Ep. 42: What You Need to Know Before You Self-Publish

Welcome to the Pub Date Podcast, the show where two book broads discuss what should happen before, during, and after your book publication date. Brought to you by Broad Book Group with your host Vanessa Campos and Jen Dorsey.

Welcome, welcome, everybody.

Hello everyone, I'm so glad to have my friend Jen Dorsey, co-host, PhD, book doctor, wonderful person extraordinaire on the show today. How's it going, Jen?

What? Wow, thank you for that lovely introduction.

Well, I realized that we rarely introduce each other like this. It's just like, hey, if you forgot, this is Jen.

Can I— can I— this is going to look really weird in the video because I kept my picture up and we can't see Jen, so they think I'm Jen. Jen with a beard.

Jen with a beard.

Jen is calling in today.

She is.

She's calling in. She's, uh, she's on the road with 8th graders or something. No, I don't know. She's somewhere. Weren't you doing a field trip somewhere with some 8th graders or something?

We leave tomorrow. Yes, we leave tomorrow for Washington. In DC for the big classic 8th grade trip. 3 days of just walking a million miles and then, you know, crashing at the hotel every night.

So, and trying to keep them all like little ducklings, all lined up and not, not wandering away. Yeah, exactly.

Uh, I'm gonna remember why I decided not to be a teacher. Exactly why I'm in books and stuff.

Exactly. I do want to stay away from that. How do you keep them all together? Because they all want to wander off and do things, or they I don't want to just stay in a group. They're not like 4-year-olds that hold their hand and are frightened. You know, they're 8th graders. They want to go explore. Ah, we'll go over here. They won't notice us.

Luckily, we're dividing into little groups of like 4 kids and 3 or 4 parents per group. So I think we'll keep it in check. Okay. As best we can.

Yeah, because otherwise, 1 parent and like 20 kids, they'd always be turning around, where's Joey? Where's Susie?

Yeah, I would not volunteer for that gig at all.

Well, today you guys are going to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart because we have a lot of shows on the network, a lot of, a lot of authors that want to be, and they all think, I'm just going to self-publish a book. I don't need to go through all this publishing nonsense. I'll just self-publish it. Got to be easy.

Sure.

Oh sure, yeah, it can be.

I mean, no one will ever see the book, but I'll have a whole box of them in my garage.

Yeah, your mom will.

Yes, your friends and family will, maybe. Actually, don't even count on that.

No, because they're gonna run. They're gonna say, oh, he wants me to buy a book or something.

It's like the new, uh, what's it called, the new MLMs. Buy my book.

Yeah, right, multi-level marketing. You have a book party instead of a candle party or whatever, crockware or something.

You may get more people with it if you actually bundle it with a candle. And some wine.

Yeah, there you go.

Oh, I like that idea.

But that's, that's got to be a common thing today here because book publishing has changed. But like traditional book publishing, which you guys came out of and which you still do, has got to be harder than ever. It's not just a dream, you write a proposal, you send it off, and they send you a big fat check, and you go up and sit in a mountain and write your book and the money rolls in. It's a lot more complicated than that these days. So in that world, I would think. And, and self-publishing books has never been easier. I mean, I've got 100 of them in here that people hand me every time they walk in. But as I've shown you, some of them, they're horrible books. They're not even a book.

Yeah, they can be. They, they really—

they—

there's no reason for your self-published book to look self-published. There's so many people out there that are willing to help, that have the expertise— and doesn't have to be us, but we just happen to, you know, have some pretty decent people on our team that are award-winning. We just won an award, if you didn't hear that.

Award? Wow, there you go for your book cover.

Gold star for Andrew. Yes.

Well, I'll get off in a second and let you guys do it, but I just want to preface it by saying— when I won't, I won't shame them by calling them up, but we have a show host here on the network, a rather wealthy woman, rather successful woman. She decides she's going to tell her life story, rags to riches. I'm sure that's a common thing. I did it. Everybody wants I don't know how you did it. She made a company that was worth $100 million or whatever here. And so she went out and hired one of these companies to help her write this book, and she's very frustrated. She's never sold any of them, no attention. She's put a lot of sweat and effort into this book, and it's never gotten any attention, whatever. And I remember sharing it with you guys off, not with her, just saying, "What do you think?" And you're like— in fact, it was one of your other guests even, and we talked about the COVID we talked about the name. And every mistake they could make. Well, the name didn't really reflect her, but they thought it was catchy. And then when they got it, they put a sexy woman on the COVID and she's not a sexy-looking woman. And so that would help, but that's more disconnect. And then the website, they couldn't get— they got the name first and then they couldn't get the website to match. So we have a website that's slightly different. And all these little things that, ah, so what, so what, so what. So what is there's no book there. There's no book sales. And then the book itself is really just kind of one big, "And then I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this. The end." There's not a lot of takeaway. There's no real story there other than her story. It's an autobiographical, "Here's where I started poor, here's where I ended up wealthy." Right, exactly.

