How to Sell Your Published Book

Rodney Walther, author of Broken Laces

In which I expound on why most writers’ initiatives to promote their own books are about as effective as patching a leaky boat with Band-Aids, and then interview a writer who has sold more than 17,000 copies of his first novel – self-published! – in just over a year . . .  and the book keeps selling: like hotcakes.

Mary’s Opinion About the Problem With A Lot of Book Promotion

Whether your novel (or poetry book, or work of non-fiction) is about to be released from a major publishing house, a small literary press, a collective, or under your own imprint, the primary challenge once the book is released is how to get it noticed amid the hordes of other authors who have also just published a book, and (more importantly) how to get it selling.

Traditional promotional routes such as a mention in the New York Times or the various outdated forms of “industry buzz” just don’t make it any more. Who cares what “the industry” thinks? (Answer: The industry does. No one else gives a damn.) What we need to do is to build a profile among readers.

I have many, many friends and acquaintances who have published books recently, both on their own or working with established presses. For an unfortunate majority, their marketing efforts seem to be restricted to statements on FaceBook or Twitter that really amount to nothing more than, “My book is out. Buy it.” Or “My book is available for 99 cents today only. Buy it.” Or even, “A big (or small) company published my book and therefore it must be good. Buy it.” Their blog posts are only marginally more interesting and/or informative. Could I care less that they have published a book and that it is for sale? No. Several millions of people have done that (most of them, it seems, within the past two years. ;) )

This “Here I am. Buy me” approach does not work for me for one significant reason: it tells me nothing about what buying the book is going to do for me. And unless you are a very dear friend, I am not going to buy your book, much less read it – much, much less read it and review it – just for your sake. And this applies not only to those who are marketing their first books, but also to those who are publishing their third or fourth books.  I need to get something out of the experience myself before I’m going to invest my time and money in your book. As I get older (and a note to younger writers: we baby boomers constitute a massive audience for books, and we buy them. It is wise to consider us in your marketing efforts), I get even more particular.

Book reviews from trusted outlets and word-of-mouth are the primary sources of information I use to choose which books to buy and read. I choose my sources of reviews and feedback based on my interests: I don’t normally read science fiction or fantasy, for example, so I don’t seek out reviews and recommendations about books in those genres.

As a writer, I want to know how to get my books into the venues that are going to persuade other people who think like me (i.e., readers who want a literate general fiction book) to read the books I’ve written (general fiction with a twist). That is my job today: no one else is going to do it for me. The time is long gone when we as authors could decide that we were “above” all that – that as “artists,” we were too superior and delicate to walk among the mortals – that good literature was self-evident, and that it would reveal itself, and that people would find and read it.

We can be delicate artists while we’re writing, but when the book is published, we need to put on our running shoes and hit the streets (the Internet streets as well as the ones outside our doors). To my mind, a work of art is only complete if it has an audience. Our publishers (if any) aren’t going to do it for us: we are the ones who need to take responsibility for making sure that our books get read.  We need to deploy new forms of creative energy in the marketing of our books. We need to study business models, to strategize, to take the “customer is always right” approach.

If we’re going to sell books, we need a mind shift: we need to stop thinking of our books as our “babies.” It is hard to sell a baby. Our books, once published, are commodities, and people are going to criticize them – and us. We have to let that roll right off our backs.

We need to create a feeling among our prospective readers that they want and need to read our books, not that they “ought” to read them. We need to figure out our target audiences: promote ourselves among people who really are going to enjoy what we’ve written – and we need to disregard the ones who aren’t in our target audience (and this includes non-readers for the most part, by the way). If our book really is intended for the entire world (a universally appealing serio-comic western, shall we say, just as an example?), it will cross genres on its own.

I actually find this part of the process exciting, and one of the best parts of the new world of books. No longer do we need to leave this crucial component of the publication process (and the source of our future incomes) up to the vague if earnest attempts of interns in publicity departments who have a dozen temperamental authors with several books to promote as well as ours, which they haven’t had time to read and probably never will. Now we can do it all on our own.

To start my investigation into how to become a really effective marketer of my own book, I interviewed multiple-award-winning novelist Rodney Walther, author of Broken Laces. In just over a year, Rodney has sold more than 17,000 copies of his self-published first novel, and I was very pleased to be able to talk with him.

With The Whole Clove Diet – my next novel, and the first I am self-publishing – due for release in about a month, I am eager to learn all I can about this subject—and to share what I learn with others in my situation. So if you have additional suggestions, please add them by way of comments at the end of this article. I appended a few links I found myself while preparing to write this post.

Interview with Rodney Walther

MWW: Broken Laces, your first novel, concerns a father coming to terms with the tragic death of his beloved wife, while also coping with the grieving process and parenting needs of his seven-year-old son. It is set against the backdrop of a suburban community and particularly a Little League baseball team, which serves as a catalyst for many lessons learned by both father and son during the course of the novel.

It is unusual to read a domestic drama with a male figure as the central protagonist, but this one works. What was your primary target audience when you wrote it?

RW: In the original draft, I envisioned my reader as someone like me, a baseball parent or coach who could empathize with the redemption-through-sports angle. As I developed the story over a number of years, I came to understand that the ideal reader was any mom or dad, which led me to emphasize the father-son connection and the hero’s grief journey even more.

While a domestic drama typically appeals to women (and usually features a female protagonist), both women and men have responded to Broken Laces for its unique male voice and its complicated male protagonist. I think that’s allowed my story to stand out from similar books in the genre.

MWW: What made you decide to self publish?

RW: Although I had the interest of agents, the process was agonizingly slow. After five plus years of writing, my novel was finally ready to go, and I didn’t see the need to wait any longer.

Scanning the landscape of the print-on-demand (POD) world for paperbacks and the digital bookstore for e-books, I sensed that the time was right to self-publish. Looking back, I believe my instincts were correct.

MWW: How long has Broken Laces been available? And in what formats did you make the book available?

RW: I originally published Broken Laces in paperback via CreateSpace in November of 2010. Within a few weeks, the e-book was available on Kindle. In early/mid-2011, I made it available on the Nook, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords platforms.

Writing Competitions

MWW: Your novel has been a finalist and a winner of several writing awards. Tell us about those.

RW: The world of writing contests has been a great experience. Initially, I entered a few contests to get feedback on the work, as I was committed to improving my writing craft. I did receive excellent feedback, but I also began to win awards.

For novel-length fiction, I’ve won first place honors from Houston Writers Guild, West Virginia Writers, Maryland Writers’ Association, Panhandle Professional Writers, Crested Butte Writers, and North Texas Professional Writers.

My work has garnered multiple second- and third-place awards as well, including being named as a state finalist at Writers’ League of Texas and an ABNA 2011 quarterfinalist.

MWW: Broken Laces has also occasionally risen quite high in various Amazon best-seller lists. Can you tell us how many copies you have sold? Did sales build gradually or did the book start strong?

RW: My expectations were modest when I released the book. Although I was confident in the work, I knew the long odds against sudden success. The first two to three months had decent sales, with Christmas, 2010 giving the book a nice jumpstart.

Then when I lowered my price in March 2011 (e-book, from $6.95 to $2.99), that set in motion a significant increase in sales. I feel blessed that I’ve seen eleven straight months of sales greater than 1000 (mainly due to Kindle).

Broken Laces regularly stays in the Top-3 of multiple categories (currently #2 in sports fiction behind the 2011 Amazon Book of the Year The Art of Fielding; #2 in baseball behind Moneyball, and #1 for months in Death & Grief). My novel reached the Top-250 of all Kindle books in June 2011.

To date, I’ve sold more than 17,000 copies of Broken Laces.

MWW: Fabulous!! I’ll just pause here to take an admiring breath.

Okay, then. On to the next question. . . .

Your book is very “clean” from an editing perspective. Did you consider this an important part of preparing it for publication?

RW: I am very proud of how well edited the book is. I work with a number of writers in a critique group, who help identify structural flaws and discuss ways to improve characterization, story, etc. Between their contributions and my almost-obsessive attention to details, the book is indeed “clean.”

One of my reviews came from a reader in Spain (!), who said that he was initially wary of reading a self-published book. But after reading the whole book he decided, “This is a well-written novel, up to the standards of any big publisher.” That quote brings a lump to my throat each time I read it.

Pricing

MWW: How did you decide how to price the book? Is price important to book sales?

