The Naked Author - A Guide to Self-publishing

Alison Baverstock

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Yearbooks
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781408139820
• eBook ISBN: 9781408157091
• Edition: 1

New digital technology, falling production costs and a new type of company offering publishing services have contributed to self-publishing becoming a viable option for writers, rather than a poor second to finding a commercial publishing deal. Written by a publishing consultant and author, with plenty of advice from other industry professionals, this book offers an objective analysis of the processes and companies involved in self-publishing. It helps you to analyse your objectives, define and meet the needs of your audience and looks at the right kind of content for self publishing. It also provides insight into the editorial processes you will need to put your content through, how to commission services from freelancers and companies and how to get a product worthy of your name. It helps you to understand format and design options, and key issues concerning distribution, sales and marketing. Self-publishing is a costly venture and this guide will help you to scrutinise your investment choices and produce a more professional-looking product.
Contains a Foreword by Mark Coker, Founder of Smashwords.

1
Reasons for self-publishing. A quiz

Why do you want to self-publish?

For the committed writer, who has been struggling for many years to get published, the ‘helpful’ suggestion that you consider self-publishing often produces a furious response. The thought can be seen as patronising, dismissive and, perhaps most crushingly, the final hint that you should give up on your ambition to get a professional publisher or agent to believe in your work. It is hoped that the information in this book will both teach you enough about the processes involved in publication, and make you aware of systems and services available to those who decide to proceed, to make an informed choice.

But embarking on self-publishing requires far more than just a technical facility, the time to manage the process or an available budget. For a satisfactory outcome it is vital for the author to be aware of the responsibility they are assuming. Even though in some cases the tasks involved may be spread between friends and wider family, still the responsibility for deciding to proceed will be that of the writer, and with this decision comes a whole range of associated considerations that in conventional publishing are looked after by someone else (Is it good enough to be published? Would anyone want to read it? Does it need reorganising or rewriting? What is the best format?).

Assuming responsibility is easier if you have both thought about how much is involved and considered your associated motivation. So before we go further, and to avoid you wasting your time, I am offering a short quiz. How many of the following statements do you agree with?

Good reasons for self-publishing

I have not been able to find a commercial publisher to invest in my writing.

‘Self-publishing should be seen as a last resort. It is better to get your book published and distributed at someone else’s risk and expense, and to have the process handled by experienced people with adequate staff and equipment, than to struggle with it yourself. Even if your book turns out to be a big success, it is highly unlikely that you will do better with it in terms either of sales or of profit by publishing it yourself than you would have done with an established publisher.

There are three rules for those considering self-publishing. The first is only do it as a last resort. The second, don’t risk more money than you can afford to lose. The third, take all the advice you can get from anyone who knows what they’re talking about.’⁶

To this excellent advice, from two people who have been through the process several times, I would add one further point: don’t give up on finding an external investor too soon.

I want to set this project to one side, in a finished format, and move on to the creation of other things.

Contacting publishers and agents takes time and energy; each submission needs to be accompanied by a specific pitch explaining why this is a project that should interest them, and goes off with an accompanying investment of adrenalin and hope. While you should not underestimate the amount of time required to turn a manuscript that you have finished into a finished product, selfpublishing does offer you the prospect ‘passing Go’ and progressing towards completion; of parking a project in a finished state, and moving on to whatever you want to do next.

I have a specific market in mind for my work, in this case my family and close circle of friends (or it could be your community or school). I have no desire to make it more widely available.

Self-publishing will allow you to put a copy of your book in the hands of everyone you intend (or in their inbox for an ebook), and say ‘see what an interesting family we come from’ or ‘now you know more about where you grew up’. Putting a set of thoughts and experiences to bed in one convenient format that can be shared with others can bring immense satisfaction, at whatever stage in life you do it.

I have no ideas for follow up books or material that could be developed. As far as I am able to say at the moment, this is a one-off book.

Publishers and agents are on the lookout for authors who can repay their initial investment (it takes time and money to get an author noticed) by producing replicable, reliable material at regular intervals. If you have just one book in you, unless you are particularly famous or the story you tell absolutely compelling, self-publishing may be a good route.

I have a very particular idea for how I want my book to look.

Publishers will of course have their own ideas for how a project should be structured and presented, and this will be shaped by their experience, what the potential reader might expect and an appreciation of how the associated costs impact on their return on investment. So if you are dead set on a particular format, then selfpublishing is a good option – you can choose the typeface and insist the picture your sister painted goes on the front. As an example of this, Ben Schott’s Miscellany was produced to a very exacting specification, as a Christmas gift for his friends – he wanted it ‘to look like something his grandfather might have owned’. But even after the project was taken on by Bloomsbury he still does all the typesetting – because he really cares how the final product looks.

I can sell the book myself.

