What You Need to Know About Self-Publishing: Solving the Distribution Problem

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

One of the greatest obstacles that self-published authors will face is finding people to actually buy their books.

Think about it. No one will visit a book store and stumble upon your book. No one will find it on a publisher’s web site. No one will read about it in a catalogue. No one will want to stock in a book store because it’s self-published.

Oh, of course you can sell it online, but how will readers find it?

That is the trick. Can you assemble a realistic marketing plan that will sufficiently take into account all of the setbacks that self-publishing brings, while still connecting with readers on a scale that will ensure you sell enough copies to at least break even?

Ah, distribution is a huge problem for self-published authors. Heck, when self-publishing A Path to Publishing, I still didn’t quite grasp the amount of work ahead of me or the sheer quantity of potentials readers I needed to connect with in my niche.

Where should you start if you’re self-publishing?

For starters, check out my free online marketing guide. That gives both traditional and new ways to market your work.

However, the most important principle in selling books is to make a real connection with a potential reader and to communicate clearly why he or she may want to buy your book. Someone else may be able to do that for you by way of an endorsement or a review, but kicking it all off depends on you and you alone.

I began this series saying that “self” is the key word when it comes to “self-publishing”. If you have any hopes of selling your book, make sure you have more than Plan A and B for distributing your book. You’ll probably need to have plans that range from A to Z.

Your job is to find the communities, blogs, forums, Twitter users, Facebook users, groups, societies, and any other group of potential readers in your content niche. That is the publishing sales game in a nutshell, and it’s a tough one on your own!

Lessons in Self-Publishing: Format It Correctly or Else…

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

While no one will dispute the importance of writing a great book and making sure you connect with readers, the design of a book can be just as important, if not more so to a certain degree. “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” aside potential readers WILL judge your book by its cover and its formatting.

In fact, if your font, lay out, and spacing look sloppy or are unreadable, they won’t take you or your book seriously. There are simple things you can do to correctly format a self-published book, ensuring that readers will be drawn in and take it seriously once you’ve successfully marketed it to them:

Keep Your Lay Out Simple

Don’t make your book’s lay out too flashy if you don’t know what you’re doing. Instead, use the templates that are available at sites such as www.lulu.com. Your primary job is to write a great book, and therefore a book template will save you a lot of time and pay off in the long run.

Research Your Design Options

Beyond the options offered by book templates, many of your most important design decisions (cover design, font choice, font size, and line spacing) can be figured out by researching your options and reading what others have found to be true in online forums. Some test-printings on your home printer will also give you a good idea of how your fonts will show up for readers.

Compare your design choices to the books you enjoy most, what experts recommend, and what others have found in their own publishing experiences. Readability is a major concern for self-publishing authors and deserves a lot of consideration.

Invest Where It Counts

There are some things that you cannot do well on your own no matter how hard you try. One of these things, for most of us at least, is designing a great book cover. Of course most self-publishing services provide a cover creator as part of their packages, but if money isn’t too much of an issue, I think it’s well worth paying a professional or even novice designer to at least create a cover.

Even designing a simple cover requires choosing the appropriate font to match your material and then choosing the size, spacing, color, and location that works best. This can be quite difficult to do.

A catchy, professional cover will not necessarily sell more books, but it will be an important part of the whole package. You don’t want an unappealing cover to give customers a reason to ignore your book!

What You Need to Know About Self-Publishing: Seek Opinions

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

In conjunction with the release of my self-published book A Path to Publishing: What I Learned by Publishing a Nonfiction Book, I’m offering this series of posts on what you need to know about self-publishing.

When working on a self-published book you may have put together a passable first draft, and even managed to spruce up a pretty decent second draft. However, chances are your argument or story will have some significant holes in it, to say nothing of some sections that readers will find confusing.

While working on my third draft of A Path to Publishing I couldn’t think of any significant changes to make, so I sent it off to several friends and colleagues to read it. Sure enough, one reader found the same glaring flaw in two of the book’s chapters.

She very gently suggested that those two sections needed significant revision. She was absolutely right. I had a few doubts at first about those sections, but I had decided they worked fine. Thankfully she pointed out some other reasons why needed to be not only rewritten but largely deleted.

