All projects: Gel, Good Todo, Games, Uncle Mark, Bit Literacy
Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known
Following up on these overviews of the book industry, I thought I'd share some lessons I learned from publishing :btl:. I originally tried to go through mainstream publishers but eventually self-published it, because of what I learned in the process. I wish I had known everything below before I wrote my book.
Here's what you should know about how most - not all - publishers work:
:b: They're not doing it for the love of books. Publishers want something that sells. Similarly, bookstores want something that sells. Publishers and bookstores want a book that sells early, sells often, and sells for a long, long time. If they don't think your book will sell, they won't pay much attention.
:b: Conversely, if your book will sell, it doesn't matter what you're writing about. You could write something boring, or irrelevant, or nothing at all - just a blank set of pages with a coffee stain on them will work fine, if the book sells. Do you get the picture? It's not about any high-minded ideals of literature, or craft, or changing the world - publishers and bookstores want something that sells. Drop any illusions about spending time with book lovers; this is business.
:b: When you approach publishers with an idea, your main job - practically your only job - is to explain very clearly why the book is going to sell. (Here it really helps if your last name is Clinton.) If you're not a known author or celebrity who can guarantee some sales, then it's best to come in with a clearly defined, market-tested book idea... not to say a knockoff of a bestselling concept or a me-too book on a hot trend, heavens no, we'd never do that, just maybe something "inspired by" a successful book.
:b: What did you say... you want to do something original? Wait wait wait. Did you not read anything I've written already? "Original" means "risky," which to publishers and bookstores means "it might not sell." IT MIGHT NOT SELL? Oh boy... maybe you could consider doing a cookbook? Or could you become famous and then send out your idea?
:b: If you do get a publisher interested in your idea, you should know now what the deal will be. You write the book, you promote the book - in other words, you create the product and sell it - and in return, the publisher will allow their name to appear on the book jacket. Oh, and the publisher keeps most of the money - since, they'll remind you, they assumed all the risk in the project.
:b: Don't write a book for the money. As the author, you can expect to make about a dollar on every copy that sells. The publisher makes several times that, so they make a nice profit with as few as, say, five thousand copies sold. Books that sell ten or fifteen thousand are rare, and considered strong sellers. So let's say you strike gold. After working on your book for a year or more, are you going to be happy with a payday of ten to fifteen grand?
:b: Incidentally, don't expect your royalty check right away. The publisher gets paid first, by the bookstores, and the publisher may then hold on to your money for several months before they part with any of it. Yes, this is legal: it's in the publisher's contract. Not getting paid may be a bummer for you, but it's a great deal for the publisher, since they make interest on the float (all the money they owe to their authors) - which is another profit stream. They'll claim one reason for the delay is the sheer administrative challenge of cutting a check within three months (so many authors to keep track of! so many payments!)... a less ridiculous reason is that they have to wait to see whether bookstores are going to return unsold copies of your book for a full refund (an arrangement that I describe more below).
:b: As for how you get those sales... that's your job, as I said above. Wait: you thought the publisher was going to sell and distribute your book? No no no. Their job is to put their name on the book jacket, fulfill orders and accept payment from bookstore orders (which come from your sales efforts), keep most of the money, and then, several months later, cut your small royalty check.
:b: By now you should be convinced that you have to sell your own books. If you're not a Clinton or other celebrity, the best way is if you have a following online - via a blog or newsletter - that you can sell the book to, by linking to the book's Amazon page. That way the publisher can just sit back and watch the money roll in, as you write and sell the book yourself. Don't rely on the publisher to sell your book. They probably won't sign you as an author, anyway, unless they know that you have a way of selling the book yourself.
:b: Another way to sell your book is to get it into physical bookstores. This isn't the best sales route, but it's worth describing. Two ways into a bookstore: (1) pay the bookstore for placement - you didn't think those books were displayed prominently because the store employees like the book, did you? ... or (2) convince the buyer for the bookstore chain that your book will sell, sell, sell, and so she should place a big order for your book.
:b: The buyer is the one single person who determines what's on the shelves in all of the stores in a chain, for a given book type. The business section in every Barnes & Noble store in the country takes orders from a single buyer. For a given category, Borders has a buyer. Wal-Mart has a buyer. Even so-called "indie" bookstores have a (single) buyer for that category. I'd guess that over 90% of the business books on the shelves in all the bookstores in the US are chosen by a half-dozen people.
