Loose Change

Inside E-Publishing 101

What’s in your in-box? No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

By Margaret Riley, publisher, ChangelingPress.com

Dear Author;

Thank you so much for submitting your work to us. While we found this proposal interesting, we regret to inform you that at present…

What, as a writer, could possibly be worse than opening your mail to find another rejection letter? Four possibilities:

1) Nothing. Nothing is what happens when you never submit anything to anyone. A rejection letter is a sign you’ve taken the first step toward becoming a professional author -- completed a manuscript and begun the process of selling your work.

2) A request for a full, based on the partial you submitted but never finished. Not the way to win an editor’s heart. Editors work long hours, and read a lot of things they’d rather not. When an editor finally finds something she thinks she could make work, don’t disappoint her by not following through. Don’t count on having months to finish the manuscript while your proposal languishes on a desk somewhere. This is E-Pub. We move at the speed of Broadband. You should have an acknowledgment of receipt in forty-eight hours, and a response to your work within thirty to sixty days, depending on the submissions editor’s backlog. And if your email catches her eye, and something clicks, she could ask you for a full in twenty-four hours. It’s happened.

3) An acceptance letter you’re not prepared for:

Dear Author:

Thank you so much for submitting your work to us. We love your proposal. We’re delighted to offer you a contract for the e-book rights to this story. Your editor’s name and email address are listed below. Please submit your marketing proposal --

Right about now most new authors go into a total panic. Wait! Edits? I have to do edits? And what’s a marketing proposal? Print Houses don’t ask for these, do they? Why do I have to market my own books? Isn’t that the publisher’s job? I thought I was done!

Think again. Writing the book’s the fun part. Now comes the work. Your book will go through a couple of stages. In the editing phase you get to cut all those long pieces of back story you so lovingly crafted that no one but you cares a whit about. (I say this with all confidence, because I used to write 30K or so of this stuff at the front end of a novel.) Once the drek’s been cut, you get to fix sentence structure, eliminate 172 exclamation points, remove 76 uses of the word SUDDENLY, or whatever your favorite word was for this book, and in our world at least, add more sex. The good news is, everyone working with you knows you’re a first time author. They’ll be kind and patient. This time.

The other piece of good news: No matter how good the book is, if they thought it was the only book you’d ever write, they wouldn’t be wasting their time on you, because, trust me, first books are a LOT of work for author and editor. You’ve made mistakes you’ll never make again -- and you don’t even know you made them yet. The learning curve is amazing during this first book. You’ll learn more than you did in three semesters of creative writing.

In the production phase, your books will go through the proofing department and the line editing department. These are the people who look for all the uses of through when you meant though, and spot the places where you left word out the sentence, and notice the heroine’s name is spelled three different ways. This is also what happens in all those weeks between when the edits are done, and when your book releases, while you’re wondering why nothing’s happening. Something’s happening, you’re just not part of it. While you’re waiting, you need to do two things: Start the next book, and start marketing.

Back to marketing. What’s a marketing proposal? Print Houses don’t ask for these, do they?

Here’s a shocker. No one in our world really cares how they do it in New York. We’re not trying to be New York. We’re trying to run successful small businesses. Part of our job is not only to publish your book, but to make sure it sells. We can’t do that alone. We can have the best promotions team in the business, and if you can’t market yourself you’re not going to sell. Just sticking it up on the front page of the website with a pretty cover won’t sell books.

Almost every E-Pub asks for a marketing proposal, either directly or indirectly. If the submissions editor likes your book, the next thing she’ll look at is how marketable YOU are. Do you have a website? A blog? A Yahoo! group? Are you active anywhere? Write fanfic? Have free stories posted at online sites? Does anyone know your name?

Marketing doesn’t have to cost hundreds of dollars to be effective. It does require a commitment of time, energy, and creativity. That’s all your marketing proposal needs to reflect. It’s not a test you can fail. It’s just a measure of your willingness to be part of the sales process.

4) Forgot there was a four, didn’t you? Remember the initial question -- What, as a writer, could possibly be worse than opening your mail to find another rejection letter? Four possibilities. Number four is a touchy subject. Signing with the wrong company. Almost all E-Publishers are good people, working hard to run successful small businesses. And there’s the problem. E-Publishing is a small business. For the most part we’re not talking about multi-million dollar a year companies. E-Publishing caters to niche markets. Because of the media, the book costs less to produce, so even though you make 5 to 10 times more per copy, E-Publishers can produce books that will break even at much lower sales numbers than large print houses. Where a print book at a New York house may need to sell hypothetically, say, 10,000 copies to break even, an E-Book may need to sell well under 500.

That’s good, right? Surely my book will sell at least 500 copies.

Maybe. Five hundred copies is pretty good for most E-books. Remember, E-Publishing works because we’re filling a niche market -- a vacuum not big enough for larger houses to see potential profitability. The smaller the niche, the smaller the share of the market. Gothic Male/Male Horror won’t have near the sales potential Erotic Paranormal does. It’s up to you to target your work to a specific audience, market to that audience, and then submit to publishers who are known and respected in that online community. If you want to write M/M Gothic, find an online community for lovers of M/M Gothic. Find out approximately how many groups there are for M/M Gothic, and how many members. If there are three Yahoo! groups with an average of 200 members each, then odds are some members are in all three groups. Assume you have a potential market of maybe 300 readers. If you’re very, very good at your marketing, 20% of those readers will buy your book. Sixty copies? Not great odds!

So you move on to a slightly more popular genre. Join a few groups. Visit blogs and review sites. See what publishers’ books the readers and reviewers are talking about. Where’s the buzz? Pay attention to the authors who are posting excerpts. Ask, privately, if they’d be willing to answer some questions, and ask as many questions as they’re willing to answer.

<I>How do you like working with this publisher? How are sales -- what’s your average sell-thru? Are their contract terms fair? Do their editors EDIT -- are they going to keep me from looking like an idiot? Do you get paid on time? And, most importantly, Will you submit your next book to this same publisher?

Know the answers to these questions ahead of time, and your inbox won’t look nearly as frightening.

Margaret Riley

Changeling Press LLC