Tag: Outskirts Press

Book Marketing, elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: The Voice in Your Ear

Or, When to Call for Help

“Your book isn’t just a product,” wrote my fellow Self-Publishing Advisor blogger Kelly back in February.  “It is, in every way and shape and form, an investment.”  She was in the middle of her Marketing B.A.S.I.C.S. series (which holds up well over time, I have to say) at the time, and put together an eloquent defense for those of us who feel the sting of the stigma wrapped around the whole notion of seeking help and advice within the self-publishing world.  We all have felt it, that little itch at the back of our mind, that but you were supposed to be D-I-Ying this! protest sparking our neurons into a frenzy of self-doubt.

There are a lot of myths about seeking help, which Kelly did a pretty good job of dispelling; I want to talk a little about what form that help might take, and specifically I want to talk about a little job title called “Personal Marketing Assistant.”  Or at least, that’s what they’re called by my employer, Outskirts Press (which I feel compelled to be transparent about).  I don’t know what some other companies like Dog Ear title this position, but they’re fundamental to our self-publishing model: in short, they’re the person you talk to on the phone when you’re trying to figure out which service bundle best fits your needs, and what the next steps are to put together a really kicking marketing campaign.  The difference is, perhaps, that at Outskirts we recognize just how vital this voice in your ear can be–so we offer 30-minute to 5-hour conversations with one of our Personal Marketing Assistants as a dedicated service.  There are a lot of reasons why this is a good thing, but ultimately they boil down to: it’s good for our PMAs themselves (to receive public recognition as integral parts of our work) and it’s good for our customers (who can be assured of reaching someone as committed to their project’s success as they are).

A Personal Marketing Assistant comes in most handy, you might have guessed, once you already have your book put together and ready to go.  They are the sort of person you want by your side when you’re putting together a marketing plan or arranging a book signing, developing your author platform or following up on marketing campaign leads.  But a good PMA–no matter which company you elect to self-publish with–will do far more for you than just talk.  A good PMA gets his or her hands dirty with your project, and does a lot of the heavy lifting for those of you who need and ask for the intervention.  This is because you don’t pay them for inspiring words or even just plain good advice.  You pay them to help, and sometimes helping looks like direct involvement.  They are your extra arms and legs, fan extension of your vision for your book.  For the most part, they’re truly gifted and empathetic individuals who got into this business because they thrive on coming alongside others and helping get the job done–helping others realize their dreams.

Q: So when do you call for this kind of help?

A: Whenever you need to.  Whenever you want to.  The stigma associated with asking for help makes it difficult for a lot of us to admit we need help, and it more or less silences those of us who simply want help.  Maybe we can do the job all by ourselves.  But maybe we don’t want to.  Maybe we have the skill set to market our book, technically, but we know we could get a lot more done–maybe around the house, maybe starting our next book–if we cede some of the workload to an expert who is paid to be an expert.  I don’t just want to kick the stigma of asking for help when we need it; I want to bring us back to that foundational self-publishing ethos that says ‘We’re here and self-publishing because we want the power to do exactly what we want without being policed by an agent or publisher.’ Want is as critical a component of self-publishing as need, and I think we forget that.

So: do a little research.  Does your self-publishing company offer the chance to talk to a Personal Marketing Assistant?  Good.  Now, do you want or need a little advice on what to do next?  You go and get it.  And I’ll be right here to cheer you on!

marketing assistant

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
Alternative Marketing Methods, Book Marketing, Kelly Speaks, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, print-on-demand, Uncategorized

Marketing Missteps Episode 5 : Printing Anything Other Than On Demand

This series is my love letter to marketing for self-publishers.  But you know what’s more fun than reading love letters?  Reading hate mail.  So while I remain a firm advocate of thinking positively and of making as many innocent errors as is necessary to refine our techniques to perfection, I have been framing this series–now four weeks gone–in the context of the dangerous and the deadly in terms of marketing missteps. Thus far, I have addressed the following errors:

As I mentioned last week, each of these things can tank your book sales singly and for a long time, and a combination of these mistakes will leave you struggling to recover years in the future.  And while some other steps off of the narrow path to success won’t necessarily damage you irrevocably–a few mistakes are, as I said, useful for making adjustments–these ones just might.  These are the Big Bads, the missteps you don’t want to make.

So today, I’m writing hate mail to self-publishing packages that lock you into massive initial print runs.  The error?

