Your Publishing Path: Small Presses

Smaller publishers with more flexibility than the giants, but more resources than an individual author.

Renee Frey, CMO Authors 4 Authors Publishing

Last week we looked at the “Big 5” publishers and talked about how to publish with them. Now, let’s look at some of the smaller publishing companies, and compare that to the traditional publishing model.

What is a small press?

A small press is a smaller publishing house. They publish books, but don’t publish as many as the large publishers, and (since they’re smaller) don’t make as much money. It’s sort of like comparing a local restaurant to a chain. The food may be fantastic, but with just one location, there’s no way that restaurant can compare in earnings to Applebees.

Since they’re smaller companies, small presses are more adaptable and flexible than the traditional publishers. However, they still do the production work of publishing your book.

So why should I go with a small press?

First of all, Authors 4 Authors Publishing is technically a small press (so I am a little biased here). What’s great about us is how flexible we are. We’ve had authors design their own covers, write their own blurbs, and everything in between. Because we’re a smaller group, it’s a lot easier for us to compromise and involve the author in key decisions.

Some smaller presses (like us) don’t work with agents. So remember that commission that came out of your earnings with the Big 5? You won’t lose it with a small press that works directly with you. It also cuts down on the length of the query process, since you can query these publishers directly, instead of trying to get an agent first.

Some smaller presses offer higher royalties than the larger presses. This is mostly to entice authors like you to go with them instead of with a larger publisher. We can do this because our overhead is less than a larger company, so we don’t need quite as much per sale to keep things running. We also don’t have offices in expensive New York City (where the rent is too d___ high…).

The best advantage is that a small press is still a publisher—so those production costs like book covers, editing, proofreading, and so on are paid for by them, not you.

Some small presses specialize.

Which is great—a small press that knows their specific market REALLY REALLY well will know how to place, market, and ultimately sell your book. And while the Big 5 have imprints that specialize, these imprints are still part of the larger corporation, which limits their flexibility.

Another specialty is the type of book. Electronic presses, for example, are small presses that only do electronic distribution, such as ebooks and audiobooks. Since this market is growing and predicted to continue growing, these presses are reserving their resources for the most impactful market areas. While you won’t realize your dream of seeing your novel grace the shelves of your local Barnes & Nobles, your book will be marketed to reach the hordes of readers on Kindle Unlimited, Audible, or Scribd.

Small presses are agile.

I do technical writing as well, so for you non-programmer folks, agile is a rapid development cycle. And small presses are VERY agile. Since it’s a smaller group, the bureaucracy that can slow things down with a large publisher just isn’t there. It also means that a small press can adapt to market changes faster because they can implement new plans and try new things with greater ease than a large company. Want to do a flash mob promoting your book? A small press is more willing to try your idea and support you in that than a larger company.

This sounds PERFECT! Small presses, here I come!

Okay, not to rain on your parade...but as with all our publishing options, no choice is perfect. There are a few cons to small presses. Most of them make sense with what we’ve already discussed.

Resources

A small press just doesn’t have the same resources at their disposal as the Big 5. This doesn’t mean they won’t spend as much on your book (trust me, even with having the resources, the Big 5 won’t necessarily allocate them), but it does mean that small presses may not have the same influence and reach with distributors as the larger companies. However, they are still putting their resources on the line, so you don’t have to.

Experience

The reason most small presses are small? Because they are a new business, and are still learning the trade. Even if they’ve been around for a couple of years, that’s not the same as the decades of experience had at larger companies. So while the people may be great to work with, there may be some kinks that need ironing as they develop their process.

Now I’m confused—should I go with a small press or not?

As I’ve already said in Choosing Your Publishing Path, there isn’t an easy answer. It’s about what’s right for you.

If you’re an entrepreneur and want to be part of a start-up company (and all the excitement that goes with it), a small press would be great for you!

If you have a very specific idea or vision for your book, but don’t want to self publish, a small press would be a good company for you.

If you prefer a more personal experience, and a smaller circle of people handling your work, a small press would be a great fit for you.

Next: Self Publishing

Join us for the next part of the series, where we talk about self-publishing.

Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!

Your Publishing Path: The Big 5

Traditional Publishing: The Oldest Path (Sort Of)

Renee Frey, CMO Authors 4 Authors Publishing

As we explore our publishing paths, let's take a close look at the “Big 5” publishers, and what it means to go “traditional” when publishing.

