Wow! Three weeks since my first blog entry. I need to do better about keeping this blog up to date. I've been busy during this time, completing a lot of steps necessary toward publishing my novel Blood Scourge through my publishing company, Moonshine Cove Publishing, LLC. A lot of it has been updating my content on various websites to try to get web exposure rather than actual time spent in publishing the book, but I'm running into snags on that too. I have made progress, however. The various ebook versions are published, allowing the book to be for sale at a lot of different sites including Amazon and the Apple store. The snags I'm running into concern the cover of the print version, but I'll save that for another time.
I ended last time making the bold claim that it takes just a few hours time to publish a book and get it into the distribution chain. Even with the snags I'm running into as a newbie publisher, learning the ropes as I go, I stand by that statement. The publisher's time in getting a book out, ready for customers to purchase is so much less than the amount of time it takes to write a novel that it's laughable. Instead of the 90:10 split (or 75:25 as for the other book contract I have) in favor of the publisher, it should be turned around the other way.
If the publisher devoted time and money to promoting and publicizing each author's book, publishing deals would be a lot fairer, but, from what I've been able to tell, they don't. They expect the author to take care of this. That really makes no sense at all. The author has already spent a year, two years or five years writing the book. Now they're supposed to take more time selling the book so the publisher can take the lion's share of any profit. What kind of deal is that? For most writers, a really bad one.
Some of you might be thinking that the reason for this is because I've been published by small independent presses, not one of the big publishers, the ones who only take submissions only from literary agents. Well, from what I read, maybe it used to be that way at the big publishers, but no more. While it is true that the big publishers have big budgets for promotion and publicity, it's all reserved for the books they think will have the best chance of selling a lot of books. What books would that be? The ones written by folks who have name recognition, the stars and especially the superstars. They get the big splashy book tours where people line up around the block, the appearances on popular TV programs, the expensive ad campaigns, the reviews by important reviewers and the blurbs by famous people about how wonderful their latest book is and how you just can't put it down. These are the books that make most of the money for the big publishers.
If you stop and think about it, this makes good economic sense. Spend your budget on the books that your experience tells you have the best chance of making money, not on some no-name author no one's ever heard of. After all, a publishing company is in business to make money, not promote unknown writers or showcase great literature that few people will bother to read. It's hard to get readers to take a chance on an unknown author being a dud. Even worse than wasting their money on a bad book is the waste of time, time no one can ever get back.
What might happen if a big publisher devoted the sort of promotional budget to a first novel by some unknown author that was spent on, say, Sarah Palin's book? I tend to think they could turn it into a best seller, but even so, it probably wouldn't sell nearly as many books as Palin sold. The publisher stands better odds of making the most money doing exactly what they're doing.
Sarah Palin's book would have done well even without the big promotional budget because she already possessed what the publishing industry calls a Big Platform, an A-List Platform, meaning her name was known to millions of people and that she could get on national TV and radio anytime she wanted. Unknowns, like me, have no platform. Our job number one is to try to build a platform. One way is starting a blog and have your own web site.
Another way is to spend your own money by hiring an agency specializing in author promotion. I've read that it takes a minimum of $100,000 to have an effective national promotional campaign. The key word in that sentence is “minimum.” A hundred thousand is considered the bare minimum to be able to sell enough books that might have some chance of paying for the promotion. A quarter of a million would be a lot better.
What is comes down to is that new authors, whether with a small independent press or one of the big names, had better be prepared to spend a lot of time promoting their own books. If you do that and succeed in selling a fair number of books, the big publisher is more likely to offer you a contract for a second book. Why not? You've made some money for them. Then they'll probably start to spend a little money on you. But if that second books flops, watch out! There won't be a third.
To return to why I made the decision to start my own publishing company, December last I bought three books on self-publishing and began reading them. To say the least, they were eye-opening. I bought some more, now seriously considering the possibility of becoming a publisher, and knowing more the type of books I'd need to guide me through the process. By late January, I found myself checking the law in the state where I live as to what steps I'd have to take in order to start my own LLC publishing company. In other words, how much red tape would I have to struggle through. If you don't already know, LLC stands for Limited Liability Cooperation, which our oldest son, the one who is an attorney, said would be a good course to follow.
As it turned out, it was a simple process, just a short application to fill out along with a check for $125. Within a couple of weeks I received a Certificate of Existence from the Secretary of State certifying that Moonshine Cove Publishing, LLC, duly organized under the laws of the state, exists. With that declaration, I found myself in the publishing business.
I knew I'd really arrived when two weeks later, the first piece of junk mail came in addressed to Moonshine Cove.
Now that I had a company, I had to start seriously planning the steps I'd have to take in order to actually put a print book and an ebook before the buying public. There are lots of steps, lots of things to do the first time through that you won't have to do with the second book. I'll get into some of these steps in later additions to the blog. None of this even matters unless you can get national distribution for your book. Without that, you'll be limited to selling single copies of your book to your family and perhaps on eBay.
National distribution is the thing that the big companies used to have sewn up. Why do you think the small independent presses are small? Because they couldn't sell enough books to be big.
But the publishing industry is now in a great state of turmoil and change. Why? Because of a new technology that started about a dozen or so years ago and the founding of a new company. The technology is POD, print or publish on demand, and the new company is Lightning Source. I'll write about both of these next time.
