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“If you build it, he will come” the field whispered to the farmer, producing a baseball diamond on the edge of a corn field. It has become a cliché since Kevin Costner played that role in Field of Dreams. It has come to stand for having the courage to create what you are driven to create and let the audience come.
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Once the book is written, what next?
Marge Simpson: If I write a book, will someone let me know when it comes out?
We all know it doesn’t work that way, but it surely would be nice if it did. Just write it and let someone else take care of the rest. We don’t get that level of service and very few people do. Writing the story and crafting it is not the hard part, getting it into the hands of a consumer is.
Let’s say you have studied what your goals are for writing, have looked at what you are willing to risk, and have chosen the traditional route as the best way of meeting your business plan. You have found an agent and that agent has finally found a publisher to buy your work. You bask for a time in the artificial “I finally made it” emotion or begin practicing your “I’m a published author” greeting so you can hobnob at gatherings and feel self important. That’s it, right? You attained what you set before yourself. The publisher sends to your agent who sends to you the money you earned with the promise of more to come in royalties. Next comes the demand for travel and a book signing tour because those books the publisher invested in won’t sell themselves. They have the name of the publisher on them but that isn’t enough. Who buys a book just because it comes from Random House? Who even looks at the publisher? Ok, maybe you do but I’d be willing to bet few can name the publisher of a fraction of their library. It’s time to get personal because there is a secret to marketing that never fails; word of mouth.
It’s time to book the trip to Akron, Ohio for a series of book signings that will eventually leave you dry of mouth and exhausted. However, you are earning your keep, for you work for the publisher now and perhaps a little for yourself.
Marketing, it is a thing that scares me and should scare most of you. Unless you are a business major and writing a book about marketing you are probably going to be out of your element here. It is the thing that will make or break us as authors for without it the story is just pages between binding and either sitting in boxes in storage or sitting on millions of bookshelves across the country. I may sound a bit cynical towards the traditional route of publishing, but it doesn’t get any easier from there along the continuum. Marketing your work, your own work, is something you will need to plan for and not depend on your publisher to do for they probably are counting on you to do it anyway. Of course, it should be something we are motivated to work our tails off for anyway.
People are fickle and unforgiving as a group. They do not take many chances out of the blue and impulse buying for books is probably a very low percentage. People will purchase what they know or know about from someone else, hence the value of a book signing and other personal contact with your consumers. A friendly hello and a handshake may go a long way to getting a sale later on if not at the table. It may be distasteful and at times seem like a waste of time, but a web page or a picture on Amazon isn’t going to sell your books. Personal knowledge and the word from a friend will.
My wife is taking a course in web page development and naturally we have begun to plan out our web page and domain name. A web page is a must, but it won’t sell your books for you. It is one step in the process of introducing yourself to a potential consumer, especially if you are an unknown and I am assuming most if not all of us are compared to Dorothy Sayers or Walt Whitman. You will need some money to reserve a domain name and web space, more money if you are to engage in electronic commerce on your site, and still more money if you want a professional look. A web presence is a good thing, but it is like a phone book. You can’t find who or what you are looking for unless you know who or what you are looking for. Opening a page at random will not reveal your presence to the masses. You have to engage in other aspects of the web medium like blogs and My Space pages to establish a presence but still no one will know who you are or care even less until you establish contact with that weird breed of creature out there called a human being.
It may sound simple, but it will be hard and at times thankless work to arrange for signings (if you are going the independent route) and hours sitting alone and staring hopefully at passers by who avoid eye contact because they know you want to sell them something. But, every contact made with a living, breathing, money spending human is worth a book sold by someone they may know.
