Chicken Scratchings

Posts Tagged ‘Traditional Publishing’

by Bill Ruesch

In many posts, I have been very vocal about the Internet Wolves and Knaves that lay in wait to snare self-publishers. I’ve witnessed what happens to authors hoodwinked into spending their savings with little or no results to show for it. I’ll continue to rant about those dirty rats. You can count on it. I’ve even advised self-publishers to visit Victoria Strauss’s Writer Beware web site because she is doing a reasonably credible job warning us about traps and dangers.

Who has bigger dreams and expectations for your book manuscript than you?

No one. What attracts those who prey on self-publishers, especially new ones, is the rookie author’s general lack of knowledge of the process and their wide-eyed belief in the value of their manuscripts. Getting a book published is a lifetime dream for most. When someone says you can have your dream come true for just (whatever the dollar figure is) you may feel you just won the lottery.

Knowing what to avoid is a good thing, but it doesn’t go far enough. Authors need to know where to find legitimate, competent, and cost effective assistance. I don’t care how brilliant you are, a first-time self-publisher isn’t likely to successfully negotiate the complexities and produce a commercially credible book on their own. Professional help is required.  After all, you wouldn’t set out on a safari through the darkest jungles without guides, would you?

BookWise & Company, BookWise Publishing, and WriteWise Mentoring

Recently I attended a self-publishing boot camp, known as a Book Camp, organized by BookWise Publishing. This isn’t the old BookWise & Company, founded by bestselling authors Richard Paul Evans and Robert G. Allen. BookWise & Company was a multi-level marketing enterprise.

It seemed like a great idea at the time.

The idea was to give 100 new authors the opportunity to learn how to publish or get their books published with the aid of two New York Times bestselling authors as mentors. For a reasonable flat fee, newbies could submit their manuscripts and have them edited by peers of published authors, designed by experienced and talented designers, printed by excellent presses, and marketed by the authors themselves, with hands-on coaching from Richard Paul Evans, Robert G. Allen and other experienced pros. What would it be worth to a green, untested author to be given the attention of people like these instead of just being dumped on some clerk’s desk, in a forest of cubicles, inside a cavernous room, deep in the basement of some publisher’s impenetrable fortress?

The thought was that if a book received very professional treatment from the outset it would garner greater attention should the author wish to go the traditional route, or give them an edge should they decide to self-publish.

No one can guarantee a book’s success. Some felt that their books deserved to be bestsellers because they paid for mentoring. It doesn’t work that way.

Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware panned the old BookWise & Company.

She had a point—when she was talking about the multi-level part of the company. BookWise Publishing is not BookWise & Company. BookWise Publishing owned and operated by Karen K. Christoffersen and Meagan Bunten is carrying on helping the authors and assisting their progress. Currently they have over 200 authors in the pipeline and have completed over 65 books over the last two years.

Despite Ms. Strauss’s good intentions…

the problem with the Internet is like the old story of the woman with a gossiping habit. As a lesson, her minister emptied a feather pillow into the wind. Her impossible task was to retrieve all the feathers. Once something hits the net it spreads like feathers in a breeze, probably further and even more impossible to call back. BookWise Publishing doesn’t deserve the stigma. It is not a multi-level enterprise.  It is a company with the same name but different owners and management.  Karen Christoffersen asked a brilliant young woman, Meagen Bunten, to be her partner in  the new BookWise. They have no relation to the old MLM and are building BookWise Publishing as an independent collaboration of top people in the publishing business who are dedicated to assisting authors with everything they need to effectively produce and market their books. Costs are contained and kept reasonable by the fact that all services are virtual. There is NO overhead and every associate is self-employed.

Experience matters.

The difference between what BookWise is doing and what hundreds, if not thousands of others are doing, is that they have collected many experienced associates with real life publishing skills. They didn’t  hire the brand-new-just-graduated-learn-on-the-job-beginners and let them loose on unknowing customers. They have real-honest-to-goodness experienced experts.

Am I prejudiced in my assessment? You bet.

I came across BookWise Publishing a couple of years ago, sort of. I had written a novel and even though with my print background I can produce a printed book in my sleep, I didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to sell it. I called Karen—and this is where the sort of comes in—because I knew that she had done a lot of marketing work for Richard Paul Evans and his books over the years, I figured that she could help me if I asked nicely. That’s when I learned about BookWise, the old BookWise. Karen was doing a lot of work preparing the books to go to print. She was burning the candle at three ends.

