Category: publishing

Let’s talk about marketing your book online

- Stacy

I was at an SCBWI conference a couple weeks ago at which they had a panel of newly published authors do a panel chat about how they got published, and the subject came up of websites and blogs. This is something that I’ve heard a lot of people talk about in the children’s book blogosphere, and the discussion that day brought up the same question for me with these authors.

After all of the authors answered the question about marketing their books online with some version of "I have a web page," and perhaps an "I have a Facebook," I raised my hand and asked, "I’ve heard it said that the children’s book online community can be a little . . . in-bred. That is, authors friend authors on LJ and Facebook, comment on each other’s blogs and do blog tours, do interviews with reviewer bloggers, but who is the audience that these blogs reach? How do your directly reach your readers online?"

(I admit, it was a loaded question, because I’ve seen authors use the web in some very innovative ways to reach their teen readers, especially, and part of the answer to that for younger readers isn’t a direct answer because gatekeepers are involved.)

But I’d like to open up the question to you guys. Let’s brainstorm and really think about how to use these new technologies in a way that reaches teens. And how do you go beyond the message of "buy, buy, buy" (which is good for paying your bills, but there is something very commercial about that which I don’t think we really aspire to openly in the book world), and make it a more general message, yet still reach them about your book?

There are already some great examples of authors doing things that reach their readers directly–I’ll name a few off the top of my head: Readergirlz, Scott Westerfeld’s blog, Shannon Hale’s blog, several communities on Facebook. How do these accomplish what they do, and is there a way of extending their reach or following their example? How did Scott and Shannon attract so many readers–do teens look up their favorite author and see if he or she has a blog, or did the blog attract the teen first and then they became a reader of the books?

And what’s up with Twitter? I haven’t really had a chance to check it out yet. How might Twitter be used to reach teen readers?

Those are just a few questions I have, and I’m hoping to open up a discussion here and on Facebook, where this blog is imported as a note. I’ve seen these questions asked again and again on listservs I’ve been on, but usually in the context of librarianship, and I’m wondering how authors specifically can use these tools to reach readers.

Tildrum wants *you*

- Stacy

To tell me about your favorite children’s book/publishing related websites.
I so seldom actually look at my own front page that it took me until today to realize that not only did I have out of date links on the sidebar from since I’d left Mirrorstone, but that I’d never really updated them when I was still at Mirrorstone!
So I took off the links to specific series that aren’t being published anymore (though I couldn’t resist leaving Hallowmere up there) and need to add a link to the still on-going Dragon Codex books by R.D. Henham, a pen name for several authors including Rebecca Shelley, Ree Soesbee, Amie Rose Rotruck, and Clint Johnston. I love letting people know about books that I’ve worked on because I think you’ll love them.
I added some links for children’s publishing general information: everyone who is first learning about children’s publishing must get to know The Purple Crayon and the SCBWI.
As far as reviewers and authors, I realize how incomplete those lists are. Those are from about three years ago, with small additions made over the years. So, let’s do
a little game. What do you consider the most essential children’s book-related blog? We’ll have three categories: blogs that dish about publishing (no matter who runs it, whether author, librarian, magazine, or reviewer), blogs that review children’s books (any age range), and author blogs. If a newbie came to you and said, "Can you point me in the right direction?" what sites would you recommend to them?
The prize for this game is just the knowledge that you are the go-to guy or gal for this kind of information. Sorry, things are a bit tight here at the Grimoire mansion, and isn’t the glow of doing good better than any material possession anyway?

Wow. Just, wow.

- Stacy

It’s been quite a day for publishing, hasn’t it? If you haven’t seen the news about all the restructurings, layoffs, publishers walking off the job, and just general malaise, I figured I’d put together a Bad News Bears list for you.

What can we all do to make a difference? Well, I’ve heard many people say to buy books for your Christmas presents. That’s definitely one way. But I think that publishing is also in a time of transition, and everyone is having a rough patch right now due to the economy (I’m no different–I am hanging on, but it’s getting tough out there!). And it also means that a lot of competent people are looking for work.

ETA: Scalzi has a much more direct approach than mine: "Buy some damn books."

Honestly, it makes me want to move back home and live off the land again (I grew up on a farm). Wait it out and see what happens, you know?

But this is what I do, this is what I am passionate for, and I think that’s true for the hundreds of people who lost their jobs today or in the last few months. Publishing is definitely in a time of transition, but I think we’ll get through it and adjust and be better for it. People will leave the industry, as they have for generations, because they find they can feed their families more efficiently in another industry, but most of them always tend to keep a foot in the waters of publishing, and rightly so, because we were never in it for the money in the first place. We love books, and we’ll figure out a way to keep sharing that love with new generations of readers.

Here’s the list for you. Don’t read it if you don’t want to get depressed, though–it’s rather doomsdayish.

Random House restructures, loses top division heads. Discussed at PW, MediaBistro

S&S lays off 35, Richter and Pfeffer depart. Discussed at PW and GalleyCat

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt pretty much looks like it’s imploding. (This one has some very strong language, but its analysis of the situation is very telling.) More on it here and here and here. This one is a complicated situation that I’m not sure I have a handle on yet.

Thomas Nelson, not a children’s publisher but a religious one, cuts 54 positions.

Manga publisher Broccoli Books folds.

My own alma mater (so to speak) Wizards of the Coast lays off 25, second layoff this year. Thankfully the books department was okay this time around, but it affected the art department and other related business units, which affects books.

