Category: Publishing Pulse

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Publishing Pulse

Don’t Let the Industry Dehumanize You

If you are an author, a human being writing for other human beings, you have been blessed with a precious ability. If you write fiction, you have the unique gift of storytelling. If you write nonfiction, you are no less creative, because you have devised ways to describe and explain truth to make it understandable and compelling. Don’t let it go to your head, but also don’t deny the importance of the  role you play in the publishing industry.

I feel the need to make such a warning because the publishing industry can tend to dehumanize us (a danger I suspect is found to some extent in most industries). But book publishing wasn’t always this way; the artistic and creative interaction between authors and publishers tended to keep the human factor at the forefront. It’s only in the last couple of decades that the publishing industry—or I should say, certain elements of the publishing industry—began referring to the person who writes the words as a “content provider.”

It all came about innocently enough. With the advent of ebooks (and to some extent, audiobooks, computer apps and other derivative products), publishers started realizing that they were not the purveyors of books, but of content. The author’s words were what had value, and the medium—paper and ink, a text file, or an audio file—were merely the window dressing. In a sense, they made an about-face from the 1960s chant of Marshall McLuhan that “the medium is the message” to see that the value was in the message, regardless of medium. The new refrain has become “content is king.”

I appreciate the sentiment. Of course, the content is what makes the book, the ebook, the audiobook a sellable product, but where does the content come from? It comes from the mind of the author, not from a computer with artificial intelligence, and certainly not from an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters. They really have it all wrong—the author is king, and always has been. Your words are the commodity that is for sale on the marketplace. The rallying cry of “content is king” attempts to divorce the product (the content, your words) from the creator and owner of the content—you, the author.

Consider the attitude of Amazon’s publishing arm toward authors and content. They claim to have the most content of anyone—and that is true, except they don’t own that content, they did not create that content, and (unlike most traditional publishers) they do little or nothing to develop and polish that content.

A lot of authors think it is wonderful that Amazon allows them to publish their material with little or no editorial “interference.” But the better authors, the ones that succeed, realize their creation needs polishing, and their creative ideas need an editorial sounding board—the feedback of a first reader, who may see problems that the author is blind to. You get that polishing, that sounding board, at a good traditional publisher, but you won’t get it at a self-publishing provider such as Amazon. It is unlikely that you will even have any interaction with a human being—the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system is computer-automated. Talk about dehumanizing!

So don’t let the “content” mongers dehumanize you. Demand (or if you are self-publishing, pay for) a real, live editor who will work with you creatively to hone your manuscript into the best book it can be.

David E. Fessenden

Literary Agent, WordWise Media Services
Publisher and Proprietor, Honeycomb House Publishing LLC

David Fesseden has degrees in journalism and theology, and over 30 years of experience in writing and editing. He has served in editorial management positions for Christian book publishers and was regional editor for the largest Protestant weekly newspaper in the country.

Dave has published seven books, written hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and edited numerous books. He is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences. Two of his books, Writing the Christian Nonfiction Book: Concept to Contract and A Christian Writer’s Guide to the Book Proposal, are based on his experience in Christian publishing. The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy, Dave’s first novel, reflects his love for history and for the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan-Doyle.

Dave and his wife, Jacque, live in south-central Pennsylvania and have two adult sons.

Websites/Blogs:

www.fromconcepttocontract.com
www.davefessenden.com
www.thebookstore.info

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Publishing Pulse

The Economics of Publishing

I don’t think many authors have a clue about how rugged the economic terrain is for the average publishing house. Publishing is changing (again and again and again!), and with every change it seems that it’s even harder than ever for a publisher to make an honest buck (or even a dishonest buck, for that matter).

When a publishing house contracts with an author to publish their book, most authors look for some upfront money—an advance on royalties, which is usually the amount of royalties a publishing house expects to pay out in the first six months of publication. Smaller publishers, and even a lot of bigger publishers, are not so quick to give advances anymore—it’s just too risky, and too much of a cash flow issue.

Still, even if the the publishing house does not put out a royalty advance, they still have to put out a lot of money well ahead of getting any income from book sales. The whole company starts working on the book, so chalk up the salaries of the editors, typesetters/page designers, cover designers, marketers, and so on. This process can take a year or more, and remember the book hasn’t made the publishing house a single dime.

