Morning all,
Some of you might be aware that I attended the London Book Fair this week at Kensington Olympia. It was an interesting experience and I learned quite a bit about different aspects of the industry, and I thought I'd share some of that here that would be relevant to those of us with an interest in writing and publishing.
The day started with me meeting my old mate and general top banana @Venusian Broon for a coffee and a gossip in Kensington, and then it was off to the fair.
Firstly, I should stress that the Book Fair is almost exclusively geared towards the corporate side of the industry, and featured in the main, organisations specialising in:
It wasn't until I had an extortionate bite to eat in the Children's books section that I realised there indeed was a section devoted to authors and writers, who are of course the brains of the industry. So tucked away right up the back was a section called "The Writer's Block" (yeah, groan) where there was a series of talks all day about the ins and outs of (mostly) self-publishing. There was also a Q&A about plot and character development with Peter James but I wasn't overly interested in that, preferring to stick to the aspects of the industry relevant to writers.
Professional Self-Publishing Services
Or "DIY Publishing" as people were increasingly calling it. This seems to have expanded from merely putting your efforts on Amazon using KDP and Createspace for the hard copy equivalent.
Companies such as White Fox, Silverwood and Matador now exist to provide authors with a bespoke service to create a quality of product that is arguably greater than might be achieved by the author alone. This service can include enlisting editors, proofers, printers (different types), book jacket/cover designers, marketing and PR plans and distribution.
From what I can see you can pick and choose what you want from these possibilities and pay a flat fee for the services that cost (ie book jacket design) or you can choose not to (for example I wouldn't ask for help with social media, web design etc).
Some other companies will not necessarily ask for flat fees up front but will take a cut of your royalties. Crucially, all of them involve the author at every stage of consultation, allowing you to retain creative control.
PR & Marketing
The talk I attended by the PR and marketing specialists were illuminating. For those unsure of the difference, marketing is advertising you pay for, while PR is getting a trusted third party source to say something nice about your book. This might be, say, getting a review in the Guardian, or Sunday Times, or a mention on the BBC somewhere; whereas marketing would be an advert in the Guardian or similar.
The general feeling was that, as journalists don't work to anything unless they have a three-four month lead time. If you're self-publishing, therefore it's best to give yourself the lead time that works for you rather than rushing something out to give yourself the best chance of receiving good PR.
Another difference between the two is that marketing costs money, whereas PR costs time. You pay marketeers to develop good ads and coverage, whereas PR involves pestering journalists editors, local outlets, bookshops, influential bloggers, and anyone else you can think of to push the word out. "Luckily" as the lady doing the PR talk said, you can of course hire a PR agency to do this for you. They don't come cheap, with a 3 month campaign costing in the region of £3000. Arguably good PR pays for itself, and it's said that in his early days James Patterson invested all of his advances on marketing and PR, to extremely good effect.
One last thing: don't pay for press release writing services. They can cost up to £200 and are a con. A decent writer may be able to concoct one theirselves if they're so inclined, but a marketing package should include them as a matter of course.
Regional Publicity
All that marketing and PR is very expensive and perhaps not an immediate option unless you've built up a wad of cash from elsewhere. So some alternative options to generate not insignificant would be to focus locally. To focus on Chrons, @Jo Zebedee has done this very effectively, particularly with Inish Carraig. Working the local press and publicity outlets is a double-pronged tactic for many authors: it not only focuses on where the author lives, so is therefore a local interest story; but also it may enable you to focus on the setting of the book. To take the IC example, Belfast is not only Jo's home but her setting for the book. That gave her a double-edged attack, which she worked pretty well and has resulted in good sales, coverage and even nomination recommendations.
Established author Margaret Dickinson goes even further. She lives in Lincolnshire, and all her books are set there. Early in her career she would arrange small tours in local bookshops and libraries. As her career progressed she would expand these tours to include 35 venues across Lincolnshire, visited inside a month. During these tour months, her sales would typically be 4000-5000 units shifted per week, enough to propel her onto local, regional and even national bestseller lists. These sales then have a knock on effect for a couple of months, and will eventually trickle away but by the time she's knocked out another book she's ready to repeat the cycle, to aggregative effect.
Local press, including local glossy mags (my local one is Essex Life) are usually keen to provide feature pieces on local authors, as are local newspapers if you badger them (nicely).
The Third Way
There is a "third" way also. To wit, setting up your own publishing firm and becoming one of the corporate set yourself. Here at Chrons, arguably the most well-known person to do this is @Gary Compton with TBP, but more recently my auld mucker @ratsy has done so with Woodbridge Press.
At a basic level this may involve simply taking on the mantle of the self-publishing author and handling typesetting, design and distribution through light-touch channels such as Amazon, but with effort and investment it could be much more.
This enables one to be one's own outlet for whatever work has been produced, and opens up other possibilities, such as becoming members of trade associations and industrial clubs lending greater prestige.
Giving up ownership to your books to your company allows you to think of revenue generation through sales of products rather than through royalties. Your publishing company would have to negotiate deals with designers, manufacturers, translators, and distributors directly, but cutting out the traditional middle man (or, more accurately, by becoming your own middle man) means you can slice your lead times and costs by quite a bit.