Publishing Bigshots Told to Open Canned Tuna, Eat at Desk (I must say that the assumption that editors "wine and dine" is only partially true, and few editors I know spent lunches with agents at "fancy" restaurants, but I’ve heard a lot of editor friends say that even the most casual of expensed meals are being cut back on, and the article rightly points out that there’s a very real function to those agent-editor get-togethers over a meal:

Marjorie Braman, the new editor in chief of Holt, said lunch is an opportunity for her to get to know agents on a more personal basis than is possible over the phone or on e-mail.

"What happens at lunch for agents that’s important is sometimes they find out things about an editor that they wouldn’t otherwise know,” said Ms. Braman, “and then when a particular project comes along, they say, oh, it’s perfect for so and so—she’s adopted, this is a memoir about being adopted, or, you know, this is a medical book about a condition that it turns out the agent found out at lunch the editor’s mother had.”

They also note a very important thing about editorial lunches: most editors I know, myself included, generally tend to eat lunch while working at their desks. Lunches with agents usually aren’t either the cafeteria or the really fancy restaurant, but somewhere in between. But even those modest lunches with a business purpose are being cut back on.

On the other hand, Hachette has been having a historically good year because Twilight and its sequels have been doing so well. Very split personality industry, says the NYT.

And then of course there’s the doom and gloom from the retail end of things: Borders in troubleindies in trouble, trouble all around. But on the bright side, Black Friday seems to have done what it’s supposed to for at least some indies.

… Whew. That’s enough bad vibes from me. Now on to a post about fun stuff!

Guest interview: Sandra Tayler on self-publishing

- Stacy

From time to time on this blog, we’ve discussed self-publishing, and from those posts you would probably know that in general I’m against it, if you’re looking to make a living as a writer. The Eragons are far outweighed by the thousands of books every year that don’t break even, I’ve argued. But I also pointed out that there are the exceptions, especially when it comes to family histories and books that already have a built-in audience. Books with local appeal also tend to fall into this category (local histories, etc.).

One of my friends, , is one of those exceptions. She knows publishing and knew that in general it’s better to go with a traditional publisher, but she wrote Hold on to Your Horses for her daughter and wanted it to be published before that daughter grew older than the picture book audience. Other factors influenced her decision, too, such as the successful family business surrounding her husband’s webcomic, Schlock Mercenary. I asked Sandra to give us her perspective on self-publishing, and here we have her answer. Notice that her answers are both personal and very business-oriented—she’s running a small publishing company, after all!—so there’s a lot to consider:

Why did you decide to self publish? What factors did you consider before going the self-publishing route?

My husband and I decided to self publish the Schlock Mercenary books because he already had a large audience. He was regularly getting emails asking for books, but we could not find a publisher to touch the project because printed collections of comic strips, available for free on the web, were too far outside their experience. We did the math on producing the books ourselves and realized that if it worked, we could keep paying our bills. If it didn’t, Howard would have to give up cartooning for another day job. We were very fortunate because there were enough people waiting to buy the books.

My book, Hold on to Your Horses, was made possible by that earlier decision to self publish the Schlock Mercenary books. It was a story that I knew my child needed and I realized that I had the means to bring it into existence. After seeing Angela Call’s amazing pictures, I did make a couple of attempts to interest publishing houses and agents. After a couple of rejections, Angela and I agreed that it was more important that the book exist as soon as possible than that it find a home with a national publisher. We knew that making that decision might mean that the book would never have wide distribution or availability. We decided to accept that risk.

What roles did you take on besides writer in the self-publishing process?

For Hold onto your Horses I did just about everything except "Artist." I functioned as an art director when I auditioned artists to take on the project. I did all the layout and page design, which caused me many tears and grief because I was trying to learn it all as I went. I can’t count the number of times it felt like I’d ruined everything. Fortunately I have a fantastic support team to rescue me. Howard was immensely helpful with image editing, as was Angela’s husband, Bill. Our printer identified some file errors to be corrected. I had to depend up on friends and associ
ates for the copy editing on the book, because I’d stared at it too much to see mistakes anymore. Once the books arrived, I had to act as warehouse manager and distributor. All the books are stored and shipped by us. I’m also the marketing director. I have to research ways to get the word out about this book because people can not just find it in bookstores. This means that I have to reach out and contact strangers over and over again. It always feels a little like begging "Please look at my book. Isn’t it pretty? Don’t you want to tell everyone about it?" The marketing feels never ending, but if I stop doing it, the book will stop selling.

I fill many of the same roles for the Schlock books, but Howard does all the writing and drawing and most of the marketing.

You had to find your own illustrator. How did you do that?

This was the part of the project where having a husband with a large daily readership was very handy. I’d posted on my blog about needing an artist and got no response. This was disappointing, but not surprising since I’d been very clear that the project might never make a profit. Howard posted it on his blog and 30 people emailed me. Only 13 actually followed through to submit an audition. That was actually the first part of the test, I needed to know if the artist could produce on a deadline. I then had to choose from the submissions. It was very hard because I really enjoyed many of the interactions I had with the various artists. I kept finding myself thinking "I hope I get to work with this one." There were many talented artists who offered their work for the project. It was hard to have to tell them no. In the end Angela’s work was stylistically best suited to the project and I’m thrilled with the pictures she produced.

How did you decide on a printer?

We’ve used two different printers for the Schlock books, both in China. The first printer was recommended to us by a friend. Their work was good, but there were a couple of small quality control issues. The printer we currently use approached Howard at a convention. We were impressed by the professionalism and quality of the work he showed to us. We’ve never regretted switching.