RW: Price is a huge factor for sales. Especially for self-published works. I originally set the price at $6.95 (Kindle) and $14.95 (paperback). In March 2011, I lowered the e-book price to $2.99 as an experiment, knowing that I’d have to sell two and a half times the number of books to achieve the same royalties. That move has paid off. I have considered the price point of $0.99, but because I’ve enjoyed strong sales at $2.99 and know that I’d have to increase sales six-fold to make the same profit—and because the $0.99 price point does have some negative connotations—I’m staying at $2.99.

Promotions

MWW: What promotional mechanisms have you used (e.g, in-person, social media, YouTube, sending out review copies, etc.)?

RW: I have done a little of everything: held book signings (sold books at several Little Leagues during Opening Day; attended a book and author dinner arranged by the community’s Literacy Council), participated in Facebook/Twitter (although not as much compared to others), participated in Amazon message forums, and sent out review copies. I haven’t created a YouTube trailer.

MWW: You have an excellent website at http://www.rodneywalther.com. Is it important for writers to have a website? Why?

RW: If people are serious about the process of crafting and selling a book, they should take the time to be serious about the way they appear in public. My website is professional and thorough, although I doubt it’s generated many sales. And I try to maintain a helpful, professional appearance in my Internet life. You won’t see me getting into flame wars or trashing others online: self-published authors do not need enemies.

MWW: Do you blog? Why or why not?

RW: I do not blog, but that’s because I try to focus on my writing.

MWW: Is targeting a specific audience important to book sales? On your website and in other places you have compared your books to other similar books by other (possibly better-known ;) ) authors in order to help readers know what to expect. Is this a worthwhile tactic?

RW: I believe so. It doesn’t make sense to try to sell my book to everyone—it’s much better to identify the audience that will respond to my story. For example, because of the complicated protagonist and the dysfunctional family dynamics (and because of the writing itself), readers of Jodi Picoult tend to buy my book. The emotional aspect of my work also attracts readers of Nicholas Sparks. Looking at Amazon’s “People who bought xxx also bought yyy,” Broken Laces is definitely being bought by that audience.

MWW: Do you have other suggestions for writers who are either self-publishing or are picking up some of the promotional responsibilities for their books from established presses?

RW: Be professional and treat it as a business. For writers who are self-publishing, pay great attention to the cover design. Mary, you and I have discussed this in the past. There are way too many unprofessional covers out there, ones that scream “Look what I did in a couple of hours!”

Building A Fire

MWW: Can you summarize the critical factors for launching a book?

RW: I look at the publishing/marketing of a novel much like trying to start a fire. Some people hope to ignite a successful book launch, but strike a single match and nothing happens. So they give up. Some people spend all their time striking individual matches, trying to win over one reader at a time. That’s a lot of work!

I was committed to giving Broken Laces its best shot at visibility. To continue the fire metaphor, I figured the best way to ignite a blaze was to bring everything together before striking matches haphazardly.

First, I took care in crafting the story and making sure it was well edited. I worked with a graphic designer to develop an effective cover. I identified my target reader and tried to figure out how to make my book visible to them (e.g., use of Amazon tagging, praying to the Amazon suggestion algorithm gods). I made FaceBook friends and ABNA friends, not for the selfish purpose of selling to them but to build relationships. I carefully considered my price point. I wrote a solid pitch and made sure to highlight my writing awards. And I tried to time my book launch for Christmas season.

Thanks to all these factors, plus solid reviews and great word-of-mouth, the fire has been burning for more than a year. Yes, every day I worry that a big rainstorm will come along and put it out.

That’s why I’m working on my next novel, so the blaze can continue well into the future.

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I am very grateful to Rodney Walther for taking the time to answer all of the questions I asked him — so clearly, thoroughly and honestly. His willingness to share everything he knows about the process of writing and selling has made him a popular and respected figure in the writing circles we share, for good reason. His generosity is appreciated. He’s also a fine writer. If you want more information about his book, click through the link I have posted to his book cover, or go to his website which is, again, www.rodneywalther.com

While researching this article I found a couple of lists of ideas re: book marketing that I think will be useful to my own initiatives — if I use them in conjunction with a few ideas of my own and the suggestions Rodney has provided. Here they are. And again, I welcome feedback from readers by way of comments if you have additional ideas that have worked for you – as a book marketer – or on you, as a book purchaser.

• http://www.go-publish-yourself.com/archive/articles/book-marketing/stuckerc.php
• http://www.themarketingmindset.com/2011/02/authors.html
• http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/ten-great-ways-to-promote-your-book.html

Update: Check out an additional comment from Rodney Walther  on ineffectual marketing, thoughts with which I concur completely. Thanks again for all your help with this post, Rodney.

12th Annual Weblog Awards (aka The Bloggies)

Coming next week on The Militant Writer: How to promote your published book — an interview with an author whose books are selling like hotcakes! In the meantime. . . 

How to nominate anyone’s blog for The Bloggies. Deadline Jan 15, 2012 (And if you don’t nominate mine, I’ll never know)

http://2012.bloggi.es/

THIS Sunday, January 15 10 p.m. EST is the deadline for entries in the 12^th Annual Weblog Awards, aka the 2011 Bloggies.

Each entry must include nominations of THREE distinct weblogs. This means that if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to nominate The Militant Writer (maryww.wordpress.com) in the “well written” or “topical” category (and in any other categories you might consider appropriate, such as best Canadian, etc. – because each blog can be entered in all appropriate categories), you can also nominate your own blog!!!! And your best friend’s blog!! Or even a blog you just like to read!

Of course, if you don’t have your own blog, or a best friend who blogs, or don’t read blogs, you could nominate one of my other blogs as your second and/or third choices. For example, my recent series of travel posts about India at I Am All Write (e.g., http://iamallwrite.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/watch-listen-learn-india-15-final-thoughts/) could be nominated for best travel or best writing or best Canadian or whatever. And then there’s my book review blog: http://marywwaltersbookreviews.wordpress.com/ That makes three. If you need them.

Here are the Bloggies Rules, reprinted from the Bloggies page

• Any pages with dated entries that existed at some point during the year 2011 are eligible.
• Only one nomination ballot and one finalist ballot may be submitted per person.
• E-mail addresses are required to vote. You must use your own address and confirm the verification e-mail.
• If you verify a second ballot, your first one will be replaced.
• In the nomination phase:
  • URLs are required.
  • Your ballot must contain at least three unique nominees.
  • Weblogs may be nominated for multiple categories.
  • Nominees must suit the category they are placed in.
  • Weblogs may win a category over multiple years a maximum of three times.

Here’s the nomination site again: http://2012.bloggi.es/ (Scroll down to find the ballot)

Here are my urls, which you will need. Insert the title of the blog (e.g., I’m All Write) on the left side of the box, then press TAB and insert the url.

http://iamallwrite.wordpress.com (I’m All Write)

http://maryww.wordpress.com (The Militant Writer)

http://marywwaltersbookreviews.wordpress.com/ (Mary W. Walters: Book Reviews)

It just takes a few minutes. Support a writer! Any writer!

Looking for Beta readers for The Whole Clove Diet

Update Jan 4/11: Thanks for your responses! I have now got ten beta readers. Watch for the next posts on The Militant Writer: How to promote your independently published book — an interview with an author whose books are selling like hotcakes!

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My third novel (fifth book) is currently being typeset and will be published in about two months. I am looking for ten people who are interested in reading the final version of it in manuscript form and then writing a one-paragraph (or so) review for Amazon once the book is published. It doesn’t matter if you like it or not — you are welcome to be honest. I just want some reviews up there as soon as the book comes out.

In exchange, once the book is published I will sign a copy of the print version (it will also be available as an e-book. It’s is going to have a beautiful cover! I’m so excited!) and mail it to you, all at no cost to you.

If you are interested, please write me at mary @ marywwalters dot com or contact me via this blog.

Here’s info about the book:

As she breaks 200 pounds, and not in a good way, Rita (29) finds herself married to a self-focused widower with two difficult kids and a mother who almost makes Rita’s own mother look like a role model—which is really saying something. Graham’s first wife, being dead, just keeps getting better and better in everyone’s memories while Rita just gets fatter and more aggravated. She’s tried every diet in the book, but it’s not until a family crisis forces her out the door that she figures out that the easiest way to thin is to get rid of the baggage on the inside. Funny and insightful, The Whole Clove Diet is sure to make readers of all shapes and sizes feel better about themselves—and ultimately maybe even about Rita.

Thanks!