One thing she could sweep off her plate was the print production. Well hey, there I was, an expert print manager walking right through her door. Since that day I have helped her with the printing side, and she’s been helping me with my writing. I tell you this because I have a special interest in BookWise. BookWise sends me business and they like me so much that my bio appears on their website as the printing expert. I don’t mind. I am an expert and I do consult with them on their printing needs, but I am not an employee nor owner of the company.

The question you should be asking right now is, “Is Bill Ruesch’s opinion of BookWise tainted?” The answer is yes, but that doesn’t make it wrong.  I encourage any self-publishing authors reading this to contact BookWise Publishing, compare their expertise, check their prices, and be prepared to be very impressed. They will be happy to give you the names and contact info of some of their authors so you can hear their testimonials. These are real people and they won’t pull any punches. This is a relatively small, intimate group of new authors who love to get together 2 or 3 times a year at Book Camps in Salt Lake City (and once a year at Book Expo America) to rub shoulders with each other and perfect their craft.

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

BookWise Publishing isn’t just another me-too author’s production resource group. It has the talent, connections, and brains to become a real force in the traditional and independent publishing worlds for years to come. Watch them and see for yourselves.

Bite your Tongue.

Those who decide to self-publish can hold their heads high, because they are counted among some of greatest authors in history. Below is but a partial list of authors who have chosen to self-publish at sometime in their career.

• William Blake, Ken Blanchard, Robert Bly,Lord Byron, Willa Cather, Stephen Crane,
  
• e.e. cummings,  Alexander Dumas, T.S. Eliot,Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benjamin Franklin,
  
• Zane Grey, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne,Ernest Hemingway, Robinson Jeffers,
  
• Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, Louis L’Amour, D.H. Lawrence, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine,
  
• Tom Peters, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust,
  
• Carl Sandburg, Robert Service, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Upton Sinclair,
  
• Gertrude Stein, William Strunk, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoi,
  
• Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman.

Note: The list was pulled from John Kremer’s Self-Publishing Hall of Fame

If you don’t find at least one of your heroes here I would be very surprised. Also you may have noticed that quite a few poets populate the list. Modern poets complain that publishers aren’t interested in their books. It’s said that poetry doesn’t sell. Compared to a fast paced pop-novel of sex, violence, and action they are probably right. I have to keep reminding myself that publishing isn’t primarily about getting the finest works into the public’s hands–it’s a profit generating business like a grocery store. If the stock isn’t turning it is costing money. I, like many others, tend to glamorize the traditional publishing houses and imbue them with a nobility they just don’t have. It’s a business. Poetry, on the other hand, is something else. Poetry is a work of passion, not business. Publishers probably weren’t any more anxious to publish poetry then than they are now and that is why so many poets had to resort to self-publishing.

The Old Man

One of my readers added this comment about self-publishers: “For me all I had to do was find out that Hemingway’s first book was “self-published,” to help me make my decision and after 32 years of “practice” I feel I did it just right. And then later this year when I found out about Mark Twain’s force of ten thousand book agents scattered across America selling his works and Ulysses S Grant’s Memoirs (also published by Twain’s company which was run by his young nephew Webster).” Miles Cobbett, Author the Alaskan book CHAMPION.

Miles followed up with this comment in another post: “One more tasty tidbit about Hemingway and his publisher, that I bet you already know is his lively discussions in letters between him and Charles Scribner about Royalty Payments. I was fascinated to read in copies of Hemingway’s “Letters” that CS only offered to pay Ernest Hemingway 10 % of the net. And Ernest wrote back in a lively letter that he wanted 15 % or a Minimum of 12.5 %…
This was fascinating to me, especially when I read in the other book I wrote to you about, (Birth of a Salesman), how Mark Twain offered and paid U. S. Grant and his widow, a whopping 70% of the profits from publishing Grant’s Memoirs.”

I have more sympathy for the traditional publishers than you might think from reading my posts. They have to have highly tuned crystal balls to foresee the future. If they choose to take a gamble on an author, and it tanks, what do they lose? Why the entire investment, of course. And what about credibility? What happens to the employee who stands behind a book bomb? Or two, or three? Can you say pink slip?