And of course, if you're feeling particularly nefarious you could hire a Panamanian accountancy and law firm to handle your financ.... no, let's not go there. Seriously though, many of your expenses would be tax-deductible and could end up reducing outlay. It may (and I stress the "may") also be better to undertake negotiations with people such as designers and other professionals from a professional standing yourself.
A Challenging Market & An Entrepreneurial Approach
These options are IMO worth exploring and once again leaves the author 100% creative control over their projects. It's an extremely entrepreneurial approach, one which isn't traditionally adopted by authors, many of whom still dream of the big advance and hitting the big time, but the reality is that big publishing houses are, in challenging econoic circumstances, are extremely risk averse, and will only really adopt very conservative new titles which they are certain will tick the "what's hot" boxes. And even then that's no guarantee.
At least this way you can spend the two years of your life you'd otherwise spend waiting around on publishing houses' lead times on creating, designing, and pushing out the lovely piece of writing you've spent so much time and love on.
While the landscape is extremely challenging for newbie authors going down the trad route, the UK business landscape is very conducive to entrepreneurs and start-ups, and there are lots of ways in which BIS (Department for Business, Innovation & Skills) support start-up businesses.
Conclusions
As for me, I've just listed highlights here. There were other interesting aspects to the show but these are the headlines for writers as I perceived them. Personally, I haven't decided which direction I'm going to take my novel down once the MS is of publishable quality. It may be I still try the trad route, but the lead times make me balk, and I've certainly had some of my snobbishness about SP-ing dispelled. I think that snobbishness (for me,at least) may derive from the sheer amount of – I shan't say poor quality, but – rushed books that have been delivered without full thought about all the corporate, under-the-bonnet stuff that writers don't always want to think about. I may well go down the SP-ing route if I can gather a small war-chest of cash together to assist with that initial push. And I'm not ruling out setting up my own company either. It would certainly be an adventure. We shall see.
I may PM some people with whom I feel there may be some ideas and products of particular interest from the show (I'm all for supporting my fellow authors, and I feel we should push that as part of the Chrons ethos wherever we can, especially the established members), but perhaps if anyone has any questions they could stick them down here and I'll do my best to answer.
Apologies for the long post, I hope it was a little bit useful, or at the least interesting.
Some of you might be aware that I attended the London Book Fair this week at Kensington Olympia. It was an interesting experience and I learned quite a bit about different aspects of the industry, and I thought I'd share some of that here that would be relevant to those of us with an interest in writing and publishing.
The day started with me meeting my old mate and general top banana @Venusian Broon for a coffee and a gossip in Kensington, and then it was off to the fair.
Firstly, I should stress that the Book Fair is almost exclusively geared towards the corporate side of the industry, and featured in the main, organisations specialising in:
- publishing (duh)
- fiction
- non-fiction
- academic
- specialist
- manufacture
- typesetting
- print-on-demand
- traditional litho and digital printing
- design (including specialist designs such as pop-up books, textile books etc)
- imprinting
- translation
- sales & distribution
- Cataloguing
- Trade association and industrial representation
It wasn't until I had an extortionate bite to eat in the Children's books section that I realised there indeed was a section devoted to authors and writers, who are of course the brains of the industry. So tucked away right up the back was a section called "The Writer's Block" (yeah, groan) where there was a series of talks all day about the ins and outs of (mostly) self-publishing. There was also a Q&A about plot and character development with Peter James but I wasn't overly interested in that, preferring to stick to the aspects of the industry relevant to writers.
Professional Self-Publishing Services
Or "DIY Publishing" as people were increasingly calling it. This seems to have expanded from merely putting your efforts on Amazon using KDP and Createspace for the hard copy equivalent.
Companies such as White Fox, Silverwood and Matador now exist to provide authors with a bespoke service to create a quality of product that is arguably greater than might be achieved by the author alone. This service can include enlisting editors, proofers, printers (different types), book jacket/cover designers, marketing and PR plans and distribution.
From what I can see you can pick and choose what you want from these possibilities and pay a flat fee for the services that cost (ie book jacket design) or you can choose not to (for example I wouldn't ask for help with social media, web design etc).
Some other companies will not necessarily ask for flat fees up front but will take a cut of your royalties. Crucially, all of them involve the author at every stage of consultation, allowing you to retain creative control.
PR & Marketing
The talk I attended by the PR and marketing specialists were illuminating. For those unsure of the difference, marketing is advertising you pay for, while PR is getting a trusted third party source to say something nice about your book. This might be, say, getting a review in the Guardian, or Sunday Times, or a mention on the BBC somewhere; whereas marketing would be an advert in the Guardian or similar.
The general feeling was that, as journalists don't work to anything unless they have a three-four month lead time. If you're self-publishing, therefore it's best to give yourself the lead time that works for you rather than rushing something out to give yourself the best chance of receiving good PR.