It’s A Wrap! Create a really effective cover for your book – Part II

In Part II of this mini-series of blog posts about book covers, I talk to my friend and colleague J. Allen (Jeff) Fielder about how writers can ensure that their covers attract readers to their books. Jeff is a graphic designer who has created covers for several independently published authors in the past few years, along with a number of other related products such as bookmarks and web graphics. He is employed full time as a graphic artist, and is also a writer of fiction and nonfiction and a photographer. His own second book – and first book of fiction – a collection of short stories entitled Voices of the Field, is currently in production. Check out some samples of his covers and info about him on his website: JAllenFielder.com

MWW: So, is it true that “You can’t judge a book by its cover?”

JAF: It’s completely untrue. You can judge a book by its cover—and people do it all the time, probably even more so in the digital age. Today, what your book looks like on a screen at about 1 inch by 1.5 inches can be the tipping point between whether someone clicks on it to read more, or just keeps scrolling.

MWW: Aside from being interesting to look at, what else does a good cover do?

JAF: Every genre has its own expectations about what a good cover looks like. Black and minimal is the style, for example, in young-adult urban fantasy, colorful and cartoony for feel-good adult fiction. A designer can help guide you through what your cover should look like, based on its tone, content and target audience. But there has to be more to it than just looking good: the cover has to look good up close as well. The covers of many self-published books I’ve seen have no depth to them. They are flat text on flat photos. That sends a message to the reader: if the cover is flat without depth, the book probably is, too. The designer has the experience that helps you to overcome issues like that which you might not even be aware of.

MWW: Okay, so clearly we can’t afford to go with something we whipped up in PowerPoint. But authors are often afraid that they can’t afford a cover designer. How much do you people charge, anyway?

JAF: Be ready to spend $200 to $500 on a good cover. You can probably get by with cheaper, but just like buying at a dollar store, you’re probably going to get what you paid for. You can find hungry designers in high school and college, but will they know how to work with vendors? Will they know how to set up bleeds, and trims, and the format types each vendor requires? Will your designer spend more time trying to figure out how to set the file up than actually designing?

MWW: Tell me about the process that a designer goes through when creating the cover of a book.

JAF: In my case, first I have to understand the book, either by reading the manuscript, or getting a detailed brief. Then I need time alone, maybe even a few weeks, to go over ideas, before I involve the author. I might spend days upon days going through stock-photo sites, or thinking about how I can shoot a photograph myself – evaluating whether a photo is even the right approach. After that, there’s constant dialogue with the author. I ask them questions about their tastes: “Do you like minimalist art? A particular text? What other book covers do you like?” Together we explore color palettes, and font treatments, and theme. In short, there’s a lot more than just going to a photography website, typing a key word or two, finding an image that appeals to you, and slapping Comic Sans on it.

MWW: You can’t just go to a website, find a photo and use it on your book anyway, can you?

JAF: No, you can’t. And it’s really not as simple as going to a stock photo Web site and buying a $10 photo, either. First, of course, there’s copyright. Even if it doesn’t expressly say it’s copyrighted, assume all photographs and images are. Just because it’s on the Internet, doesn’t mean it’s free. Also, photographs, paintings, even fonts, have what’s known as an End User License Agreement and Terms of Use. You have to read the fine print to know what it is you’re buying. Some stock photo sites will sell you a photograph, but the license only allows you to use the image on Web sites, or for personal use. Some stock photo sites require that for covers, or other resale, you have to buy an “Extended License,” which can cost up to several hundred dollars. So be careful, and know what it is you’re buying.

MWW: Sometimes you can’t get the image you want at all – as I recounted in Part I of this cover series, I ran into that with my efforts to get a Botero on my cover.

JAF: Or it might just not be worth it. One writer I was working with found a shot he really liked for his cover from a professional photographer. I contacted the photographer, hoping to work out a deal to license the image for the book. She wanted $500 to use the photograph, and $2,000 to buy the full rights. The $500 would have included the first 1,000 copies, and then the contract would have a continued life where every 100 copies after that would include royalties ($200). There’s no way the writer could ever have recouped that cost: it was probably more than the royalties he would make on his own book.

MWW: What advice do you give writers on how to work with a designer to get the best cover possible?

JAF: A good relationship with your designer should be one where there’s back-and-forth and understanding. A designer shouldn’t dictate, but neither should the writer. As a writer, you need to be able to bring ideas to the table, know what you want, and be able to express yourself. But you also need to have an open mind and be flexible. If either side lays down the law and won’t budge, you’re probably going to get poor results. Ultimately, you might get what you want and find out it’s not what your readers wanted. Your cover shouldn’t be about ego: your cover should help sell your book.

MWW: Obviously, choosing the right designer is almost as important as choosing the right cover.

JAF: You have to be able to trust your designer to take care of you. A good designer is not only going to give you the cover you want, but will know how to make it usable for all of your needs. Today, you may just want a great cover design so that you can sell the electronic version of your book, but when the time comes that you want to produce a paperback, a single front cover that can’t continue the theme to the spine or back flap isn’t going to do you any good. You need to be sure that your designer will set up the file so it can print large scale as well as small. Electronic images might look good at one inch by one inch, but if you go big and your cover wasn’t designed for it, you might have to start all over.

MWW: Thanks, Jeff. The ball’s in your court with the cover of my next novel, The Whole Clove Diet. I am looking forward to seeing what you (we) come up with!

* * * * *

Note to writers/independent publishers from Mary the Editor aka The Book Charmer: The text that goes on the back cover of your paperback version of your book is also critical. Go to a bookstore and pick up lots of books and really look at the elements on the back cover. What do you want? An author bio? An author photo? Quotes from pre-publication reviewers/readers of your manuscript? Reviews of one of your previous books? A brief summary of plot that gets the reader hooked?

Don’t try to include all of these components on your back cover – you don’t want the text too dense. And make sure you get your cover proofread: one of the first books I supervised through production as editor in chief at Lone Pine came out with the name of a government minister (who later went on to become prime minister!) spelled wrong on the back cover. And in those days, you were stuck with selling an entire print run before you could fix the error. Ever since then I triple check the text on the cover, and get someone else to take a look as well.

Once you have the text prepared, your cover designer will be able to help you compose a back cover layout that complements the design of the front cover and the spine. For a great example of this, check out the layout (and the design!) Jeff created for John A. Aragon’s first novel: Billy The Kid’s Last Ride
(Sunstone Press). The images on the cover are from John’s “Last Ride” mural in Santa Fe.

It’s A Wrap! Create a really effective cover for your book – Part I

Whether your book is published by an established press or you are doing it yourself, it is important to remember that what the outside of your book looks like is the first introduction many of your readers are going to have to the content, tone and quality of your book. Like it or not, your cover will provide the foundation for all of your marketing efforts. You have spent so much time writing the text; you do not want to reduce its impact by wrapping it in a less-than-impressive cover.

If you are publishing with a traditional press, your contract may not allow you any say in the selection of the cover of your book, although many writers are now requesting that their contracts give them at least some rights in this area (if publishers are expecting writers to do most of the promotion on their own books, they should at least give them a great-looking product that they are excited to hold in their hands and celebrate on their websites, right?).

I recommend that even if you have no legal ground to stand on, if you really dislike a cover that has been designed for your book, you say so. I never liked the cover of my second novel, Bitters, and told the staff at the publishing house how I felt, but they managed to convince me I was wrong. They suggested that I was a writer and not familiar with design elements. I wasn’t wrong – the colours are putrid and the design uninteresting – and I’ve regretted not being more assertive about it ever since.

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In the second part of this two-part post, I’m going to interview the acclaimed book-cover designer Jeff Fielder – who created the cover of the newest edition of The Woman Upstairs (it was originally published by NeWest Press and I didn’t own rights to the original cover), and is also doing the cover for my next novel, The Whole Clove Diet. He has also created great covers for a number of other writers’ books, not to mention other promo materials such as bookmarks. You can see samples on his website here. Jeff will tell us how to find and work with a book-cover designer.

Before I report on that interview, however, I want to tell you a bit about what I learned about creating book covers when I worked as editor-in-chief at Lone Pine Publishing, and what I have attempted so far in the creation of a cover for my latest novel.