But finally, the book gets published, it is sent out to distributors and retailers, people buy the book, and the revenue gets back to the publisher—eventually. Distributors are notorious for delaying payment of sales for several months.

The publisher puts out all the money up front to edit, typeset, design, print and market a book, and then has to wait for months for the sales revenue to come in. And far too often, the sales are not enough, even after a year or two, to pay for the investment. So what do they do? Well, they bleed red ink! Thanks to print on demand, the initial investment for printing can be lower (you don’t have to print a large quantity all at once), but since the per-book printing cost is higher, their profit margin gets cut down. So print on demand helps you cut your losses if the book doesn’t sell, but it also cuts into your revenue if the book is successful.

And how often is a book financially successful? It used to be that about one-third of all books published lose money, about one-third break even, and about one-third make a profit—hopefully, enough of a profit to make up for the losses. Today, I suspect it’s more like 25% lose money, about 50% break even, and about 25% make a profit. One of the old jokes of publishing is that we should only publish the books that make money—then we’d really be successful!

The sad truth is, publishing houses usually expect all of their books to be profitable—which means these “experts” in the publishing industry are wrong about most of the books they publish! No one has a crystal ball to predict which ones are going to succeed and which will fail. There are innumerable stories out there about how this or that best-selling book was rejected by a lot of publishers, but the other side of the coin is that there are at least ten times as many stories about how a book that had everything going for it, that looked so promising, got published and lost a lot of money.

So next time you’re tempted to accuse publishers of being stingy, remember the economics of the industry, and shake your head in amazement that they manage to survive in this crazy business!

David Fesseden has degrees in journalism and theology, and over 30 years of experience in writing and editing. He has served in editorial management positions for Christian book publishers and was regional editor for the largest Protestant weekly newspaper in the country.

Dave has published seven books, written hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and edited numerous books. He is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences. Two of his books, Writing the Christian Nonfiction Book: Concept to Contract and A Christian Writer’s Guide to the Book Proposal, are based on his experience in Christian publishing. The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy, Dave’s first novel, reflects his love for history and for the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan-Doyle.

Dave and his wife, Jacque, live in south-central Pennsylvania and have two adult sons.

Websites/Blogs:

www.fromconcepttocontract.com
www.davefessenden.com
www.thebookstore.info

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Publishing Pulse

Do You “Own” Your ISBN? Do You Really Want To?

I recently read some advice to self-published authors, to the effect that Lulu offers their clients a “free” ISBN—but it comes with a catch. The “free” ISBN means Lulu imprints their name on your book. I suppose the writer was bothered that Lulu was getting free advertising on their clients’ books, but I’m not entirely sure. (The advice was in the middle of an online self-publishing discussion, so you had to be there, I guess.)

The advice was good (a more succinct piece of advice is to stay away from Lulu altogether), but it served another function for me. It pointed out how much misunderstanding there is about the ISBN system among authors.

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a system in the bookselling industry used to identify a specific book (a specific product, really;  every edition of a book—hardcover, paperback, ebook, and so on—has a different ISBN). It’s the number built into the barcode on the back of a printed book. The cashier scans the barcode, the cash register looks up that specific book in its database, and the correct price is added to your bill. Everybody understands how that part of the system works.

What most people, including authors, don’t seem to understand is that the ISBN also identifies the publisher/publishing house—the person or company through which a distributor or retailer can obtain the book. The ISBN system in the US is managed by a company called Bowker. Publishers pay a fee to Bowker to have ISBNs assigned to that publishing house.

Bowker is the ONLY company in the US authorized to assign ISBNs, and they ONLY assign ISBNs to publishers/publishing houses. A publisher/publishing house cannot re-assign their ISBNs. So when a company other than Bowker tells you they will give you a “free” ISBN, or that you can “buy” an ISBN from them, they are not being accurate. What they are really saying is, they are going to publish your book through their publishing house. Distributors that look up your book with an ISBN will be told that the book is available through a specific publisher, because that ISBN is assigned to that publisher.