The original plan for Hold on to Your Horses was to use a Print on Demand publisher. Primarily I wanted the book to exist for my child. But when I saw the beautiful art that Angela created
, I knew two things; I had something really salable and that Angela deserved to get paid more money than a small POD project would provide. The advantage to POD is the small out of pocket expense. The disadvantage is lower profit per book sold. Howard and decided to take the financial risk of paying for a printing to increase the profit per book sold. This allows us to pay Angela for every book that sells whether or not the project as a whole breaks even. Hold on to Your Horses has been available for 4 months now and we’re about halfway to the break-even point.

What challenges did you run into?

One of the first challenges we faced was the question of where to put all the books. We do the Schlock books in runs of 5000 and we printed 2000 Hold on to Your Horses. We pre-sold about 1000 of each Schlock book, but that still leaves 4000 to store. Multiply that by 4 titles and it takes up a lot of space. We are fortunate that our house has an unfinished basement room that became our warehouse. By the time we printed the third book, we shifted most of the inventory over into a rented storage unit and the basement has become a shipping center. Another basement room has become my office, a third room has become Howard’s office. About a third of our house is dedicated to business tasks.

Shipping was another challenge we had to tackle. We open up pre-orders on books about a month before we expect to receive them. This means that I have to manage, track, then ship over 1000 orders. I write in detail about that starting here.

Trying to get our books available in stores is something that we are still working on. They’re all carried at Amazon.com, but none of the big chains have them. We’ve got consignment deals with some independent stores, but each of those deals has to be worked out individually which takes a lot of time and effort. We’ve submitted to comic distributors and national distributors, but they turned us down because they claim our books won’t sell quickly enough.

In order to make our books available, we had to set up and maintain an online store. Researching and setting it up took significant amounts of effort and time. It is also a continual expense because there are monthly fees associated with the store and with credit card processing. Fortunately we make enough to cover these expenses and the expense
of renting a storage unit.

Now that the book is out, what would you have done differently? What do you feel were your successes?

I wish I could have skipped the times when stress about book production and sales spilled over into all other aspects of my life. But I’m not sure I could have done anything differently. The truth is that I had several learning curves to hike and that process is inherently stressful. The successes are when we get an email or a comment that says, "Thank you for this book, it really helped me." We’ve gotten some of those for both the Schlock books and Hold on to Your Horses. We’re almost to the success point where we can say that we’ve sold 10,000 books. (It exhausts me to realize that I’ve supervised the shipping of that many books.) The biggest success is continuing to be able to pay all the bills. It has been a near thing more than once.

Your husband is a successful webcomic cartoonist who has published several compilation books. How do your audience and his overlap? What kinds of appearances have you both done separately and together?

There is some overlap between Howard’s audience and mine, but not very much. His audience is primarily college-age male, while Hold on to Your Horses appeals primaril
y to parents and young children. This has forced me to strike out in different directions trying to promote my book. It has actually been good because it may open up some promotional opportunities for the Schlock books as well. Howard does much of his promoting at science fiction conventions. He’s often invited as a guest of the convention. I’ve gone with him several times and that is very enjoyable. It is fun to work a table together and meet all the people who come by. It is also fun to be presenters on panels where we talk about the kinds of things that we do. In the future we’ll try to branch out into selling at book fairs and hopefully we’ll be able to arrange bookstore signings as well. But for the next year we’re scaling back on event attendance so that we can concentrate on producing more books. There just aren’t enough hours in each day to get it all done.

What is your writing schedule? How do you balance your writing with your roles as mom of four kids and jane-of-all-trades for your husband’s business?

It is kind of funny that this question comes at the end of the interview because in my life things are the other way around. I do all the mommy and house things first. Then come the business things which help pay our bills. If any time is left, then I work on my writing projects. For the past year there hasn’t been much time left over. I’m willing to let the writing lay idle for awhile because I can see that there will be more space for it in the future, particularly now that Howard has cut back on his convention attendance. The thing I have to remember is that being a writer is not my only dream. All of these things are part of my dreams. For now I do most of my writing on my blog, but occasionally I get the chance to write short fiction and I post some of it on my website.

How do people find your book? Can they read a sample online?

Both Hold on to Your Horses and the Schlock Mercenary books are available through Amazon.com and our online store. A free pdf of Hold on to Your Horses can be found at http://www.holdontoyourhorsescom. Schlock Mercenary can be read at http://www.schlockmercenary.com.

Would you recommend self-publishing to anyone else?

I think that the publishing path you choose should reflect your long term goals. If you want your books on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, reviewed nationally, or to make bestseller lists, then your best option is working with a traditional publishing house. If you already have a large audience, then self-publishing is a very viable option, but choose carefully how to proceed. POD may be a better choice if you don’t want to warehouse and ship books. If you want to build a career as a professional writer, you’re probably better off with a traditional publishing house. If you have a project that you just want to exist, but don’t care if it ever makes a profit, self publishing is a great option. If you want your work read by lots of people, you’re probably better off with a traditional publishing house who will help you promote your work.

There are times I wish we could have a deal with a traditional publishing house. So much of my time is taken up with non-writing tasks. It would be nice to have a team to take care of it rather than carrying the load myself.

Thank
you, Sandra! If anyone else has any questions for Sandra, feel free to ask them here or over on her blog, .