When I went to work at Lone Pine Publishing, my employer and the design and sales staff taught me an important thing or two about book covers:

1. You want the cover to accurately portray not only the content, but also the tenor and even the complexity of the book itself. As far as content, think about conveying the era, the culture, the milieu the book is set in – not necessarily by portraying these things exactly, but by communicating the sense of them. For example, if your novel is set in early 20^th-century Paris, you may not need a street scene that is an exact portrayal of the streets your narrator walks along; a drawing, even abstract, that evokes the same feeling as a rainy lamplit Paris street can have the same, or even greater, impact. If you’ve written a comedy, a somber cover will not suit, and a historical saga should not look like a steampunk novel. As far as stylistic complexity, if your writing emulates that of Feodor Dostoevsky or Ayn Rand, you may not want a cover image of a couple clutched in a passionate embrace à la Harlequin Romance, no matter how passionate your characters may be. Go to a bookstore: either a real one or online, or check out collections of book cover designs like this one. Look at books in the genre and style in which you are writing. Look at their covers for inspiration and guidance and to increase your own awareness: pre-teen novels do not look like detective novels for adults; books on creating effective websites do not look like biographies; westerns do not look like zombie novels.
2. Design styles change. This can work to your advantage. If your novel is set in the 1950s, check out the original covers of novels published in that time period: emulating them can reinforce the time-frame of your book. The fact that design styles change is also something you should think about if you want your cover to remain effective for the next twenty years: you may not want to get too trendy;
3. You will need to make choices about the content of the cover design. Are you going to use a photograph on your cover, like this one on a bio by my friend Peter Jonker does? A painting? A drawing? Perhaps a simple colour design with text? Each of these options presents a different message to the viewer and conveys something about the content of the book;
4. Consider costs. Can you afford to commission an actual work of art for the cover of your book? Can you even afford permission costs to use a work of art already in existence? If you want a photograph, how will you access the one you want? You CANNOT use a photo or piece of art you find on the Internet without seeking permission from the creator and/or his/her estate: it is not only unethical, it is illegal. On the other hand, if you use a free or very cheap stock photo from a do-it-yourself cover-maker page, you may run into your cover illustration on the cover of someone else’s book or other product. But if you create your own photograph or work of art – or use a drawing by your clever seven-year-old – is it going to look sufficiently professional, or merely quaint and home-made?
5. Did you know that the font you choose for your title, author name, and back cover text, is also communicating a message about the content of your book? Did you know that fonts also go in and out of style: there are quite a few people who actually “hate” comic sans because they’ve seen it in too many PowerPoint presentations, for example, and may be turned away from reading your book just because you used that font on your cover? You many want to investigate any non-classic fonts carefully before using them – unless, of course, the funky font you’ve chosen reinforces the tone of your book;
6. Visual contrast is crucial to a cover. You want to make sure that people can read the text on the cover of your book. White text on pale gold may look great up close, but it’s almost impossible to see when the cover gets small enough to put on a website, or even on a shelf a few yards away across a bookstore. A very busy cover may also make your title invisible to the reader;
7. What is your cover going to do to help your sales? Is it going to attract attention when it is reproduced for review on someone’s blog at about 3 cm x 3 cm? If a bookseller puts it in a book stand, is the title still going to show? Will it reproduce well on a poster, a brochure, a postcard, a bookmark or other materials you may choose to create to produce to promote your book?
8. Remember that a cover is a wrapper for a book. It has three sections: the front, the spine and the back. If you choose different backgrounds for those three elements, what is going to happen to the appearance if the cover is cut a little “off angle” during the production process? Is the artwork for the spine going to actually appear on the spine, or is it going to angle across the spine? It is generally best to use the same predominant colour all the way around the cover so you don’t end up with off-kilter colour where you don’t want it.

These and many other questions should occur to you as you are creating your book cover, which you can do on your own for free with programs offered by self-publishing companies like CreateSpace, or online by Googling such terms as “book cover templates.” I recently read a great suggestion that you can make a jpeg for a book cover using PowerPoint.

You can also hire a cover designer who knows what he or she is doing (which is my preference, and as important to me as hiring an outside editor) or do it yourself. But whatever course you take, make sure you love your book cover and that it is “you,” as much as your writing is.

Fernando Botero, and The Whole Clove DIET Cover

Early in the period during which I was writing The Whole Clove Diet, I saw a painting at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University that opened a whole new world to me. It was by Fernando Botero, a Bolivian artist I’d never heard of at that point, and I immediately identified it with the mood I was working to convey in the novel. The subject of the drawing was a young girl – round, as most of Botero’s subjects are—and she was smoking a cigarette. She looked feisty and assertive, defiant in spite of or perhaps in part because of her shape and her age-inappropriate nicotine-delivering accessory.

As I explored further I learned that the men and women in most of Botero’s paintings and sculptures may be far over a healthy BMI but they seem not to be concerned in the least about that. If they are not flaunting their pudginess, they are at least confident in their bodies and apparently certain of who they are.

Over the years since I have sought out and found many Botero paintings and sculptures to admire both online and in real galleries. I always imagined that when I was ready to publish (I assumed at that point that the world’s major publishers would be begging at my door for The Whole Clove Diet), I would ask my publisher to approach Señor Botero and secure permission to use one of his images for the cover. I had, in fact, chosen several paintings that I would particularly have liked to use.

When I decided to pursue publication on my own, I thought at first that I would need to abandon the idea of using a Botero on my book because I did not have the heft of a publishing company behind me. But then I decided that I should leave no stone unturned, so I began a rather lengthy process of figuring out how to contact the artist. With the help of a friend, I finally figured out who Botero’s representatives were in the United States, and contacted them. They said I could make a proposal to the artist through them, and so I proceeded to carefully prepare a letter to send to them, to send to him. I gave evidence to the artist (I hoped) that I was no first-time writer, that I respected and admired his work tremendously, and that although I could not afford to pay him what it might be worth for this one-time use (which I presume would be in the thousands of dollars), I would be happy to share any amount of the cover price of the book that he might be interested in suggesting. (I would not, of course, have agreed if he’d wanted too much of the cover price!) The owner of the gallery who represented Botero was very helpful, asking for additional information I had not included and even going to all the trouble to buy and read The Woman Upstairs, my first novel.

The pitch was not ultimately successful – Fernando Botero declined to allow me permission to use his art – but I gained from the experience anyway. I acquired a fan in La Jolla California (the gallery owner, who said she liked my book and is looking forward to The Whole Clove Diet. Thank you, Mary Beth Tasende!). And even though I was disappointed that Señor Botero said “No,” I would have been even more disappointed in myself if I had not tried to reach him. I would have wondered forever if he might have said “Yes” if I had just asked. I did the best that I could do, and even though the response was not what I might have wished, at least I have it.

A couple of my friends worried that if I did get permission, some prospective readers might not like Botero’s art, and might therefore not want to buy the book. Who knows? I still love his stuff, and I think that people who love good writing are also those who love good art.

However, the message I am trying to deliver here is that as writers pursuing the new world of “independent publishing,” we need to have some chutzpah. It is no longer enough for us to just write our books. Now we need to clothe them before we send them out in public. We need invest some energy, and maybe even some money, in making our books look as good as we have made them sound.

If you have a book cover you particularly like, tell us about it in the comment and add a link. Show us what you like about it. If it’s your book, tell us why you chose it.

Need Help From Current or Prospective Grant Applicants

Update 11 p.m. Tues., Sept. 27 – Thank you for the responses so far! I am still looking for one artist (any discipline except writing — visual arts, performing arts, multimedia etc — preferred, as two writers have already volunteered) and three people involved with writing grant proposals for community groups or non-profit organizations (small to large groups/organizations welcome.)

__________________________

I am developing THREE series of audiocasts (6 in each series) based on my book, Write an Effective Funding Application: A Guide for Researchers and Scholars (The Johns Hopkins University Press).

The courses are being developed for three different audiences of prospective grant applicants: Researchers and Scholars, Creative Artists, and Non-Profit Organizations/Community Groups.

I have developed preview audiocasts for each of these courses and they are now available as MP3s. I am looking for people who are planning to write applications for funding in one of those three categories, and would like to listen to these preview audiocasts and tell me what you think.

If you are interested in helping, please contact me at marywwalters at marywwalters dot com (note the double W) or by responding through this website.

If you don’t like the audiocast (which is about 25 minutes long and comes as two MP3s), I win because I get to incorporate your suggestions for changes in the recordings before I “go public.” If you do like it, you win, because I will be happy to provide you with the six audiocasts that form the modules of the course at no charge as they become available — as long as you keep providing feedback on what you hear before I post them. :)

I want three “beta listeners” for each audiocast. I have two already for the researchers and scholars preview recording. I am therefore looking for

1 researcher/scholar (PhD student/candidate, PDF, assistant or associate prof etc. Any discipline)

3 creative artists (including writers, visual artists, filmmakers: anyone who would like to learn how to write an effective grant application to support their creative projects — from a foundation or other funding agency, for example)

3 people who would like to learn more about writing effective funding applications on behalf of community groups or non-profit organizations — from water polo teams to national galleries: block (operational) funding or project grants.