I’ve heard people try to connect the ISBN to copyright, by asking questions like, “This company put their ISBN on my book; have they stolen my copyright?” No. Nothing could be further from the truth. Remember, all an ISBN does is identify a specific edition of a book, and the publishing house that produced it. The copyright has nothing to do with it.

If you self-publish a book, and pay Bowker to assign an ISBN to you, you are effectively setting up your own publishing house. A publishing house is, by definition, an entity with one or more ISBNs assigned to it—nothing more or less.

Well, let me qualify that. A publishing house is, of course, an entity that publishes books, but one can assume that the books are published so that they can be sold. And to sell a  book in today’s market it needs an ISBN — a number which identifies what book it is and what entity has published it.

A book cannot be distributed and sold commercially without an ISBN, and ISBNs are assigned only to publishing houses.

Do you want to deal with distributors  and retailers about details of your book’s distribution and sale? If so, then pay Bowker a fee to assign you an ISBN, and become a publishing house. If not, then work with an established publishing house, whether it be traditional or subsidy (“self-publisher”), and let them worry over the details. Some of the issues that can arise are complicated and difficult—and dealing with those problems is a rather high price to pay just so you can say you “own” your ISBN!

David Fesseden has degrees in journalism and theology, and over 30 years of experience in writing and editing. He has served in editorial management positions for Christian book publishers and was regional editor for the largest Protestant weekly newspaper in the country.

Dave has published seven books, written hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and edited numerous books. He is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences. Two of his books, Writing the Christian Nonfiction Book: Concept to Contract and A Christian Writer’s Guide to the Book Proposal, are based on his experience in Christian publishing. The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy, Dave’s first novel, reflects his love for history and for the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan-Doyle.

Dave and his wife, Jacque, live in south-central Pennsylvania and have two adult sons.

Website: davefessenden.com
Literary Agent, WordWise Media Services
Publisher and Proprietor, Honeycomb House Publishing LLC

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Publishing Pulse

Beware the Hollywood Stereotypes of Publishing

There seem to be plenty of people out there who have never published anything, but are happy to give you advice on how the publishing industry works, based on something they saw in a movie. Far too many people have a stereotype in their mind of publishing a book, and worse yet, it’s a 20th-century stereotype. Here’s some of the questions I have been asked that are mostly the stuff of fiction:

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Publishing Pulse

Beware of Purported “Trends” in Christian Publishing

Every time I read an article from Publisher’s Weekly about trends in Christian publishing, especially fiction, I find myself stifling a sarcastic laugh.

First of all, I don’t have that many articles to choose from, because PW appears to publish just one article on Christian fiction trends per year, in May. (My comments concern last year’s article; this year, in May, they had an article about a “Fiction Readers Summit” held by Baker Book House, rather than a review of the market.) This once-a-year market review seems a bit odd to me, considering that Christian books make up about a third of the total book  industry. (Disclaimer here: that statistic may be a bit old, but if you change that from “Christian” to “religious” books, I’m sure it’s still valid.)

But the infrequency of the market review is not what gets me chuckling; it’s some of the “trends” that PW reported last year, such as “Amish [romance] fiction remains popular.” Really? In my contacts with acquisition editors, there doesn’t seem to be interest in more titles in this genre, though well-known, established authors of Amish fiction still seem to be cranking out new titles. The conventional wisdom is that the Amish craze peaked a long time ago, and acquisition editors generally follow conventional wisdom, because it’s usually right.

PW also made a big deal about Christian romance fiction in general, yet my reading of the market indicates that, while still a viable subcategory, romance no longer dominates Christian fiction in the way it did years ago—but you sure wouldn’t know it from this article. There was some discussion of the popularity of other genres, suh as Christian suspense and adventure, including political thrillers, but I was surprised that there was little mention of speculative fiction, a genre that appeared to be growing last year (though it may now be on the wane now, for all I know).

Of course, I’m probably being a little too hard on Publishers Weekly, considering that their article on trends was looking at what had been published by May of 2017. The trends they were identifying appeared to be based on looking back at 2016. Still, their comments seemed more dated than that. Oddly enough, at the end of the story they announced some titles that were scheduled to come out in the spring of 2018. Why did they not look for genre trends in those upcoming titles?

