Self Publishing with a view to getting Publisher.

DangerMouse27

Hi Guys,

I've finished my book,yay! its been proof read over and over and changed and edited ad nauseum. Its a younger adult themed piece of ficton and now i want to get it published.

I wonder should i self publish first, with a view to then 'snaring' a publisher. Im thinking if i show some initiative and get it all done up, all nice and fancy like, then it might wowza some publishers.

Does anyone have any thoughts, regards to this?

Thanks for reading.

EileenG

My immediate reaction is No, don't do it.

I reckon most publishers will not be interested in taking on a book that has already been published and probably didn't sell all that well. Realtically, very few first books do sell well - you don't have the marketing engine tuned up to help you generate sales, you don't have an establisted reader base and it's very likely that your writing is not yet as good as it's going to get with more books.

Also, on a practical note, very few teenagers have credit cards, which they need to buy an e-book. And self-publishing a paper book is madness, and a sure way to lose a ton of money.

If your book is the exception, and sells thousands, then I would just rake in the money, and when you write another book, go to a publisher with "My first book sold X thousand, do you want to publish my second one?" They'll jump at you.

The one thing I would not do is to to a publisher with a self-pubbed paperback and ask them to take it on. They won't even read it.

PS. if you pm me your first chapter, I'll tell you if I think it's ready.

pavb2

Hi DM 27 an interesting problem maybe others can answer but how difficult is it to secure an agent? Would this take a lot of the pain out of it or is it a question of just submitting to publishers?

I agree with Eileen the best advice is not to self publish at the beginning it seems like you only get one shot at it and once published in whatever format your options from then on are limited. I assume publishers want some form of exclusivity.

Congratulations on getting this far an achievement in itself

Pavb2

EileenG

Harder to get an agent than to get published. There are only a handful of agents in Ireland, and many of them don't take things like YA or science fiction etc. Those agents who are open to new clients are swamped under with submissions. Jonathan Williams, for instance, got over 2000 submissions last year, and picked twelve.

Most of the bigger publisher prefer submissions through an agent, but a few like O'Brien will still take direct subs. And a lot of e-publishers will take direct subs.

If the book is good, then self-publishing is an option, just don't expect any publishers to come and say they want to publish it as well.

DangerMouse27

Thanks EileenG, and i certainly will pm you the opening few chapters.

What i hoped to gain from it, is something that might stand out on a publishers desk that little bit more. The thoughts that i had gone to a little bit of trouble and cost to get it done up, i hoped, might show initiative.

I really was not intending to get that many printed up and bound, just thirty copies or so.

I do see your point though. This site is great, it is better to sound out these things on here than have gone ahead and just done something i might later regret.

Kinski

DangerMouse27 wrote: »

What i hoped to gain from it, is something that might stand out on a publishers desk that little bit more. The thoughts that i had gone to a little bit of trouble and cost to get it done up, i hoped, might show initiative.

It would stand-out, but not in a good way. When submitting a manuscript to a publisher, you must follow their submission guidelines. If you send them anything which deviates from those guidelines - which a printed and bound book would - then you've just made the job of clearing your submission from the slushpile a whole lot easier. They wouldn't even bother opening it.

EileenG

What he said. I've heard editors tell horror stories of people who try to stand out from the crowd, and it always goes against them. If your writing doesn't stand out, a printed paperback won't.

And that's quite apart from the fact that most POD paperbacks are not going to be the quality of what they produce themselves. A friend of mine printed out a few copies of his novel to show to people. But he picked a san serif font that made the whole thing look like a technical report. By the time you get your book edited so there is a wow factor, you could have spent a fortune which might be better spent on a professional editor

nomdeboardie

EileenG - I see from your website that your self-published novel was picked up by a publisher when it got to the quarter-final of a contest (Amazon) - congratulations. That's interesting - you can get stuff out there by self-publishing, and if you enter it in a contest like this, and the novel is good enough, it has a chance of being noticed by a conventional publisher.

Edit: Eileen's novel was not first self-published (my mistake). However the competition does allow submission of initially self-published works.

FewFew

All these rules...

