A friend in the book marketing biz recently sent me a link to a blog post by R. W. Ridley, the “Self-Published American”. Link directly to the relevant post here.

Essentially, Mr. Ridley states that POD (Print on Demand) is akin to the methods of the independent filmmakers of Hollywood, whose rejection of convention means that they are able to put their material out there with less risk and greater profit potential. They may even get picked up by a major publishing house, as per “… It’s reducing their (the publisher’s) risk when acquiring new material. Print on demand has become their minor league program. They (traditional publishers) monitor the market for books that are selling well, and find material that has already built an audience and with more marketing dollars has the potential to build an even bigger audience.”

Let’s consider for a moment who is speaking: Mr. Ridley works for a major POD supplier. What I read in his posting here is something like, “OK Mr. Author – you do all the work plus make the major up-front investment, and once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to recoup part of your money when Huge Publisher Inc. pays you a royalty. ”

If you read my blog on a regular basis, you’ll know that what frustrates me about this post is not the idea of print-on-demand in general, but Ridley’s attitude specifically. POD has its’ place, but the way to make money in print-on-demand is not to use it to get a publisher to buy your work. If you’ve gotten to the point where you can produce a good quality manuscript worthy of printing at all, you’re probably better off to market the book yourself than to take money from a major house.

As I’ve said before, I think POD has its place, but it’s not what’s best for most publishers. If you make an analysis of what it costs to produce a book, you’ll know that there’s a lot of pieces that the pie must be cut up to serve. The printer takes a big slice, but when you’re doing POD for anything serious, you might as well give him the whole pie, and be happy with licking off the plate. I tell clients that printing should take up a maximum of 15% of the retail cost of your book. With POD, the slice is more like 50%, and that’s before you take into account the fact that most retailers (virtual or otherwise) will buy your book for 40% off the cover price. Hmmm, that must mean that you now have no budget for professional graphic design, marketing, publicity, sales, etc. Gee, is that why you’re trying to do without those things, and you’re having trouble with your plans to sell your book on your own? I can see why the temptation to sell out is very strong.

However, when a book is treated like a small business venture – which it is – including market research, planning, and quality design, isn’t it amazing how the profit potential for that project increases?

I do know of one author whose book magically sold a gazillion copies as soon as it was released. He’s been in print since forever. Yet, he does no marketing, or his marketing seems to happen at no cost to him. He doesn’t need to research his topic, and lousy graphic design and print quality doesn’t seem to affect his sales, which grow every year. And since we never see him in public, we can only assume he’s working on the next great release.

Actually – he is seen regularly doing his thing in Vegas. Isn’t “Jesus Christ Superstar” still running on a stage there?

The Writer’s Online Workshops are a great resource for writers who want interaction with peers, but are limited by time and distance. There are others out there like this, but these workshops are moderately-priced and easily available.

>All content copyright Peggy Richardson,
2007. For re-posting permission, which is often granted, please email
blog@peggyrichardson.ca.

My husband recently brought to my attention a fact that (somehow) escaped my notice. The Vancouver Canucks hockey team has a large number of players off with injuries lately. The majority of their injuries are groin pulls.

The theory behind these current injuries is interesting. When training camp started not too long ago, team management decided to only have the young and new players show up early for training camp, and the experienced players come in a bit later. It’s not about being in shape – all of the players are in top physical condition all year round. And it’s not about acclimatization to the culture of the team, because all of the players are involved with team and hockey-related activities all year round, including volunteer time spent at Canuck Place, a hospice for sick children that receives the majority of their funding from team events.

But is it not interesting to note that the players who are suffering on the bench right now are not the green rookies – but the experienced players? The difference in age between the rookies and the so-called old-timers is within 5 years at the most, so it’s not about the elasticity of youth. Something about that extra couple of weeks of early ice time is giving the newer players an extra defense against this type of injury.

How many of us write on a daily basis? Are we writing in our specific genre? Are we “working out” between writing gigs to keep our skills well-rounded? How are we keeping the writing portion of our brain elastic and ready to stretch around new ideas?

There are a variety of ways to keep ourselves in touch with the basics, preventing the type of writer’s injury (such as a block) that keeps us on the bench. The Victoria School of Writing, currently posting via their blog at http://www.victoriaschoolofwriting.blogspot.com/, is based on Vancouver Island, BC. This non-profit entity has been helping writers pump pens of iron since 1995. I won’t bother to name all the books out there that claim to help your writing, for fear of accidental exclusion of your personal favourite.

