Here We Go Again... (Tales of a De-Published Author Part 3)

For those of you following the saga of my de-publishing, it is finally over (I hope).

To recap: in April my publisher, Booktrope, announced it was going out of business and on June 1, 2016 my book Mr. 8 was pulled from all retail outlets. I was faced with many choices. It became clear to me that the best thing for me to do was accept the fact that it would no longer be available and take some (considerable) time rewriting to produce a better (my writing has improved since it was first put out) and unique version of the story. Since sales had stagnated prior to Booktrope's decision, a new version along with a well planned re-launch might create increased interest. But there was one major problem with that option: time. There are other projects I was hoping to move forward with before the end of the year, projects that would have been postponed if I went forward with a full on rewrite. Setting these projects aside to go back and work on a "finished" book was all a bit heartbreaking.

So I compromised. I've re-launched the same book that Booktrope had published. I did give it another proof read to tidy up a few typos my proofreader missed, but otherwise it is the exact same book. The pros of doing this was that it only ate up a month of my spare time, it keeps a presence in the retail world, it allows the few readers who want a copy the ability to get one, and it leaves open the possibility of doing a major rewrite and re-launch at a later date.

Doing it indie style

I started out greatly ahead of most self-publishers. I had a fully edited manuscript, which had been formatted for print and ebook publication. I had a professionally designed cover. And the book had already been registered with the Library of Congress. What I didn't have was an ISBN or the rights to the photography used in the cover. These were owned by Booktrope and weren't transferable. Also, I had no means of distributing the book.

In my research, I learned that an ISBN is not very important these days if one is planning to sell exclusively online, although it does limit your sales channels. Luckily, being a Canadian resident (this will come back to haunt me, see below) meant getting an ISBN was both easy and free. Unlike in the US, where ISBN numbers are controlled by a private company, the government controls them in Canada. I filled out an online form, waited two weeks to have an account set up, and now I can generate ISBN numbers for my self-publishing whenever I want.

The photo art wasn't much of a problem either. It was obtained through ShutterStock so I just needed to setup an account with them and purchase the most basic package, which included the rights to two photos. The package normally cost $30 but as a new member I got the discounted price of $23.

The big decision and hassle was distribution. This is a complicated web. I read several articles talking about ways to maximize profit. This involves setting up accounts with multiple retailers and print on-demand companies and reading all the fine print to make sure your book is being sold at each location with the lowest fees and percentages being taken off. However, this works alright in the US, but as a non-US resident (see, it came back to haunt me) this strategy opens up a myriad of problems.

Take CreateSpace, one of the most common print-on-demand companies you're likely to use. It's owned by Amazon so it grants you the best opportunity for profit with that mega-retailer. But their payment plan for non-US residents is beyond disadvantageous. You can only set up direct deposit with them if you have a US or EU bank account, everyone else gets paid by check (or cheque, if they're sending it to Canada). But they will only cut those checks once you've reached one-hundred units of whichever currency the sales are in. Sell a book in the UK, then you'll have to wait until you've earned 100‎£ before you get paid. Sell in Japan, wait to earn 100‎¥ and so on. Then they'll send you a check in that currency, which will me paying foreign currency fees when you try and cash it. And if you never earn a full one-hundred units of a currency, guess who pockets the money.

There's probably a way around this and I'm sure more industrious and business savvy people have worked their way through it so it is not so onerous, but I'm not expecting to get rich off sales and I wanted things to be simple. So I decided to distribute solely through Ingram Spark.


Distribution Lite

Ingram Spark is the junior arm of the huge book distributor Ingram designed for very small and self-publishers. The pros of going solely with them were: it was one stop shop, they have a expansive global distribution, they offer the option of receiving payment through PayPal, and unlike Amazon and CreateSpace (and many of the others) they don't treat earning like royalties so they do not withhold US income tax at source.

But there were a few cons as well. There's a fee of $49 per book, which is minor but more than the free services like CreateSpace and Lulu. There is also a huge learning curve for getting a book's setup files in the format they accept, as well as for understanding the whole distribution price and discount system.

The bulk of the time I spent in republishing Mr. 8 was spent getting those files just so. It took a lot of trial and error partially because I had no experience using tools like inDesign and Photoshop. I was tempted at a few points to pay someone to do it for me, but I got it done in the end.