Just get an idea and run with it. The publishing industry is pretty similar to the record industry, well maybe a year or two behind. You've got the majors who only invest in what they assume is going to be a sure thing. They don't waste time on unknowns.
Get some Arctic Monkeys work ethic going on and make a noise. If your book is good enough you'll begin to gain momentum. You have to keep moving. Sure, if you release a book online and nothing happens, a publisher will see it as a failure, but you never kill that book, it's just your first stone in the pond. Your next stone will be bigger and soon the water will be full of your ripples, and soon you'll have waves.

You might as well be productive because you have the major publishers who won't accept unsolicited manuscripts, and then you've got indies that take about a year to get back to you. Ok, so you won't be idle for a year, you'll keep writing, but I guess a lot depends on patience and how ready you think your work is.

DangerMouse27

I had even thought of taking a day flight to the Frankfurt Book Fair and trying to get some face time with publishing chiefs. I did not, but honestly, because i was too late to apply.

It is very interesting to compare the industries of music and books. I suppose a record producer executive needs only to listen to a minute of lyrics or voice to make his/her mind up whereas a publisher must read a chapter or two.

I did have some interest from Yvonne Kinsella of Prizeman and Kinsella when i pitched the book but by the time i sent it in, they had received one hundred more projects that also peaked their interest.

My worry, is that my piece is based in New Jersey/West Virginia and from a sales point of view, does not lend itself to an Irish market. That is now my problem, where self doubt over if it was good enough is now replaced with, if they think if it will make people lots of money.

FewFew

DangerMouse27 wrote: »

It is very interesting to compare the industries of music and books. I suppose a record producer executive needs only to listen to a minute of lyrics or voice to make his/her mind up whereas a publisher must read a chapter or two.

My worry, is that my piece is based in New Jersey/West Virginia and from a sales point of view, does not lend itself to an Irish market. That is now my problem, where self doubt over if it was good enough is now replaced with, if they think if it will make people lots of money.

Well, the product is obviously different, but the transition from expensive physical production to cheap online production is the same. In music land it's now a case of "how many people buy CDs?" and while paperbacks are still the most common way to get your literature, you can see eReaders growing.
The stories of online million sellers are already breaking, so think back to when the same happened with music. You can't emulate our musical brethren note for note, but lessons along the lines of guerrilla marketing, hard graft and exciting content can be learned.

All those trade fairs sound great if you're a talker and can sell your book. That's not my strong point, so I'd never consider something like that, but I do know a fair few people who could sell poo as gold. The tricky bit is getting the publisher fish on the hook.

EileenG

nomdeboardie wrote: »

EileenG - I see from your website that your self-published novel was picked up by a publisher when it got to the quarter-final of a contest (Amazon) - congratulations. That's interesting - you can get stuff out there by self-publishing, and if you enter it in a contest like this, and the novel is good enough, it has a chance of being noticed by a conventional publisher.

I didn't self publish. I wrote the novel, spent a lot of time polishing (lots of thanks to all the Boardies who helped) and entered the ABNA. Then Fantasy Island got interested and published it. Trust me, if I were self-publishing, that awful Tinkerbell cover would never had seen the light of day.

EileenG

The London Book Fair next April might be a better bet than Frankfurt.

I'm not advising against self-publishing. I think, with the right book and a lot of time spent promoting it, it's possible to sell enough to make a decent return. But I think it has to be as an e-book. You can put up an e-book on Amazon and Smashwords and a few other sites, price it to move and if it doesn't, you're not at a loss and you've learned a lot about publishing.

Self-publishing a paper book is almost guaranteed to lose you money, and unless it's perfect, to get you the sort of reputation it can take years to live down. At least if you see a mistake in an e-book, it's possible to get it down, fix the mistake and put it straight back up again. A mistake in a paperbook is forever.

Speaking as someone who didn't notice that my first MS was all about a "spare vampire", it's very easy to miss a mistake that will jump out at every other person who reads it.

nomdeboardie

EileenG wrote: »

I didn't self publish. I wrote the novel, spent a lot of time polishing (lots of thanks to all the Boardies who helped) and entered the ABNA.

Oops, sorry - I don't know how I jumped to that conclusion. Maybe I just saw saw that the competition allowed self-pub works and it stuck in my head!

EileenG wrote: »

Trust me, if I were self-publishing, that awful Tinkerbell cover would never had seen the light of day.

:pac:

EileenG

DangerMouse27 wrote: »

My worry, is that my piece is based in New Jersey/West Virginia and from a sales point of view, does not lend itself to an Irish market. That is now my problem, where self doubt over if it was good enough is now replaced with, if they think if it will make people lots of money.