Is reading a good exercise for writing? The debate about reading works in your genre is one that heats up from time to time. While it’s good to know the work of your contemporaries, it can also happen that one can model – subconsciously – from another’s work, in the form of style, influence, length or intensity. For myself, I write before I read anything else in the category, and then read a bit while I’ve put my work away to age. That way, when I come back to edit, I can do so objectively, not only because I may have forgotten what I wrote, but also because I know what standard I must meet for an increasingly demanding audience.

Is writing prose or other creative work good for technical or business writing? Apparently so. I know several very successful technical writers who spend their days consulting on information design, and their nights pecking away at a film script. The Robert McKee seminar is coming to Vancouver again soon. Perhaps that would help me in regards to the archetype I wish to consider when editing a book on fly fishing in British Columbia..?

This is part two of my post, “The 10 Emotional Phases of the Self-Publishing Process“

We left you at…

6. Panic Mode – Take 2
This phase varies the most, but it starts the day the book arrives in cartons at your door. Depending on your visualization skills, it can happen that the book does not look exactly as you dreamed. Or, it may be selling like hotcakes, and now the pressure is on for you to produce more content, and be in three places at once. You will feel the urge to sell out quickly to recoup your investment, but this is a bit of a trap. Don’t drop your price just to speed up sales – the point is that this remains profitable. Try several new sales approaches first. (Talk to me about that.) And, unless you did it by accident, overselling can backfire, because waiting for a book to be printed can take a long time during peak times of the year, thereby frustrating your market and losing your momentum. Look for ways to help you play it cool, and act like a polished and confident author.

7. Selling Exhaustion
You may quickly find that the travel and personal demands of marketing your product become tiring. Your evenings are spent on the phone or email. You need to schlepp yourself downtown at 4 am to be on a morning talk show, and if that’s TV, you need to look fabulous doing it. You will need to hire a cleaning lady. You will need to eat more take-out. You will need to book time at a day spa. And, you will need to be realistic about the life span of your book. To experience the greatest success, you may want to consider committing about 5 years to the marketing of each book. Those who exhaust themselves early will not reap the same rewards. Remember it won’t be quite so bad for long. Do whatever is necessary to keep up your enthusiasm for selling the book.

8. Losing Interest Mode – Take 2
It was really funny the first time I had an author call me a few days after the project finished, and say, “They asked me about my second book. What should I tell them?” (Duh.) You may reach a saturation point early in the process, and crave the stimulation of a new project. You may have even reached this point during the writing of book #1, and already begun writing it! A shortage of material is always bad, so never stop writing, but the fallout from publishing can include a relative loss of privacy, and there’s always pressure to publish again. This can cause you to want to shrink away. This too will pass.

9. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch…
Once the smoke has cleared, you will receive accolades for the quality of your book (because remember, you had this amazing editor…) and you are feeling good about writing again. You are proud of the product. And, you are enjoying your new “zone”. It’s all clear sailing from here on out.

10. Book number 2 – With Less Stress
Now that you know what you are in for, the second book will cost you less. This is mostly because you know how to maximize the time spent with contractors, including myself. You will inevitably have found ways to cut costs for the second time around that are specific only to you. (I can already help you find some ways based on my experience.) And, perhaps the biggest obstacle of all is removed, because now that you know what you are in for, you can approach the project with far less stress. You can just relax and write!

Writing a book is like sewing a suit – the largest suit you’ve ever made for yourself. You select a beautiful fabric (theme or outline), you match your socks / tie / shoes / handbag (watch the details), and add a hanky in the pocket for style (present it with a professional flourish). A great suit always makes you look 10 pounds thinner, right?

>All content copyright Peggy Richardson,
2007. For re-posting permission, which is often granted, please email
blog@peggyrichardson.ca.

A number of years ago, I worked on a corporate publishing project for an un-named entity. In total, there were probably about 8 departments, each with a full staff, that all needed to have their say in the process. There were some great people involved, and each of them were passionate about their perspective on what needed to be said. It was quite rewarding to be part of!

In the end, the product of our efforts was well-crafted and well-received. But at the end of each meeting I felt like I had been coaching a full-contact football game, instead of advising on the content for a book and website. Enough time has passed that I now recognize that this was the largest example I’ve ever seen of the Self-Publishing Emotional Roller-Coaster – something I should have anticipated.