Another difference between the two is that marketing costs money, whereas PR costs time. You pay marketeers to develop good ads and coverage, whereas PR involves pestering journalists editors, local outlets, bookshops, influential bloggers, and anyone else you can think of to push the word out. "Luckily" as the lady doing the PR talk said, you can of course hire a PR agency to do this for you. They don't come cheap, with a 3 month campaign costing in the region of £3000. Arguably good PR pays for itself, and it's said that in his early days James Patterson invested all of his advances on marketing and PR, to extremely good effect.
One last thing: don't pay for press release writing services. They can cost up to £200 and are a con. A decent writer may be able to concoct one theirselves if they're so inclined, but a marketing package should include them as a matter of course.
Regional Publicity
All that marketing and PR is very expensive and perhaps not an immediate option unless you've built up a wad of cash from elsewhere. So some alternative options to generate not insignificant would be to focus locally. To focus on Chrons, @Jo Zebedee has done this very effectively, particularly with Inish Carraig. Working the local press and publicity outlets is a double-pronged tactic for many authors: it not only focuses on where the author lives, so is therefore a local interest story; but also it may enable you to focus on the setting of the book. To take the IC example, Belfast is not only Jo's home but her setting for the book. That gave her a double-edged attack, which she worked pretty well and has resulted in good sales, coverage and even nomination recommendations.
Established author Margaret Dickinson goes even further. She lives in Lincolnshire, and all her books are set there. Early in her career she would arrange small tours in local bookshops and libraries. As her career progressed she would expand these tours to include 35 venues across Lincolnshire, visited inside a month. During these tour months, her sales would typically be 4000-5000 units shifted per week, enough to propel her onto local, regional and even national bestseller lists. These sales then have a knock on effect for a couple of months, and will eventually trickle away but by the time she's knocked out another book she's ready to repeat the cycle, to aggregative effect.
Local press, including local glossy mags (my local one is Essex Life) are usually keen to provide feature pieces on local authors, as are local newspapers if you badger them (nicely).
The Third Way
There is a "third" way also. To wit, setting up your own publishing firm and becoming one of the corporate set yourself. Here at Chrons, arguably the most well-known person to do this is @Gary Compton with TBP, but more recently my auld mucker @ratsy has done so with Woodbridge Press.
At a basic level this may involve simply taking on the mantle of the self-publishing author and handling typesetting, design and distribution through light-touch channels such as Amazon, but with effort and investment it could be much more.
This enables one to be one's own outlet for whatever work has been produced, and opens up other possibilities, such as becoming members of trade associations and industrial clubs lending greater prestige.
Giving up ownership to your books to your company allows you to think of revenue generation through sales of products rather than through royalties. Your publishing company would have to negotiate deals with designers, manufacturers, translators, and distributors directly, but cutting out the traditional middle man (or, more accurately, by becoming your own middle man) means you can slice your lead times and costs by quite a bit.
And of course, if you're feeling particularly nefarious you could hire a Panamanian accountancy and law firm to handle your financ.... no, let's not go there. Seriously though, many of your expenses would be tax-deductible and could end up reducing outlay. It may (and I stress the "may") also be better to undertake negotiations with people such as designers and other professionals from a professional standing yourself.
A Challenging Market & An Entrepreneurial Approach
These options are IMO worth exploring and once again leaves the author 100% creative control over their projects. It's an extremely entrepreneurial approach, one which isn't traditionally adopted by authors, many of whom still dream of the big advance and hitting the big time, but the reality is that big publishing houses are, in challenging econoic circumstances, are extremely risk averse, and will only really adopt very conservative new titles which they are certain will tick the "what's hot" boxes. And even then that's no guarantee.
At least this way you can spend the two years of your life you'd otherwise spend waiting around on publishing houses' lead times on creating, designing, and pushing out the lovely piece of writing you've spent so much time and love on.
While the landscape is extremely challenging for newbie authors going down the trad route, the UK business landscape is very conducive to entrepreneurs and start-ups, and there are lots of ways in which BIS (Department for Business, Innovation & Skills) support start-up businesses.
Conclusions
As for me, I've just listed highlights here. There were other interesting aspects to the show but these are the headlines for writers as I perceived them. Personally, I haven't decided which direction I'm going to take my novel down once the MS is of publishable quality. It may be I still try the trad route, but the lead times make me balk, and I've certainly had some of my snobbishness about SP-ing dispelled. I think that snobbishness (for me,at least) may derive from the sheer amount of – I shan't say poor quality, but – rushed books that have been delivered without full thought about all the corporate, under-the-bonnet stuff that writers don't always want to think about. I may well go down the SP-ing route if I can gather a small war-chest of cash together to assist with that initial push. And I'm not ruling out setting up my own company either. It would certainly be an adventure. We shall see.
I may PM some people with whom I feel there may be some ideas and products of particular interest from the show (I'm all for supporting my fellow authors, and I feel we should push that as part of the Chrons ethos wherever we can, especially the established members), but perhaps if anyone has any questions they could stick them down here and I'll do my best to answer.
Apologies for the long post, I hope it was a little bit useful, or at the least interesting.