What are the “Big 5?”

Simply put, through years of mergers and acquisitions, there remain five main trade book publishing houses. These companies are the largest book publishers in the US, and all have their headquarters in New York City. They are:

• Hatchette Book Group
• HarperCollins
• MacMillan
• Penguin Random House
• Simon and Schuster

These companies are really large and own smaller imprints. For example, if you’re a science fiction or fantasy fan, you’ve probably heard of Tor, which is an imprint of MacMillan. Many of these imprints have separate offices and have their own set of editors, publicists, and other specialties needed to bring a book to life.

Publishing with the Big 5

Publishing with the Big 5 is not an easy process—at least, not when you’re trying to break into the industry. The best comparison I can think of is interviewing for a top executive position at a company. It’s not one interview, or a phone screen and an interview, but rather a series of interviews, meetings, and a lot of hope.

Step 1: Find an Agent

While the Big 5 have “slush” piles (unsolicited manuscripts) these usually get farmed out to interns or other unpaid labor to read. Very rarely will a publisher pick up an unsolicited manuscript. Most of them wait for an agent to approach them with a manuscript to purchase. This works for the larger companies because they don’t have to pay someone to weed through all the submissions to find ones that are marketable. An agent does that “for free” (more on that later) thus saving the publishing house the overhead involved. The publishing house doesn’t pay the agent for the work, the author does.

To get an agent, you have to query and submit to agents looking for manuscripts like yours. You can usually find agents with a little bit of research. If an agent likes your book, they will offer to represent you and try to sell your book in exchange for a commission. That commission is a percentage of what your book sells for, and a percentage of any royalties the book earns. The commission ranges from ten to twenty percent, with most commissions right in the middle at fifteen percent.

Querying an agent is difficult and time-consuming: you may get a lot of rejections before you find an agent. Many agents are overwhelmed with submissions, so they may take a long time to get back to you, or even lose track of you in the shuffle. If you opt to go this route, be professional but be in touch since the “squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

The Agent (Hopefully) Sells Your Book

If an agent decides to represent you, they will approach their contacts in the publishing industry and try to sell your book. The publisher will look at the book, and based on market research, decide how much they think it will cost to publish and how much they expect to make on the book and offer a price. You will receive this price as an advance (minus the agent commission). Bidding wars can increase the price, but you don’t want the price too high, since failing to earn out your advance can make the publisher question whether or not to keep you on as an author. This is a very involved process, but thankfully your agent handles most of it.

Your Book Gets Published

You’ll be contractually obligated to make edits and review changes, like those made during proofreading and copyediting. However, the Big 5 tend to be very hands-on when publishing—so while they may get your opinion on things, they will handle writing the blurb, designing the cover, and other parts of putting together the book.

They will also put together a sell sheet, and try to sell your book to distributors, such as Barnes and Nobles. These are almost exclusively for physical books, as ebooks populate in their distributors automatically. They will also submit your book to renowned reviewers, and pay for reviews and publicity for your book. You will be expected to promote your book, but contrary to the reputation they receive, the Big 5 do put time and resources into marketing a book—they just mostly happen behind the scenes.

You Write Your Next Book (But Still Market This One)

The beauty of receiving an advance means you can dedicate time to write the next book in a series or in general. You should still try to arrange readings and signings, but you can start writing your next book.

How Does That Sound?

In some ways, the process I described above is great! Notice how you, the author, aren’t doing a whole lot once you get that agent. This is probably the biggest advantage of the Big 5: you can focus on writing, and someone else handles the nitty gritty of the publishing and marketing. These publishers have the best reach, and can really get your book out to lots of markets.

So, what’s the catch?

You don’t make that much money. First, you have to earn back that advance. And for each book sold, less than ten percent of the list price actually goes towards that advance. So for your first year of hardback sales, for a book priced at $20, maybe two dollars goes into that advance. And until you earn that out, you don’t receive royalties. After that first year, paperbacks earn even less. You may receive a better rate on ebooks, but it’s nowhere near the seventy percent you would receive self-publishing, or the higher amounts offered at small or mid-sized publishers.

The Big 5 grew designed to sell print books. Yes, they offer ebooks, but their relationships are with printers and physical stores. And unfortunately, there’s just not as much traffic to traditional book stores anymore (or stores in general, at that).