Individuals who self-publish go through exactly the same experiences, just on a smaller scale. And it is part of my job as an editor to make them aware of this, so that when they are ready to sacrifice their future careers over the choice of a comma versus a semi-colon, they can pull the camera back and look at the big picture.

Here’s a revised version of my analysis, set to the music of the entrepreneurial self-publisher, like yourself. This is part one – part two will be in another day or so, to avoid loooong postings.

The 10 Emotional Phases of the Self-Publishing Process
(Part 1)

1. “Publishing Fever”
This is the best phase of the whole project. You have an overflow of ideas, and relief that the project you’ve been dreaming about is finally “going somewhere”. You are actually publishing your own book! (The thrill never dies, by the way – you’ll feel like this on book number 50.) Expect that during this phase, your original direction for the project will shift, possibly in a huge and unexpected way, and for the better. This is part of what happens when you start to talk about the project to the friends and professionals you have brought into your production circle. (But check out future posts for info about disclosure, and when you should protect yourself from people who will steal your ideas.)

2. It’s a Drag
This feeling happens when you are full-force into the editorial and revision phase, and it seems to be endless. There are meetings. And long phone calls. And, you guessed it, more meetings and phone calls. Questions will go out to people, and you will have to wait for answers. This is the time to be diligent and stick to your vision, because this is the cosmic test for success: those who endure this phase will be the ones who succeed.

3. Perfection Obsession
The worst trap of the entire project! However, avoiding this is almost impossible. When you are faced with endless choices for cover designs, print variables, etc., you can easily become emotionally involved with every comma and paragraph. You think to yourself, “Everyone will know it’s ME that wrote this thing, and I don’t want to look like a fool!” The trick is to gain just enough distance that you don’t emotionally identify with the dot on every I, which interestingly, gives you enough objectivity that you can see it freshly when you need to. This is a great time to cultivate your outside interests, like golf or going to movies, unless of course you are writing about golf or movies. Making the right compromises is important, because you have to understand that it may not be perfectly aligned with what you imagined. (It should be close, however.)

4. Panic Mode
Unless you’re Rockefeller, at some point you are going to need to consider your budget. This is the phase when costs start to crystallize, and you are freaked out about how you are going to sell this crazy thing. (Don’t panic – and stick to the plan!) It may turn out that there are many more people involved than you had anticipated. The day it goes to press will be a two part day: the first part is relief that the thing is out of your hands, for now. But you won’t be the first author to spend that night staring at the ceiling at 2 am.

5. The Waiting Game
The time it takes for a book to come back from the printer varies, but for several weeks you may find yourself tapping your fingers on the table. This is time that needs to be spent in pre-marketing for the book, and you can spend it sending out review copies, possibly getting interviews, and scheduling more lectures and signings.

Click here to read part two of this list, in the following posting.

>All content copyright Peggy Richardson,
2007. For re-posting permission, which is often granted, please email
blog@peggyrichardson.ca.

You can tell a lot about a restaurant by the way they treat a lentil. I’m no restaurant critic, but I was pleasantly surprised yesterday while on the fringes of Gastown, in Vancouver. While waiting for a meeting to begin, I wandered over to the nearest place with open tables for a late lunch and cup of tea. I found myself at a dimly-lit, sexy little retaurant with beautiful brass ornaments, small tables with handwoven tablecloths, and the exotic smells of roasting cinnamon and incense wafting out the door.

The authentic Morrocan experience was complete, including real mint tea from actual fresh mint leaves (imagine that!) served in a colonial-style silver teapot, and poured from quite a height into a small silver-rimmed glass. The tea was even better with the yummy fresh date, placed delicately on a doily next to the glass of tea. The chickpeas were tossed in a mixture of spices that I might have sold a kidney to discover the recipe for. It was an elegant escapist experience in the middle of an otherwise stressful day.

But as I made my way to the washroom, I realized that while beautiful, this restaurant would be a nightmare to navigate on a crowded Friday night. Cleverly fitted into a 1900′s building between Alexander and Powell streets, it made best use of the space available, but it did this through the use of stairs – lots of skinny stairs, on three precarious levels – and extremely narrow doors, some of which could not have been more than 24 inches wide.