If you know your book will sell–you stand behind it. Raise the money to print and promote it. You might be like my friend Miles Corbbett whom I quoted above. His self-published book CHAMPION is selling well and he owes it all to word-of-mouth advertising. Miles has this to say about his success: “Getting the word out has been a fun & challenging journey, but it’s all been done so far without any help from a Madison Avenue super advertising blitz.”

If you are a self-publisher, considering self-publishing, or a supplier to self-publishers be sure to check out the manifesto for The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors, Inc. (click here).

Mark Twain had an army of ten-thousand salesmen peddling his books all over the country. He understood the principles of marketing as they applied to his time. Today’s marketing is different and requires an understanding of blogging, social networking, books on Amazon, etc. You can get that information from The Author Platform (TAP). It’s not free but almost click (here) for more information. If you can sell your book yourself you’ll earn 15 times more than if you traditionally publish.

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This article was republished with permission from the author’s blog Talking Through My Hat.

I’m not just talking through my hat here. Yesterday I was asked by a librarian to tell her about book publishing in today’s world. I am not a publisher, but she thought my print production experience would give me an understanding.  One thing is very evident, everything that was once true before, is not true now.

The traditional book publishing business has changed dramatically. In the past a publisher bought the rights to an author’s book, they edited the book, typeset the book, promoted the book, they printed the book, and they distributed the book. In return the author received a royalty. Today publishers demand that the author do most of the promotion. The author has to set up their own book signings and public relations tours. And the biggest surprise of all is that if an author is over fifty or deceased you can forget about it. In the past the quality of the literature reigned supreme. Not anymore. By today’s publishing standards Emily Dickinson’s poems would have never seen the light of day.

What’s going on with publishing? In my opinion it is too focused on the almighty dollar and is losing its soul. Can you say profit motive?

Mountains of Books

It could be because the shear magnitude of manuscripts circulating is overwhelming. In fact, most traditional publishers will not accept a manuscript unless it comes to them first through a trusted literary agent. They’ve barricaded themselves in their towers and I believe, cutting off their noses to spite their faces. I know, I know, those are cliches and not a particularly good ones, but it makes my point. Traditional publishing has become a closed loop. If you are in the loop, you’ll get published, if not, good damn luck.

The tragedy is that the pressure is on the popular authors to keep knockin’ ‘em out at a speed that keeps the cash registers ringing, but floods the public with marginal work. It has the feel of an egg farm. Just keep the authors on the roost pushing out eggs as fast as they can.

No wonder everyone thinks they can be a writer, when the bar is set so low. Much of the material that gets through to the bookshelves is not worth reading. I can’t believe that those authors are proud of their work. How could they be? Today’s system turns potentially good authors into hacks. Is that too strong? I’m sorry, but if anyone has laid down good money to buy a book, knowing it is light beach reading, and found it falling short of that expectation, then there is something really wrong with the system. Publishers, especially well-known publishing houses should guard their honor with their lives. Maybe is is just me, but if their stamp is on a book, the public should be able to trust that it has real intrinsic value.

What about authors who haven’t found a place in the closed loop? Self-publishing is their only hope. What do I mean by that? If you have a manuscript that in your opinion, must be published you can do it yourself. The traditionalists haven’t thought very highly of what they call vanity publishing. Vanity publishers have been mocked and derided. If you had to resort to self-publishing you were considered to be a second rate author. That belief is disappearing. Some excellent writers are self-publishing now to earn more profit on the book sales, or are using the book sales as a bargaining point to secure a better publishing contract. Numbers talk.

Today, since the publishers have pulled back into their shells, authors have no choice but to do all the work themselves. It’s like the old Golden Books story of The Little Red Hen.  After all of the work is done and the book is selling well, then, and only then will the publishers get interested.  I tell you it is the profit motive.

Richard Paul Evans wrote and promoted his little book called the Christmas Box Story. He was so successful in selling it that the publisher paid over $4 million dollars for the rights. He proved that his book was a viable piece of property and the publisher who now wanted in, paid dearly for it.  That’s where publishing is going. You self-publish, you self-promote, you keep a bigger slice of the pie, and if you get a good enough offer, you sell it, if you want to. Some publisher-authors may never want to get in that game at all.