On self publishing vs. trade publishing

- Stacy

I’ve had conversations with a few friends outside the publishing industry lately who tell me that they think self publishing is the way to go for their fiction. They’ve got a lot of reasons for it, but the one that stands out is that they think they can make more money by self-publishing, because writers make so little per book that unless you’re a hit, publishers don’t pay any attention to you and you’d be better off hiring a PR firm to market your book.

There are so many things I’d like to dispute in this thinking about the industry, not least of which that you only get PR attention if your book is already big (not true). While self publishing can be quite successful for very particular purposes–for example, independent comic artists tend to do better by self publishing (see my friend Howard at Schlock Mercenary for a great example)–and it can definitely serve writers who only have a limited audience in mind–as a family historian, I can tell you I’m looking forward to using LuLu or a similar service for several personal projects for which the only audience would be my family, and I know one friend who wrote a picturebook for her daughter and wanted to have it published in time for the daughter to be able to enjoy it, and felt that any other sales she might get would be a bonus–in general, for fiction, self-publishing is a sure way to ensure you spend a lot of money and that few people will ever see your book.

If you’re okay with that and have money to spare, go for it. But if you want your book to sell to a wide audience, especially if you’d like to make a living at your writing, self-publishing is definitely not the way to go, even if you know someone at a PR firm who would do some google-bombing and social networking for you. There are some very few exceptions—very few. Out of the several thousand self-published books every year, about 5, tops, break out enough to actually make a profit for the writer and/or get picked up by a trade publisher, and few more are actually well-written*. That’s not really very good odds, especially if the author is paying out of pocket for the PR and marketing.

Let’s break it down and talk about why this is. I’m pretty sure the majority of my readers will have heard this kind of thing before, especially if they frequent blogs like Writer Beware. But let’s assume a lack of basic knowledge of publishing for this post, because that’s where these friends, most of whom fall into the ‘would like to write someday” category, are coming from.

What’s in it for me?

Such prospective writers might think that a publisher is just plain greedy and is hogging all the money to themselves. Why not just get a bigger piece of the pie by publishing the book themselves—then even if it’s just a little bit more money, they’d still be making a better margin than the small percentage an author makes in a deal with a publishing house.

But there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes on at a publisher that a writer might not be aware of until he or she starts talking to people already in the industry, going to conventions and conferences, and just in general learning what it takes to get that lovely story from manuscript to beautiful, hardcover or paperback, finished book on a bookstore shelf.

What a good publisher contributes so that you don’t have to

While I agree that what most authors make per book can be harsh, that’s the reality of the book business. Most publishers don’t make that much, either–overhead of editors, art directors, and designers (and don’t discount the importance of a good editor, let alone somebody to make the book actually look good) takes up a small chunk, and then there’s the illustrator or photographer for the cover, and then there’s the overhead of production staff (typesetters, prepress staff), and then there’s the cost of printing the book–the price of which goes up all the time, due to the cost of freight, paper, etc.–and that all depends on the length of the run. Smaller runs (for example, self-published runs, which rarely go higher than 2000 books) are usually exorbitant because the cost per unit is smaller with increasing volume.

And don’t underestimate the contribution of a talented editor and design/art team to making your book more marketable and enjoyable. (Don’t get me started on the so-called “editing” of a vanity press. And the horror that is the covers and interior design of most self-published books… *shudder*) Few authors are able to bring forth a manuscript that needs no editing whatsoever—writing groups can be helpful, but the partnership with an editor who knows the particular market is an entirely different thing. It is an editor’s job to take that manuscript and shape it, mold it into the best story you have ever told. We’ve been trained in education and job experience to know what the market needs and to help you perfect your style and all those other things that a second pair of eyes can do. The different perspective of a like-minded professional makes such a difference, and it’s one that pretty much no self-published book I’ve ever seen benefits from.

Young readers especially are not even going to bother to pick up a book if it’s not packaged well. That means quality binding, beautiful artwork, nice finishes on the paper, clean and beautiful interior design, perhaps interior artwork. Who will illustrate your cover for you? Who will buy the fonts and design them? Do you really have either the money to hire an illustrator or photographer and know how to negotiate a contract for that, or the ability to illustrate or photograph and design your own cover? Do you own InDesign or QuarkXpress and can you make your book look as beautiful as the books on the shelves of the bookstores?

We’re living in a golden age of children’s and YA literature, and if a book’s cover doesn’t measure up, few kids will pick it up to know whether it’s worth reading or not.

So here’s our list so far:

  • editor
  • copyeditor
  • proofreader
  • illustrator (dust jacket, interior art)
  • designer/typesetters
  • art director
  • prepress staff (prepare book for printer, get quotes from printer, and other business-related liaising with printer)

Add to that other behind-the-scenes staff that you might not think of right away. How do you get a book listed in the Library of Congress? Most publishers have someone who submits the book for cataloging in publishing data. Did you know that the Library of Congress will not catalog self-published books?

And what about legal protection? If you self-publish, you will be the one legally responsible for what’s in your book. The legal team at a publisher usually reviews books as they head out to press to be sure that copyright and other legal information is correct, that contracts are in order, and all sorts of things that I can’t even begin to list because even I don’t know them all—but I do know that our legal team is always working hard and helping to make sure that all the legal details are considered. A contract between the author and publisher affords the author some legal protections—not a lack of responsibility, obviously, but it’s a partnership.

So we can add to the list:

  • legal/contracts
  • Library of Congress

But wait! There’s more!

