I've finally come to the end of my tether and I am contemplating self-publishing. I always viewed this as the very last resort for my work, but believe it's currently the only way my first novel will see the light of day! I am considering using Grosvenor House Publishing - anybody heard of them? They are a POD company and seem quite reputable. I have no illusions about the difficulty of the path I am proposing to take. I am considering hiring a book publicist for at least one month - does anyone know of any good book publicists in London? I will of course pay to have my manuscript proofread and edited fully before doing this. I am still not sure whether this is the best course of action and whether I should hold out a little bit longer. Any views on self-publishing generally and any experiences members have had would be useful here.

If you are self-publishing with the aim of finding an agent or traditional publishher, then don't do it.

If you are self-publishing in the hope that others will read the novel but are not looking for financial remuneration, then I would go for a limited imprint and sell face to face at craft fairs (you won't need an ISBN number), and/or donate the copies to libraries where you will be paid a small royalty payment each time someone borrows it (you will need an ISBN number).
If you POD publish there's no point in hiring a book publicist - simply a waste of money. Don't expect to generate sales via Amazon or other online websites.
You wil not get the books into any bookshops.


- NaomiM

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Don't self-publish. There are no advantages. Put this one away in your bottom drawer and concentrate on writing the next one.

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Your money would be better spent getting an editorial report done on the mss, and use it to help you write the next one.

Hi Traveller,

I don't know enough about the position your novel is in to judge, but you can answer this yourself.

If it has been a near miss with several agents, who've all loved the full script but been unable to place it, or with publishers who praise it but don't think it fits their list or whatever else they say, then yes, if you have the money, energy and commitment, self publish.

But if you've had no solid, positive response from anyone, then...well, if I were in your position, I'd look at how much self publishing and self-publicising costs and put that money into some intensive tutoring/mentoring from an author I admire, so that the next piece of work was far stronger.

I understand the allure of having the solid product of your labours in your mitts (you can get a few copies for a few quid at Lulu, I'm told) but personally I'd rather get better at writing than spend money on producing something I might be ambivalent about later on.

I'm not saying your book isn't up to scratch - not read it! - but that the call on whether to self-publish fiction or not is largely measurable by how industry professionals have responded to it.

Hi Traveller.

It's pretty much impossible to get self-published books onto Amazon, and if your book is neither on bookshop shelves, nor on Amazon, then all the book publicists in the world won't make any difference, if ordinary people can't lay hands on the book to have a look at it, by their ordinary route, once their interest has been tickled.

A publicist would be putting in the same kind of work that a publisher would reckon to do, albeit more concentratedly. It may be nothing to do with the quality of the book, but if a publisher doesn't think they could get enough media notice in the six weeks or so when they're concentrating on your book, then a publicist might well do better (not having so many other books to worry about). But better enough to compensate for the sales lost for lack of visibility? As far as I know it costs tens of thousands of pounds to have six weeks of a publicist's attention, and for it to bear any fruit the books would have to be ready and waiting in the shops, which means a serious print bill before you've sold a single one.

Playing devil's advocate here, admittedly. But it could be a very, very expensive route to go down...

Thanks for the responses - sorry, I should have been a bit clearer. Grosvenor House offer a one year listing on Amazon, an ISBN number and
distribution via wholesale booksellers Bertrams, Gardners and Nielsons see link below.

http://www.selfpublishing.co.uk/what_do_i_get.html

Cerys - thanks for your response. Yes, of course, I've had positive feedback and near misses (you'd have to be crazy to consider self-publishing otherwise!). This is coming at the end of considerable encouragement from various people who thought it wasn't quite there but that I had elements of something special. I had an editorial report commissioned a couple of years ago which was very helpful and I've decided I know what works and doesn't. But revising the manuscript hasn't been quite enough to convince agents and publishers. I think I've taken it as far as it will go and there are people who have read it both in New York and London.

Ultimately, I believe in this book and I feel logically the next step is to put my product out there and see what the reaction is. It's a big risk but it's one I feel like taking after working for years on the manuscript and not necessarily moving it forward.

Regarding moving on to something else - I've done that already. But I feel this first novel is the novel that's going to be my breakthrough work. It is the singular work that has attracted the most interest (and I've written six). I am working on other novels of course but I feel it's my strongest work that has stood the test of time.