:b: If you can convince the buyer to carry your book in their chain, you'll have some distribution. (Not sales, to be clear, but a step closer.) But how do you contact one of those half-dozen supremely important people? You need entry. The buyer doesn't have time to talk to every individual author in the US about their half-baked book idea... there needs to be a gatekeeper to filter for surefire sellers.
:b: You can guess who that gatekeeper is: the publisher. If you sign with a big enough publisher, you have the chance - not the guarantee - of getting some - not necessarily much - distribution in some - not necessarily more than one - national chain, where customers will have the chance, on a shelf somewhere in the store, to come across your book and maybe buy a copy. As I said, it's not the best sales route. (And it's not a compelling reason, on its own, to sign with a publisher.)
:b: What's more, publishers have limited resources for the (usually) enormous list of authors they sign, so publishers focus only on a very few A-list authors. The majority of their list gets very little support. And if you have to wonder whether you're one of the chosen few, you just got your answer. (Why, then, do publishers sign so many authors, if they can't support more than a few? Same reason gamblers play the numbers in roulette - you never know which long-odds bet might win big. Besides which, authors are signing on to write and sell their own work, so it's a pretty good deal for the publisher anyway.)
:b: Incidentally, if the book sits too long, unsold, on the bookstore's shelf, the bookstore will return it to the publisher for a full refund. Once again, distribution is not the same as sales, although it can be a step in the right direction.
:b: If you do find an interested publisher, they'll hand you a contract. Read every word of the publisher's contract, and get your lawyer to do the same. Many things in the contract are negotiable, though the publisher won't tell you that upfront. But you'd be a sucker to sign the first draft of the contract.
:b: Up to this point you will have been talking to an editor at the publisher, and if you're at the contract stage you probably have a good rapport with him or her. Such a nice person, the editor wouldn't try to shaft you, would they? Well... they don't write the contract; that's the job of the contracts manager. This is someone who's never met you, who doesn't particularly care whether your book gets published or not, and whose responsibility it is to secure the very best terms for the publisher. Furthermore, their job is to write contract after contract, day after day, ad infinitum, and so anything you ask out of the ordinary, any change from their best-terms-for-publisher template, will be a major pain for them.
:b: Years ago, before I was fully educated about publishers, I let two different books die at this stage - because the contracts manager couldn't (or wouldn't) fix some truly boneheaded wording in the template. I'm glad I made that decision. If the contract process doesn't go well, walk away. This is the most attention your publisher will ever give to you - remember, after this, it's up to you to write and sell the book - so if they can't be reasonable in the contract, it's really not going to go well later, when it's time to publish the book.
:b: You can also hire an agent to seek out and negotiate with a publisher for your book idea. This can shield you from some of the hassle of contract negotiations, but the basic arrangement is still in place. You write it, you sell it, and the publisher keeps most of the money. (The agent, for their efforts, gets a percentage of your royalties.)
:b: You may see now the author's dilemma. Publishers and bookstores are in it for the money. But you, the author, can't be in it for the money - it doesn't pay enough. You should write a book because you believe in it. And that's the trouble: what you love isn't necessarily what publishers believe will sell. If you can find a topic that you love and that will sell in the market, well then, go forth and type. You're one of the lucky ones.
:b: You may not want a publisher to handle your book. After all, you have write the book, you have to sell the book, while the publisher may get you some distribution that may lead to a little bit of sales. Meanwhile, the publisher gets most of the money - and can pay you months later, according to the contract, which they wrote. It's just not a great deal for you, unless you're a celebrity or known author and can negotiate more equitable terms.
:b: The good news is that there are other options than finding a publisher. You can self-publish, as I did with my book :btl: - or you can publish your content online for free (via a blog, for example). It depends on your goals. If I have time for a followup post in the future, I might write about the pros and cons (mostly pros) of self-publishing.
I just hope this helps some aspiring authors out there. As I said, I wish I had known this before I wrote my book.
See also: Seth Godin's advice for authors
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Secrets of Book Publishing from a Self-Published Author
There Are No Rules — Jul 18, '08 – 12:57 PM
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Eric Weisstein, the creator of MathWorld ( http://mathworld.com/ ), wrote a commentary about his own experiences with publisher CRC Press ( at http://mathworld.com/about/erics_commentary.html ).
It's a cautionary tale for authors who want to get published, especially if they want their content visible online as well.
Thanks for this detailed, helpful, if not depressing, overview of publishing.
It would be great if you followed up with a case study of self-publishing Bit Literacy. How did you do it? It seems successful to me - I've given it to ten people and have no trouble finding it. Is it a success for you?