Printing Anything Other Than On Demand

Some authors out there will caution you against doing a print run without already having  solid distribution deal in place, but I’ll take it one step further and caution you against buying into any publication package that locks you into an unsupportably large print run.  The average hybrid publishing company (also sometimes and misguidedly referred to as a “vanity press”) will offer a range of packages to choose from, depending on your budget, and many of them include these massive print runs in order to set you up to compete with traditional publishers and their even more massive print runs.

The problem is this: we can’t compete with traditional publishers by replicating their behaviors.  Self-publishers simply don’t have the same budget, and the same margin for error.  Traditional publishers want to flood the market with a book in order to sell as many copies as possible by simple exposure alone, but they also have the distribution deals to get their books into a lot of different markets to do so.  These distribution deals mean that if a book sells poorly in one corner of the world, Hachette or Penguin or whoever can simply bundle up all of those books and send them somewhere where they are selling well.  Or, if they’re selling poorly everywhere, the loss is attenuated by the profits from other books entirely–books that are selling well.

Campus Bookstore at University of Pennsylvania

Unless you have the reach and courier services of a traditional publishing company, I caution against these massive initial print runs.  I am a firm advocate for printing some copies of your book from the outset–they’re useful for ARCs, for book readings, and for giveaways–but they should be a tool, not a burden.  If your garage is stacked floor to ceiling with printed copies of your book that you can’t sell and can’t move, that benefits no one–and it’s a needlessly expensive price to pay in a market where ebooks continue to be a profitable source of income for the self-publishing author.

I’m not saying that there aren’t benefits to printing your books in bulk: you do save money.  But what do you lose?  You end up covering shipping expenses later, and having to manage distribution through your own personal website.  That’s a lot of work, and most authors don’t have the time or resources after that initial purchase to operate within luxurious margins.

So: keep that first print run small, until you can gauge future demand.  Better to sell out that first print run entirely and put in another order via Print on Demand (POD) copies than to end up sending your books to landfill.  (And believe me, this is such a common experience among my self-publishing acquaintance.)  Better yet, start with POD instead of turning to it as a second option.  Hybrid publishing companies like Outskirts Press, my own employer, offer several packages that allow you to cut back on the numbers–or to start without a built-in print run, with the option of going straight to POD copies purchased wholesale.  Other hybrid publishing companies offer similar deals with some variation, but the fact remains: this kind of plan helps keep initial costs down, and frees up your money for other, more carefully targeted marketing strategies.

 

 

Thank you for reading!  If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or contributions, please use the comment field below or drop us a line at selfpublishingadvice@gmail.com.  And remember to check back each Wednesday for your weekly dose of marketing musings from one indie, hybrid, and self-published author to another. ♠

KellyABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com. 10:00 AM
Alternative Marketing Methods, Book Marketing, Kelly Speaks, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, outskirts press, Uncategorized

Marketing in the Hybrid Publishing World

Two weeks ago, after much consideration, we settled on a simple and straightforward definition for hybrid publishing:

Hybrid publishing is any publishing model that allows authors to enter into direct, flexible, contractual collaborations with industry professionals that in traditional publishing would be indirect (they would be paid by the publishing house, not the author) and are not traditionally available to self-publishing authors.  This includes companies like Outskirts Press, which offers a range of collaborative services, and excludes the so-called “hybrid author,” or someone who has moved from traditional publishing into self-publishing or vice versa.

And last week, in hopes of getting a glimpse into the actual experience, I dove into the stories of two self-publishing authors who have chosen the hybrid publishing track: Norman Smith  of Dog Ear Publishing, and Mirtha Michelle Castro Mármol of Outskirts Press fame.  Smith’s review spoke to what I consider the real strengths of the hybrid publishing experience: constant communication, flexibility, and a real willingness to put the author’s vision at the forefront of the publishing process.  Meanwhile, Mirtha Michelle’s interview highlighted the collaborative nature of hybrid publishing––from writing her book, to finding the company she wanted to go with, to finding a designer for her book’s cover, to connecting with her readers after the fact.

This week, I want to answer a different set of questions, and I want to take us back to marketing, our focus for our Wednesday posts here on Self-Publishing Advisor.  How does hybrid publishing assist an indie author in the realm of marketing a book, for example?  Does it offer tangible benefits?  How can an author know when the expense is paying off?