Naomi, can you elaborate in relation to your comments about not being able to generate sales on Amazon as a POD published book?

EmmaD - yes it would have to be proportionate, but I'm willing to pay at least £1000 to have my book marketed properly. I would do this even if I had a publishing deal. I think marketing is key to the success of any book. I have no idea what book publicists charge - but maybe there are some freelance publicists who could get my book reviewed or a radio interview or something that would get my book out there at a reasonable price?


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Cerys - re-reading your post - that's precisely the point. I've always thought that agents and publishers are necessary filters for work that isn't good enough to get through. That's why I've waited FIVE YEARS, before even seriously considering self-publishing!

Bookshops simply won't stock them even if you do a limited imprint and go round begging them to take a copy. Even if you do manage to presuade one or two in your local area to take a copy, they'll expect a 40% discount and will take it on a sale or return basis, which means they won't pay upfront to stock it. And that's physical copies, they can't stock virtual POD copies.
If you're hiring a book pubublicist, you'll need a platform - something that makes you stand out from the crowd - since you will be selling yourself, rather than the book. So what celebrity attributes do you have?

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Sorry, crossed with you traveller.

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Amazon are going over to their own POD publishing outfit (not sure what it is) so they don't like stocking other POD published books.
If they do agree to sell them, they put a markup on the books - a so-called 'finders fee' - which prices them out of the market.

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Plus Amazon stocks millions of titles, so it's not something anyone is going to come across just browsing the site, so you then have the problem of telling people it's there...

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The plain truth is the market is saturated with books, sold via bookshops, online, supermarkets, charity shops, car boot sales.... There are far too many titles chasing too few readers to the extent that often you can't even give them away. At the bottom of this pile, at least in the consumer's estimation, are self-published books. It is not just a matter of geting it properly proof-read and editied, it comes with a whiff of failure that damns it from the start unless you are good at selling yourself. The one advantage you have is peopl will buy anything, if you give them the hard sell, a winning smile and a firm handshake. They won't read the book, but they'll happily pay you for a copy if they like you.

Wait a second, Naomi, hasn't Grosvenor House publishing dealt with the 40% discounting below in the book print cost? I would appreciate if you would give their website a little look as I'm new to this self-publishing lark and don't want to be misled by wrong advice!

http://www.grosvenorhousepublishing.co.uk/bookprintcost.php?x10=tdr

"Paperback Hardcover
Retail Price £9.99 £16.99
Retailer discount @ 40% £ 4.00 £ 6.80
Balance £ 6.00 £10.19
Costs of printing * £ 3.72 £ 8.02

Author royalty £ 2.28 £ 2.17


* Based on a 252 page book sized 198 x 129 and the price is the same for 1 to 5000 copies of the book. Delivery is an extra cost on top of the above prices.
As you can see from the above example the royalty you receive is 22.8% of the retail price of the paperback book and 12.77% of the hardback book. However, the retail prices (especially the paperback book) are quite a bit higher than you would find for the average book."

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OK, I take your point about Amazon, although I didn't know they priced POD books out of the market (are you sure about this?)

So having a listing on Amazon is meaningless really unless you advertise the fact that it's on Amazon...hmmmm.

You're doing a good job of putting me off self-publishing - which I guess is what I wanted coming on Writewords!

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That's an interesting point Naomi about selling. I've often wondered how submissive book marketing is - I mean, you never see authors lugging their books round the streets trying to sell them? Why not? Why shouldn't writers sell their novels in a more proactive way? Surely there's a huge untapped market there...

You might get lucky, but then oyu have the problem that 12 months down the line your budding readership is going to expect the next title - do you have anything for them?

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It's a fun if treated as a hobby, albeit an expensive one, but it doesn't make you an author. You'll just be a writer who self-published. Join the club.