Have you checked the e-pub market? There are a lot of good e-publishers out there who will take direct submissions and are more willing to take a chance on a book from an unknown.

E-publishing doesn't have the same "Here's my book" factor, all you can do is give people a link, but it pays better, and books can stay available for a lot longer than they will stay on a book shop's shelves.

Danpad

Hi, hope this question isn't too much out of line with the theme of this thread; do you think ebooks will end up dominating in terms of sales/popularity? Is it going that way already? I'm a die hard 'need an actual book in my hands' reader and am not ready to embrace the 'e' approach yet. However, given the power of the internet and developments in technology is it a foregone conclusion that it will become the way to go consigning books as we know and love them to the...um...history books?

Antilles

In my honest opinion, the "physical" book will be all but dead before the decade is out. It will still live on as a specialist item and in second hand stores, but very few people will buy one new.

EileenG

Danpad wrote: »

Hi, hope this question isn't too much out of line with the theme of this thread; do you think ebooks will end up dominating in terms of sales/popularity? Is it going that way already? I'm a die hard 'need an actual book in my hands' reader and am not ready to embrace the 'e' approach yet. However, given the power of the internet and developments in technology is it a foregone conclusion that it will become the way to go consigning books as we know and love them to the...um...history books?

I think they already have. Amazon is selling more e-books than paperbacks and the e-book market is increasing all the time. I'm amazed at how many Kindles I see in coffee shops these days, and I have no idea how many people are reading on their phones.

I have to say, I used to be a "I'll always want a paper book" person, but now if I have the same book on my phone or in paper, I'll read the e-book for preference. It's just so handy. I always carry my phone, and in it I've got about 20 books already downloaded, all set to pick up at exactly where I stopped reading. If one of those 20 doesn't do it for me, I can buy and download another book in seconds. And I can read my e-books anywhere, including in bed in the dark and at rock concerts where the band refuses to show.

Kinski

Fewcifur wrote: »

Just get an idea and run with it. The publishing industry is pretty similar to the record industry, well maybe a year or two behind. You've got the majors who only invest in what they assume is going to be a sure thing. They don't waste time on unknowns.
Get some Arctic Monkeys work ethic going on and make a noise. If your book is good enough you'll begin to gain momentum. You have to keep moving. Sure, if you release a book online and nothing happens, a publisher will see it as a failure, but you never kill that book, it's just your first stone in the pond. Your next stone will be bigger and soon the water will be full of your ripples, and soon you'll have waves.

Comparisons with the music industry don't work. People still pay money to see musicians perform live; even if downloading ultimately kills sales of recorded music, the artists will still have that to fall back on.

As far as I, an outsider, can judge the state of the publishing industry, it's something like this: if you submit an unsolicited manuscript to any decent publisher, they probably won't read it. You'll need a respected agent to do the submitting for you. So you find some agents who are open for submissions, and deal with the genre you're working in, and you send your novel to them. And they probably won't read it either. To get a respected agent, you'll need an offer from a decent publisher first. So I guess you'll be sending that manuscript back to the publishers. :pac:

As for this self-publishing on Amazon business, IMHO it's a waste of time. There are no significant barriers to entry in that market - anyone who's got a pc with an internet connection can 'publish' their work on there. You know who'll make money in that kind of market? Nobody. And with no way of promoting your work (that's not also available to every single other person chucking their novels up on Amazon) you won't find a significant readership.

The most productive thing you can do is just keep working away at your book, polishing it as much as you can, and hope that one day, somehow, you get a lucky break, and it finds its way into the hands of an editor who falls in love with it. Or at least likes it. But the odds are not good.

FewFew

Kinski wrote: »

Comparisons with the music industry don't work. People still pay money to see musicians perform live; even if downloading ultimately kills sales of recorded music, the artists will still have that to fall back on.