Some authors can sell their book themselves, maybe in conjunction with training or after-dinner speaking, or via an effective website through which they can market the title. Or you may want to hand out a copy of your book as a calling card for a business that offers consultancy. If you have a specific expertise and the contacts that back this up, then self-publishing means you can communicate directly with that market, without sharing the profits with anyone else.

As an example of this, a friend is an expert in fireplaces. Such is his reputation, through his business he holds the names of all the relevant dealers and installation experts. His first book on fireplaces was published by a conventional publisher, but for his second he is considering managing the process himself making full use of his contacts and expertise.

I want to write something different from my usual output.

Publishers tend to pigeonhole writers; not out of a desire to entrap but because it takes time to get a reading public established for a particular writer, and it helps get their name known if they are producing a particular type of book. One of the reasons it took Hilary Mantel so long to achieve the reputation she so richly deserves is that it was impossible for her publishers to do this; each book was completely different. While this arguably makes her a more significant and estimable writer, the unifying strand to her work was that each title was the new Hilary Mantel, rather than belonging to a specific, and identifiable genre. So if you have established a name as a particular type of writer, and you want to try something different, and are not sufficiently established with your publishing house that you think they will back you, whatever you produce, or can risk selling fewer copies of a title and so having your profile reduced in house, self-publishing might be a useful way to proceed.

My last book did not do well.

Sales are under constant scrutiny and the author whose sales pattern is in a downward direction will find it hard to maintain their previous position, no matter how well reviewed/highly respected/fast selling their work has been in the past. No author today who ‘has a publisher’ can consider it an ongoing arrangement. To counteract the accompanying feelings of insecurity, it may be pragmatic to investigate the mechanisms of publishing work yourself; the investment of time and money that would be required were you to be forced to go it alone.

My work is about to go out of print.

Once a title is nearing the end of its print life (i.e. there are few copies left), or sales have slowed down, the publisher has to decide whether or not to keep it in print. If they decide not to, the stock may be sold off at a substantial discount to a remainder merchant, or pulped. Alternatively, the author will be offered the option of buying up the remaining stock, which they are free to sell at speaking engagements or give away. Once a title is declared out of print, and the rights have reverted to the author, they may decide to have more printed at their own expense; through self-publishing, or perhaps to change format and disseminate as an ebook. At a time when you inevitably feel vulnerable, learning more about the processes involved in self-publication may help you feel empowered.

My ego feels bruised by constant rejections from agents and publishers.

If you decide to self-publish, you become the customer – and so rather than facing endless rejections you will find that firms offering you their services tend to be pleasant to deal with. They are helping you develop your dream. It’s a bit like buying a house you have wanted to own for a long time, the various legal and practical processes confirm you on the path towards ownership -but happily with no one else competing for the property.

Decision making in publishing takes so long; I want to get on with it.

‘I am afraid as you do not write – that the 3rd volume has occasioned some disappointment. It is better, however, to speak plainly about it, if it be so. I would rather at once know the worst than be kept longer in suspense.’

Charlotte Brontë to her publisher, George Smith, 1 December 1852⁷

Publishers are careful people. They take their time to think about whether the market needs the product offered, whether what is suggested is right for the market (or needs adaptation), and then whether the writing is appropriate for the product (they may like your idea but decide you are not the best person to produce it for them). They are also committee-based, so work tends to get discussed between colleagues not all of whom see literary excellence as the chief criterion for making a decision (would we be better off commissioning someone better known?).

It’s possible for decisions to be stalled, or revisited, after commissioning. And the irony is the larger the publishing company, the longer the process may take (more committees to consult). If you decide to self-publish you can almost certainly get a product to market more quickly, although whether you can replicate the quality product of a professional publisher is less certain.

Time is not on my side.

The other reason for speed is perhaps the age or physical state of the writer. The publishing world is not particularly ageist (there are examples of people who get published later in life, consider Raymond Chandler, Laura Ingalls Wilder, M.M. Kaye, Diana Athill and Mary Wesley) but a commercial publisher or agent who decides to invest in you will want to build your reputation as a writer over years to come. You may also feel that trying to get published is eating up too much of your time – that could be spent doing other things.

There may also of course be an additional personal agenda here: you are aging or seriously ill and suspect your writing time may be limited; you want to capture the memories of a key member of the family before they are no longer with you. Ensuring the survival of information they alone have, and recording it as a self-published book, will ensure permanence.

I have got £10k to spare/available to access and a project I have always wanted to see in print.

