On publishing and promo

Note: This was drafted before Quartet Press folded, but it seems oddly relevant now.

Question from Sachiko regarding author promotion:

Does this [increased demand for author promotion- Ilona] reduce publishers’ gatekeeping powers? If I’m going to bust my hump to sell my own books, then vanity publishing looks a little less unattractive. Online publishing should also serve to reduce the need for big publishing houses, if they’re not going to handle the PR.

Let’s do these one at a time.

1)  Publishers do not have gatekeeping powers.

Publishers want to publish quality fiction, because they love books.  I know there is a tendency to view publishers as extremely cold and solely business-oriented, but a lot of them get into the business because they do truly love books.  Editors, who work for publishers, also love books.

Publishers also want to make money.  Money lets them eat and publish more books.

There are no mythical editors who sit there before a stack of manuscripts and think, “Yep, have to guard the gate.”  When an editor sits down before the pile of submissions, he or she most likely think, “I hope I find an awesome book and I hope it will be a bestseller.”  They want to find somebody to publish.  That’s how they stay in business.

Think of it as sitting before a a sack of marbles and looking for a particular one.  No. no. no. No, no, no, no, no, omg no, no, no.  YES!  I found one!  I found one!  Look at my precious!

2) Vanity publishing.

There are two types of publishing commonly referred to as “vanity publishing”.

1) Scam Publishing.

Google manuscript novel publisher.  Check out Sponsored links.  Some of those are scam publishers.  You can typically tell them by the ads.

“Traditional publishers don’t want new authors to get published!  (Lie – see paragraph above.)  We really care about you and your manuscript.  (Lie, they only care about your money and making it their money.)  We are not a vanity press.  (Lie – Yes, they are.)”

Scam publishers pray on ignorance of new authors.  You’re usually offered a deal: you give them x amount of money, and they publish your book.  The money is not a fee – it’s an investment into your future.  You get 50% royalties, the book will sell like hot cakes, everybody will be rich.  You give them the money, the book doesn’t sell, and you pocket 50% of 0.

Scam publishers do not edit the books they receive.   The books are rarely made well.  These people are not there to make money on the books.  They are there to make money on authors.

2) Self-publishing.

Honest companies who provide self-publishing services do not pretend to be publishers.  They tell you upfront that you will be paying a fee for x amount of books.  What you do with said books is your business.  Some companies do provide proofreading services for an additional fee and some don’t.  But they are very clear where they stand: they are not interested in royalties.

Vanity presses in general do not have the distribution the big publishing houses have, they do not have marketing budgets, they do not have contacts within the industry, such as access to big chain book buyers, who determine what titles and how much units these big chains carry.

I had just dropped the last of Ace samplers at a local Books-A-Million, where I was subjected to intense scrutiny.  They asked my name, my publishing house, whether or not they carried my book, and so on.  If I was published through a vanity press, they would not have accepted my promotional materials.

That said, there are isolated cases of people succeeding through vanity presses.  This usually happens when the subject matter was too odd for traditional publishing channels or books which were good enough to be published, but the author gave up too early.  It’s hard to be rejected and the submission process is grueling.  But if you submit to three publishers, get rejected, and  throw a hissy fit and give up, you really can’t blame the industry.  You quit.

3)  Online publishing

My recent experiences with online publishing have not gone as smoothly as I hoped.  I’m not going into details, because that would be unprofessional, so I will instead offer you this: e-publishing is a growing industry, and if you can get in with a professional publishing house, you can find an audience and make some money.

However, dead tree books still rule.  All of my titles in Kate Daniels series are released as e-books, and the numbers of units sold are tiny compared to dead tree books.  So far it seems to be about 5% of dead tree book sales for me.  So yes, you can build a career in e-publishing, reaching a significant audience and making a nice living, but almost every e-book writer out there, when offered a NY contract, jumps on it with both feet.  That happens for a reason.

4) Marketing.

Traditional publishers do much more marketing than people realize.