Yeah, that's a no-go.

Yeah, and there was no real editor. Nobody really talked. She just rambled this thing off. Somebody wrote it down.

Oh yeah.

They gave it a horrible cover. They gave it a horrible name. The name didn't match with the website and all these other just on and on, one mistake after another. And she put a bunch of money into this and got nothing out of it.

Expensive mistake sometimes. No, not a mistake. Lesson learned.

Lesson learned, right. So I'm curious if you guys, you know, see any value in self-publishing and if you do, how to do it better than she did. That's all. I'll drop out and let you guys talk here.

Well, let's talk a little bit about what self-publishing actually is. You know, we— you know, when you're growing up and you're picking up a book at the bookstore, you don't realize it, but that's traditional publishing. Um, those are the— I always forget— Big Four, the Big Five, the HarperCollins, the, the Wiley's Books, the For Dummies. And, you know, those are your traditional book publishers. That's the one everyone thinks they want, right, Jen?

Right, exactly. And sorry, I, I got disconnected from the Zoom call and I'm back.

So welcome back. I only—

thanks so much. Uh, it's— I had to step out. I'm kidding, it's a bad internet day at my house. Uh, so yes, I mean, I think that, you know, a lot of people have in their minds what they think publishing in general is, and then not necessarily knowing the differences between self-publishing and hybrid and what that traditional experience is like. I mean, there are three very different experiences. Right? So, right, um, I think that kind of knocks people off-kilter a little bit when they decide, okay, well, I'm just going to do it myself, and then they get into the weeds and they realize that there's a lot to know about it and to make it successful, and then that's when people kind of get lost, right?

And to Paul's point earlier, you know, it's never been easier to get lost in the weeds. Amazon has definitely made it so that you're able to just go in create a very simple cover, create content, just plug and play and go. And that, that could be fine, but it really is a matter of like, you know, what you're looking for in terms of what your overall goals are with publishing. And you always have to make sure that you know what you're— where you're going with publishing before you dive into like, am I going to do it myself, you know, everything from beginning to end? Am I going to hire someone to help me do it myself, which means like you hire a team that's an editor or a designer, copy editor, marketing person that understands the language around that and can do the work in a shorter amount of time and really guide you. Um, we always recommend going to a source that has had the experience in your genre. That's actually very important to do, right? Make sure that the people you're working with have had success in publishing books like yours.

Right, exactly.

Because there are riches in niches, and that's true of everything in, in this industry, I think.

Right. And I think when you're going out to find those helpers, ask that question very specifically. And if someone says to you, oh well, I just do all of it, I do any of those kinds of books, then I think you need to be very careful about moving forward with that person. Because, you know, we are not all things to all people in publishing. And so if find someone who, you know, you're doing a nonfiction book, you know that they've done great nonfiction books, that's awesome. But, you know, let's take you and I for example. We readily admit that fiction, as much as we love to read it, is not our area of expertise when it comes to publishing. That's not what we do. It's a different kind of publishing. You know, I can read a book as a reader and say I liked it or I disliked it, but as far as knowing how to do pacing and plot and character development, that's just a different skill set. For you and me, right? Or children's books, very different skill set from what we do, or poetry. And so if you have someone who says, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do it all," then I would be really wary of working with that person.

Yeah. And you would think that like, "Oh, okay, well maybe the editor or the marketing person needs to be very specific to the genre," but you don't consider like, "Oh, a layout designer." Layout is actually really, really important depending on the content of your book. And I think that a lot of people overlook that and go to Fiverr or something like that and don't do their due diligence and see what else in their portfolio they've done. I think that's something really important. We don't really take into consideration how important a— I'm using the word important a lot, if you haven't gathered. This is very important.

It is, but you know what, you're spending money to do this, right? I mean, it's a different experience than traditional publishing where you're possibly getting paid in advance, even if it's a small one. You're not being— you're being paid to write a book and to produce the content. But when you're self-publishing, you are paying the bill. You're footing the bill for all of it, for printing, for design, etc. And so you want to be a smart, well-educated customer if that's what you're doing.