Most of us would-be-published-authors are best expressing ourselves through the written word. That’s why we write. Unfortunately in today’s publishing environment whether you self or traditionally publish you will be required to market/sell your book. What do you do? Where do you start? You can follow the steps outlined in the author platform. I can personally vouch for it because I’ve done it and still refer to it even now. Follow this link to learn how you can participate for a nominal cost.

This article Reprinted with permission from Talking Through My Hat, originally posted Jan 27, 2009

You’ve written a book. CONGRATULATIONS. 80% of adults dream of doing what you’ve done. A very small percentage actually do, so you are in an elite group. Hold your head high. You are now an author.

What, you don’t believe it? According to my Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary the act of writing is all it takes to become an author. If you wrote something, you are an author.

To become a published author is another thing altogether. For most of us the ultimate goal is to see our books in print and distributed to readers everywhere.  After all, what is a writer without a reader? It’s Yin and Yang. Two halves of the whole. As far as I’m concerned a manuscript in a desk drawer defines you as an author, but something definitely is missing.

There are only two approaches you can take to get published. You can do it yourself (self-publish) or find someone else to publish it for you (traditional publish). How do the two choices compare?

At first blush it appears that the easiest path is to sell your rights and let someone else publish your book. Let’s face it this is what most of us think of when we talk about being published. The biggest hurdle with the traditional publishing model is that  4% or less of manuscripts will ever become a book. And for that 4% there are probably thousands that never even make it to a publisher’s desk. It’s pretty obvious that if your manuscript doesn’t get read, it will not be published. I’ve said it before, if you are unknown, getting a book published through traditional channels is like winning the lottery. The odds are that bad.

Let’s compare the two methods and help you decide which way is best for you:

weigh your decisions carefully

1.  Who accepts the financial risk? If self-publishing you pay for all the costs involved in producing the book including the editors, artists, and printers. In traditional publishing the publisher takes on that burden.

2.   Who has creative control over the look and presentation of the book? If you do it yourself, you retain the rights. If you sell those rights to the publisher they can do whatever they think is best. That doesn’t seem important to you? It will if the publisher changes the meaning of the text through their editing, or comes up with a cover design that would lead readers to a totally opposite idea from what you meant. It happens.  Your only remedy you have is whining.  Selling your rights will give you money, but it may not give you peace of mind. Which is more important to you?

3.  Who arranges for distribution? If self-published, the burden is all yours. No matter how good the book is, please keep in-mind that some channels, like national bookstore chains, may not be available to you. Many booksellers have a policy against accepting self-published books, but If  your book is traditionally published, and your publisher pays for distribution, many of those guarded gates will be opened. It doesn’t seem fair, but that’s the game.

4.  What about marketing? Marketing is doing all of the things needed to promote the book, making fliers, public relations, appearing on TV talk shows, and radio programs. Issuing press releases, teaching seminars, speaking at schools, clubs, and wherever you can find an audience. You’d think that if traditionally published your publisher would handle all of this. Wrong. Most book contracts today require the author’s active involvement in promoting the book. That involvement is much more than showing up for the occasional book signing.  So, whether self-published or traditionally published, you dear author, must by contract, be hawking your book, mostly at your own expense.  If you don’t drum up sales your book won’t move, except from the shelves inside the store into the discount bins outside. If that happens, your chances of ever being traditionally published again are astronomical.

5.  Profits, ah profits, who gets the money? The one who takes the risk takes the money. If you are lucky you’ll earn between $.50 -$1.00 per book in royalties. Sell ten thousand books and you get $5 to $10 thousand dollars. That same book, if self-published, could generate $150 thousand dollars.

The self-publishing model is heaven made for those authors who believe in their product and are sure that they can find a market. It is costly and difficult to self-publish, but if you are right and you can successfully reach your readers, the amount of money you could make is much greater. You can have financial freedom and personal freedom as well.

Which way is best? It all depends on you. Either way, it will take energy, money, and lots of effort. After putting everything you have into it, it may not be enough. If the traditional route is the one you choose, the odds are that you will never be published. If you self-publish and can’t find your audience, your garage full of books will hang like albatross around your neck. But remember, that even though the odds are notoriously poor, someone always hits the lottery eventually. Who knows, maybe this time it might be you.