Some really great points, Mark. There are a few things I don't agree with, but for the most part I think you got it spot on. I've recently started a blog to stay in communication with our authors at Cumberland House and interact about the realities of the publishing market. This post will be very helpful, I think. I encourage authors to research publishers before submitting proposals, and certainly before signing a contract.
Thanks, Paul - nice to see a publisher being more in touch with authors.
BTW would be interested to hear what you disagree with in the column.
Thanks, Joe... appreciate you sharing the book with others. Most people who have read Bit Literacy have given it very positive reviews, so in that sense I do consider it a success.
However, I don't feel like the book even began to reach the number of people who need it. Book promotion is difficult if you're not already a celebrity or bankable author. Publishers won't invest, and it's hard for the author to get the word out beyond their existing network of readers.
Thanks Mark. You can see some of my disagreements on this post at http://publishingassociates.blogspot.com/2008/07/some-realities-of-publishing-business.html
Thanks, Paul, for your thoughts. My response to your three disagreements:
1. "Most of the people in this business (not all, but more than Mark implies) love books."
No argument there. Lots of lawyers and politicians love books, too. My point is that publishers, and their process, aren't driven by that love. Rather it's all about getting sales while limiting risk. Authors need to know that going in.
2. "Average net profit on a book is about 5%. How does that compare to most author royalty rates?"
Uhhh... you're comparing the publisher's net margins to the author's gross revenue - ? Those are two very different things, as I'm sure you know! Apples-to-apples means comparing the publishers *positive* 5% to the average author's *negative* margins, or comparing gross revenue - in which the publisher, as I said, earns several times what the author makes.
3. On risk, "In 2007 Cumberland House spent an average of nearly $20,000 per book..."
No argument that publishers invest *something* when they sign an author. The question is, are the terms equitable for an author who is expected to write and sell their own work, and could, in many cases, self-publish for better terms? (I don't mean this as a comment about Cumberland House specifically, just toward the publishing industry as a whole.)
Mark and all,
Thank you for revealing the "secrets." I now have another place to point prospective authors. I've worked in publishing for over twenty years, both in-house and freelance. It used to be considered "recession-proof" back when recession was the biggest scare (not greedy stockholders, takeovers, foreign competition, war, and corrupt leaders). Today publishing is an increasingly challenging area in which to make a living. But I can't think of anything I'd rather do . . . I still enjoy the process of assisting an author in manifesting her or his dream.
I agree with most of your post, having written or co-written 6 books, including my most recent one for ChefMD and ChefMD.com (where the publisher experience was my best to date).
Even with a NYTimes best-seller to my name, I thought seriously about self-publishing before signing on the dotted line.
If you can create, as you have, a following in another way, you can circumvent the publisher/bookstore/remainder industrial complex. Your blog and newsletter, and your general approach to customer service, and GEL, all help you do that. So, a self-published book may well have been your best choice, financially and in writing what you want to write.
But having a book with an established publisher gives you an additional credential. You may argue it's unnecessary, and it might be, but most people find that credential valuable...even those with a big online following. The established/published book then becomes an oversized business card, which helps to advance your case for your ideas. Which is another step in helping you gain recognition, which will also help your ideas.
In other words, leveraging the name/brand of your publisher, in and of itself, can help you with people who know that name/brand, but don't know yours: they tend to be people in corporate settings with whom you may want to consult or speak. That's helpful, for new business ideas.
There is a balance between, on the one hand, wanting to have a big, credentially business card and being a savvy marketer and presenter of your marketing ideas; and on the other hand, knowing that it will cost you money (both opportunity costs and real financial costs) to publish your work with an established publisher and to get that card and credential. For people who have national and international aspirations for their ideas, and are interested in the corporate world, I think the big publisher route still has merit.
That is a good description of some of the awful truths about publishing. However, as small independent publisher I am desperate to see the spreadsheet that demonstrates that the publisher "earns several times what the author makes."
Since the economics of publishing are quite irrational by the usual business standards I've asked many booksellers and publishers why they are in the business. The dominate answer is that they want to contribute to, preserve or enhance the culture.
There is the publisher's conundrum: spend money to produce and promote the work and deliver the author's message to as many people as possible while waiting 18-24 months from day one to start getting it back (not to mention potential returns and so on as you have described).
Maybe the big publishers are big because they've solved this. For most publishers, I suspect that the faults of this business are just as painful as they are to authors.
Mark, I agree with the entirety of what you have written and posted here. It is completely in sync with my experiences and observations.