Just the fact that the book can get printed by a printer who has access to higher-end paper, cover paper with nice glosses and varnishes and foil—these are things that few who self-publish could afford. When it’s right for a book, a trade publisher is more able to fit these kinds of things into the budget (not always of course—there are always sacrifices that have to be made—but it’s definitely more in the realm of possibility).

  • better printing

The publisher’s connections

Now let’s take this book out of the printer and off to the market—to the influencers. While the marketing and PR budgets for a publisher vary greatly depending on the book, they’ve got the force of a whole catalog list behind them, not to mention the publisher name, sales force contacts with each and every bookstore in the nation, especially the ability to get it into the chains, which have one buyer they have to convince for a whole network of bookstores.

If you’re self-publishing, it’s pretty rare to get your book into a bookstore unless you have connections at a local independent, and getting a self-published book into the chains is nigh on impossible unless you’re Christopher Paolini or one of the other five breakouts I referred to above. Few bookstore buyers want to deal with self-published books because they don’t give a discount like the big publishers will and won’t take returns.

That doesn’t even get into the review side of things, which are tough all over, too. Google-bombing and social network sites only do so much–you have to have a quality site to link to, which requires money to build, and you have to have people running that site with content. Perhaps this is where a PR firm might come in handy, but from my experience, you’d rather have your PR firm getting you in local media, getting interviews with your local radio stations and with bloggers in your field, getting press releases out to widely-read news outlets, and most importantly, getting your book the attention of the trade press such as PW or Kirkus, in either reviews or articles (as it applies). Few reviewers will review self-published books—and that includes bloggers with any kind of influence. Your PR is the way you reach booksellers, librarians, teachers, parents–all those gatekeepers that are between the publisher and the book. A good PR firm knows what influences each of these parties in their different ways, because each has particular needs and agendas.

  • marketing team
  • sales team
  • PR team

Granted, a lot of this kind of publicity is harder to get for a midlist author nowadays, but authors who are willing to work with their trade publishers at publicity will find that they don’t have to do it all. Authors need to get involved in the publicity of their books through reaching out to their community—school visits, library activities, local bookstore signings, throwing a launch party, talking to your local paper, etc. (I’ll have to do a post on author promotional tools sometime!)—and should be willing to attend conventions and conferences. This kind of grassroots publicity will then be a support to whatever marketing and publicity a publisher is able to give, and the author doesn’t end up having to do her job plus the job of a whole team of professionals. They can work in concert with each other, supporting each other’s efforts.

The market

One argument I’ve heard is that an author might be more successful in a niche market with a targeted web site than having a bookstore presence. While this may be true if you already have a built-in following (see my webcomic example), for most authors if you’re not already a household name to at least several thousand, if not tens of thousands, of people, then it’s a pretty hard sell.

Few people buy fiction through websites other than the standard bookselling ones. From what I understand, Amazon itself only accounts for 5% of the bookselling market. Those booklovers who do buy from Amazon tend to buy in large quantities, but those quantities usually consist of books they’ve looked at in a brick and mortar store or the library, and/or read reviews of in reputable review outlets. And as we already discussed, it’s very, very hard to get a self-published book reviewed by a reputable outlet. With something in the neighborhood of 2000-5000 children’s books published by publishing companies every year (I’m not sure of the exact number, as it fluctuates), it’s hard enough to get those reviewed, let alone the self-published books. Many reviewers won’t even review original paperbacks but even if they do, they often draw the line at self-published works.

Beware scam artists

If none of this daunts you and you’re thinking of self publishing, then you need to be extra cautious. Check out Preditors and Editors, Writer Beware, and the Writer Beware blog to ensure you’re not sucked into a scam vanity publisher.

What it costs

All of this costs money, capital that most authors don’t (and shouldn’t have to) possess. That is the strength of a traditional publisher

Have you ever seen a P&L for a publisher? That’s mostly a rhetorical question, since most are proprietary. What it comes down to is this: given the cost of all those services I listed above, and add in the author’s royalty, compare that to the list price, expected sales, and however many returns and discounts a publisher might be giving to a bookseller, and what you come out with are margins that are *extremely* low.

None of us are in it for the money, and there are definite market advantages to what a real publisher offers.

*And believe me, I see a lot of the other kind in my slush pile. (DO NOT think that self-publishing will get you the attention of a real publisher. In fact, it will ensure that book will never see the light of day from a regular publisher in most cases except for the very rare exceptions.)

Also, one reader asks:

No doubt you don’t need anyone to tell you this, but I wish SP folks realized that the places to advertise their book are not 1) editors–since if it’s already published they don’t need an editor (see Editorial Anonymous), 2) agents, since you can’t rep a book that’s already been published, and 3) boards for writers to discuss craft and traditional publishing. SP is not for me, but maybe a few pointers on where it IS appropriate to plaster your ads would be helpful to those who want to do it?

This is a very good question. Anyone want to tackle this in the comments? I’d say stay out of my inbox, stay off my Myspace, and please don’t market to me as an editor, period. I don’t want to see previously published stuff in my slush pile because I can’t publish previously published work.

I do think that especially if you’re writing science fiction and fantasy, you should be going to as many fan conventions as possible to market to actual readers. Sometimes school visits work. I know that Eragon did so well because his family packed up a van and traveled across the country selling it–I don’t know where. Was it at flea markets? Something like that–someone correct me, as I don’t have time to google it. Whatever it was, they did a great job and it ended up being successful for them. But just know that it’s going to be a big, uphill battle if you go the self-publishing route, and that when you act as your own publisher, you’re going to have to fill all the roles of the people I listed above, or hire them out yourself. That’s a lot to juggle, and for most people, they’d rather just be in charge of their writing, period. They’re willing to do the self promotion because it’s a necessary evil in this market–and because it connects them with readers.