Ebooks appear in a crowded market since self-publishing makes it easy for anyone to publish a book. The publishers do what they can, but with that much noise, it’s very difficult to get a message through and direct readers to your book.

Wait, now this sounds terrible!

It’s not. I promise. It’s just not the gold standard that it used to be. Many people do feel that they haven’t “made it” as an author unless they are traditionally published. But when you compare earnings, there are self-published authors that make a lot more money than traditionally published authors.

Like anything else in life, it’s a tradeoff. With traditional publishing, you give up control of your book and top royalties for someone else to do the majority of the publishing work (sorry, writing doesn’t count as publishing work). In exchange, you get a team of experienced professionals giving your book top-notch development, and the freedom to focus on your next project.

Now I REALLY Don’t Know What to Do

Like I said when I started this series, it’s not easy, and there is no universal answer. I hope I gave you an honest look at what works and doesn’t work for this publishing path. Now you have to ask yourself if it sounds like the right fit for you.

If it doesn’t, just check back in the coming weeks as I go into other publishing options. I’m sure one of them will be, as Goldilocks says, “just right.”

Just us next week when I talk about small presses and electronic presses.

Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!

Submitting Your Manuscript

The writer’s version of a job interview.

Renee Frey, CMO, and Rebecca Mikkelson, Editor-in-Chief Authors 4 Authors Publishing

You wrote a great book, and now you’re ready to publish it. Congratulations!

Before you start querying that manuscript, let’s have a discussion: What does submitting a manuscript entail? What should you have ready? How many submissions should you send?

Pride and Prejudice: First Impressions Matter

If you’ve ever read Jane Austen’s classic, you’re well aware of just how much damage a bad first impression can do. Unlike other jobs, there aren’t automatic filters that kick out queries or books, so publishers still have to look over every submission with human eyes. While that might seem like a relief, the opposite is true.

If a publisher or agent has a stack of 100 submissions, they’re going to make some pretty drastic cuts to make that pile manageable.

But I worked so hard, and query letters are just...impossible! And you can’t really ‘get’ my book until halfway through!

Sorry. I really am. But agents and publishers flat out don’t have the time to read an entire manuscript and hope to find brilliance somewhere along the way. Your manuscript and query letter are NOT a resume and cover letter: they are your job interview and 90-day trial all rolled into one. Just as (I hope) you would not attend a job interview in jeans and a t-shirt, or mail your resume in on a napkin, please don’t interview with a potential publisher with an unpolished manuscript.

Preparing Your Manuscript

Going with our job analogy, part of the interview is the preparation. Let’s look at the areas you should concentrate on in order to get your manuscript and query letter ready for their “big day.”

Read the Formatting Guidelines

The first step of a job interview is researching the company, learning about them, their culture, their expectations. Similarly, just about every agent or publisher has a format or other expectations for their submissions. Take formatting, for example. A lot of publishing companies have formatting guidelines, so we aren’t the only ones, and we didn’t put it on the website because we like to hear ourselves talk. Part of the reason that publishing companies put up guidelines is:

1. To see if the author can follow directions.
2. Make it easier to read the manuscript.

If you can’t follow directions for something as simple as formatting, how can a publisher trust you to make requested edits, adhere to a deadline, and perform other promotional tasks? We would rather have an author whose manuscript needs a little more TLC but is great to work with than the best manuscript in the world written by an author who can’t do something they are asked to do.

Also, given the sheer volume of slush piles, do you want your manuscript to be the one that makes our eyes hurt? We’ll probably put it down, and save our eyesight for something formatted the way we asked.

Proofread, Proofread, Proofread

It’s the day of your big interview—so you plan the perfect outfit, groom yourself well, and bring a pen and notepad for notes. You print out and load the directions on your phone and practice driving to the interview or leave extra early so you aren’t late. You should do the same for your manuscript.

We get that things slip through the cracks, especially when you’ve been staring at the same story for days, weeks, and even months at time editing it. As authors, we need to use every tool in our toolbox to make our work the best it can be. Spellcheck is one of those tools. You can even use the free version of Grammarly to find some of the mistakes you might miss after the twenty-seventh time you’ve read your manuscript.

A few spelling errors here and there are fine; it’s not going to turn us away from your manuscript. But when the work is riddled with spelling errors that could have been easily picked up by using spellcheck or Grammarly, then it becomes a problem. We don’t have to have utlra-polished, but we do have to have effort.

