I love the “bubbling up stew” of books coming from lots of heretofore undiscovered places. Excellent news. I also love the library market and am grateful beyond grateful that it’s done so well in the past and is continuing to do so. More folks are using their library cards to check out books rather than pulling out there credit cards to purchase.

In these difficult times, it’s wonderful to see new ideas “bubble up!”

Thanks for sharing this with us all,

Joanne Sundell

Matchmaker, Matchmaker
A…My Name’s Amelia
The Parlor House Daughter
Meggie’s Remains
The Quaker and the Confederate~Hearts Divided
The Quaker and the confederate~Hearts Persuaded

I am wondering why you say you “paid the price” for your success?

Again, it all comes down to understanding the publishing business. Part of my stump speech when I teach writing seminars is to point out that if any one of the students in the room were starting a new business, they would instinctively understand not only their own product, but also what the competition is doing. Before they asked for financing, they would develop a business plan and a marketing plan to show the bank how their investment would be protected. They would have a good idea of how they were going to alert the world to the presence of their new product.

Well, there’s a reason why most writers (artists in general) don’t own businesses, and it has a lot to do with the fact that on balance, they’re not wired for all of the grunt work that goes into building a success. They want a publisher (or an art dealer or a record company) to buy their stuff and make them successful, and it just never happens that way. Okay, it RARELY happens that way. With limited exceptions, myself among them and I’m still paying the price in some regards, the people on the bestseller lists got there by publishing a lot of books. They started small, got a couple of breaks and worked their tails off to build a market for their words and stories.

Anyone not willing to do the work for themselve should not expect others to do it for them.

You are absolutely right when you say that many writers are duped by the self-publishing industry into believing that once they have the books in their hands, sales will automatically follow. Nothing could be further from the truth, and many writers find themselves terribly disappointed. On the other hand, however, I have also heard from writers with commercial contracts who felt that their publishers did not give them the sales/marketing support they needed. One of the reasons I decided to invest in marketing Choke Creek on my own is because I felt that I would need to do that work whether or not I had commercial backing for my book.

If I can build an audience for CC on my own, I will definitely approach an agent again. It’s lonely out here and it would be great to have someone else working with me to help make the book a success.

What I admire most about your response (apart from the success it documents) is your embracing of publishing as a business that requires all the sweat equity of a more traditional business. My primary concern about the self-publishing world is how authors who are unaware of these business elements can be easily duped into believing that once their book is printed and posted on an internet marketing site, people will find it and buy it.

I’ve admittedly been very fortunate in my more traditional publishing career; but from where I sit, the self-publishing strategy appears to be orders of magnitude more difficult. It’s certainly not a decision to be made lightly.

Again, congratulations on your successful navigation of the mine field!

My own story is instructive. I am a Pushcart Prize nominee, a writer who has published fiction in revered (and largely nowadays defunct) print literary magazines such as Partisan Review, StoryQuarterly, and Fiction. When I failed to get an agent for my first novel, I accepted the reality that it was–as my first–flawed and best left in my drawer. But my second was a different story. Over seven years I researched, drafted, wrote, and revised Choke Creek, with the help of professional editors and writers such as John Dufresne and Gerald Duff. In the end I still couldn’t find an agent for it, because while many admired the novel, they feared they would not be able to sell it: as a novel with teen protagonists but a complex narrative structure, it was deemed too sophisticated for young adult but unmarketable to adults. But I believed passionately in not only my book but also in the story it had to tell, which is based on the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, one of the most atrocious–and forgotten–incidents in U.S. history. I decided to “put my money where my mouth was” and start my own publishing company. Now I am spending my time getting the word out about Choke Creek, and the response has been both positive and gratifying.
I have the joy of knowing that my book is being read, and as a new publisher, I have the added pleasure of helping other writers do what I did, and get their work into print.

You are also right in that marketing Choke Creek has taken precious time (and energy) away from my next novel. In an ideal world I would hole myself and work on it like I did when I wrote Choke Creek. But it is underway and I have confidence that in time it will be done.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. All self-published writers ask is to be given a chance. Check out my website http://www.laurensmall.com–and the websites of other writers you come across. Read an excerpt. Make up your own mind. The world is changing, and we are well-advised to change with it.

If getting your book into the hands of friends and family, a Kinko’s would serve you as well as a self-publishing house. What a publisher does–or is supposed to do, and often with uneven success–is get the book into the hands of booksellers and book-buyers thousands of miles away. The publisher’s subrights department greases the skids to get the book translated and distributed in foreign countries as well.

Most of the books you see on the shelves of your local bookstore arrive through a distribution netowrk that involves wholesalers and transporters. After a few months, the books that don’t sell are returned to the publisher for a full refund.

On the authors’ side of the deal, we’re not out a dime on any of this. In fact, we’re paid cash as an advance against royalties, and the money is ours to keep even if the publisher fails to sell a single copy of the book. I write and get paid; the publisher takes all of the risk. As compensation for that risk, he keeps the lion’s share of the book’s cover price.

For self-published authors, none of that infrastructure is in place. Many bookstores refuse to stock self-published books because they cannot returned unsold stock. If they do agree to stock a self-published book it’s probably because the visiting author is a good salesman. That’s all well and good, but who’s writing the next book (and probably working the day job) while the author is out there pounding the pavement?

I’m the first to admit that there’s a lot of crap out there from traditional publishers, but in every case, at least there’ve been some editorial hurdles. First, the literary agent blesses the book, and then it’s passed to an acquiring editor who in most cases has to get approval from others before making an offer to buy the book. After that, there are several more editing passes before the book is finally printed and distributed. I don’t know if it’s frightening or comforting to know that the stuff on the shelves is there after such a thorough vetting.

Given all the hoops that are jumped through in the traditional publishing route, it’s easy to see how self-published material can be perceived by booksellers and some book-buyers as being too undercooked for general consupmtion. I’m not saying they’re right necessarily, but the perception is understandable.

With all respect, the notion that publishers are resistant to new talent is just wrong. They live off of new talent. The problem is that since the advent of word processing software, everybody with a keyboard has come to consider themselves a publishable author. It’s just not true. The marketplace has no room for a bad story well-told, or a good story poorly told. (Again, intelligent minds will differ on those definitions, but in this context, the only votes that count are the agents, editors and readers.)

I think there’s undeniably a place for self-publishing. The history of a certain military unit, for example, or the story of how your grandfather made his fortune against all odds are tales that will resonate with a certain definable group that is almost certainly large enough to recoup the author’s investment, but nowhere near large enough to attract the attention of a mainstream publisher.

What I worry about–and what turns a lot of people in the publishing industry off of the self-publishers–is the fact that people who enter into those contracts often do so without knowing what they’re getting into. For the forseeable future, the two publishing routes will never be seen as “equal,” anymore than a community theater production of a play will be considered the equivalent of Broadway.

The talent may be equal, but it’s reputation that pays the bills.