 

Value vs. Expense:

As hybrid self-publishing superstar CJ Lyons puts it, “If you are spending more time marketing than you writing a book, then you are probably doing a disservice to your readers by not writing the best book that you can. You can trust your readers and if you are writing a book they love then they will do the marketing for you.”  And it’s true: your readers are the greatest force for influence that you have!  When readers fall in love with a new world or a new book, as you are probably already well aware, they can’t help but want to share the thrill of discovery with their friends, families, and other social connections.

marketing hybrid publishing

Connecting with your readers is, of course, a matter requiring some delicacy in and of itself.  Marketing doesn’t happen by itself; your social media presence, whether you’re a solo act or working with a hybrid self-publishing company, will require work.  You have to balance your personal time and energy budget without falling behind on either sleep or sacrificing valuable time you might spend writing that next book (and that next book is a powerful marketing tool in and of itself, so you don’t want to sacrifice it).  The difference between being a “regular” self-publishing author–assuming, for the moment, that we set aside the massive range of experiences that fall into that category–and being a self-publishing author who chooses to work within the hybrid model boils down to resources.  A good hybrid publishing company will reduce the amount of time and energy and expertise required to keep up a vigorous social media campaign as well as a nationwide marketing plan to something more like light maintenance than heavy work.

marketing hybrid publishing

Within the hybrid model, you the self-publishing author don’t have to be the one running down to Kinkos to print out a massive pile of fliers that you spent weeks designing yourself, or staying up late squinting at a dim computer screen scrolling through tweets about your book.  You pay to let the professionals assist you with that.  Most companies offer a range of marketing products  (like this one from Outskirts Press) and bundles so that you can choose to pay for only the services you need or that you don’t know how to manage yourself, and which allows you to only spend money on truly necessary expenses.  An easy way to know if a product is worth spending money on is to hop on a web forum and ask around after authors of equal expertise in, say, book trailer creation–and see how long it took them to design one.  Multiply the hours they spent by the average going wage for freelance videographers (anywhere between $20 and $50 an hour in USD) and compare against the price for that product.  Run the numbers for each product you’re thinking about purchasing, and make your decisions accordingly.  These figures don’t allow for the expertise you’ll have access to by paying a professional to do them for you, but they do give you a starting point–and we all need one of those!

Thank you for reading!  If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or contributions, please use the comment field below or drop us a line at selfpublishingadvice@gmail.com.  And remember to check back each Wednesday for your weekly dose of marketing musings from one indie, hybrid, and self-published author to another. ♠

KellyABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com. 10:00 AM
co-operative advertising, elizabeth speaks, in your corner

In Your Corner : What do I need to know about Co-op Ads?

For those of you who may be new to the indie publishing world, the co-op advertisement is an invaluable tool to add to your self-marketing toolbox.

But what is a co-op advertisement in the first place?  

As Dan Poynter of ParaPublishing notes, “Book promotion is expensive. The challenges are that books are a low-ticket item (they do not cost much so you have to sell a bunch to pay for the promotion), their subjects are targeted to a small group of people (an individual title is not needed by everyone), and there is no recurring consumption (customers do not buy a new copy of the same book every trip to the grocery store).”  (Emphasis mine.) What’s the answer?  As my grandmother used to say around the holidays, “Many hands make light work.”  And many authors can band together to amplify their individual advertising impact.

Simply put, co-op ads are a way for you to experience all the benefits of a large-scale print marketing campaign without the sponsorship of a major heavyweight Big Five publishing house, and without having to lay out a whole lot of cash to do so.

teamwork

You may already be aware of what all is involved in getting your book’s name and/or cover out there into national magazines and newspapers.  You may also be aware that print advertisements like the ones that run in the New Yorker and Ladies Home Journal are expensive!  One full-page advertisement in the New York Times book review section requires a person or company to shell out around $40,00o–and that’s fairly typical.  Many other journals, print magazines, and newspaper inserts are just as expensive.  And while the NYT doesn’t come cheap, it does reach around forty million readers–so the cost for reaching each of those readers is less than one-tenth of one cent.  This is a good deal, sort of.  Not many of us self-publishing authors have $40,000 just lying around in a duffel bag.  (And if we did, well, we would probably be dealing with far greater problems than a marketing campaign!)

Expensive as these ads are, they’re not beyond your reach.  Not if you choose to become a part of co-op advertising, which allows you to share premium exposure in household name magazines and periodicals with other self-publishing authors.  By doing so, you have access to all of the benefits of national marketing without having to bear the full burden of expense.