It only highlights the problem a Christian author has when looking at trends—it’s something you don’t want to take too seriously. Not only is the information almost always dated (a published book may have been acquired up to two years previously), but it is pretty much irrelevant. In the publishing world, acquisition editors have the unenviable task of having to guess as to what topics and genres are going to be “hot” two years from now. Since they can’t read the future, they can only speculate—rolling the dice, you might say.

It’s a waste of time, therefore, for a Christian author to try to catch the wave of a new publishing trend; by the time you write the book, prepare a proposal, sell it to a publisher, and it gets out there in the market, the “trend” is going to be long gone. Even if you decide to write the book extremely quickly and self-publish, it’s bound to take six months or so — even more, if you you take into account the months it can take to publicize, promote and market the book. If you time it right, you just might catch the tail end of such a trend, if at all.

Do I dare to suggest that you ignore elusive “trends” and ask God what he would have you write about? Get your advice on trends from the only person who actually does know the future! It’s really the only sure way to stay ahead of the ever-changing Christian publishing market.

David E. Fessenden

Literary Agent, WordWise Media Services

Publisher and Proprietor, Honeycomb House Publishing LLC

Dave has degrees in journalism and theology, and over 30 years of experience in writing and editing. He has served in editorial management positions for Christian book publishers and was regional editor for the largest Protestant weekly newspaper in the country.

Dave has published seven books, written hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and edited numerous books. He is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences. Two of his books, Writing the Christian Nonfiction Book: Concept to Contract and  A Christian Writer’s Guide to the Book Proposal, are based on his experience in Christian publishing. The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy, Dave’s first novel, reflects his love for history and for the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan-Doyle.

Dave and his wife, Jacque, live in south-central Pennsylvania and have two adult sons.

Websites/Blogs:
www.fromconcepttocontract.com
www.davefessenden.com
www.thebookstore.info

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Publishing Pulse

The Dirty Little Secrets of Self-Publishing

Book authors are hearing more and more voices telling them to self-publish and “reap the profits that traditional publishers are stealing from you.”

Okay, not every promoter of self-publishing puts it that way, but some do. And it should make you curious as to why these people are giving you so much pressure to self-publish. The answer boils down to the first dirty little secret of self-publishing:

There is no such thing as self-publishing.

In the process we call self-publishing, authors are portrayed as doing all the necessary steps in publishing a book—writing, editing, typesetting/interior design, proofreading, designing the cover, arranging for printing and/or e-book production, distributing, marketing and promotion. But in reality, authors do not do all those things by themselves, because no one person could possibly have all those tools and skills. Instead, the “self-publishing” author pays someone else to do most of these jobs.

And there is the motivation for the push to self-publish: most of those who push an author to self-publish are hoping to get hired to do the work the author cannot do. No matter what publishing method you use, publishing is a team effort. The only difference is in who invests the money—the publisher (traditional publishing) or the author (subsidy publishing, or so-called self-publishing).

The self-publishing promoters often argue that since the author is paying the bills, the author has complete control over the entire publishing process. And this brings us to the second dirty little secret of  (so-called) self-publishing:

No single person has complete control over the entire publishing process.

Of course, that goes back to the fact that publishing a book is a group effort. Authors, even those who pay to have their book published, cannot control all aspects of publishing their book—and they should not want to. Authors who try to have total control over their own publishing process will find that they cannot control those who have the publishing expertise they lack. They either learn to trust others with their creative baby, or they find others who will let them be “in control,” but who, like them, lack the publishing expertise needed for success.

The moral of this story, then, is that success in publishing is dependent upon finding a team you can trust. Are you confident that the publisher you work with, whether subsidy or traditional, has professional expertise and knows the audience you are aiming at? Certainly you have your own ideas about your book, but are you willing to take advice from someone with experience and a track record in publishing? If so, your book has ten times the chance of success than if you find someone who gets paid to follow your instructions blindly.

David E. Fessenden
Literary Agent, WordWise Media Services
Publisher and Proprietor, Honeycomb House Publishing LLC

Dave has degrees in journalism and theology, and over 30 years of experience in writing and editing. He has served in editorial management positions for Christian book publishers and was regional editor for the largest Protestant weekly newspaper in the country.

