7 Book Publishing Secrets that Every Writer Needs to Know

Over and above his content management work, Seth Godin has published books for years.

Not just ebooks, but real dead-tree printed books with covers.

He says the reason he wrote Linchpin is because, “If you want to change people, you must create enough leverage to encourage the change to happen.”

A book gives you that kind of leverage.

Books change lives

Celebrities usually write books to “set the record straight” or explain the twisted story of their rise to stardom.

They can’t do that with a magazine article or tweet. It takes more than 140 characters to explain why Paris does what she does, after all.

Changing a reader’s opinion requires space, whether it’s transforming your attitude toward Paris Hilton or changing your thinking about how you do business.

A tweet doesn’t often change someone’s life but books can and do — all the time.

In a small way, books change people’s lives - change your life.

A book is something tangible you can point to as a repository of your knowledge. Unlike a series of blog posts, a book is organized and works as a cohesive unit. People take books more seriously than almost any other form of writing.

Being a book author gives you a level of credibility like almost nothing else.

Let’s face it, saying you’re a book author has a lot more cachet than saying you’re a blogger.

Where’s your book?

If you’re reading Copywriter, you’re undoubtedly a writer, content marketer, or some other type of wizard of words.

You’re a writer. Why haven’t you written a book?

Maybe the idea is too big and scary. I’m living proof that it’s not as hard as you might think to face those fears, move forward, and get your book out into the world.

Here are seven secrets Paris and Seth know that you may not know about getting a book written and published:

1. You don’t have to accept rejection

Many people never write their Great American Novel because they think someone might not like it.

We writers are sensitive souls and fear of rejection is real. The secret is you don’t have to accept rejection.

Have you ever heard of Mark Victor Hansen?

He’s one of the guys who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul — a book that has made millions of dollars and spawned countless spin-off products.

Yet, that book was rejected 140 times. Mark believed in his book, refused to accept the rejections, and kept going.

Another secret is that rejection often has nothing to do with the quality of your book or your ideas.

Many rejections relate to a publisher’s business decisions and have nothing to do with you or your writing at all.

2. You can learn everything you need to know

Many authors take a peek at the book-publishing business, get completely overwhelmed, and run away.
It’s a lot like when you started your own business or your blog.

There’s a learning curve.

The secret is to realize that although writing is a creative process, publishing is a business. Publishing a book is going to require work and a bit of education on your part.

For less than $100 worth of books about publishing before you get started, you can save an enormous amount of time, money and aggravation in the long run.

3. You have to market the book

Even if an enormous New York City publishing house publishes your book, you will have to market it.

A first-time author rarely gets help from the publisher. Accept that you will be on your own when it comes to marketing, a fact you'll discover first-hand, the hard way.

When you know that you and only you will be responsible for marketing your book, you won’t be disappointed.

The key is to think like a marketer before you write the first word of your manuscript.

4. You don’t have to sell your soul to “The Man” (unless you want to)

It used to be that you had to beg a Big Publishing Company to give your book idea the time of day.

You needed an agent and preferably a lot of money and as noted, the Big Publishing Company could still reject your book on a whim.

Book publishing is different now.

You can publish a book yourself. In the past, self-publishing was often equated to vanity publishing. (In other words, a self-published book was often considered base.)

But now that idea has been turned on its head. Some people argue that being published by a Big Company is more for “vanity” reasons than anything else. It’s certainly not because of all the great marketing support you’ll receive.

You get to say, “My book was published by a Big Company.”

Of course, almost no one outside of New York actually cares about that.

Have you ever looked at a book to check and see which company published it?

Your readers don’t care who published the book. They care whether or not the book is good.

Self-publishing books can be very good because it makes it possible to release books you want to write and hopefully, make a lot more money.

Even Seth Godin ditched his publisher and started The Domino Project so he can have more control over his books.

5. Your online presence and knowledge give you an advantage

Your blog is the beginning of the “author platform” every publisher requires (even if the publisher is you).
Today most books — whether paper or pixels — are sold online.

All the online marketing techniques you use to market your blog or digital products work for a book too. You can leverage what you already know.

A blog also gives you a way to do market research.

Chris Anderson said he wrote many parts of The Long Tail based on comments from his blog.

6. You need to spend time and money on your book

As noted above, publishing is a business.

If you opt to try and get a traditional book publishing deal, it will take time to find an agent, write a proposal, and send out queries.

If you opt to publish yourself, you’ll need to pay for editorial services, ISBNs, and designers.

You need to accept that these investments are part of the business of your book.

7. You will feel resistance at many points during the publishing process

Every writer experiences some level of anxiety about putting a book “out there.”

In his book, The War of Art, author Steven Pressfield talks about the concept of “resistance.” Often authors struggle to get a book out the door.

As a bit of an introvert, an author will worry about putting too much of themself out there on public display or worse, being completely ignored.

The secret is to know that resistance happens; it’s part of the process.

So what’s stopping you?

As a good content marketer, you’re probably churning out articles, blog posts, and ebooks.

So, why not publish a real print book too?

It worked out nicely for Seth and Paris, after all. There’s no reason it can’t work for you.
A book is your legacy.

The Cost of Printing Hardcopy Books and eBooks

In the emerging world of e-books, many consumers assume it is only logical that publishers are saving vast amounts by not having to print or distribute paper books, leaving room to pass along those savings to their customers.