The best advertisement for the book is the presence of the book in stores and publishers employ a sales department which does have access to big chain buyers.  The sales department does its best to pitch the books to these buyers.  The more big chains order, the better are the book’s chances at success.

Traditional publishers employ publicists who serve as a bridge between the publishing house and reviewers.  If you follow this journal, you will see periodic calls for “Who wants to review the new book?”  That list goes to the publicist, who then makes sure the warehouse sends out advance copies.  Advance copies, ARCs, are expensive to print and smaller independent publishers can’t always find the money to print them.  Even traditional publishers are cutting down on those costs.

Traditional publishers have presence at major conventions.  This year, Ace, for example, printed samplers with their UF line up for the late summer/early fall and gave them away at Comicon.

Traditional publishers purchase ads.  They buy special placement for certain titles in the big chains: special displays, front shelves, eye level placement, etc.

A lot of times they don’t do some of the more expensive marketing until the book has proven itself.  But they still find the ways to promote their titles.  For example, if you head over to Dear Author, you will find my lovely editor Anne introducing the fall line up.  And you can win a copy of ON THE EDGE.  [This is me doing marketing- Ilona]

Traditional publishers can also choose to kill a book.  It’s rare, because it’s financially damaging, but it does happen.

5) Author

How much promo should an author do?  It’s up to the author.  I can’t spend too much on promotion, because I need the money to feed my family and while Gordon and are frugal, we didn’t go to RWA this year because of the cost.  Could we have promoted ON THE EDGE there?  Yes.  Would it have justified the cost?  Probably not.

Here are some avenues of promotion:

• conventions
• ad placement in blogs and print publications
• online and print interviews
• promotional give -aways
• swag (bookmarks, magnets, and other silliness) mailing
• blogging (snippets, fun, etc)

Online promotion is relatively inexpensive and requires mostly time and occasionally Photoshop skills.  But an ad in Romantic Times, although it can cost you a couple grand or more, will reach a wide audience that’s not necessarily an online audience.

Online promotion is also hard to target.  Same people tend to visit an array of similar blogs.  It’s not uncommon to see the same person comment at Dear Author, Smart Bitches, and Bitten by Books in the same day.    Purchasing an ad at all three at the same time will brand your release date into the reader’s mind and may also make them hate you with violent hate.

All promo is not created equal.  Suppose Scalzi gets a copy of your book and he likes it and he mentions it on Whatever. The resulting traffic would result in much greater exposure for the book than if I mention it, but it also has more value than a simple ad.  It would be a personal recommendation and we tend to value personal recommendations much more than advertisements. That’s what the blurbs on books are, after all – personal recommendations by authors.

This time around I really have no time for promo.  I need to finish Kate 4 and have Edge 2 in by the end of October and Edge 2 is in no shape. I have it in my head but that’s different from having it on paper so  I will have to write like mad.

I am going for the most reward for least time and money: I give away content.  I’m pretty sure that if I can get you to read first three chapters of the book, you’ll probably remember it.  I will also be at Borders SF Blog Babel Clash blog come September 29th, and I’ll be doing a give away at Bitten by Books, probably an I-pod of some sort.  That’s about it.  J has been after me for ages trying to get me to make a trailer for ON THE EDGE and I have no time and thinking about it makes me growl.   (Please note that this is the third time I mentioned my title.  If I was really pushing it, I would work September 29, its release date in there (muhahaha!) – Ilona the Slick Willy)  I only made one trailer for Magic Bites  and it’s dying a quiet sad death on Youtube.

All of this promotion is not aimed at getting the readers to buy books.  Mostly it’s there to make sure that readers know the release date and recognize the book if they see it in the store.

Are you expected to do promo?  Well, it doesn’t hurt your relationship with the publisher.  But I can tell you that I did no promo for MAGIC BITES and that did not sour my relationship with my publishing house.    Nobody fussed at me and nobody twisted my arm.

In conclusion: I stuck some marketing information into this post for funsies and because I thought it was ironic.   If you know of some good way to do inexpensive marketing, please leave a comment.   I am now officially too tired to write any more of this post.