Unfortunately, John La Puma's points concerning the prestige of having your book published by an established publisher are also true. Isn't it sad that there is no prestige to be gained from making an intelligent and well-reasoned decision to self-publish? Instead, defending that decision becomes a pesky, ongoing aspect of promoting a self-published book.
As far as your assertion that publishers are not "doing it" for the love of books, that is true of many authors as well. Increasingly, readers are on to this and aware that many times the books they purchase are little more than "big, credentially business cards."
You could replace the word 'publishing' with 'music industry'/'film industry' and 'book' with 'album'/'movie', and you'd have two more essays on the same essential idea...
Thanks for the advice. We all do things because we love them; but you didn't answer the question that seems central to me; how did self-publishing the book turn out in the end -- have you broken even? Did you do better than that? Or was this simply an exercise in altruism?
This is a good overview to those that are unfamiliar with publishing, but:
I'm sure it's a shock to someone somewhere that selling things (books, movies, records) is a business, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me. And while you can complain that the publisher takes a higher percentage of the profit, they also take all of the loss when - more often than not - the book doesn't sell. Finally, in all of your ranting about how little the publisher does, you gloss over the fact that they actually lay out, design and print the books. Which has to be worth something, right?
Thanks for the info...I--like half of the known world--am writing something and it's become increasingly clear that when I'm done, I'd be better off giving it away. I'm just psyching myself up for that.
I have had a book finished for four years. I have become a publisherphobe. I can't do anything with it... I .. I.. It is hidden under my bed.
I went the self-published route via lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com/content/121141). I find the issues fascinating... and while it may be true that having a known publisher will provide some prestige, I would prefer to have the benefits/costs of total control.
The tasks that a well-known publisher may perform are now independently offered. Cover design, layout, typesetting, editing, etc... If you're not able to do them yourself, it's now possible to hire a third party to help you.
Combined with an easy-to-use tool like Lulu, you can quickly create your book. Add a marketing person (someone to help you design a good, yet simple, website) and someone who can connect you with a little publicity (though, you can do most of that yourself now, too)... and you're good to go.
Having gone through this process now, I would've loved help on the PR side of things... and a little editing help would've been nice, too. But I was writing such a niche thing that I knew no known publisher would ever touch it. So it took me much longer than it may have taken a professional publisher to get the finished product available. But then again, instead of getting 5-8% of the price as my royalty, I get 80-90%.
I write technical academic books. Like the previous commenter, I too went the Lulu route, after having had a previous (co-authored) book published by a major press. The experience has worked great for me, and I've written up my thoughts on self-publishing (http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Memos/Books-as-Software/). Of course, they probably don't apply to authors of non-technical books, especially literary works.
Thank you so much Mr Hurst, you have educated me,there are so much that I didn't know about book publishing and what other publishing companies are looking for in a book, I have been very careful on who should publish my book. This Book is about my parents who is deaf and blind. I'm working on my next book, My wife who is Hearing Impaired, and my daughter is Autism. These book will be completed in 24 Months. Once again thank you. My Name Henry.
Regarding sales, I run a service called Rankforest that tracks sales rankings at Amazon.com (and .co.uk and Barnes and Noble). This provides *some* indication of how well your book is doing, while you wait for the publisher to release some quarterly figures to you. Rankforest also has tracking links that redirect to Amazon.com's site. When purchases are made via these links, the sales are captured and can be related to the sales rank charts.
Chris over at my blog, Survival of the Book, has responded to this post, too, and we may have some kind of open discussion of the issues. Thanks for the post!
Excellent analysis. All budding authors should read this. One more thing that a larger publisher can bring is foreign translation sales and other "subsidiary rights" sales like audio rights and Amazon Kindle rights. While it is possible to get those with a self published book, it is tough.
My first book was self published, then I went with a small publisher, then with my 3rd, 4th and 5th books with Wiley, a big business book publisher. I sold more copies of the first Wiley book in the first week then the other two books combined lifetime sales. Yet, the effort I put into it was almost the same.
One thing the big guys look for is your "platform" (that's what they call it). Do you speak? Run seminars? Have a magazine column or blog? The bigger your platform, the more they want you.
David
excellent post.
very informative to
budding authors...
thank you so much.
-bowerbird
Quite depressing for aspiring authors if their goal is to make enough money to live on (so: keep the day job and write because you love it). The terms are dictated by the side that holds the most power in a particular transaction (if you're Dan Brown, you have much more power to set better terms). As technology reduces the barriers to publishing by reducing the costs and providing alternative routes to printing we should see contracts become more equitable, but the bottleneck will still be those dozen or so buyers that really control distribution and what shows up on bookstore shelves.