Publishers largely agree, which is why in negotiations with Apple, five of the six largest publishers of trade books have said they would price most digital editions of new fiction and nonfiction books from $12.99 to $14.99 on the forthcoming iPad tablet — significantly lower than the average $26 price for a hardcover book.

But publishers also say consumers exaggerate the savings and have developed unrealistic expectations about how low the prices of e-books can go. Yes, they say, printing costs may vanish, but a raft of expenses that apply to all books, like overhead, marketing and royalties, are still in effect.

All of which raises the question: Just how much does it actually cost to produce a printed book versus a digital one?

Publishers differ on how they account for various costs, but a composite, and necessarily simplified, picture might look like this, according to interviews with executives at several major houses:

On a typical hardcover, the publisher sets a suggested retail price. Let’s say it is $26. The bookseller will generally pay the publisher $13. Out of that gross revenue, the publisher pays about $3.25 to print, store and ship the book, including unsold copies returned to the publisher by booksellers.

For cover design, typesetting and copy-editing, the publisher pays about 80 cents. Marketing costs average around $1 but may go higher or lower depending on the title. Most of these costs will deline on a per-unit basis as a book sells more copies.

Let’s not forget the author, who is generally paid a 15 percent royalty on the hardcover price, which on a $26 book works out to $3.90. For big best-selling authors — and even occasionally first-time writers whose publishers have taken a risk — the author’s advance may be so large that the author effectively gets a higher slice of the gross revenue. Publishers generally assume they will write off a portion of many authors’ advances because they are not earned back in sales.

Without accounting for such write-offs, the publisher is left with $4.05, out of which it must pay overhead for editors, cover art designers, office space and electricity before taking a profit.

Now let’s look at an e-book. Under the agreements with Apple, the publishers will set the consumer price and the retailer will act as an agent, earning a 30 percent commission on each sale. So on a $12.99 e-book, the publisher takes in $9.09. Out of that gross revenue, the publisher pays about 50 cents to convert the text to a digital file, typeset it in digital form and copy-edit it. Marketing is about 78 cents.

The author’s royalty — a subject of fierce debate between literary agents and publishing executives — is calculated among some of the large trade publishers as 25 percent of the gross revenue, while others are calculating it off the consumer price. So on a $12.99 e-book, the royalty could be anywhere from $2.27 to $3.25.

All that leaves the publisher with something ranging from $4.56 to $5.54, before paying overhead costs or writing off unearned advances.

At a glance, it appears the e-book is more profitable. But publishers point out that e-books still represent a small sliver of total sales, from 3 to 5 percent. If e-book sales start to replace some hardcover sales, the publishers say, they will still have many of the fixed costs associated with print editions, like warehouse space, but they will be spread among fewer print copies.

Moreover, in the current print model, publishers can recoup many of their costs, and start to make higher profits, on paperback editions. If publishers start a new e-book’s life at a price similar to that of a paperback book, and reduce the price later, it may be more difficult to cover costs and support new authors.

Another reason publishers want to avoid lower e-book prices is that print booksellers like Barnes & Noble, Borders and independents across the country would be unable to compete. As more consumers buy electronic readers and become comfortable with reading digitally, if the e-books are priced much lower than the print editions, no one but the aficionados and collectors will want to buy paper books.

“If you want bookstores to stay alive, then you want to slow down this movement to e-books,” said Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, a consultant to publishers. “The simplest way to slow down e-books is not to make them too cheap.”

In many ways, the $12.99-$14.99 price bracket for e-books is an experiment. With it, the publishers seem to have beaten back, for the moment, the $9.99 price that Amazon has offered for Kindle versions of most new releases and best sellers, but it remains to be seen whether consumers will tolerate that.

Music prices, for example, have come under significant pressure in the digital age: from 2000 to 2009, the price of audio discs, tapes and other media, which includes digitized music, fell a little more than 3 percent, according to the federal Consumer Price Index. Prices of so-called recreational books, meanwhile, have increased just over 6 percent during that same period.

Certainly, publishers argue that it would be difficult to sustain a vibrant business on much lower prices. Margins would be squeezed, and it would become more difficult to nurture new authors. “Most of the time these people are probably not going to make huge sums of money the first time they publish,” said Carolyn Reidy, chief executive of Simon & Schuster.

In fact, the industry is based on the understanding that as much as 70 percent of the books published will make little or no money at all for the publisher once costs are paid.

Some of these books are by writers who are experimenting with form or genre, or those who just do not have recognizable names. “You’re less apt to take a chance on an important first novel if you don’t have the profit margin on the volume of the big books,” said Lindy Hess, director of the Columbia Publishing Course, a program that trains young aspirants for jobs in the publishing industry. “The truth about this business is that, with rare exceptions, nobody makes a great deal of money.”

For many authors, pricing is a thicket of confusion. “None of us know what books cost. None of us know what kind of profits hardcover or paperback publishers make,” said Anne Rice, the author of “Interview With a Vampire” and the “Songs of the Seraphim” series.

She said she did not know whether publishers had struck the right price for e-books. “For all I know, a million books at $9.99 might be great for an author,” Ms. Rice said. “The only thing I think is a mistake is people trying to hold back e-books or Kindle and trying to head off this revolution by building a dam. It’s not going to work.”