FAQ: Take Joy, a review (sort of)

- Stacy

I think it appropriate that the book I will review today will be Jane  Yolen’s Take Joy, due to all the joy I’ve been taking in my new camera over the weekend. I’ve been finding the joy again in my photography that I’ve been delaying for so long because film has become such an encumbrance that I end up saving rolls of film for months–my latest batch included shots from San Diego Comic-Con last July, a trip I took last August, several rolls from my Christmas travels, as well as a variety of smaller events in the last six months–and by the time I get to see them again, the pictures have little meaning. I didn’t play with pictures as much as I used to when in photography classes because I don’t have the time to play in the darkroom making the exposure perfect (though how tempting it has been over the years to find a place I can build a darkroom, especially this last year because my uncle offered me his enlarger….).

Getting the digital camera, even in the first few days of use, has given me back that joy. I’m starting to remember the way I used to play with angles and ligh
ting and the strange subjects I used to seek out. I have done a little of that playing with my camera phone, but that’s more of a toy than a passion–when you’re dealing with a 2 MP camera, there’s only so much art you can create.

(I have a point, really I do.)

This is an important process to me, because I occasionally do a freelance article here and there, a wedding here and there, that kind of thing. I’m taking some pictures for our kickboxing teacher in a couple weeks to help him promote his new dojo. But I’d been feeling lately that I was losinig my chops. All my pictures ended up coming out the same–lots of flash burn, standard compositions, nothing out of the ordinary that gives you that wow factor. Competent, but not excellent. Even the pictures I posted in the last few days reflect those ways of seeing, though I love the salt shaker post because it’s something different, something new I tried after learning a few things about indoor lighting (the bane of my photographic existence).

So, what does this have to do with writing and with Jane Yolen’s book in particular?

The whole book is about that discovery process, giving writers permission to find that joy that I have been rediscovering in my photography. In the first chapter Yolen quotes Gene Fowler, “‘Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead'” and immediately refutes him: “I suggest you learn to write not with blood and fear, but with joy.” She says to forget about publishing, because it’s out of your hands, and to focus on the joy of your craft–of writing a story well, of really digging in and living in the story.

A very good premise. I mean, after all, why write if you don’t find joy in it? I write. I think I’ve said it before here. I have a story, a retelling of a Scottish fairy tale, that I’ve been working on since my last year at BYU, in 2001. It’s gone through many renditions, and the most I’ve ever finished was a novellette for a folklore class in grad school. Then I threw out the entire setting and decided to change it all around, and have gotten all of 10,000 words written since then in the new setting.

Why haven’t I finished it? Because while it brings me joy to live in that story, it doesn’t bring me enough joy to make it worth my time to write every night after doing a very similar activity at work every day. I fully admit I may never be a published fiction writer (I am a published non-fiction freelance writer over and over, but that’s a different market), and that’s enough for me to find the little joys in the little bits of writing I do from time to time because publication isn’t important to me–what’s important to me is the story in my imagination.

And mostly because I find that same kind of joy in being an editor to far better books than I could probably write right now.

For those who don’t have that push-pull of using up that creative energy before you can set pen to paper (metaphorically speaking), Yolen’s book will have much fodder for the imagination.

Though I must say that the whole numinous “the mystery of fiction,” “the mystery of the writing process,” bleh. Don’t make it all mysterious, as if someone with a little talent and a lot of effort can’t figure it out. There’s nothing mysterious about the combination of putting in the time to do something you love so that you can develop the inborn talent you have into something better. It’s work, but if you find joy in it, it’s time well spent, in my opinion.

But that may just be my practical Midwestern upbringing coming into play. Doesn’t mean that there isn’t mystery in the art, and if that motivates you to seek joy in creating art, whatever your art is, more power to you.

Back to Take Joy–as you have probably already guessed, this isn’t so much a review as a disjointed essay borne from a few ideas I’ve plucked from its pages–Yolen says
that “These stories grace our actual lives with their fictional realities. Like angels they lift us above the hurrying world.” I really like that idea. I don’t know if I can recapture what it is that caught me about that particular passage, but I’ll try.

As I was driving home the other night a program on NPR caught my attention. It was a Romanian professor by the name of Kodrescu (spelling? who knows?) who was speaking about the power of memories, how we create memories that didn’t actually happen and turn them to pedagogical uses, how we change memory to fantasy because sometimes fantasy feels more real than the reality it is trying to reflect.

How to express this? That talk really said something to me the other night, but now it’s slipping from my mind, and I can barely even remember who the speaker was at this point.

At any rate, I think what I’m trying to say is that sometimes in fiction we find more truth than we do in the reality we’re seeking to interpret. I’ve said this before about fantasy, about its wonderful metaphorical magic. We can talk about struggles, the epic battle between good and evil, the shades of gray, the variety of human existence, in so many ways in fantasy that we can’t do as well in realism sometimes because of the power the metaphor gives us–the power that the fictional, the fantasy (meaning the numinous, the fantastic, as well as simply the fantasy of making up a story), give us to assign multiple meanings and to interpret and reinterpret.

That the stories can “grace our actual lives with their fictional realities” can mean so many things, and I’m losing the ability to express what I’m trying to say.

At any rate, the book is a good read, and I think nonwriters as well as writers can benefit from the idea of taking joy in the art you pursue–remembering why you do what you do.