The Bourne Identity: Communication is everything!

Okay, you’ve done your homework: you’ve formatted your manuscript, double and triple-checked it for errors, and written a killer query letter! Now send it in!

But when you do, please avoid these mistakes.

I’m ready to query my manuscript...kind of.

Congratulations! We’ve liked your work enough to ask to see more of it. You should be really excited because we certainly are. If you can’t get it to us right away, that’s fine, but you need to let us know it’s going to be more than a few days. Don’t send us your work a month later with no explanation and expect us to read it in a timely manner.

Why should I tell the publisher it isn’t ready?

Common courtesy, for one.

When you query your work, it should be finished to the best it can be. Sometimes you want to do another check through just to make sure there isn’t anything you’ve missed. That’s fine, but tell the people asking for your full manuscript that that’s what they’re doing. You’re wasting their time wondering if you’ve received their request, having to check in, etc.

We’ve seen plenty of people ask, “Should I tell the publisher/agent I need to get it ready?” and get the response of, “Nah, they’ll take it when they get it, and they’ll like it. They need authors to function.”

No. No, we won’t. We won’t like it, and if it isn’t you, another author will submit their work and get it in timely, and you’ll have lost your chance to get published sooner.

Razzle Dazzle Us!

Or the agent you’re targeting. Or whatever lucky reader receives your manuscript. Treat it like a professional job interview, because it is. Even if you don’t get a request for pages, your reader will appreciate (and remember) your care and consideration.

Next week, we’ll start our in-depth look at publishing options, beginning with Traditional Publishing.

Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!

Choosing Your Publishing Path

What to do when all the publishing suggestions contradict themselves

Renee Frey, CMO Authors 4 Authors Publishing

Confession time: I’m a Scribomaster (yes, that’s a thing) on Scribophile, which is a fantastic site where you can workshop your writing (and help other people too!). There are discussion forums, which are a great distraction from writing and editing (I promise, I don’t have firsthand experience with this...be quiet Rebecca and B. C.!). One of the FASTEST ways to start a flame war? Ask what is the best way to publish your book.

I hope you brought a fire extinguisher.

In defense of my colleagues on Scrib, as we call it, this is a really difficult question to ask...and even harder to answer!

Why?

Because publishing your work is one of the most personal decisions you can make (despite what the bra advertisements on Pinterest imply). Think about it: for most authors, we’ve poured hours of inspiration, work, and mental effort into a manuscript. It’s not just a text document; it’s a part of your life!

So what should I do?

To start off, do research. Lots and lots of research. Verify, check reputation and sources, and (#shamelessselfpromotion) read this blog series about publishing. Start getting a feel for what feels “right” for you. And remember, it may seem the best option for you, but not for your best friend—and that’s okay.

To get you started, lets go over the basic options you’ll see for publication. Over the next several weeks, we’ll go over these options in-depth. We’ll also go over what to avoid and, hopefully, get you started down your publishing path.

Traditional Publishing

This is what most people think of when you bring up publishing a book. In a nutshell, you submit your manuscript to an agent, that agent (hopefully) sells your book, a publisher sends you an advance, and then the publisher prepares and publishes your book.

Self-Publishing

This is a (relatively) new form of publishing. With print-on-demand and e-books, it’s become very easy to format, cover, and publish your manuscript on your own. Amazon’s KDP, Draft2Digital, and Smashwords are popular venues for self-publishing. There are also lots of vendors, including editors, proofreaders, and cover artists you can pay to help you prepare and publish your book.

Small Press/Indie Publishing

Although self-publishing is sometimes called indie publishing, indie in this case means “independent”—and applies to small presses or companies that exist outside of the “Big 5” traditional publishing companies. These presses often are more flexible than the larger publishing but don’t always have as much reach as the larger publishers.

I can’t wait to learn more! But, what should I avoid?

I’m glad you asked!

Avoid “vanity presses”—or any company calling themselves a publisher who asks for YOU to pay money. It’s one thing to hire a cover artist or editor, or even a formatter. It’s another to sign a contract where you get only a portion of the royalty fees, but still front the publishing costs.

Always check any agents, and make sure they’re in good standing.

We’ll go over this in more detail soon (with some great resources!).

Next: Submitting Your Manuscript

Before we go into these different publishers, we’ll talk about how to get your manuscript ready for publishing!

Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!

So You Wrote a Novel…Now What?