The series is relevant to those who are working in any geographical location where grants are available.

How writers can stop plagiarism: individually, and as a powerful, united, “pen”-wielding group

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but copying is theft. And yet stealing the writing of others has become so commonplace that teachers and professors feel impotent to put a stop to it, and many writers seem resigned to the inevitability of being ripped off, scraped, plundered, robbed and screwed.

I am not resigned. I can only begin to imagine my outrage if someone ever attaches his or her name to a story, essay or article I have written and tries to pass it off as his or her own (which has happened to many other writers but not to me yet, as far as I know). It was aggravating enough to discover that a post from this blog – which I had spent hours and hours creating (or years, it could be argued, if you consider the experience that went into it) – had been altered enough to make it hard to trace and almost unintelligible, then posted as part of a money-making machine set up by some scuzzbucket with a website registered in Russia.

Thanks to the diligence and knowledge contained within my fellowship of on-line writers, with whom I communicate at last count on about ten different sites, I managed not only to figure out who was doing this to me (and hundreds and hundreds of other writers), but also why – and what I could to do to address the problem.

How I Discovered I’d Been Pillaged

About three weeks ago, I Googled “Militant Writer” to get the link to my blog (usually I just use the autofill function on the Google toolbar but I was on another computer). To my surprise, the results included not only my site and a few unrelated items, but also a couple of links to what turned out to be mangled versions of one of my blog posts — on someone else’s website.

It turned out that the site, entitled Publish A Book, is a compilation of hundreds of articles previously published in dozens of different on-line publications – some from blogs such as my own, but others from more established commercial outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. In each case every fourth or fifth word has been replaced with a synonym, most of them slightly “off,” so that the articles come out sounding as though they have been translated into a different language, and then translated back to English. One sentence in my article reproduced on the other site read, for example, “It looks unpreventable to me now that except they take up the sideline manufacture of weaponry or maybe bath salts to sponsor themselves, the major publishing homes are going down,“ while the original version was “It seems inevitable to me now that unless they take up the sideline manufacture of weaponry or bath salts to subsidize themselves, the major publishing houses are going down.”

Screen capture of an article on canyoupublishabook.info

In addition to all the other articles,  I noticed that there were lots of ad links on the website but I didn’t yet understand what that meant. I looked around the site – without success – for an email address to which I could send a complaint. On July 20, I put a notice up on my blog to tell my readers what I had discovered, and I also started threads about it on FaceBook, Twitter, Google +, authonomy, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards (ABNA) discussion forum, a couple of LinkedIn writers’ forums I belong to, and The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) listserve. I also sent a letter to Access Copyright, which is the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – with which I am registered (you will notice a copyright notice on my on-line posts). I cc’d TWUC, my lawyer, and a few other people.

It was a few days before I heard back from Access Copyright, and the representative there explained that they could try to help me to get some payment for having had my work used by someone else. I said that what I wanted to do was to have my post removed from the other website, and they told me that they could not help with that.

In the meantime, my fellow writers on the forums had been working overtime. One person (thanks again, tvguy) found the email address I had been unable to locate on the website (by going to the Privacy Notice page and scrolling down, down, down) and he discovered that the same email address was also the contact address for a whole lot of other sites (there were about 80 at that point) which offered advice and guidance (and links to more ads) for people who had questions about lung cancer, loans for bad credit, migraine headaches, and a whole lot of other conditions and issues. Another writer helped me by tracking the websites and the email address to an internet host which included an actual name and functioning email address, albeit one located in Vladivostok (which didn’t sound like a place that was going to honour my copyright).

Another writer colleague explained the rationale for all those sites – and the dozens of others like them that are proliferating on the Internet. He explained that these larcenists set them up to attract hits by people using search engines to look for information on certain popular topics – in this case, self-publishing. When unsuspecting visitors to these sites click on one of the many links contained within them, the owner of the site gets a payment – from Google AdSense or similar advertising programs. They probably get only a few pennies when someone hits one link, but when you have 80 sites and hundreds of links, they start to add up.

In the meantime, I had been going through the perpetrator’s websites attempting to work backwards to identify others who were, like me, being victimized by the owner of these websites (if you are looking for a new way to procrastinate on the Net, there is meaty potential here. The articles become puzzles that you can solve by trying to guess what word was in the article originally before they replaced it with a less meaningful synonym, then Google the result and see what happens). I guess I was thinking of “class action” remedies to the problem – if enough of us who had been wronged complained together, perhaps we could get the sites taken down.

I found the originals of several articles – including a few from blogs and some by writers for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Toronto Star. I wrote to these latter writers, and ultimately to the papers themselves to tell them what was happening. (In response, I have had one “Thanks for the heads’ up” response from the WSJ, but that is all.)

What I Did

Despite really significant support from the writers on the aforementioned forums and this blog page (“Go get the slime, Mary,” was a typical response) and their excellent sleuthing skills (thank you, people), in light of the lack of interest exhibited by almost everyone I had written to directly, I lowered my expectations. I did have other things to do besides bringing down one scumbag. I decided I would settle for having my own blog post removed from his website, and alerting other people as to how I had done it.

On August 8, I sent the “Cease and Desist” letter I posted on the same day on my Militant Writer blog. I sent it to the email address that was posted on the “Privacy Policy” page of all those websites (which turned out to be a non-functional email address) and to the email address that was listed on the site where ownership of the website was listed (which seems to have been working). I sent a copy to Google AdSense (which required me to walk over to the FedEx office several blocks away and spend $12 to fax it, since Google and Google AdSense don’t have email contact addresses. Which makes me laugh). I sent copies to my lawyers in Canada and the USA, and to the papers to which I had previously written whose work had also been plagiarized.

Even though it was a big hassle to go and fax the letter to Google AdSense, I think that was the step that brought results. Google is based in a country that does have copyright laws, even if the plagiarist is not. (I have since heard that the perpetrator might not be just one person – that businesses to set up advertising-money-generating websites are popping up all over the Middle East and Asia, employing hundreds of workers at $1/hour to comb through articles in western newspapers, magazines, and blogs, alter them, and post them on these money-making websites. Others have suggested that the perpetrators use complex computer algorithms rather than slave labour.) It seems unlikely to me that Google is going to want to be seen as knowingly paying someone on the basis of stolen copyrighted text.

Whether it was the fax to Google AdSense or the email to the website owner, all of the articles I had pointed out had disappeared off the websites by the following morning (not only mine, but the examples I had provided from the NYT and the WSJ). The sites are still up, although there seem to be fewer associated with the fake email address grishina@addictiontreatmentinfo.net,  which leads me to believe only that there are probably now sites with a whole new fake email contact address on them. But it is time for me to get back to my own work.

What To Do If You Are Plagiarized

1. Make screen captures (Command, Shift, 3 on a Mac) so that you have evidence of what has been posted and where it was copied from, with date stamps;
2. Write a cease-and-desist letter (like the one I wrote) to the person who has done the plagiarizing. Use any contact addresses on the site to track down the legal owner of the site, or try http://who.is/

If you want to start strong – or with your followup email if the first one doesn’t work – send copies to:

• the site’s web host if you can find it (e.g., if the name on the site is scuzzbucket at yahoo.com, send a copy to Yahoo);
• any commercial interests that the plagiarist is working with via links or other promotional initiatives;
• legal representation in the country where the commercial interests are based;
• the media.

If that doesn’t work, then:

1. If any of the stakeholders are based in the U.S., send the website a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice. The act is explained on Wikipedia and this WordPress site gives excellent guidance on how to complete a notice: http://en.support.wordpress.com/content-theft-what-to-do/
2. Advise the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN. Note: I didn’t get around to exploring their site so I’m not sure if they have any interest or power in this area)
3. If you still don’t get results and you can afford it, sue the bastards. If you can’t afford it, try to gather a group of other writers together whose copyright is being infringed by the same website owner, and put your resources together or find a pro bono legal service to help you to sue the bastards

Attitude Attitude Attitude

The important thing, as far as I’m concerned, is that we don’t just accept that plagiarism is the new reality. If anyone in the universe should be able to fight back eloquently and passionately against the theft of our writing, it is writers.

We can prove that the pen is mightier than the sword, and if we are fortunate (as I was) we can use our words to diffuse the problem before we have to start paying lawyers. Sending a copy to a lawyer is a good preliminary indication of your serious intent, however, as far as I’m concerned.

For many of us, our writing is our stock-in-trade. Most of us aren’t making very much money from doing it, but we invest a lot of time, thought and heart into what we write, and if our work is stolen and we don’t speak up, we are devaluing what we do.