And that brings us to the challenge of editing your own book. You always need perspectives other than your own to make sure your book flows and makes sense. No matter how talented you may be as a writer or an editor, you can’t catch all of your own mistakes.

Depending on your relationship with your friends and family, you may ask them for help. However, remember that a good editor will not worry about hurting your feelings. A good editor needs to feel comfortable pointing out all of your book’s flaws. Will your friends and family be able to do that?

My friends through social media and blogging have been a tremendous help in reading drafts of my books, while several key friends and family members have helped at times as well. However, I think it’s important to choose your readers carefully and to give them deadlines that can be flexible if need be.

In addition, keep in mind that these friends may publish their own books some day. Guess who they’re going to e-mail before anyone else for help…

What You Need to Know About Self-Publishing: Get Known First

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

In conjunction with the release of my self-published book A Path to Publishing: What I Learned by Publishing a Nonfiction Book, I’m offering this series of posts on what you need to know about self-publishing.

When you’re self-publishing all of the work falls on you, the author. No matter how much published authors complain about the lack of marketing support provided by their publishers, which can be spotty at times, the worst publicist will do more than upload a file to a web site, which is all you’re doing when self-publishing.

The Basic Ways Publishers Market

Publishers have established lists of contacts who receive their catalogues, e-mail newsletters, and browse their web sites. They represent authors at book stores and can send releases out to major press services—something that can be quite costly to do on your own.

The staff at publishers generally have social media accounts and blogs, and they may even generate some buzz for your book through these tools. At the very least these publishing professionals will tell potential readers about your book. You’ll at least have a few warm bodies with a measure of interest in selling your book.

Any way you slice it, the least that a publisher provides still puts their authors way ahead of the self-published ones.

What Self-Published Authors Need to Do

While it’s important to seek out some reputable endorsers and reviewers who have a large group of readers, I don’t think self-published authors realize the number of readers they need to pull off a self-published book that sells more than 25-50 copies. Simply put, self-published authors need a massive number of connections with potential readers.

The “potential reader” part of this is crucial. Authors may have lots of “connections” through social media, their blogs, or more traditional means, but many of these connections may not view their books as something they’ll want to purchase.

I’ve done quite a bit of networking, but I have been reading Crush It! by social media expert and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, and he’s been blowing my mind. I usually drop by some blogs to leave comments and contribute to writing forums, but he advocates a scale of networking that few would ever consider.

I sure didn’t!

I could try to describe it to you, but to be honest, I’d be doing you a disservice because I can’t do his methods justice. Crush It! is available at a pretty low price as a Video Book, which I highly recommend, though it’s also available in print. You may not do everything Vaynerchuk suggests, but I think he’ll give self-published authors the reality check they need about how involved the marketing process will be for their books.

An author who is new to the publishing process will underestimate the amount of work necessary for marketing. Count on it. As a published author I still underestimate the amount of work I need to do. Before you invest heavily into a book, begin marketing yourself and making connections today. It’s a worthwhile investment you won’t regret.   

Next Steps

What You Need to Know about Self-Publishing: Know the Publishing Business

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

PTP150 In celebration of my latest book, A Path to Publishing: What I Learned by Publishing a Nonfiction Book, I will be posting a series on what you need to know about self-publishing. I chose to self-publish A Path to Publishing and discovered an enormous amount of material online, but some of it was dated. Over the coming weeks I will provide an updated guide to self-publishing today based on my latest experiences.

What Self-Publishing Involves

The most important word in self-publishing is “self,” not publishing. The publishing part is fun. The self part is not.

Of course self-published authors boast higher royalties, greater control, and many other benefits. These are all true to a certain extent, but consider what you’ll need to organize by yourself:

  • Researching the market and audience for your book.
  • Outlining, writing, and editing.
  • Researching a publisher and comparing the various packages.
  • Paying for and organizing the editing, design, printing, and distribution (which of course will vary).
  • Putting together a marketing plan.
  • Creating a publicity kit
  • Contacting bloggers, radio producers, newspaper editors, and other media outlets about your book’s release.
  • Contacting independent and chain book stores to set up book events. Many of them will not call you back because you are self-published.
  • Finding conferences where you can sell your book—that is, if you pay for the space.
  • Setting up book events and eating the cost if they flop.