Ok, you've convinced me. I'm not going to waste my money self-publishing...


















yet

I'm not anti-self-publishing, but the majority of people go into it for all the wrong reasons.
The success stories have been those that have built up a readership by word of mouth. It's a slow process but it can be done if the book is good enough.
You don't need to pay a publicist, You can do your own publicity by writing a press release and sending it out to your local newspapers, and offering to go on local radio to talk about it. And local bookshops will often allow you to do a booksigning for a cut of the sales - but you'll need physical copies to do that, which means a limited print run of, say, 500 hundred copies, which is a big initial outlay, and it's unlikely oyu'll recoup your investment once you've taken petrol and postage, etc, into account.
Do a handful of proof copies via Lulu.com, because there'll always be typos and layout problems in the first run, and give them to freinds and family and see if they recommend it to their freinds. If they do, you'll know it's got a potential market and is worth going ahead and self-publishing.

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If you were self-publishing for the right reasons, then everything I've said in earlier posts would not have put you off.

Just to add to the 'Don't do it!' crowd. Promoting on local radio is more difficult than you may think. Most local commercial stations have very limited speech content and many carry non local 'network' programming for most of the day.

That leaves community radio (very limted listenership) and the local BBC. Local beeb are great BUT, depending on where you are, they will have their fair share of authors wanting to go on air. You will need to find a marketing 'hook' for you and your book that will make you an enticing guest.

You know traveller - I just wouldn't do it.....

The advantage of self-publishing, is the validation one feels when just one person reads it and likes it. After all, a painter will sell a picture to just one person who likes it, and it hangs on one wall, in one room with very few other people knowing about it or caring about it. If it's good enough for the painter, it should be good enough for a writer. Success shouldn't be measured by what our peers think of us, nor by the number of copies sold, nor whether or not we get a publishing contract out of it. Success is measured by one person buying it, reading it and liking it.



- NaomiM

I can see it's very frustrating to have got that near and not quite got there - that's hard.

I think for a publicist to do anything worth paying them in the first place it's more like £10,000, because it takes time as well as expertise and a careers-worth of contracts. Anyone can learn to write a press release: it's chatting up existing contacts and pursuing things and pursuing them again which takes the time. The difficulty in promoting fiction is finding the angle to get them interested. For non-fiction it's easier, because your platform is, by definition, what you wrote the book about. But fiction? Someone writing a novel is not news, except to a village, or if they have truly extraordinary circumstances which make news in themselves: what my US editor the non-fiction hook.

you never see authors lugging their books round the streets trying to sell them? Why not? Why shouldn't writers sell their novels in a more proactive way? Surely there's a huge untapped market there...

You do, in a sense: they're called readings.

I think this is where you have to put your readers' hat on - not your writer-who-reads-voraciously hat, but your average-jo/joe-who-reads-a-few-books-a-year. The Book Trust defines a heavy reader as someone who reads five books a year. Why should they read yours? What it is about yours that will make him/her shell out £13.99 for a LuLu paperback, when s/he is used to buying £7.99 pbs at 40% discount in Tesco, and that's of authors s/he knows and trusts to do what it says on the tin, because their last one did?

Emma

I don't understand your comment Naomi about self-publishing for the right reasons. What makes you think you are such a great arbiter of what is right or wrong when you have not even read my work? I find it quite bizarre how people can pass judgment when they are so uninformed. Perhaps it's simply ignorance (which needs to be tolerated when posting online), but annoys me nonetheless.

EmmaD - these are all pertinent questions which really focuses the mind. I truly believe there is a market for my novel. A market of 18-40 year old readers who will love my novel and buy it on the strength of the first three chapters alone. Not only that, I believe my novel has an international audience as it deals with themes that cross national boundaries such as race and religion. What distinguishes my work from the plethora of novels out there is simply literary quality. The writing is of a very high standard. However, I do take the point that the bar is very high in the area I am trying to compete in and perhaps this is the concern of some editors or agents.

My novel is unique though. It addresses concerns that are not evident in literary fiction as represented by the bourgeois purveyors of published novels in 2009. It is fresh, original...utterly original. This alone is reason for it to be published among the noisy ranks of chick-lit, celebrity fiction and manufactured thrillers perpetuated by our publishing industry in the name of the singular unashamed pursuit of profit.

I'm sorry that you didn't understand my comments, Traveller - they were about perceptions and mindsets. I wasn't taking a dig at you or your book, and I apologise for causing offense.


- NaomiM

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I think you should self-publish and get to view the glass from the other side. It would certainly change your perceptions of the industry.

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tbh, with that attitude, I think self-publication will be your only option.