We need to constantly remind our students and our readers that plagiarism is theft. We need to be familiar with, support and monitor the copyright legislation that affects us. We need to join copyright collectives like Access Copyright and post copyright notices on our work. (I am not a copyright lawyer, but I do know that you don’t need to pay to copyright everything you write in order to protect it. If you have evidence you wrote it — as I do here with my early drafts of this blog post on my computer — you are covered.)

We need to make a BIG, FOCUSED, ARTICULATE NOISE when someone rips us off, or steals the work of any of our fellow writers. We, both individually and as a group, hold the strongest weapon there is against the theft of our creative enterprise: our own eloquence. It is up to us to use it.

P.S. I welcome comments that include any additional information you may have on fighting copyright infringement. And stay tuned — I WILL be getting back to the important subject of self-publishing very soon, as I move closer to publishing The Whole Clove Diet.

Note: If you want information on how to detect plagiarism, or where to find plagiarism-detection apps, visit this blog post by Jennifer Murtoff. And tvguy, mentioned above, has found a way to warn off prospective plagiarists before they even start.

Dear Plagiarist/Vile Wretch/Scumbag

Update: On Tuesday, August 9, the stolen and mangled articles I linked to in this blog post were removed from the sites associated with the grishina email address. I suspect this had more to do with the copy of the letter I faxed to Google AdSense than to the letter I sent by email to the perpetrator (with copies to all and sundry). I will write a blog post soon about what I did — and what steps I would have taken if this step had not worked. For now I am just pleased to see that a letter does work (power to the pen!), and relieved that it was not necessary to hire a battery of lawyers to achieve my goal.

 

To: grishina@theaddictiontreatment.info *

Copy faxed to Google AdSense Violations.

Additional copies sent to: The New York Times, Toronto Star, my legal representatives in Canada and the U.S., Access Copyright, The Writers Union of Canada

Subject: You are stealing my work. Please stop immediately.

Dear Grishina:

You have posted at least two of my blog posts on two of your 50 or more websites. You have riddled my text with links to Google AdSense ads and other commercial entities. It is my understanding that when unsuspecting people come to your site for information for their problems or answers to their questions and click on one of those links, you get a payment.

I don’t imagine you get paid much for each click, Grishina, but whatever you do earn from these articles of mine is more than I have earned from them—and it took me days and days to create them: thinking, writing, revising, researching, selecting the exact right words and phrases to communicate what I wanted to say. All you did was set a computer to work, crawling the Internet for articles that might fit into one of your “topical” websites, copying the articles, replacing every fourth or fifth word with a happenstance synonym so that plagiarism search programs won’t find you, stripping off the name of the author, and then posting the resulting text as if it were owned by you on one of your many sites.

You have posted the articles you have stolen from me on at least two of your websites that purportedly offer information about writing and publishing. You have stolen additional material for those sites from dozens of other writers and bloggers as well.

But that’s just the beginning, isn’t it? You have also stolen the writing that you have posted on other of your sites to attract people who are looking for information about such subjects as:

• lung cancer causes (and here’s your nonfunctioning email address on that site)
• traumatic brain injury
• migraine headaches
• loans for bad credit
• addiction rehabilitation (and here you are again, unreachable at the same email address!)

You have stolen from magazines, newspapers, community group newsletters, online health sites, and hundreds and hundreds of other sources. Every single piece you stole was written by a writer – some of us professional, some not. None of us gets paid well when we create information that is directly useful to others, and most of us from whom you have stolen do not get paid at all.

You have chosen our articles to steal because of the key words in them that, when posted on your site, will help you rise to the top of search engines when people are looking for answers to their problems – some of them life-and-death problems – so that more people will click on the ads you have inserted into our work and earn you a few pennies.

“Plagiarist” and “thief” are only two of the words that apply to people like you.

I am attaching screen captures of just two pages of Google searches that I have found this morning with your return email address on them. How many clicks from all over the world have they provided you today? What you have stolen from me may add up to mere pennies in your pocket, but I’m sure the return on what you have stolen from all of us together is more significant. And even if you are earning no money from us, you have still plagiarized our work, and that is theft.

Here is one paragraph from a post on my Militant Writer blog that you have transformed for your use:  This is your version at http://canyoupublishabook.info/the-author-as-publisher-the-militant-writer/

It looks unpreventable to me now that except they take up the sideline manufacture of weaponry or maybe bath salts to sponsor themselves, the major publishing homes are going down. There’ll surely be a part for niche publishers in future (literary presses that concentrate on poetry or maybe esoteric fiction amongst them, teetering on the edge of ending as they constantly have, and non-fiction homes that focus on such restricted regions as the plants and creatures of Paraguay or maybe the struggles of Planet War II), however for almost all mainstream fiction and non-fiction book writers, autonomous publishing will shortly end up being the norm.

This is what I originally wrote, at http://maryww.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/how-much-more-do-you-really-earn-when-you-self-publish/

It seems inevitable to me now that unless they take up the sideline manufacture of weaponry or bath salts to subsidize themselves, the major publishing houses are going down. There will certainly be a role for niche publishers in future (literary presses that focus on poetry or esoteric fiction among them, teetering on the brink of expiration as they always have, and non-fiction houses that specialize in such limited areas as the flora and fauna of Paraguay or the battles of World War II), but for the majority of mainstream fiction and non-fiction book writers, independent publishing will soon become the norm.

Here is an example of an article you have stolen from The New York Times and posted, slightly changed, on your “Early Signs of Lung Cancer” site at http://earlysignsoflungcancer.info/costello-loses-battle-with-lung-cancer-thechronicleherald-ca/

Billy Costello, who ended up being an undefeated light welterweight champion in the mid-Nineteen Eighties regardless of not putting on boxing gloves till he was Nineteen, died June Twenty Nine in Kingston, N.Y. He was Fifty Five. The cause was lung cancer, said his woman, Dolores Costello.

The original, on http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/sports/billy-costello-who-won-light-welterweight-crown-dies-at-55.html?_r=1

Billy Costello, who overcame a troubled youth to become an undefeated light welterweight champion in the mid-1980s despite not putting on boxing gloves until he was 19, died Wednesday in Kingston, N.Y. He was 55. The cause was lung cancer, said his mother, Dolores Costello.

Here is one from The Toronto Star, republished on your “What Is High Blood Pressure” site at http://whatishighbloodpressure.info/reducing-salt-no-cure-all-new-study-suggests-toronto-star/

A recently published assessment implies there’s no indication that temperately cutting back on the quantity of sodium in the every day meal plan — not just salt from the shaker though also the stuff poured in processed meals — decreases the danger of developing heart ailment or perhaps dying before the time.

The regular study by British scientists working for the Cochrane Partnership, a non-profit organization that takes a second look at the indication after medical care, published in the American Journal of Blood Pressure on Wednesday concluded that lessening salt does result in a slight decrease in hypertension however had no effect on coronary disease.

Compare to the original at http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1020928–reducing-salt-no-cure-all-new-study-suggests

A newly published analysis suggests there is no evidence that moderately cutting back on the amount of sodium in the daily diet — not just salt from the shaker but also the stuff poured into processed foods — reduces the risk of developing heart disease or dying before your time.

The systematic review by British researchers working for the Cochrane Collaboration, a non-profit organization that takes a second look at the evidence behind health care, published in the American Journal of Hypertension on Wednesday concluded that reducing salt does lead to a slight decrease in blood pressure but had no effect on cardiovascular disease.

Plagiarism is theft, Grishina. I have a copyright notice on my blogs, but even if I didn’t, you have stolen what I have done. I insist you take down my writing from your sites immediately and never steal anything of mine again. I have copied this letter to my legal representatives in Canada and the U.S.A., as well as to the Canada Copyright Licensing Agency and The Writers Union of Canada.
Thank you for your immediate compliance.

Mary W. Walters

______________

Note: many thanks to my on-line friends on The Writers’ Union of Canada listserve, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards forum, the authonomy forum, and readers of this blog, who helped me figure out who was doing this and why after I found my mangled text on-line. Special thanks to ABNA super-sleuths tvguy who found the perpetrator’s email address and showed me how to find his ISP, and Simon N Schuster who led me to this link: http://rising.blackstar.com/how-to-send-a-dmca-takedown-notice.html.

* The email I sent to the email address that the plagiarist puts on his “Privacy Policy” page does not work, by the way. The emails are returned with a “permanent failure” notice. Quelle surprise.