Granted, many publishers today are quite light on the marketing end of things, especially for nonfiction books where a marketing platform is essential for new authors. That being said, at least having someone who is paid to help you send out press releases and to advise you on ideas can save you a lot of time and frustration. In other words, even the publisher who provides minimal help with marketing a book is still way better than doing everything yourself.

What You Need to Know about the Publishing Business

If all of this is new to you, then I’m guessing you’ve never commercially published a book. While self-publishing is easy to jump into from the standpoint of writing and printing a book, making it into a product that someone will actually deem worthy of $15 is quite another matter.

Here are a few things you need to know about publishing as a business:

  • Most books need significant editorial development.
  • It takes time to learn how to write for a specific audience.
  • A bad cover and sloppy interior design can be fatal for a book.
  • Distributing a book effectively will take a lot of e-mails and phone calls.
  • Marketing a book is a full time job.

If you want to self-publish and to sell more than 500-1000 books, your work is cut out for you. Thankfully it can be done. In the coming days we’ll discuss the importance of a marketing platform for self-publishing.

Looking for a bit more about publishing right now? Check out A Path to Publishing. It’s available for $10 as an ebook and for $15 as a paperback.

A Path to Publishing is Now Available!

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

PTP_final03_texOrange450 I’m happy to announce that A Path to Publishing is now available as a paperback book through Amazon and most other distributors, as well as an ebook through Lulu.

The price through Amazon is $15, while the ebook price through Lulu is $10.

So far the feedback has been really encouraging, including comments from readers who have found the book both informative and well-organized. One book publisher enthusiastically purchased a copy, and he’s someone who certainly could have taught me a thing or two about publishing! So I’m grateful to see positive responses to the book as it starts out.

If you’re interested in hosting me for an event with your writing group or book store, I offer group discounts and free publishing workshops along with my book events.

Throughout the third and fourth weeks of May a number of bloggers will be posting reviews and interviews. I hope to have the schedule up soon.

In addition, I’ll be posting a series here next week covering what I learned in the self-publishing process. If you subscribe to my e-mail newsletter (in the right column), you can also read about the inside story of self-publishing, the decisions I made throughout the process, and why I followed the course I chose.

There are a lot of decisions to make in the self-publishing process, so believe me, reading about my process will help you a great deal! I learned a ton over the past 6 months.

How to Handle Rejection as a Writer: Reasons for Rejection

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

When rejection letters come, and they will, you’ll need to figure out why your piece was rejected. Sometimes an editor will tell you point blank. Other times you’ll wait for months and never receive a reply.

Either way, it’s important to evaluate the reasons for a rejected query. If an editor has filled you in on the reasons, then you’re well on your way. If not, you’ll need to review the magazine and its guidelines as you ask some of the following questions:

Do you have the experience necessary?

Perhaps you’re overreaching into a topic or a field in which you need more experience or research before you can submit an effective query.

Have you learned the craft of writing? Are you well-read?

Some writers will need to spend more time reading up on the basic techniques of nonfiction writing, style, and grammar. I took a workshop with the former editor of Vermont Life Magazine and he just about blew my mind with his various diagrams for structuring a magazine story. Books such as On Writing Well and The Elements of Style are bestsellers for a reason!

Do you know your competition?

Did you query an editor regarding an article or book on a topic that has already been addressed by many other writers? Have you failed to address a fresh angle or to offer a unique perspective?

Do you know your audience?

Even if you have a great idea, sufficient experience, and a unique perspective, you may still fall short of writing directly to the magazine or publisher’s audience. I have run into this on many occasions in the field of religion when I took angles that were a bit too liberal, charismatic, or conservative depending on the editor’s taste. In addition, some magazines are more academic or scholarly, while others aim for general readership.

Do you know your potential publishers or agents?

Many magazine editors, publishers, and literary agents who receive queries from writers state their preferences on their web sites, list previous publications, and sometimes even share a theme or genre list. Did you miss any of that crucial information before sending in your query?

Keep Trying

Even if you’ve been rejected or ignored, keep working on your queries, articles, and book ideas. It’s a tough business, but you never know when the right situation will fall into your lap. Unless you’re trying, that will never happen to you.

How to Handle Rejection as a Writer: Say Thank You

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

I know this sounds a bit pathetic or possibly even demeaning. Can I possibly mean that you should actually thank an editor for rejecting your piece?