Whether you won NaNoWriMo 2018 or finished your first draft of another work, what’s the next step toward publication?

Renee Frey, CMO Authors 4 Authors Publishing

First of all, if you have written an entire novel, CONGRATULATIONS! You should be proud of your accomplishment. I want to offer a special shout-out to my NaNoWriMo winners—50,000 words in 30 days is no mean feat! But now that the first draft is done, you might be wondering, what comes next? Let’s explore that in today’s blog post!

Writing is Just the Beginning

I’m sure it’s the last thing you want to hear, but writing this first draft—this long and tedious labor you just finished? It’s step one. That’s right: step ONE.

You may think you don’t need editing, that this work is perfect, and you don’t want to change a thing.

You’re wrong.

I don’t mean to upset or insult you, but as a publisher, I’ve seen unedited manuscripts. They usually have a great premise (just as I’m sure your story is great!) and some good points, but overall they feel unpolished, unprofessional, have continuity and spelling and grammar errors, and just aren’t ready for publishing.

As a personal confession, I was one of those people. The ones you hated in college, who would start the term paper the day before it was due, type it up, not even run spell check, and ace it. Yup. That was me as an undergrad. Twenty pages, no grammar or spelling errors.

And then I wrote a 50,000 word piece. Which was about three to four times as long as those papers. And let me tell you, there were issues all over the place. I’m still editing that piece.

So needing edits doesn’t mean your story isn’t good, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t a good writer—it means that your piece is a first draft and needs work to become the best it can be. And if you want the time you’ve already invested into writing to mean something, you should commit to making those edits.

But I Want to Publish Now!

If anyone reading this submits a first draft of a manuscript to a new agent or publisher, and it gets accepted, please let me know. Until then, believe me, it’s better to wait.

When I reach out to authors who obviously sent in a first draft and suggest edits, to a T, they almost all tell me they don’t want to change a thing. The impression that leaves me? Even if they were Hemingway, I would not want to work with them.

As an author, you write the story inside you, which you NEED to do. Great. As a publisher, I want to publish the story that sells, that appeals to the largest audience possible. That means there will be a few changes. A good editor will work with you, so that the spirit and meat of your story stay the same, while overhauling the method in how that story is expressed to improve it.

Just as you would (hopefully) not go to a job interview without preparing yourself, such as choosing proper attire and printing extra copies of resumes, don’t send your book in for its job interview without doing the same. Why?

BECAUSE FIRST IMPRESSIONS MATTER.

Trust me, you don’t want any agent or publisher’s first impression of you to be that you are uncooperative, unprofessional, lazy, unpolished, or poor at your craft. We can tell if someone has edited their story or not.

What is the MINIMUM Needed to Submit?

Please, if you only take away one thing from this blog post, proofread your work. Running spell check isn’t enough. Find and correct typos and verb tenses. Have others read your work, or read it yourself aloud, or read it backward. Find all those issues and fix them.

Ideally, you should work with a critique group to identify weak spots in the manuscript, from individual sentences to character arcs, make note of them, and with editing, correct them.

THEN for the love of everything, PROOFREAD YOUR WORK.

What Are the Next Steps?

Lucky for you, as part of wrapping up NaNoWriMo 2018, we’re hosting a series of blogs describing how to move your manuscript from first draft to published. Here are a couple of the topics we’re going to explore:

Editing

Editing is going through a manuscript and fixing issues. An edit can be in-depth, such as line edits, or can be a large, overarching view of the whole. You may need multiple rounds of edits, and before finalizing anything, you should always proofread it.

Critique Groups

As Velma Kelly said, you can’t do it alone. A good critique group helps you pinpoint those areas that need work in your manuscript. As with editing, a critique group can look at a chapter closely, or alpha/beta read the work as a whole and offer a big picture feedback.

Publishing

Once your manuscript is ready, you have to make decisions about how you want to go about publishing it. Options vary from doing everything yourself (self-publishing) to small press publishers (that’s us!) to the “Big 5” publishing houses that, until recently, handled just about all publishing business in the US.

Seem Like a Lot?

It is! So my first suggestion: take a break from your manuscript. Walk away, breathe, catch up on holiday shopping, and make the commitment to yourself to get back to it next week. That way, you can clear your brain and come back to the piece with a clear head. You can also read the post next week about editing, so you can have some idea of where to start.

Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!