Dave has published seven books, written hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and edited numerous books. He is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences. Two of his books, Writing the Christian Nonfiction Book: Concept to Contract and  A Christian Writer’s Guide to the Book Proposal, are based on his experience in Christian publishing. The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy, Dave’s first novel, reflects his love for history and for the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan-Doyle.

Dave and his wife, Jacque, live in south-central Pennsylvania and have two adult sons.

As a literary agent for WordWise Media Services, I am interested in historical fiction (not romance) and speculative fiction (sci-fi/fantasy); nonfiction titles on Christian living, spiritual growth and biblical studies. I am not interested in devotionals or memoirs. dave@wordwisemedia.com

Honeycomb House Publishing LLC is a subsidy publishing house, assisting Christian authors to publish their books at their expense, and reaping the full profit on the sale of their books. We believe there really is no such thing as self-publishing, because no one can publish a book completely on their own. Standing on Proverbs 16:24, “Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones,” we are looking for gracious words that bring spiritual sweetness and healing. dave@fessendens.net

Websites/Blogs:
www.fromconcepttocontract.com
www.davefessenden.com
www.thebookstore.info

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Publishing Pulse

Publishing as a Business

Today’s book publishing market can be a dangerous place, with a lot of scam artists spouting confusing terminology. I applaud the efforts of legitimate author groups who try to dispel the confusion, especially about different types of publishing business models. And yet, in an effort to simplify, it’s easy to become simplistic. Some of the explanations I’ve seen about traditional (commercial) publishing versus so-called self-publishing (subsidized publishing), even from industry leaders, are sometimes inaccurate and do not seem to take into account some basic business principles.

Like any business, book publishing involves a capital investment (the purchase of raw materials, labor, tools and/or equipment) to produce a product or service that is marketable (able to be sold for a profit). But unlike most businesses, the “raw material” of book publishing is content—an author’s words. And this is where the disconnect between author and publisher usually begins.

Most authors are uncomfortable with viewing their creative work as “raw material” — they prefer to think of their work as a finished product. Rather than being paid a standard industry rate for their raw material, they believe they have a marketable, finished product, and so they should receive the profits.

It’s an attitude that seems to make perfect sense—until you remember what profit really is. Profit is the revenue over and above the capital investment. In writing a book, has an author made a capital investment? Not at all! As an author, you may feel you have invested your heart and soul into your book, but if you haven’t invested any cash, it’s not a capital investment that will generate profits. Certainly you should be paid an appropriate amount (in royalties) for the value of your “raw material” — or, if you prefer, for your hours of labor in writing the book. But if you haven’t paid out the money needed to publish the book, you are not entitled to the profit on that investment, no more than you would be entitled to the interest income on someone else’s bank account!

And like it or not, it costs money to publish a book. The word publish has the same root as the word public, because when you publish a book it means taking those words sitting in your computer and putting them into a form that can be distributed to a waiting public—and it costs money to do that.

Rather than limiting themselves to the role of content provider (or “raw material” supplier, if you prefer), some authors choose to wear the hat of capital investor (supplier of the cash) and publisher (doing the work involved in preparing and distributing their words to the public). The common term for this is self-publishing. Next month, I will discuss the pros and cons of this process, and why there really is no such thing as self-publishing.

 

David E. Fessenden

Literary Agent, WordWise Media Services
Publisher and Proprietor, Honeycomb House Publishing LLC

Dave has degrees in journalism and theology, and over 30 years of experience in writing and editing. He has served in editorial management positions for Christian book publishers and was regional editor for the largest Protestant weekly newspaper in the country.

Dave has published seven books, written hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and edited numerous books. He is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences. Two of his books, Writing the Christian Nonfiction Book: Concept to Contract and  A Christian Writer’s Guide to the Book Proposal, are based on his experience in Christian publishing. The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy, Dave’s first novel, reflects his love for history and for the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan-Doyle.

Dave and his wife, Jacque, live in south-central Pennsylvania and have two adult sons.

Websites/Blogs:
www.fromconcepttocontract.com
www.davefessenden.com
www.thebookstore.info