How do you get involved in co-op advertising?  You can always try to wrangle up something on your own, of course–with other, perhaps local, authors–but that’s a lot of money and hassle to manage.  Certain hybrid self-publishing companies, like Outskirts Press, offer a range of co-op options and possibilities.  Every company offers different options, of course, but Outskirts specifically offers the option to sign up for co-op advertising in the Boston Review, Publisher’s Weekly, Bookmarks and ForeWord magazines, and the New York Times Sunday Book Review.  The best part?  Co-operative advertising doesn’t drum up competition between authors.  As with many other aspects of the self-publishing process, Poynter believes that “it is easy to band together with compatible, non-competing products to lower costs, save time and gain more attention in the market place.”  Now that’s a message I can get behind!

Always remember: you are not alone. ♣︎

ElizabethABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
Kelly Speaks, news from the self publishing world, self publishing news, Uncategorized

Self-Publishing News: 2.22.2016

This week in the world of self-publishing:

It looks like Reedsy––a self-publishing marketplace platform that “empower[s] writers, publishers, editors and designers to build hybrid careers and work together quickly and effortlessly through bespoke, user-friendly digital tools”––is filling in some very important gaps for the indie community, as this February 19th article by founder Emmanuel Nataf for The Bookseller intimates.  Writes Nataf, “Until only recently, the self-publishing arena was an unchecked battleground, a veritable free-for-all where authors and freelancers alike placed their profits in the hands of lady luck.”  But a sea change has arrived as the indie publishing industry matures, as he goes on to say––a sea change that has taken some endurance to see through, as self-publishing authors and companies face social stigma and constant critical examination coming from the traditional commercial publishing sector.  Things may be changing, however: recently named FutureBook’s BookTech Company of the Year, Reedsy is looking to find its place in a stabilizing conversation with other industry standouts about the future of self-publishing.  “After all,” writes Nataf, “if there’s one thing we’ve learnt, it’s that successful growth as a startup depends on looking out, as well as in.”  For more information about Reedsy and the FutureBook awards, follow the link!

Big news for the digitally inclined!  As per this February 16th press release, Outskirts Press has officially completed work on a suite of apps for smartphone users that aim to make the self-publishing experience an even richer and more rewarding one; the apps are available to authors with both iPhone and Android devices, says the article, and “provide users with self-publishing guides and information, connect users with the Outskirts Press social media community of self-publishing authors, and provide direct links to contact Outskirts Press instantly by phone or email.”  Outskirts––which describes itself as offering “full-service, custom self-publishing and marketing services for authors seeking a cost-effective, fast, and flexible way to publish and distribute their books worldwide while retaining all their rights and full creative control”––sees the apps as a way for its authors to connect with both their audience and their self-publishing team.  Other indie publishing companies, like Kobo and Amazon Direct, offer supplementary apps, but Outskirts’ newest offerings may prove to be the most streamlined yet.  For more information, visit the original press release here.

If you’re looking for the latest and greatest news when it comes to bodice-rippers and steamy romance, Publisher’s Weekly has got you covered.  In its annual review of what’s going on in and what’s to come in the genre––this year courtesy of Ryan Joe on February 19th––PW first takes a moment to define the difference between the two terms:

Erotic romance, according to a definition from the Romance Writers of America, refers to “novels in which strong, often explicit, sexual interaction is an inherent part of the love story, character growth, and relationship development and could not be removed without damaging the story line.”

And erotica? “Erotica is just people doing it,” says Cordelia Logan, who has written 19 stories under five pen names and is beginning to focus on BDSM.

Good to know.  More importantly, erotic romance and erotica make for a good slice of the self-publishing industry’s total footprint (written and read) … so even if you don’t like it, don’t read it, or don’t like to admit that it exists––it does!  And it’s churning along in any case.  And “Thanks to the rise of self-publishing,” writes Joe, “authors can now experiment more.”  For the full article, and lots more pith for the aspiring indie erotica or erotic romance writer, you can always stop by the original Publisher’s Weekly article.

spa-news

As a self-publishing author, you may find it helpful to stay up-to-date on the trends and news related to the self-publishing industry.This will help you make informed decisions before, during and after the self-publishing process, which will lead to a greater self-publishing experience. To help you stay current on self-publishing topics, simply visit our blog every Monday to find out the hottest news. If you have other big news to share, please comment below.

KellyABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com.