As far as I, an outsider, can judge the state of the publishing industry, it's something like this: if you submit an unsolicited manuscript to any decent publisher, they probably won't read it. You'll need a respected agent to do the submitting for you. So you find some agents who are open for submissions, and deal with the genre you're working in, and you send your novel to them. And they probably won't read it either. To get a respected agent, you'll need an offer from a decent publisher first. So I guess you'll be sending that manuscript back to the publishers. :pac:

As for this self-publishing on Amazon business, IMHO it's a waste of time. There are no significant barriers to entry in that market - anyone who's got a pc with an internet connection can 'publish' their work on there. You know who'll make money in that kind of market? Nobody. And with no way of promoting your work (that's not also available to every single other person chucking their novels up on Amazon) you won't find a significant readership.

The most productive thing you can do is just keep working away at your book, polishing it as much as you can, and hope that one day, somehow, you get a lucky break, and it finds its way into the hands of an editor who falls in love with it. Or at least likes it. But the odds are not good.

They're not exactly the same, no, but the two industries are experiencing similar shifts towards the digital. Plus any major record label will now secure a percentage of a new acts overall income rather than just sales.

I firmly believe in word of mouth. If you've got a good product it'll rise above the crap. That's how bands rise above the crowd and that's what you have to do to get out of a flooded marketplace.

All the capital is tied up in mass marketing sure things, there's no room for taking risks on quirky newcomers. Independent publishers will try their best to make their mark with a hidden gem, but once it's shown to be a profit maker it'll be absorbed into a major. You have to demonstrate you're a winner before anyone will take notice. How do you do that when indies are so overloaded they're taking over a year to get back to people? ePublishing baby, ePublishing.

harrythehat

Antilles wrote: »

In my honest opinion, the "physical" book will be all but dead before the decade is out. It will still live on as a specialist item and in second hand stores, but very few people will buy one new.

They said that about newspapers when radio came along, radio when tv came along and tv when the internet came along.

All are still important, if not dominant or thriving mediums.

EnglishLit

Interesting that you have been advised not to self-publish.

Publisher Fantasy Island (who published EileenG's work) have stated an interest in self-published work.

http://www.fantasyislandbookpublishing.com/submission-guidelines

EileenG

FIBP are interested in someone who has self-published and managed to sell a significant number.

I'm not advising not to self-publish, there are a lot of people who are doing this successfully. What I do think is that producing a paperback with the intention of getting a traditional publishing deal is a waste of time and money.

However, I reckon that if you self-publish one book, and it sells well, traditional publishers will be very interested in your second one.

Kinski

Fewcifur wrote: »

They're not exactly the same, no, but the two industries are experiencing similar shifts towards the digital. Plus any major record label will now secure a percentage of a new acts overall income rather than just sales.

I firmly believe in word of mouth. If you've got a good product it'll rise above the crap. That's how bands rise above the crowd and that's what you have to do to get out of a flooded marketplace.

All the capital is tied up in mass marketing sure things, there's no room for taking risks on quirky newcomers. Independent publishers will try their best to make their mark with a hidden gem, but once it's shown to be a profit maker it'll be absorbed into a major. You have to demonstrate you're a winner before anyone will take notice. How do you do that when indies are so overloaded they're taking over a year to get back to people? ePublishing baby, ePublishing.

I'm not convinced. I'd come back to the point that bands tour, and up-and-coming bands trying to build up a fanbase tour relentlessly. A band can, at least in part, become popular through word-of-mouth, but doesn't that tend to be localised at first? Like a band becomes known in their hometown, and the other locations they perform in frequently, before their popularity can really take-off? And to perform anywhere, a band's members need to at least be competent musicians, or else they will struggle to get bookings (and to avoid being bottled off stage!) There is no such problem in epublishing - even completely incompetent writers can upload their books.

harrythehat wrote: »

They said that about newspapers when radio came along, radio when tv came along and tv when the internet came along.

Newspapers aren't thriving; they're actually in a lot of trouble.

pavb2

I think Kinski is right on a number of points a good dose of reality/cynicism but for the unpublished unknown author the options are limited I think you have to try all options.

It's interesting that writing and editing are only a part of the process(unless you're not looking at publishing).

As much energy if not more has to go into finding an agent/publisher or going down the e book route which requires a lot of marketing and self publicity.

Has this always been the case or is this a result of these recessionary times?

EileenG

I get the impression that writers are now expected to do a lot more than before. Some of the older writers say they used to give in a very rough draft to their publishers, and an editor would work with them for months to get it ready to publish. Now you are are expected to have it pretty close to ready before you approach the publisher.

And of course, with so many people now wanting to write a bestseller, there's a huge amount of competition.