Of course, writers will get even more out of it, because she’s got some solid advice for writers in there about taking rejection well, the elements of a good story (beyond a simple anecdote to a fully drawn drama), finding your voice, even a whole section dedicated to specific practical advice. I love the little interludes, the little bits of wisdom between chapters. One such, before chapter 5, is especially apropos for anyone who writes historical fiction, fantasy, or other genres that require lots of research:

For a writer, nothing is lost. Research once done can be used again and again, a kind of marvel of recycling. As writers we need to be shameless about thieving from ourselves.

For example, I did two books on the Shakers–a nonfiction book called Simple Gifts and a novel, %3
Cem>The Gift of Sarah Barker. And it is no coincidence that the round barn I discovered in my historical research, I then used as a piece of setting in the Sarah Barker book. It later found its way into my young adult science fiction novel, Dragon’s Blood.

Good research swims upstream where it can spawn. (p. 41)

So there you have it, as one of hopefully a lot of writing book recommendations here at Stacy Whitman’s Grimoire, couched in an essay on finding my photography chops again. Check out the book–you might find some gems that help you find joy in your own writing.

How to become a book editor

- Stacy

Cheryl Klein from Scholastic just posted some really good advice on how to become a book editor.

The only thing I’d add to the internship advice is that if you need to work your way through school, as I did, colleges often have student editorial jobs. At BYU, where I went to school, I was the editorial assistant for the Humanities Publication Center. I also did an unpaid editorial internship, worked at the library, and worked at the University Press, as well as an off-campus job editing phone books and a job typesetting college textbooks at a prepress firm (that last was in Champaign, Illinois, while I was attending University of Illinois, so it goes to show those opportunities weren’t just available at the one school). If you can’t afford to take an unpaid internship, look for paid positions. They’re harder to find at the college level, but well worth it, and I was able to graduate with a little experience on my resume. This led directly to getting my first editorial job out of college.

Getting started as an editor

- Stacy

Ala alg’s post about getting a job in publishing.

When I tell people that I edit children’s books, their first answer is, “Oooh, how fun!” My answer is usually something like, “Yes, but it was also a lot of hard work to get here. And I’m still working.” But having a lot of fun while I do it!

Getting my dream job was not a straight path, unlike many in trade book publishing. The stereotypical path of a children’s book editor is to start out as an editorial assistant in a New York house and work your way up. You use certain skills as you do that, though, that I also used in my much-longer path to figuring out just what I wanted to do and how to do it.

Behind the cuts below, I’ve talked about each phase of my path to becoming a children’s and YA fantasy editor, but to sum up, I worked my way through college in publishing jobs, being willing to take any job or internship that presented itself as long as it was giving me more experience in the field. I was willing to work for cheap, if anything—while scrounging to make a living because I had no family money. As I worked at it, eventually I got jobs that led me closer and closer to my goal. After graduation, I still didn’t get my dream job, though, and needed to go to grad school to get that extra edge in the children’s lit field. While in grad school, I got some more experience, working for an educational publisher. And then, in a stroke of good networking at a part-time bookselling job, I got a tip that led me to the job opening for my current job. Long road, but using the same elements that everyone else did: who you know and what you know. Network and build your skills. And then move to where the jobs are.

It starts way back when I was an animal science-prevet major at the University of Illinois. I decided I hated chemistry. So I picked the best-sounding major that would keep me within the College of Agriculture, so I could keep my scholarship. Thus, I became a human development and family science major. Worked in a few preschools.

At the time I had a friend who worked at a local prepress. My friend copyedited college textbooks, and it occurred to me that it would be a lot more fun to do that than to chase toddlers and two-year-olds around for $5 an hour at a daycare with no benefits. I love kids, but teaching wasn’t fitting me, especially teaching an age group that was mainly potty-training.

I got hired there as a typesetter, programming books in Unix in the early 90s, about the time that Quark was first being introduced. Another team was figuring out Quark, but I worked on math and physics textbooks, and the equations came out looking better when done in Unix.

Later, taking some time off school, I went home and worked at the local newspaper for a few months. I then moved to Utah, where I got a job editing phone books for Phone Directories Co., where I was considered the expert at catching errors in the White Pages. Talk about repetitive and detail-oriented. While working at PDC, I was also working on finishing my bachelor’s degree at BYU. I ended up quitting PDC so I could go back to school full-time.

I got a job on campus at the library in the Special Collections department, where I got to see ancient texts, Victorian books, and all sorts of amazing things about the history of publishing. During summers, I juggled that job and a job at the University Press, where I used my photography skills (one of my many majors in those years) to make slides of artwork for professors to use in class. While working at the press, though, I also got to help out in the press itself whenever they needed an extra hand.

During this time, I took a children’s literature class as an elective in my major (back to human development and family studies, with an emphasis on children’s literature, so I could graduate quicker, even though I was toying with the idea of becoming an editor after graduation). It was like lightning struck–wow! I could combine these interests! I could do good things for children, and I could work with books! It was an epiphany—one I can’t believe I had earlier.

So I took an editing class in the English department. Completely out of my major, but I thought I needed to hone my skills a little. In that class, I met , who announced that Leading Edge magazine was looking for students to join its staff as slush readers. My time reading slush at that magazine directly led to getting my first job out of college. Plus, I’m still good friends with many of the people I met there.