Exactly. And I think it's really important that we point out the fact that you get what you pay for. I realize that there are going to be a lot of people who are starting up in the industry as self-published, um, Sherpas, have you, um, people who are guiding you through the process who may have been already in book publishing. But at the same time, I think it's, it's important to understand that $2,500 to get your book published and from beginning to end is a great deal, but it may not be— it may not include everything that you aren't even thinking about asking when it comes to self-publishing.

Right. And, you know, to kind of be in your sandbox a little bit, I think you have to think of the marketing pieces of this very early in the process. It's not wise to just say, I like this topic, I want to write a book about this topic, I'm going to write the book and then figure out the marketing. If you truly want to sell books If you truly want to market books to your intended audiences, you need to think about the marketing at the front end, just like a publisher would. Just like when someone comes to us with the proposal, we look and say, okay, what's the marketing potential here? Is this person a good subject matter expert? Are there opportunities to sell this book to, you know, the associations they are with, or, you know, through corporate, or through their own email list, or through their social media? You have to ask those questions of yourself. And if that's your goal— I mean, if your goal is just to say here I did a book and it's printed, ta-da, that's one thing. But if you want to make those connections and sell the book, you got to think about that and really analyze yourself as, as the right author for this topic. Um, I will never forget, I, I work in a coworking space and it's shared with a lot of different kinds of professionals. And I was discussing books with someone who shares the coworking space. And, um, he said, well, I want to write a book about this. And I said, great. Is that what you do for a living? And he said, no, it just interests me. I'm just interested in the topic. And I said, well, then you shouldn't be the person to write a book about it. And he was flabbergasted that I said this. He's like, but I like it. I like the topic. I said, yeah, but if I also like the topic and I want to come buy a book, I want it to be written by someone who knows, who like works in the topic area. And so you have to ask yourself that even if it's self-published, like, am I the right person? Is this the right book? Is it even a book, or is it maybe just an article? So be— look at yourself with a critical eye as well as everybody else that you're going to bring to the ballgame, right?

I love the fact that you said think like a publisher, because in reality, if you do go the route of self-publishing, it's not— it's not that we're saying you can't. You absolutely can. There have been people who started off in self-publishing that ended up getting a traditional publishing deal because their book was so good and they had a following. That's the thing is that you have to have all the pieces in place as an individual who is out there wanting to write about a topic. So like something, a little bit of research that, you know, you had done in the background, um, in terms of who's gone from self-publishing to a traditional publishing route. And I know a lot of people in business books that go between self-publishing and traditional publishing quite often because they know that the top topic might not be of interest to a publisher. And I think that's another conversation to have. But what's in common with all of these people like Stephen King, Colleen Hoover, our friend Bob Bly, Ken Blanchard— all of these people had bits and pieces of the puzzle already in place. So they had a website, they were industry experts, they were talking about the thing, they had been, you know, thought leaders in that process of building their credibility in their, in their business, even if they weren't, um, you know, at the time working for themselves. Your career is, is in that building your awareness of everything that's around you. You're gathering your bits and pieces, you're getting your testimonials of people that you work with, and then, you know, eventually once you have this, you have a newsletter, you have an audience, you've been talking about this non-stop to people, and everyone's like, where's your book?

Right.

And that's when you know, like, okay, maybe I do have this in me. And I think that that's actually really, really important because if you decide, okay, I've got this, I think I have an idea, and you are, you know, teetering between self-publishing and traditional publishing, I think it's really important to still go through the book proposal process, right?

Yeah, it's just like writing a business plan, right? Right. So you wouldn't, you wouldn't start a business even if it was like a— you knew it was a slam dunk, you would still map out what going to look like. And a book proposal is a business plan for your book. It lays out all the pieces for you to see, whether you're pitching it to someone or you just need to kind of reaffirm with yourself, this is my plan, this is what I'm going to do to market the book, here's why I'm the right person for the book, all that good stuff. I mean, it just helps center yourself in the conversation, I think, right?