Well, sort of. Don’t thank them for rejecting it. Thank the editor for reading your submission and for taking the time to e-mail you back even though he/she is probably overworked and underpaid.

If you received a reply within a few hours or days of sending your query, then treat the editor like a god.

Personal Rejections

If you didn’t get a form letter, that’s a good sign! Read what the editor tells you, take it to heart, and save that message so you can refer back to it every time you query that magazine or one like it.

Suck It Up

Writers need to develop thick skin and get used to rejection. You will never write for any sustained period of time if you don’t know how to take a textual punch. They come fast and often some days.

Saying thank you has a way of keeping yourself positive and showing the editor that you aren’t fazed by the rejection—which you shouldn’t. The next time you send a query to this editor you’ll start on much better terms than if you’d pouted or offered a rebuttal to his/her rejection.

Even if you think the editor is out to lunch, you need to move on. Whether or not you ever query this editor again, you can’t argue your way into convincing an editor to accept your work. I know, I was awesome at convincing my mom to buy me legos and ice cream, but really, it doesn’t work on editors.

Transition

You can be grateful that this rejection is not the end, but just the closing of one of many paths. There are other magazines where you can send your query or article, so get moving.

How to Handle Rejection as a Writer: It’s Not You, It’s Me…

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

Rejection is not always a reflection on you or your work. In fact, there are many good books and articles rejected each day for a variety of reason.

Good books are rejected because of similar books.

You may have a great idea and you may be an incredible writer, but if someone has written a similar book, especially for your publisher, you may be out of luck. In addition, there may be projects in a publisher’s pipeline that you could never know about unless you submitted your proposal.

That isn’t to say that different publishers will back away from your book if there are similar books. You just need to show that it has a unique message or perspective that distinguishes it from its competition.

Good books are rejected because of different focuses at a publisher.

You may have addressed an important topic, and that topic may be within the interests of a publisher, but perhaps you wrote a book that didn’t strike the right angle or genre for that publisher. One publisher may aim for literary books, while others may opt for the academic route.

Good books are rejected because of cuts or changes with editors.

Sometimes publishers may change their focus or even eliminate a line of books. With new editors come new criteria for accepting books. Editorial changes will mean a book that may have been accepted a few months ago will no longer work for a publisher. Timing and luck are huge factors when pitching book and article query letters.

Good books are rejected because editors don’t always know what they want.

While publishers have guidelines and specifications, they don’t always know what book would work best. This is something that some editors themselves have admitted.  See editorial veteran Leonard Goss’ endorsement for my new book A Path to Publishing.

That doesn’t mean that all editors are fickle and indecisive, and you should never tell them what they want. Rather, they always aren’t able to know what exactly will work and what will not. There are plenty of stories of best-selling books passing through a series of rejections before finding success. The moral is that editors are human like you and me, and that publishing is not an exact science—as it should be.

Good books are rejected because of publicity concerns.

Even if you’ve written a great book, some publishers may reject your proposals because they fear they’ll be unable to market it to a particular group of people or that you aren’t popular enough to promote it. Those are big problems for writers to deal with, but at least they aren’t necessarily marks of a poorly written book.

In addition, if you are able to write a good book, you can certainly work on raising your profile and reworking your material so that it speaks more directly to an audience of readers. These are big problems, but they don’t spell doom for you as a writer.

How to Handle Rejection as a Writer

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

I’ve spoken to rooms full of writers and have looked into the eyes of many who fear the very real possibility of receiving a rejection letter for their novels or nonfiction works. Writing is an emotional business in which people invest heavily in very personal and meaningful ideas and characters.

Rejection is just about the worst thing a writer can imagine besides publishing a book that is hated by readers and critics. Both possibilities sound pretty terrible, but rejection is the one thing that every writer who hopes to publish a book or article has to face from the start.

Even well-known authors with a history of successful books have to sometimes face rejection. Legendary Christian writer Frederick Buechner has published shelves worth of fiction and nonfiction, but even his latest book, The Yellow Leaves, was rejected by his life-long publisher. He had to take it elsewhere before landing a book deal.

Rejection is a real issue that every writer has to deal with in one way or another.

I had intended to write this series last week, but a few other projects and a persistent head cold pushed it back to this week. Tune in tomorrow, and I’ll discuss the nature of rejection in the business of writing.