Also in that class, I heard that the director of the Humanities Publication Center was hiring an editorial assistant for the next semester. Not only did I take an unpaid internship with him the next semester, I got the EA job, so I did a lot of copyediting of campus journals like the Journal of Microfinance and the Journal of Comparative Religion.

After college graduation, I couldn’t find a good full-time job in Utah (big surprise), so I moved home to western Illinois to figure out where to go next. I had no money to just up and move to New York, so I knew I needed to find something a little more local, even if it wasn’t my end goal of children’s literature.

No real opportunities presented themselves near home, but I did know some people in Chicago, and called them up to see if I could stay with them for a few days while I interviewed for a job. These friends suggested that I cold-call all the publishers in the Chicago area from the phone book, just to see if they were hiring. So I went down the list alphabetically, and Barks Publications was hiring. When I sent in my resume, I didn’t even know what they published, but I was hungry for a job, and they’d just had their publisher’s assistant quit. I took the job.

Turns out they published a trade magazine in the electromechanical aftermarket (industrial electric motors, and everything related to them). My grandpa was an electrician and I grew up on a farm, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch for me to learn all I could about motors so I could be advanced through the company and become an editor. I started out answering phones
at the front desk as publisher’s assistant, and a year later, I was associate editor, in my own office writing articles, editing columns, and copyediting the whole final magazine.

But I still wanted to do something with children’s literature, so I read all I could, joined the local SCBWI chapter, and even tried to take a night class in writing. But that class was filled with literary snobs who looked down upon children’s lit, genre fiction, and generally anything commercial, so I dropped it within a week and started looking for other options.

Eventually in my search, I found children’s literature master’s programs. There was the writing for children master’s at Vermont College, or there were children’s lit programs at Illinois State in Bloomington and at Simmons College in Boston. At that time, I attended an SCBWI presentation by Anita Silvey, who once edited the Horn Book magazine and had just recently retired from being editor in chief/publisher at Houghton Mifflin children’s trade. She taught at both Vermont College and Simmons College, so I asked her advice when she signed my book. Her answer–“If you want to be an editor, Simmons College, no question.” No other school had the contacts and the depth of education in the literature itself, she said.

Simmons it was. I never really planned on being in a master’s program–it took me nine years to get my bachelor’s, and that tends to discourage one from going on to higher degrees–but I thought that even if I never finished the program, I’d be better off for having experience in the children’s field.

Grad school, especially in Boston at a private college, is expensive. So I started looking for ways to make it less expensive. One part of that was getting a job: temping at Houghton Mifflin in the School division. When they offered me a full-time editorial assistant position, I took it and went on sabbatical to raise a little money for school. Soon they’d promoted me to associate editor when they discovered my experience. I made a lot of good friends at Houghton, and editing social studies textbooks for 5th and 6th graders really taught me a lot–both about editing/the publishing business and about history, geography, and culture.

But I still wanted to work in trade children’s books, so I went back to school after about a year. Took Anita Silvey’s publishing class, took a really great folklore class, and a lot of other classes that really delved deep into the literature. Got an internship at the Horn Book that fall, sorting books and doing other clerical jobs for both the Magazine and the Guide. Had a great time being a “intern fly on the wall,” as Roger Sutton once put it, getting to sit in on meetings about how they chose the starred books each month.

The next semester I got a part time job at the local Barnes and Noble, because that was the last place in the book business I’d had a job and because I needed the cash. What a blessing that I did! I got to know a few coworkers, and in talking with , found that she was as into fantasy and science fiction as I was.

While in grad school, I’d also started networking as much as possible with editors from publishers in Boston and New York. Whenever there was a conference in town–WorldCon came to Boston in 2004, where I met Anna Chan from Tor, and ALA Midwinter was in Boston in 2005, where I met a few other editors at various houses, who all said to let them know when I graduate and they’d help me find where the openings were.

About a month after I started at B&N, comes into work and says, “Hey, did you see that Wizards of the Coast is hiring a children’s book editor?” I hadn’t, because all those editors I’d been talking with said to wait till after graduation to start looking for a job–preferably after I’d moved to New York.

I figured I’d apply anyway, even though graduation was still a good two months away, figuring that if the interview process took time, it’d be close to graduation, so what did I have to lose?

Happily, I got a first interview, by phone. Then a second interview, by phone. Both went really well, and I felt like I’d work really well with the senior editor in charge of Mirrorstone Books, and that the company would be a good fit–great benefits, great city. So when I got the offer, even though New York was certainly closer, it was a bird in the hand thing. I could move to New York (with barely any money) and gamble that I’d get a job in children’s lit that would let me work on fantasy, or I could move to Seattle and start on children’s fantasy from Day 1.

Right when I got out here, I found out from a writer friend that her editor at Bloomsbury was hiring an associate editor. Part of me kicked myself for not having patience, but the other part of me says that who knows? Maybe eventually I’ll find myself at Bloomsbury, or maybe I’ll just start publishing books like the ones I love so much from Bloomsbury.

I picked the bird in the hand, and it’s really worked out for me. The series I edit are doing well, and I have a new series coming out next year that I’ve helped develop from the beginning. We’re even starting to take manuscripts for standalone books. I’ve really grown as an editor, while getting to watch the imprint grow, too.

If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’re not bored by the details. Like I said at the beginning, it’s always a combination of improving your skills as an editor–both as a generalist and within your chosen field–and networking so that you know people who know where the job openings are. Then, you move to where the job openings are. For most, that means New York. I was lucky to find a job in a city with a little lower standard of living, but it took me a long time to get here. Good luck in your own search.