Ingram Sparks allows you to set the price for the physical book and ebook in every major market they distribute to. This took a little finagling with currency exchange to ensure I was earning a little profit in each of the areas but wasn't too bad. The choosing of discounts was another matter and something I made a misstep on. The recommended retailer discount is 55%. Most retailers will not stock books in their brick-and-mortar stores with any discount less than 55%. I selected this discount because, hey it was recommended after all. But until I actually started visiting stores and pitching my book to the manager, it was highly unlikely any store would ever choose to stock my title. So by offering such a large discount, I was essentially giving away a huge percentage of my profit to these internet retailers. Shortly after the launch I figured this out and updated it to offer them the minimum discount of 30% or 35% (depending on the region). Should in-store sales ever become an issue, I can change it back for that particular market.


And that's it

So now Mr. 8 is self-published. It no longer has a publisher behind it, but it is now available through many more retailers than it was under Booktrope, including the Canadian giant Indigo (having a foot in the local market feels good). One of my biggest concerns was the cost would far outstrip any potential revenue, but the whole business of self-publishing cost me a grand total of $72(US). I will still need to pay a percentage of future earning to my cover designer, editor, and proof reader as per the team contract we signed, but if I keep payout to once or twice a year through PayPal it shouldn't be a labor intensive endeavor.

And now that I've done it and have self-publishing experience, I have more confidence moving forward with one of those other projects I mentioned earlier. Hopefully, soon I'll be putting out a novella to join Mr. 8 on the electronic shelves.

Three Lessons from the King

I'm currently about halfway through Stephen King's Revival. In my younger days, I read a lot—let me repeat:a lot—of King. And then one day I didn't. Part of it was my tastes changed, or rather broadened. I was no longer focused so tightly on horror. And part of it was, because I had read and reread his books so much, they felt like well covered ground.

Now that I'm writing myself and in a similar genre to the great man, I felt the need to revisit him. It didn't take many pages before I realized I had been cheating myself. Stephen King is undeniably a master storyteller. And I haven't just been enjoying this book, I have been dissecting it and trying to learn as much as I can.

These are three lessons I've picked up on so far. In terms of creating an engaging story, they are incredibly obvious, but they fact these techniques aren't more widely used shows how ingenious they really are.

Once more with feeling

It's no secret that emotions are important, but it is easy to get caught up in the mechanics of writing and maneuvering the characters through the plot points—I know I do. Yes, the character is happy or sad but it becomes secondary to getting her from point A to point B. One of the first things that jumped out at me was how Stephen King relates it all back to the main character's emotion. Or to put it another way:

It's not about stuff happening. It's about how characters feel about what happens.

It can be about big emotions like sorrow or anger but it can also be about wonder, curiosity, nostalgia. In the end, it isn't simply about how the main character perceives the events but the inner response to them and this gives the plot an immediacy and makes them personal.

The breadcrumb trail

Foreshadowing is a key to any novel, but (good Lord!) Stephen King foreshadows everything. Every single plot element is telegraphed ahead of time.There is more teasing going on than in a burlesque dance. These hints at future events provide a breadcrumb trail for the reader to follow. It stirs curiosity and also makes the reveals that much more gratifying.

It can be such a simple thing. At one point, while relating an incident, he drops: "This was while my mother was still alive." Suddenly as the reader we know the narrator's mother will die. And then a few chapters later he gives us the scene in the hospital and there's this eager anticipation. An "aha" moment as the reader realizes that the full story is coming.

By dropping these small teases, mini-mysteries are created in the reader's mind.

I do admit that the structure of Revival favors this approach, as the narrator is relating events that he has already lived through. I'm still trying to work out how to achieve it when events are unfolding in present rather than retrospect, but this is just too good of a technique not to put the effort into figuring it out.

The Contract

Stephen King makes you want to know what's on the last page. This is so basic. How did I not know this? Of course, you want the reader to be anxious to get to the end, right from the start. As writers, we need to find a way to get the reader to commit to the story.

It's all about getting your reader to want to find out what's on the last page.

Part of this is related to the second lesson. It's about teasing the reader enough for them to want to know more. But it's also more than that. It's a promise—a contract. Somewhere on those pages, there is a silent promise that the ending will knock your socks off. Will it? I don't know yet. At the halfway mark, I'm only beginning to grasp the direction of the story. But I only needed to read the first couple of chapters to know that I needed to find out what happens in the last one. 