The very wise father of a friend of mine commented recently that when he looked back on his life, the thing he regretted was not the money he had spent, but the money he had not spent; when life circumstances made expenditure difficult and as a result they had all missed out on something they would have enjoyed at the time or appreciated later. My husband and I still regret a picture we passed up in 1985 – by the time we came back to the artist he had become much more collectable and the prices had gone up accordingly -but the experience did influence our future buying habits. Having sufficient resources (or an ability to cut your overheads) to complete a project that has been a long-term fantasy is a good reason for deciding to go for it, particularly if the funds are now accompanied by sufficient time for you to nurse it into life. Roddy Doyle:

‘I had no family. I lived in a bedsit so I didn’t need to save. Not a bother in the world. I went into the bank and I did a bit of homework with my agent. We figured out the printing wasn’t all that expensive, same as buying a second-hand car. I lived by the train station so I didn’t need a car so did this instead. It was a great adventure.’⁸

I want to learn more about how the publishing industry works.

Receiving just a couple of rejection letters from publishing houses can make the industry look very joined up, and exclusive. While invariably polite, publishers tend to use the same phrases in their rejection letters (’I did not fall in love with it’; ‘does not fit our list as currently developing’), leading aspiring writers to feel this is a club of which they are not members. While dispiriting, authors often do not appreciate just how much material they have to choose between, and hence the difference that an attractive package or effective introductory letter can make.

Self-publishing is an excellent way of learning more about the industry, and the amount of effort that goes into the creation of a book. As broadcaster Libby Purves said after self-publishing her son’s writing: ‘We did get a sense of what they do all day.’⁹

I have a lot of energy to put into this project.

Self-publishing will require this, and the generally accepted starting point includes a combination of determination, grit, assertiveness and some experience of negotiation. There is also considerable power in energies that may be just as forceful, but less willingly acknowledged. A self-publishing project may be fuelled by anger, frustration, loathing, a burning sense of injustice, isolation, neglect, jealousy and a determination to set the record straight.

Several years ago I heard a blind marathon runner interviewed on the radio. The interviewer began by concentrating on the difficulties of running such long distances when you cannot see, and the kind of special support needed. So far, so predictable. But he concluded by asking the runner about his motivation in taking on something so difficult. The response was obviously a surprise – ‘Bitterness’. Asked to amplify, it was clear the interviewer felt increasingly uncomfortable as the runner talked of his determination to prove that he could do something that others had been confident he could not; after years of feeling patronised. Negative content was not appreciated and the interview ended with the host trying, unsuccessfully, to extract a positive message from the overall discussion. The ‘b’ word lingered in everyone’s memory.

Writers need to think about the emotions and personal attributes that they will bring to the task of self-publishing. These will necessarily include determination and forcefulness, but maybe also a dash of bitterness to keep you going. And who’s to say that it is positive emotions that progress a project more than negative ones?

Bad reasons for self-publishing

I want to make money.

Please accept now that it is seldom that the amount of effort that goes into writing a book is compensated for by its subsequent sales.

If you decide to self-publish, and to try to make money out of the venture, you will have to try to sell the work: to friends, colleagues and even family. You will find that most people seem to expect a free copy (’I bought you dinner two years ago’; ‘we have known each other for thirty years’; ‘you are my brother-in-law’) and the logic of being willing to pay more for a round of drinks than you are asking for your book is not widely accepted. You may well feel frustrated that they are so mean and end up either losing friends -or just liking them less.

I am furious with the publishing industry.

‘Certainly anybody whose experience has been gained in the literary field cannot believe that merit alone decides the success or failure of a writer.’

Rebecca West, 1960

Publishing is a business. And to remain in business, risk gets spread – across different markets through the commissioning of different types of product. In the process, it is true that good manuscripts do get overlooked; books commissioned from those who cannot write, and remain stubbornly un-bought by the general public because their role as ‘author’ stretches credulity; bad decisions made. But this happens because judging the taste of the book buying publ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword: Mark Coker of Smashwords
• Introduction: why self-publishing is no longer a last resort
• 1 Reasons for self-publishing. A quiz
• 2 The stages of self-publishing; the competencies and assets needed
• 3 Climbing over the fence: a history of self-publishing, with Judith Watts and Lindsay Brodin
• 4 What to write about? Developing content for self-publishing
• 5 Checklist: defining the scope of your project: setting parameters and targets
• 6 The author’s calling
• 7 Other writing solutions: writing with others; paid support including ghost writers
• 8 Checklist: the other component parts of the book you need to manage
• 9 How do you know if it’s any good? with Gale Winskill
• 10 Editorial support and why it is needed, with Margaret Aherne
• 11 Commissioning images and illustrations
• 12 What will your book look like? Format, layout and typography, with Nicholas Jones
• 13 Proofreading, with Margaret Aherne
• 14 Book production, with Katharine Allenby
• 15 Using an author solutions company
• 16 Self-publishing ebooks, with Kay Sayce and Darin Brockman
• 17 Distribution
• 18 Marketing
• 19 Copywriting: how to describe your work effectively
• 20 Marketing online
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Further reading
• Footnote
• Imprint