And I think it's, it's that roadmap. You absolutely need it. And, you know, once you have that, it solidifies like, yes, Got it. This is an idea. This checks all the boxes in terms of what a traditional book publisher would look like. And there's nothing wrong with pitching your, your, um, your book to a publisher to see if, if there's a market for it at the time. And that's the other thing that, you know, going back to traditional versus self-publishing is with traditional publishers, we're looking, you know, we as in the industry, we're looking at creating a catalog a year or two down the road. So, right, it is 2024— I was gonna say 2013. Oh, it is 2023. But, you know, we're both looking at 2024 titles, fall titles, and there are even some, um, publishers that may be looking into 2025 depending on the topic. So I think it's really important to, to consider, like, okay, is traditional publishing right for me? Does this information I have right now, is it timely to what is happening in, in politics, in the world, or is this evergreen and can I sit on it for a little bit longer? And I think that's a really important question to ask yourself and how that actually fits into your business model and what that book journey actually looks like for you.

Absolutely. And, you know, I think too, something that we haven't delved into too much yet during this conversation is the role of hybrid publishing in this conversation. So, you know, And for the— we've mentioned it a lot, and we've done some hybrid publishing ourselves. That's kind of when both people, both groups have skin in the game. So, you know, the author's putting in some money, the publisher's putting in some money, whether that means the author is going to pay for the hard costs of like doing the print run, or if they're going to pay the designer, and then, you know, the publisher is going to pay some of the other people who work on it. Hybrid publishing is, is kind of— I would call it the best of both worlds in some ways because You know, it's still very much on you to, to drive the bus and to make sure that the proposal looks good and the business plan is in place for the book. But then you have the backing of a more traditional style of publisher, but you both have skin in the game. And so it's, it's important for both entities to, to kind of, you know, do their due diligence in the process. So that's sort of a— I would call that a compromise if maybe you, you want to have more creative control but you still want to have more traditional distribution as well.

Absolutely. I think hybrid publishing is one of those really wonderful in-betweens where it's really a partnership where I feel the author is super invested. Having worked with several, you know, authors throughout our careers, we've probably seen the ones who are, you know, are in it, they're invested, they're gonna make this happen, they're, they're marketing it every day in, day out, and every chance they get, they're dropping, you know, mention on a podcast, in an email, it's in their signature, it's everywhere, it's their identity. And then you have the author who is confident that the publisher is going to take all of that off of their hands. And that's just not the landscape that we're in for book publishing these days. It's very much a partnership regardless, actually, of which way you go, except for self-publishing. That you're on your own there. Yeah, you're on your own. But I do like that because most hybrid publishers will negotiate with you in terms of, you know, what your royalty looks like, what, you know, within reason, because we're still playing within the traditional publishing rules of, uh, for book sales you get paid 90 days out, and ebooks it's 30 days out, then you've got returns, and you get into the book publishing math of it all.

Right, which is complicated, very complicated.

Yeah, you need a degree for that.

You do. Whereas if you're selling with the back of room at an event or out of the trunk of your car, you know, it's— yes, it's a little more— the accounting is a little more straightforward. I mean, you pay the money, you know, you get paid the money, you get the money. It's— yeah, I would agree with that for sure.

It is, it's, it is one of those things where it's just like, what is right for me? And That's one of the many reasons why I love publishing. And I'll say this, you know, till the day I die, publishing, it is what you make it. And the rules are there, but doesn't mean you have to follow all the rules, right?

Exactly. And I think too, you know, self-publishing has, has had a bad rap, sometimes for good reason, right? There are what we call vanity presses where, you know, you go and you pay them $5,000 or $10,000 and you get the printed book, but none of those things that are important have happened. It's got a pretty bad cover and it really didn't have any editing. You basically paid to print a book. And so I understand that that may be the image that a lot of people have in their heads, or, you know, like, like Paul was saying earlier, maybe the COVID is just not great and it looks self-published. It doesn't look professional. But I think there are so many ways to circumvent those kinds of situations now with hiring quality designers, you know, with having really great people on your team who know books and know about them. It kind of all comes down to trusting professionals, you know, and finding the right people. Like, you know, I don't change my own oil in my car. I know it's possible, but I don't do it because I want to trust a professional. I don't cut my own hair. I go to somebody. So, you know, same thing right here.

And with the excuse of the pandemic, right, we all tried a little bit of that.

Oh shoot, I did do that. I cut my son's hair and it was He's still mad. So yeah, I don't do it anymore, though, is the point, right?