Someone in a comment a while back mentioned that you shouldn’t start your own publishing business because people do not buy books from unknown entities. This may be true to a point, but I do not know many people who buy books based upon who published it. Being a historian, I buy based upon the topic alone and when I find another work by a historian I like I’ll buy their next book. For Cozy Mystery books, it is the author that sells the next book and not the topic or the publisher. It is all based upon the market and who makes up that market as a body of consumers. In the home school market, it is a combination of publisher and topic and word of mouth. Bob Jones University sells a wide range of curriculum but if that where the only criteria they would be the only ones making it in the buisness. The name aside, word of mouth from one family to the next is what drives this market most of all as people tend to agree with the philosophies of those they know more readily than making cold purchase decisions out of the blue. For someone starting out, this can be daunting but getting the book into the hands of a few families here and there will lead to other sales later on.
So, I’m sure most of you out there already realize that marketing is tough business and yet it is so important to make allowances for. If you go it alone, alone it you will go and have a harder time making a name for yourself unless you are willing to put dough and travel into it. You will spend more than you make for a time. If you are going a traditional route, it will be a bit easier but you’ll have less control over your work and make even less per copy sold. But, it is an economy of scale. Make more but possibly sell less early on as you work to make contact with potential consumers on your own dime or make less but possibly still sell less early on but have a potential for a larger distribution of your work on the dime of someone else. Without a good plan, you’ll spin your wheels and make little on your creativity either way.
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I’ve picked out a few examples of members who have published via self publishing.
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DB Cooper 
Submitted Comment:
I published a book through PublishAmerica and I would cringe at the thought of useing some other POD.
Sharon 
Submitted Comment:
Great newsletter, but I have a question. Self-publishing is an inexpensive way to get your book published when the conventional publishers won't look at your work, but what about readers? As a reader, I look for what the reviewers say about a book before I buy it. I don't want to waste my time reading a book that bores me after one chapter. When I pick up a New York Times Bestseller, I know I'm going to be entertained by good reading. How does a self-publisher grab that audience? Do self-published books get reviews?
Sharon
andromeda
Submitted Comment:
I tried writing nonfiction, but I tend to put my own expiriences into my fiction stories, so it gets hard. I guess I'm stuck with fiction.
Andromeda
ehrydberg
Submitted Comment:
Another great newsletter in your series on the business of publishing. I don't think I'd ever call myself 'starry-eyed' however, I probably have fallen for the sigma of traditionally published over self-published. I also tend to be weak on the business end of things, in general, so your newsletters are very welcome for opening my eyes to that side.
Thanks for this great series.
SmokeyMtn
Submitted Comment:
This may well have been the most useful newsletter I've seen to date. Great info and a great wakeup call. Thanks!
monty31802
Submitted Comment:
After co-publishing two books with my co-author I recognize good advice when I read it and I found a lot of good advice in this Newsletter.
Larone Mckinley
Submitted Comment:
Thank you for writing this Newsletter. I was one of those with stars in by eyes. Your letter has reminded me of the Business side of this craft.
Thank you.
Larone
Lordmat
Submitted Comment:
A very to the point commentary. It is good to be reminded that writing is also a job and that anything to do with making money should be treated as a business.
Do you have any comments to make on how an unpublished author should go about generating a following. For example is setting up a website to promote your own work a worthwhile endeavour.
I'd be interested in hearing what you think about the topic of self marketing.
heartofahawk
Submitted Comment:
Great newsletter - I'm sure everyone on the site is interested in the publishing topic. Would love to see more along these lines in the future.
thanks!
Heart of a Hawk
Seisa-sleepingcatbooks.com
Submitted Comment:
Great newsletter on the business of publishing, thePookie Spider Pig (66) phil1861
I don't usually keep newsletters in my inbox because they're all archived, but I'll be keeping this one. I don't want to forget about it! I may even print it out to hang at my desk.
Kenzie 
Submitted Comment:
Thanks for including my article in your list. I enjoyed your newsletter. It's true that many writers start out thinking that all they have to do is write the words and somehow they will magically appear in print. As you so aptly pointed out, that just isn't the case. It's also true, because of POD's and self-publishing avenues that far too many people have been published who should not have been. Computers and the internet have given us so many opportunities. It's up to us to use them wisely.
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For Authors: September 19, 2007 Issue [#1962]
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