The ladies room was very pretty, painted in an old-world robin’s egg blue, and fitted out with cotton cloth hand towels and marble counters. But when one sat on the toilette, my knees bumped the stall door. The entire room was lit by a single 40-watt light bulb, in a recessed fixture in the ceiling. The beautiful tile mosaic floor, meant to resemble those of the ancient mosques of north Africa, was so bumpy that I kept tripping slightly as I made my way around the entire restaurant. Wheelchair accessible? Give me a break. How does a place like this pass a city inspection?

Usability in information design is a very clear-cut set of rules that are taught and practiced with a great deal of pride. And yet, in certain cases, I could consider myself a form-over-function type of gal. (I’d take a gas-sucking convertible over my soccer-mom minivan any day.) But in my line of work, one must always consider the user, the reader’s needs to understand and use the material, first, before anything else.

When does beauty no longer seem beautiful, and instead, become unusable? Or, in some cases, is beauty the only thing that matters? Inconveniences of translation, poor sentence structure, and other things that editors have nightmares about may no longer matter if the words are enough to make the reader understand a beautiful vision. A few minutes of aimless surfing will tell you that not enough web designers are aware of the issues around usability and information architecture.

Perhaps the answer to this is illustrated by this restaurant: know your market. (Do I hear an echo in here? I’m sure I’ve said that before…) This restaurant is, after all, in one of the hottest neighbourhoods in the city. It is thickly populated by hip, young, educated artistic professionals who make excellent money doing things they are extremely talented at. The experience in this bistro is so over-the-top that I know anytime I feel in the dumps about my dream journey to Egypt being delayed another year I can just drop in there and feel refreshed about my trip of a lifetime being put off, yet again. It doesn’t matter that you can only pee there if you are under 5’2″. It doesn’t matter that you might fall off the stairs and break your leg. It doesn’t matter that I’m too old and married to appreciate that a place like this on a Friday night is supposed to be crowded and uncomfortable, so that you have a reason to say, “Want to go somewhere else and talk?”

The other question that pops into my brain as I’m sitting in the ladies room is that if it were not for this creative restaurant’s approach to an unusual space, the space might be sitting empty. There are plenty of heritage buildings in this neighbourhood that have been destroyed while being renovated by architects and designers eager to meet current code requirements. The only other option might be another art gallery (would that put the number in that hood over 100?) or a business office that would not be able to sustain rents in that range. They are creating employment, adding to the atmosphere of the area, promoting tourism, and, well, making those chickpeas.

How many of us would be better writers if we didn’t have to rush to meet deadlines, causing us to sometimes trip up and reveal our inexperience? How many basic skills would we learn more easily, allowing us to relate better to others because we understood ourselves, and our writing, so much more thoroughly?

Characters or non-fiction concepts don’t always want or need to be rushed. Concepts demonstrated in an un-rushed manner allow the reader to bond with the information in a more meaningful and usable way.

I imagine our road trip to San Francisco a few years ago. I was in a real lather all the way there, getting stressed out about luggage, speed limits, where we were staying, how to find the locations I needed to meet people at, etc. I have no memory of the drive through northern California’s beautiful hills and wine country. Meals in elegant restaurants, fantastic nightlife, my visit to the museum, and shopping in local galleries are all a blur. I only know I was there because I still have a souvenir bottle from the trip, waiting to be consumed at some special occasion.

Then came the evening we were to spend on a local boat chartered by some business acquaintances. I was excited about going on the boat, but when we arrived at the pier, I discovered that I had to climb down a skinny little ladder, and hop across an unstable float to get to the boat, and not walk gracefully down a nice comfortable dock. This wiggly little ladder hovered over a stretch of black filthy water, with an oily sheen over it.

I was certain that if I slipped in my dinky little evening shoes and fell into the water, I would be able to swim to safety after I regained my breath, but my camera would be lost and my clothes ruined. Not to mention the discomfort of trying to flag a cab back to the hotel covered in god-knows-what.

I flatly refused to go down the ladder. My husband would simply have to make excuses for me, pointing out that I was afraid of heights. There was nothing worth lying about, because there was nothing to be ashamed of. I prepared myself for the let down of knowing that I would miss the entire cruise, the view, meeting new contacts, and so on. I had even started to hail a taxi when our friends walked up. It was clear my husband would be very embarrassed if I left now. So I bit my lip, and agreed to go down the ladder.

A few seconds later, I asked myself what on earth I had been thinking to agree to this. The ladder seemed even steeper and scarier when I was hanging off of it. But as usual, I was more afraid of humiliation than anything else, so I kept my composure as best I could. I wiggled off the ladder, everyone else already in the boat, holding my purse and camera bag for me while I scampered down as best a woman my size can scamper.