This promise comes from the confidence in his narration, between the words it says: this story is going to be worth your time and there is something amazing, thrilling, surprising waiting for you at the end.

How does he do it? I still haven't worked that out, but my main question right now is, how can I do it?

Conclusion

What I believe is so beautiful about these lessons are that they should be obvious but they aren't. I don't see these things done that often, certainly not to the extent that it is in this book.

I started to read Stephen King again out of the curiosity of re-familiarizing myself with an old favorite author I hadn't read in while. I didn't expect to learn so much, but I did. I will be pushing myself to use these lessons in my own books.

The Launch Day

Everything in this blog series has been leading up to the book launch. To get the most out of it takes a lot of planning and preparation. Your book launch will likely be the most important moment of its publication. not just because it’s your book’s big day, but because the sales on this day will likely set the tone for the entire run.  Get it wrong and you may be struggling for every sale afterward. 

And yes, I got it wrong. But I've learned a lot since then.

Getting Through NaNoWriMo

Today starts off the second half of National Novel WritingMonth. If you’re like me, you are probably thinking a lot about how to make your goals a reality in the next two weeks.

My challenge is writing the volume of words I need to and staying on track with the story. At the moment, I’m about two days behind schedule in terms of word count, but I’m actually much further along in my plot than I should be. But I know for many of you, the concern is with getting to the end.

Last night, I appeared on the YouTube series The CornerBooth to discuss self-doubt and how to overcome it and push past it to complete NaNoWriMo. There were a few things I had hoped to share but due to time and the direction of the conversation I didn’t get the chance so I’m putting them down in this blog.

Swag

In recent years, swag has become an increasingly important element in book promotions. In some genres, it's an absolute necessity, especially in the environment of a writer’s convention. Romance and young-adult seem particularly gripped with the idea that merchandise equals a book to be taken seriously. But not all genres have embraced it to the same extent. And outside of in-person events, the value of it remains questionable.

What is swag? It’s T-shirts, baseball caps, travel mugs, key chains, pens, fridge magnets, and just about anything else you can put a logo or a promotional image on and give out to fans and prospective readers. It is also ephemera like bookmarks, postcards, bumper stickers, and posters—much cheaper to produce and much more likely to end up in the trash. 

Swag is extremely enticing to writers. I know myself, I wanted people walking around with my book on their T-shirt. There is no denying it, merchandise for your book is fun. It's a step toward feeling like a big Hollywood movie. But it is important to understand that unless your publisher is flipping the bill, swag can be a mounting cost that will eat away your royalties.

Party Time

Prior to publishing, Facebook parties were no secret, although I had never attended one. Truth is, I didn't like Facebook and never focused on it much as part of my writer’s platform. I wish someone had told me I was making a big mistake by ignoring this valuable resource. Today, I often think: if only someone had pulled me aside and told me to plan a launch party on Facebook (and really I can’t figure out why no one did).

Since the release of my book, I have attended several Facebook launch parties and even guest hosted at one. My experience has left me convinced that it is an absolute must for any author releasing their book into the wild.

Why do I say that? Because love it or hate it, Facebook is one of the biggest, most used social platforms on the Web. And hosting a party on it is some of the best free advertising you’re ever going to get.

Review as Preview

It won’t come as any surprise to you that good reviews are important to a successful book, but did you know it was vital to get good reviews before the book is even released? If you did, than you are a step ahead of where I was when I went to publish my novel.

My publisher mentioned wanting a review or two for the back cover but never stressed what that would entail. In fact, there is something I'm about to tell you, which I only learned long after the book was for sale. It was so completely absent from the information and advice I received that it felt like a great secret when I figured it out.

Fools Rush In

On New Year’s 2014, I made the resolution to publish my first novel before the end of the year. When I made that vow my plan was to self-publish quick and dirty, but then in June, I miraculously had a publisher contact me with interest in Mr. 8. I spent two weeks asking questions, researching them online, rereading the contract, having heart-to-hearts with a published friend of mine, and then I made the decision to sign.

My publisher, Booktrope, operated on a new model, where project teams collaborated and earned a share of the profits rather than any upfront payments. As the author, I was the head of my team and got to choose when my book would be launched. I decided on the week before Christmas. The novel takes place at that time of year, sales are high with holiday shopping, and I’d fulfill my resolution. It all made sense.

What could possibly go wrong?