My blog posts are being plagiarized —

Check out this site I found today with my material from a recent post on The Militant Writer, only marginally changed, reproduced without credit:

http://canyoupublishabook.info/the-author-as-publisher-the-militant-writer/

Compare it to my original post.

http://maryww.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/the-author-as-publisher/

Hundreds of other articles by other people have been stolen — just click on the right margin.

They even have a warning privacy policy that they know who is reading “their” stuff.

I’m looking into this but if you know anything about what is happening here, please let me know.

More to come….

How much more do you really earn when you self-publish?

(Third in a series of articles about the new realities for writers and readers. In this post, I attempt to compare the relative costs and potential profits of self-publishing versus traditional publishing, and explain which method of self-publication I have chosen for my next novel, The Whole Clove Diet – and why I have chosen it.) (Of course, none of us is really interested in making money from our writing, right? We are only interested in making art. ♬ )

It seems as though every time I go onto the Internet these days, I stumble over another post in which some author is enthusing over how much more he or she is making per copy on a self-published book (70% of the cover price or more) than he or she would have made with an established press (where a 10 to 15% royalty is the norm). Somewhere on The Militant Writer, I may even have crowed about this advantage of self-publishing myself. :)

While such statements may be accurate in absolute terms, they fail to take into account many of the costs outside of printing that are incurred by traditional publishers on behalf of authors’ books. Some established presses invest more than others (and some seem to invest next to nothing) in such make-or-break areas of book production as editing, cover and layout design, and promotion and marketing, but whether they are effective or not at what they do, publishers incur overhead costs with each title.

Many of these same costs are also incurred by self-published authors—or should be—but the authors may overlook them when they are calculating their final “take” from sales.

Self-published authors who fail to make their books look and read like something besides draft manuscripts that have been laid out at home and then slapped with amateur-looking covers are (in my opinion) fools. However, as soon as we start putting money into improving the quality and impact of our self-published books, the longer it takes for us to recoup the money we’ve invested. We cannot claim we are “making 70% of the cover price” of our books until we have paid ourselves back for our expenditures to produce them.

The biggest financial difference between having a book published by a traditional press and doing it ourselves is who pays the overhead, what the overhead entails, and how the proceeds are shared. In this post, I am going to take a stab at evaluating the relative costs of self-publishing versus traditional publishing, but keep in mind that attempting to compare the two approaches can be like weighing “apples” against “all citrus fruits,” due to the variety of publishing models that have begun to proliferate.

I encourage readers of this post who have self-published (aka “indie-published”) their books, participated in shared-expense publishing initiatives, or have info about traditional publishing that I may have overlooked here, to contribute to the comments section of this discussion.

No Money Down: Working With Traditional Publishers

When a traditional publisher offers to publish your book, you do not need to contribute any money. By inviting you to give them the publishing rights to your book, publishers are essentially saying that they believe that they are going to sell enough copies of your book to make up for the costs they will incur up front in order to get it to the marketplace – and then, they hope, make a profit by selling even more.

The costs traditional publishers incur are outlined in my “Authors and Publishers” post and they include:

• copyediting and substantive editing
• book interior design
• cover design
• layout
• printing
• promotion
• sales
• distribution
• storage
• overhead costs – these range from the rent, utilities, etc. that are part of the costs of maintaining an office and a staff (including executive editors who will read your manuscript in the first place—or pay someone to send you a form rejection letter—salespeople who go out to bookstores to talk up your book, promotions staff, art department staff, bookkeepers, shipping and receiving staff), operating a warehouse, paying the fees of freelancers, selling other (foreign, movie) rights to your book, legal, financial and accounting costs, costs associated with creating a catalogue, posters and other promotional materials, securing ISBNs and Books in Print notifications, etc., etc., etc.

If a press publishes 20 books a year and its annual expenses are $1 million, one could argue that each book costs the company around $50,000. Of course this is a vast oversimplification because books that were published in previous years that sell this year bring in income that helps to sustain the business, operating grants may be involved, or subsidies from institutions such as universities, funding may have been secured to help with marketing and promotion, and there are many other factors that need to be considered. So let us say that the cost of producing 5,000 copies of your book is $20,000.

Let us also say that the book thus created is going to sell for $20.

In that case, on each book:

• You, the author, will receive about $3 (depending on royalty rates that are set out in your contract);
• The booksellers will keep about 40% of the amount they receive for the books they sell, or $8;
• The publisher will retain the remaining $9.

As you have already figured out, these numbers show that in order to pay itself back for the costs it has incurred, the publisher needs to sell nearly 2,500 copies of your book— half of the stock it printed – just to break even. Even after that, additional promotion, storage of unsold books, and other costs are going to need to be deducted from the publishers’ portion of the income from each book.

In this scenario, the author starts to make his or her paltry $3/copy from the first copy that is sold – although the author’s actual receipt of those $3 pieces is subject to such factors as:

• Advances: The amount that has been advanced to you by the publisher must be reached before you will receive any more money. If the publisher advanced you $3,000 in our example, for example, since you are making $3/book you will not start earning any more money from royalties until after 1,000 copies of your book have sold;
• Agents: If you have an agent, he or she will receive a cut of your take: let us say 15% of $3 =  45 cents, leaving you with $2.55. (This is why agents are only interested in working with writers who have the potential to sell a lot of books.);
• Returns: The traditional book business is unlike almost any other business in that bookstores can return the products (books) they do not sell to the manufacturers (publishers). Your book is not sold when it is stocked by a bookseller, but only when it is purchased from the bookseller.

Costs to Self-Publish

The costs of self-publishing, by contrast, are entirely dependent on who the writer deals with, and what costs beyond book production (e-book and/or print version) he or she chooses to incur.

The Rip-Off Artists

Let us dispense first with the companies that advertise on-line that even though they accept every book that is submitted to them, they are still traditional publishers because they will give you an advance and publish your book at no cost to you. Closer examination of these companies (and reviews from those who’ve used them) indicate that the advances are minimal ($50 or so), the printed copies are expensive (e.g., $20 to $25 or more), the “publishers” often do not make any real effort to get the books into major sales outlets (including onto Amazon), there is no e-book option, and the major thrust of such companies is to hard-sell copies to the authors. (In one contract I read on-line, the company assures authors that review copies will be distributed, but only to reviewers who write to the company asking for a copy of your book. How many independent, respected reviewers do you think you can convince to write to your publisher and ask them for a book? It isn’t going to happen.)

Similar methods were used by what is known as “vanity” presses in the past: they offered you “free publishing” as long as you agreed to buy 1,000 copies of the finished book, which of course you would then need to sell yourself. People invested huge amounts of money in such scams and ended up with hundreds and hundreds of copies of unsellable books in their basements. In this era of print-on-demand, you don’t need to buy all those copies up front, but the principle is the same: the only entity that makes any money off such ventures is the “publishing” company.

Some other companies have recently been created that are in the e-books-only business. They also offer publication at no cost to you, but they spend almost nothing anyway: all they really do is pour your text into a file, slap a cover image on it, and then put the book up on the Internet. No real editing, no significant effort to market your book, no real investment on their part. They then stand back and simply take a cut of whatever sales you are able to drum up.

Check the fine print in the contract with any self-publishing enterprise as closely as you would (or should) with any other venture in which you have chosen to participate. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Ask to see what the publisher is prepared to do to help promote your book (and then make sure they do it), seriously consider the books it is already offering and determine whether you want to be associated with those books and authors, and Google to find if there are any negative comments about them from authors who have used them in the past. Keep in mind that the testimonials that appear on the “publisher” websites are those that have been pre-approved, and even their on-line forums may be censored to weed out negative feedback.

In other words, caveat emptor.

Bare Bones Self-Publishing

The lowest cost I have found to self-publish a book with a reputable company is $299. With this very basic option, the author provides all text pages and the cover in “camera-ready” PDF format so that the publishing outlet doesn’t need to do anything but assemble the book on a computer so that it is ready to be printed, one copy at a time (known as “print on demand,” or POD), whenever anyone orders it. An example of this basic service is the CreateSpace Author’s Express, and CreateSpace also offers a slightly enhanced version of its basic package that provides you with a template for the interior and the covers, and costs $499. It is called the Author’s Advantage.

(Note: I am using CreateSpace not only for my examples in this post but also for my book production because of that company’s close association with Amazon. A book produced by CreateSpace is not likely to encounter any problems entering Amazon’s distribution system. I know that Amazon has created a monopoly that is taking down all competitors, including lots of mom-and-pop bookstore operations, and I’m sorry. However, with my little novel I cannot afford to become a one-person protest movement any more than I already am: I need my book to be available everywhere, as soon as I publish it.)