I don’t even remember the act of climbing into the boat, and greeting Captain Monty. (At that point my brain was mercifully not recording my actions for a terrifying replay later.) But I do remember him explaining that the boat had been built in 1928 in the boathouse next to where our slip was, for Joe DiMaggio’s father. Monty had bought the boat sight unseen, prepared to restore it, and also prepared to raise it from the watery purgatory in which it had resided. (It had been at the bottom of the bay for months by the time he got it above water again, and spent two years restoring it.)

My slowdown moment was soon to come. I have wonderful spans of memory of this day on the water, flirting harmlessly with Monty, and him letting me drive the boat. I watched myself as if in a movie, smiling and relaxed and at ease in this tiny boat, even though I might have been a bit wind-chilled.

We passed a large expensive yacht adrift, clearly in danger of crashing into the breakwater, and offered him a tow. When we had reached a safe dock, and he had tied off, he kindly tossed us a six pack which was quickly consumed. The least he could offer, he pointed out. Certainly true, especially when you take into account that we had just saved his million-dollar yacht with a dead battery from an early and wholly unnecessary death at the hands of its inexperienced captain.

On our way back from our farthest point, Monty pulled out a heavy-bottomed cast-steel cup that smelt of motor oil, and filled it with something that he assured me would keep the sea snakes away. (Frankly, it tasted like sea snakes. For all I know, I could have consumed transmission fluid.) Whatever it was, it slowed down all those moments even more for my memory recorder to preserve for me forever.

Had it not been for the gift of the limited area of the boat, and my lack of an adequate escape plan, I would have missed an experience which left an extremely memorable impression on me. I literally had nowhere else to go, and was forced to enjoy myself for a few precious moments. My character revealed something about herself, and demonstrated growth as she had not done in some time. Readers do not remember things that are rushed – but we do remember scenes that are explored to the proper degree.

All content copyright Peggy Richardson,
2007. For re-posting permission, which is often granted, please email
blog@peggyrichardson.ca.

The whole reality TV thing has more or less skipped me by. I’ve tried to get into it, but something about it just doesn’t push my buttons. My family has never been that into TV at all, which is why I was extremely shocked when my 70-something mother, on her recent visit to my house, turned on the TV at 9pm to watch Canadian Idol.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Well, Matt Rapley has that wonderful round sound, and plenty of style. But it’s that kid Jaydee that I just can’t get over – the way he involves the crowd, and captures them with his incredible charisma. He’s been performing with his family since he was 4, you know.” I found myself sitting down to watch, even though I should have been doing the supper dishes. I wanted to know what she found so involving about this. I suppose she sees a bit of her own children in the competitors, all striving for their own successes. And so, unlike her normal tendencies, she is completely emotionally involved in this program. She doesn’t answer her phone on Wednesday nights anymore.

The phenomenon of dysfunctional parents doing embarrassing things is not what is new, but this does highlight a concept that is of particular importance to authors looking to sell their self-published material: consumers acting outside of their assigned tidy little roles, and buying things that their demographics say they shouldn’t be buying.

So much is being written about this concept lately, that it’s tough to ignore the possibility of more sales through a simple tweak of your message or placement. The essential message is that a consumer and their needs are defined not by their age, race, or gender, but more by what they already buy, do, or affiliate themselves with.

It’s not that aggregates are not still being considered. That is, we are still using words like “typical skateboard competitor”, or “average black-diamond skier”. It’s just that we are no longer assuming that either of these categories are single guys in their early 20′s. More likely, we are considering that individuals who are into skateboarding and skiing are probably also into high-performance sportswear for everyday use. That they also want to drive a hybrid car over the speed limit, and must need a sufficiently powerful caffeine supplement.

My little motto, Think Beyond the Book, means that this is about thinking of your product as not so much a book, but the powerful spearhead of your entire self-publishing venture. Consumers who are interested in your subject matter will also be interested in non-competing compatible material. As I’ve observed in previous posts, this is about knowing your entire market, not just your tiny corner of it.

Where are the parallels? Where are the opportunities to co-market your book with another product or service? Where are the market holes that you can spin yourself into, where another parallel is also aiming? None of these questions can be answered generically. (Sorry – it’s not that simple.) But it is very stimulating to spend time talking to the readers of our work, through focus groups, reader reports, and reviews. You may be surprised what you hear.