's no reason in this media-rich environment that one author can't promote their book and reach as many people as the big publishers do (assuming your novel would be one of the lucky few that such publishers choose to design a big promotional campaign around, which is actually very few of their yearly total). Many of the POD publishers actually do make your book available via Ingram or other wholesalers, so you may still see your book in Target one day.

Perfect tea to contemplate having the best of both worlds: Harney & Sons Wedding Tea (Mutan white tea with lemon-vanilla)

If it's good enough for Samuel Clemens...

Self-publishing may or may not be the future. Then again, back in the 90's people said CDs would never replace analogue recordings. The technology avalanche just keeps building, evolving. Now we have Blueray and I'm going to have to buy Star Wars again.

Being surrounded by younger people much more tech savvy can be intimidating or inspirational. Taking the latter viewpoint as it applies to the publishing industry, you can only see a broader horizon. There are so many options now to get a book into the hands of readers a) very quickly, and b) with full control over the process.

Audrey Owen has a nice site that lays out some of the pros and cons of self-publishing. On the plus side, you have:

• much more control of the process - you choose your formatting, style, cover artwork, et al.
  
• money - self-published writers can earn 40-60% of the sale price of the book as opposed to the standard 10%
• time - the production time alone can take 12-18 months, and let's not get started on the JK Rowling-esque years of endless query letters to agents and publishers.
  

If the reason you're writing is because you have a voice, a vision, or a story you feel compelled to share with others, self-publishing might be an option.

The downside of these same points is that you have to do most of the pre-production work yourself. You invest your own money instead of letting your publisher run the risk, and for some authors, the marketing process can be as frustrating and disheartening as the query-letter-rejection-letter stage.

I'm excited to explore this option and see where it goes (and not just because my husband keeps asking me when I'm going to sell my book and make a million dollars so he can retire). If this really is the next wave, I might as well be on it.

Recommended tea for weighing the pros and cons: Organic Assam (lemon and honey optional)

All great ideas start with a cup of tea

It's true, some writers are inspired by scenery, others by music, art, a strange encounter on the street - any number of myriad experiences (just ask a SF author what inspires him and you'll get a whole host of bizarre connections between his toaster and alien mind control). I can't say I'm inspired by tea so much as my writing seems to improve when it's present.

Even so, this blog isn't really about tea (though there may yet be many references to it). I am keeping this blog in the hopes it will prove cathartic as I head into the self-publishing process on my novel, Cephrael's Hand (in bookstores soon!)

I've never been comfortable with shameless self-promotion, though I'm happy to shamelessly promote my yoga class to new students, but it's not quite the same thing as emailing all of your friends and asking them to buy your book even if they don't particularly like the Fantasy genre or even know enough of it to suspect that Cephrael's Hand is not an explicit novel about a young boy's personal struggle with puberty.

So look for more as I forage deeper into the forest of self-publishing armed with only an internet connection and a lovely cup of Harney and Son's Bangkok (green tea with coconut, lemongrass and ginger - an appropriate tea to begin any adventure).