(Lakers-Cavs talk will best be found on my Twitter feed – Cavs by 5.
This is somewhat of a companion piece to my screenplay writing post – I seem to get occasional emails on this since the book came out.
Few jokes, so pass on through if this doesn’t interest, although there’s some general discussion of internet marketing in what follows.)
Here on February 8, 2009, I’m five weeks into self-publishing.
This is everything I’ve learned, hypothesized, and rationalized.
I’ve broken this into four sections – Why, How, Marketing, and Results-to-date.
Keep in mind, all of the following applies to me and my book, Prelude to a Super Airplane. It may not apply to you and your book, even if your book is about the events leading to the creation of a 47-story airplane and its tumultuous affect on those individuals involved in same.
WHY SELF-PUBLISH?
I decided to self-publish for a few reasons:
1) It’s easy to do today with the print-on-demand services.
2) I’ve been through the torture of finding agents and producers in my screenwriting career, and there’s a reason it’s torturous. I’m not good at hurry-up-and-wait, especially when the results are largely unknown and likely lean toward “zero”.
I’m also not an aspiring author – I just happened to write a book. Of course I want people to read it, but I’m not banking on it for a career. I have no plans for another book.
3) Even if I could find a publisher, the book might not come out for a year or more, by which time I will have forgotten I wrote it.
4) Everything you read today says publishers are cutting their pr/marketing staffs, and authors are expected to do a ton of legwork and marketing themselves.
5) It’s 2009, and the ability to market yourself and your product is readily available. Many small-press publishers, which let’s face it, a first-time author like myself would probably end up at, are doing many of the same things I am right now.
This is not to say there aren’t negatives to this, and that there aren’t huge positives to finding an actual publisher. That said, having an official publisher’s name on the spine or getting into bookstores aren’t things I care about, and if I’m expected to do a ton of marketing myself, I might as well get the most benefit financially.
HOW TO SELF-PUBLISH
I used Createspace, which is owned by Amazon. This is how PTSA comes to be listed on Amazon. The books come out physically of great quality, it’s easy to use, and you can make a decent margin on it, all things considered.
(You make a higher margin if the book is sold through your own site, which is why I direct people to there. I have sold the majority of my copies via my own site so far.)
There are other print-on-demand companies. The other big one is Lulu, but my book came out priced at $25 through there, so I nixed it. They do hardcovers and such, which Createspace doesn’t, so if you want to go that route, you may need to use Lulu.
All-in-all, I can’t complain about Createspace, and you can order copies of your own book at cost, if you want to get a bunch of them and sell them in back alleys to airplane addicts.
Another note – it took me a long time to figure out how to format this thing in Adobe InDesign, and I’m also fortunate to be handy in Photoshop for my cover art. There are companies that will do all of this for you, such as Booksurge, but that’s also going to cut into your margins.
For me, it was worth it to figure it out myself, and I also get mad when I can’t figure something out. (See: binary.)
HOW TO MARKET
1) Marketing is awareness. I try to make people aware of the site here, get them hooked on what I do day-to-day, and then casually seduce them into buying the book at some point.
(I know some of you will argue that it hasn’t exactly been casual, but I try to make things like the reviews interesting, ie the chats and such.)
Anyway, that’s my thing – if you like my blog, you’ll like my book. So you build a blog audience. That, unfortunately, is an entirely different companion post, but there are plenty of resources out there.
(I’m writing my “how to build a successful blog” post next weekend, and it includes stuff like reaching out to other bloggers to give them coverage, ie the interviews I’ve done with sports blogs.)
2) Excerpts. My book is pretentiously split into a “Part 1″ and “Part 2″, and I was actually going to put the entire first part (basically half the book) online for free.
A traditional retailer, let’s call him MY DAD, scared me off of this tactic, but I realize now I should’ve gone with my instincts. His argument was that I was opening the door for people to not like it.
My counter was that if they read the first half and liked it, they’re hooked, and are more likely to buy it than if they just thought it sounded interesting, because now they’ve read half and they want to finish it.
I also said that if they don’t like it, I wouldn’t want them buying it, anyway. Maybe I’m just like super nice, but I’d like to have someone be happy they spent money on my product.
Anyway, the whole point is that in 2009, transparency and such is really important in marketing. Intelligent people don’t fall for, nor do they appreciate, marketing trickery. (And clearly only intelligent people would want to read about a 47-story airplane.)
“Hey, here’s my book – I hope you like it and want to read the rest.”
I’m pretty confident in PTSA’s ability to be well-liked by its target audience (15-40 year old males), that I’ll put it out there in this manner. (I know only 55 pages are up right now – I’m doing it as a three-pronged attack.)
NOTE: If your book sucks, you’re in trouble on this approach.
3) Reviews. I have reviews on this site only so far, save for Roundie Henchman Ben Cox, who has reviewed it before he read it. I have 5 or 6 legit media/pop culture or book reviewing sites that have agreed to review so far, but that of course will take time. Books aren’t movies, even though mine is an easy read.
Best way to do this is to ask for a review and offer a free copy to do so with. Try making friends with them on Twitter/Facebook/etc, or by commenting on their blog/site first.
Yes, this is blatant schmoozing, but that’s part of business and marketing, and if there’s a mutual interest in what you both do, everyone wins, i.e. I’m not going to a hardcore science journal review site or a blog that does romance novel reviews and seeing if they want to review my book.
4) Stalkers. If you have any, they’re guaranteed to buy your book. I’m 2/2 on this count.
5) Media coverage. There are other things being done out there, such as blog book tours, offering yourself for podcasts, media/blog stories, or radio interviews, but I’m not really high on that at the moment.
I’m kinda jammed with a bunch of other stuff I’m doing, a lot of times you run into dead ends on that front, and I also don’t need to sell 10,000 books today.
I’m fine with a slow build, and I’m also in the position that I’ve got WSM? coming up, which should kinda gonna give me a nice boost in awareness of my work.
Overall, the point here is you can do almost anything, but I’m not of the opinion the hard sell is the way to go these days. You’re not going to sell 1000 books in week one. Probably not in your first six months, unless you’ve got some other stuff going on, or your book happens to have some kind of news-worthy element that gets you a ton of coverage.
I’d say give yourself a web presence, make that presence of value through offering chicken recipes, and then you’ll have people aware of, and supporting, your work. At some point they are likely to buy your book.
You rinse and repeat that enough times, and momentum and publicity will begin to generate itself. Here are some other sites I’ve found to educate myself on book marketing, and they all have links to other useful sites:
Nothing Binding
Author Marketing Experts
Chris Hamilton’s Publishing News
Nathan Bransford – Literary Agent
Those are great starts in terms of getting educated. Don’t fool yourself – this is a lot of work, and like I said about screenwriting, not a get rich quick scheme.
RESULTS
This is, of course, the number one question I’ve gotten: how many books have you sold? The answer is not as many as I’d like, but not as few as it could be.
Really, it’s been fine, and the most important thing is the feedback has been terrific. Like I said above, this isn’t necessarily a RIGHT NOW thing for me, so I’m happy to know people are enjoying the book. The fact that it’s a good read for people will do as much (eventually) as other actions.
One thing I’ve gotten a lot of is, “I’m planning to buy it at some point.” Book-reading is not an immediate, “Ooh…I’ll get to this right away” type deal, like a movie, unless you’re Harry Potter or Twilight. I’d guess even hardcore readers have a backlog of 10 books they need to get to.
That’s about all I know so far.
I’m five weeks in, and I’d guess the “three months in” post would look totally different. If you’re thinking about self-publishing, the first thing you have to do is finish your book, so I’d get started on that right away.