The Cadillacs of Self-Publishing

At the opposite end of the spectrum, those who want to buy a publishing package that already includes all the bells and whistles, in the hope (probably erroneous, but who knows?) that they will need to do no work at all to make their books bestsellers, may choose an option like the Total Design Freedom Marketing Pro from CreateSpace, which sells for $4,999.

For this price, the author receives two rounds of copyediting, which CreateSpace estimates to be worth just over $1,000 per round, a custom-designed interior ($499) and custom book-cover design ($999), a video book trailer ($1,249), promotional-text creation ($249), assistance with the creation and distribution of a media release ($598), and registration for a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN), which allows libraries to catalogue your book correctly if they buy it, but does not guarantee that they will buy it ($75). (This is a worthwhile investment, as far as I’m concerned.)

Options In Between

CreateSpace offers a variety of packages that range in cost between the Author’s Express and the Total Design Freedom Marketing Pro, and other companies (LuLu, for example. Update: Comment linked here says there are no costs at all with LuLu if you’re prepared to do all the work yourself) offer similar ranges of packages. These companies also offer a range of royalties on each copy sold, depending on the agreed-upon forms of distribution and other factors.

The various expenses and reimbursement options can be found on the companies’ websites, although sometimes you need to trade your email address for specific details. When you look at their charts and numbers and offerings of royalties, it is very important to remember that your profit does not begin until you have paid yourself back for what you have invested to get the book published.

Most writers will decide that there are some aspects of book production and promotion that they can do themselves, or that they want to hire people they know to carry out certain functions, and they will choose a publishing package that allows them to incorporate the options they have chosen to do independently with the services for which they require direct assistance. If you use outside services to complement the package you have purchased, the costs of these too need to be added into what you pay back to yourself before you can start to look at profits.

How Much Will You Make?

On this page at CreateSpace you can start to estimate the royalties you are going to make on the book you have created.

In order to compare your profit as a self-published writer to the model I set up to illustrate the disbursements to you by a traditional publisher, let us say your self-published book is also going to be marketed at $20 per copy. ($20 is quite a lot to charge for a POD book, because [at least at this point in the history of publishing] no matter what you do, the quality of a print-on-demand book is not going to match that of a book produced on an off-set printer running 500 to 2,000 copies at a time or more; however, for the sake of argument we will leave the price there so that comparison is possible.)

Let us say that this book is 120 pages in length, and the trim size is 5½ by 8½ inches. (Page count and trim size are important matters that you will need to take into consideration when you are publishing your book. So is paper weight, cover quality, etc.) The royalty that will accrue to you from this set-up if your book is sold on amazon.com (depending on various options you have chosen) is just over $8/copy. (The chart says you can make 50% more if you set up your own e-store with Amazon, but I haven’t even considered that: I could be wrong, but it sounds like a lot of work.)

If you have chosen the basic package from CreateSpace ($299), at $8 a piece, you will need to sell 38 copies of your book before you will start to earn any income from it. If you have purchased any additional services, from typesetting to cover design to marketing, either from CreateSpace or individual suppliers, you will need to add those amounts to the $299 before you can start counting profits. And if you went with the Total Design Freedom Marketing Pro from CreateSpace at nearly $5,000,  you will need to sell 625 copies before you start to see a profit.

The Whole Clove Diet: The Option I Am Choosing – And Why

I don’t want to spend any more than I need to on bringing my new novel, The Whole Clove Diet, to market. However, I want to be proud of how it looks because I think it’s a good novel (funny, and other good things as well), and I spent a lot of time writing it. I have also paid to have it edited, and I want it to look professionally produced so I can market it with confidence.

My experience as editor-in-chief at a publishing company, and work I’ve done since as a freelance production manager of books, newsletters and other publications, have taught me that it is not a wise investment of my time to even try to typeset my own book. Typesetting requires specific skills, knowledge and experience in order to ensure that pages look professional and avoid common errors (such as widows and orphans—do you even know what those are?) that instantly tell the reader that a book is self-published.

I believe that the price offered by CreateSpace to typeset books is reasonable, so I am going to use them for the typesetting part of the production. I will work with them to decide how the typesetting should look (what font, what the running head will look like, etc.), but they will do the work.

I also know I am incapable of creating my own book cover, although I want to have a lot of input into what that looks like, too. I have worked with a book cover designer in the past (Jeff Fielder) and I want to work with him again, so I am going to pay him to provide a custom cover for my book, which he will submit to CreateSpace in the format they require. Hiring an artist/designer for a book can run anywhere from about $500 and up, depending on the experience, knowledge and reputation of the designer and what you want him or her to do. (CreateSpace offers this service at $999 if you buy it from them.) You may also need to pay for cover art or photographs that are included in the cover.

I’ve paid my editors, and I am going to pay for my own marketing, including promotional copy, a video trailer (if I decide to use one), sending out review copies, and other promotional activities. Some of these tasks I will do myself; for others, I will hire other people.

I am therefore choosing a package offered by CreateSpace for $499 in which they will do the typesetting, and I will be responsible for the rest. I will send them the edited text in a Word document, and the cover I have had designed by my friend. They will do the layout, send me a proof to check over, and then make the book available for sale in both Kindle and POD formats. (Kindle conversion is normally $69 but I took advantage of a special offer from Amazon that was available when I placed the order for my book.) I have paid an additional $75 to obtain an LCCN.

Note in all cases that there is an extra charge for illustrations, photos, charts and other visuals included in the book.

Other Options Besides Self-Publishing

In addition to straightforward self-publishing packages, a host of other publishing models are now available, thanks to the opportunities for POD and e-books that are offered by the new digital technologies.

A number of collective approaches to publishing are out there, for example. Some, such as ShelfStealers which is the brainstorm of my friend Sheryl Dunn and her colleagues, have a strict editorial process that ensures the quality of books they are publishing.  The company does the cover design, layout and some of the promotion, and offers authors 50% gross royalties on audio and e-books, and 50% of net on print books less the cost of book (approximately $5.50 each).

Other coop companies involve authors to a greater or lesser extent in the publishing process, and royalties are related to the contribution the author makes. There is certainly something to be said for publishing as part of a collective—a group of books is better able to attract attention than a single book, and it is often easier to promote someone else’s book or a group of books of which yours is a part than it is to promote your own book. These collectives do not necessarily make you eligible for consideration in awards programs or by writers organizations, reviewers or bookstores who require “traditional publishing” status before they will even consider you or your book, so be sure you know what benefits you will gain from participating in such cooperatives, and how much time and energy you will need to invest, before you sign anything. There are lots of writers in this world who no longer have time to write because of commitments they’ve made to help get other people published.

In order to stay in business, some established publishers are also now offering co-publishing agreements to writers. The publishers do the same things they have always done for the books they publish (editorial, layout, design, distribution, etc.), but the authors contribute several thousands of dollars up-front to the overhead, and their royalties reflect the fact that they are essentially co-publishers. The authors get the cachet of the publisher’s imprint, but this can be an even more expensive alternative than self-publishing.

Reprinting Your Out-of-Print Books

For the information of those who are considering self-publishing books that have gone out of print – here is my experience.

I had my novel The Woman Upstairs, which was well reviewed and won an award for excellence in writing but had been out of print for twenty years, reprinted by CreateSpace. Since I didn’t own the rights to the original cover or its artwork, and I wanted to revise the cover text, I had new cover made and paid for that separately.

I paid $191 to have the book scanned (5 ½ x 8 ½ in., approx. 120 pages) by CreateSpace. I paid $69 for Kindle Conversion. I needed to pay an additional $50 because I changed the copyright page to reflect the new ISBN, my current name, the LCCN, etc. I also paid $75 for the LCCN.

So for less than $800, my first novel is now available in both print-on-demand and e-book formats. Now all I have to do is sell about 160 copies to recoup my costs. :)

Note: If the book that you want to reprint—or create—is in a non-standard format or requires special layout or certain types of paper, such as poetry, children’s books or art books, some specialists are now making their services available to help you prepare your book for self-publication. Two examples that I know of are so far in these areas are Really Love Your Book in the U.K., and Blurb.

So there you have it — all I  know about the costs of publishing a book, and perhaps more than even you wanted to know. The time it took me to write this post would probably have been more profitably invested in moving The Whole Clove Diet closer to being ready to submit to CreateSpace. But since I am investigating these issues for my own purposes anyway, I figure I might as well share what I find out. I hope you will find something of use here — and please do add your own experiences with publishing by way of comments, for the benefit of others. (Update: Note the positive feedback re: Lightning Source in the comments.)