You Think It's All Over?

In the talk I gave last week I listed a few of the common errors made by people who were self-publishing their book. The errors ranged from covers to quote marks to spines and the last one was:

Thinking that the finished book is the end of the process. It's not - it's just the beginning!

Making a book is the easy bit. It's just processes. Whether you outsource those processes to someone else or handle them all yourself there is a checklist of things that need to be done. You may do them well, you may do them poorly, but at the end of it you will have a book. And that's great if you have made the book to give to family and friends - easy - you know where they live (presumably). But the majority of people self-publishing their book want to get it to a wider audience - and ideally, sell it to them.

This is where it gets tricky. How do you reach that audience? Even traditional publishers with their publicity departments and  (supposedly) huge budgets make a hash of this sometimes so what chance do you have?

Well if you've written a book on Victorian Railways and you're the editor of Victorian Railway Monthly Magazine and you run a railway enthusiasts' website with an extensive mailing list, then of course you have a considerable advantage. You have direct access to pretty much your entire market and you can reach them cheaply and easily. If this is you then good luck with your book, you don't need to read on.

However, if your book has a less defined audience, you need to be creative in your approach to getting your book out there.  It's hard work and you need thick skin and persistence but here are a few things you can try:

* Get online. If you're reading this then you are already so make the Internet work for you. Start a blog and start building your audience. Comment on blogs written by other writers in your genre and use their blogrolls to discover more.

* Twitter away. Whether you love it or hate it Twitter is a great way to reach a wide audience. Follow and be followed and post regular updates on your writing tales. The writing community is (on the whole) friendly and supportive and before too long you will have built up a good following.

* An online book tour – once you have a bit of network built up you could ask some friendly bloggers if they would mind reviewing your book. Remember to return the favour.

* Send out a press release. If your book covers a topical issue send it out nationally – even internationally – in these days of email attachments it doesn’t cost any more to send it to the New York Times than to the Portsmouth Evening News. Don’t spam editors with totally irrelevant releases though.

* Even if it is a general book try to put a local spin on it to generate interest from the local press. Contact radio stations too and offer them books to give away as prizes. It might not get on air but you could get on the website – another audience again.

* Identify the organisers of regional literary festivals and email them to ask if you can participate. These are difficult to get into so rather than simply ask if they’d like you to do anything, suggest something to them, ‘I’ve just self-published my book on XYZ and I think I could host a lively session on the pros and cons’.

* Hold a launch at a local bookseller (independent if possible, they’re having a hard time of it). Round up your friends and family and your new blog and twitter followers and have a get together. You’ve published your book – now celebrate!

It is worth highlighting that although this post is aimed at people self-publishing their book, more and more authors published by traditional houses are being expected to play a very proactive role in the promotion of their book. The big budgets I mentioned at the beginning are tied up in the publishers' key titles and you would be surprised (or perhaps not) how little of that budget filters down to new authors and their books. Nowadays it is not enough to be author. It's not even enough to be author and publisher if you are self-publishing. An author must be author, publisher, marketer and salesperson all rolled into one.

Not easy.

Talking Covers

Last night I headed down to Portsmouth to give a talk on self-publishing. Held at the New Theatre Royal I was quite looking forward to a bit of theatrical glamour but alas, the talk was in a slightly less impressive room at the top of the theatre. However the good news was that my talk had a fairly impressive score with the music from the auditions that were being held booming in the background!
The talk was organised by New Writing South and went well I think. I enjoyed it anyway and I hope it was useful. I handed out some brief notes at the end of the session  and thought I would post extracts from them here on the blog. Here's a note on covers.

Should you Judge a Book by its Cover?
Hell, yes!

The cover is the first thing your friend, family or customer will see so you really want to dress to impress. Please, please, please pay someone to design your cover. Do not get a friend of a friend who did technical drawing at college to do it. Commercial publishers engage specialists to do this – so should you. I can’t emphasise this enough.

When you engage a designer, don’t expect them to read your book (although some might). You should provide a cover brief which gives them a taste of the book and ideally give them an idea of other books that your book is similar to. Some people criticise the publisher habit of creating very similar covers for similar books but if your book is the next da Vinci Code why not make it look like it. It will sell more copies.

There's another talk in Brighton on 10 November. Do come along!