And you know, one of the things that I, I think a lot of people, when they're— whether their first time or, you know, they've, they've published in the past— one of the things that I feel, one of the questions I feel like I, I hear a lot is, if a publisher rejects my book proposal, does it mean that it's not good enough to publish? And I think we should address that because that really is probably a big reason why people end up going self-publishing, where you just think like, this is for me and they don't know what I'm talking— they don't know what they're talking about, and this is the right idea and I'm gonna get it out there. Do you think that that's— there's any truth to that?

I would say in some cases maybe, but I think the more accurate reason is that it may not be a fit for that particular publisher, right? So, you know, I truly believe that every book will find its place, whether it's in traditional, whether it's in hybrid, whether it's in self-publishing. And at the end of the day, it's got to be about fit. And so if I take my book about tarot card reading and I take it to, you know, a business book publisher that's, it's obviously not a fit for them, right? But sometimes it even comes down to, well, we just already have books that are similar and we don't want to do that again. Or, you know, this book is very intriguing, but we're not ready to take a risk like that because publishing is a financial risk, uh, no matter who does it, whether you do it yourself or a big publisher. So I would, I would say, you know, read stories about famous authors who have taken their books to many, many publishers. There are amazing authors out there who now have a great deal of success, but it just wasn't the right book at the right time with the right publisher, right?

I mean, off the top of my head, Andy Weir's Martian was self-published, and it's— I mean, I'm pretty sure that's like the 5th time we've sent Matt Damon into space and had to spend billions of Hollywood dollars to like save him. But I mean, that was— that's a really good, um, that's a really good example of something that is just like we couldn't— a publisher couldn't put their money behind it, and that's okay. But I think that's another good thing to consider, is that if you are, you know, interested in going into the book publishing route and you, you're thinking like self-publish because you just want to get it published, you just want— you don't care about the money, and if you're saying that right now, you don't care if it, if it becomes a bestseller, you just want to get it published, I think that maybe that's a flag for yourself to pause because it is, it is a financial decision to get into book publishing regardless of how you look at it, right?

Well, I'm going to get you to pause right there and see, uh, how do people reach you if they do want help doing this? Because you guys help people. You actually, you actually have your own book publishing company, but occasionally you work with people who do want work on their own here.

Absolutely. I think, I think people are, you know, if you're listening to this, are we allowed to plug your services?

Why not?

Here, I, I would, you know, we have a lot of resources on broadbookgroup.com, and if you have any questions, all of our DMs are available. They're open. If you have a random question that you're just like, I can't find the answer to this on the internet, send us a DM. I mean, we might not know the answer to it, but we probably are connected to somebody who, who knows the answer to it. So find us on all the socials @BroadBookGroup, um, and we're here. We're info@broadbookgroup.com. We're always here to help.

Well, I have one last question. Is, is self-publishing just the last route to go? It's because, like you mentioned, this guy wrote the book about Mars or something, nobody else would publish your book, so you publish your book. Or is there an advantage to doing it yourself? Doesn't seem to be any advantage. You don't have any help, you don't have any marketing, you just kind of want to get the story out and hope somebody sees it.

I think the advantages come when you yourself as an author— and I'm speaking to like business authors or authors who are in fiction that have a following— when you know that this is a good story and you just want all of the creative direction, just make sure that the people that you're working to get the book out there have experience in your genre. So hire that cover designer that knows how to make something that pops so that you're not left looking like an amateur, because you're not. You're not an amateur.

And I say you got to have a Jen. You gotta have an— I gotta have an editor. Everybody thinks they don't need—

you gotta have a Jen. Yes.

Oh my goodness, everybody just goes on and on and on. It's brilliant, it's perfect, and then they start pulling it apart. I've had that experience before, and you're like, you're crying. But I thought this is perfect. Well, it's perfectly unclear. It's perfectly—

don't let your mom be your editor.

Oh, good God, no.

Or your cousin or your aunt who loves you very much just because they like grammar. Liking grammar is different than knowing how to edit a book. And I would say too, please get yourself a Vanessa Campos Campos Campos who knows how to market a book. Yes, lots of people say they are quote-unquote marketing experts, and that's great, general marketing is a good skill to have, but there's a specific skill set for how to market a book. It is a different animal. It's a different flavor. And so if you're hiring marketing help, which you should, it should be someone like Vanessa Campos Campos Campos who knows the book marketing industry. It's different than marketing ketchup.

100 years ago when I was an entertainment publicist, the only projects we wouldn't touch are books. I quickly learned books are a different breed of cat. They're different animals.

Yes, 100%.

Okay, well, there you go. Get somebody to help you out. Don't just sit down on a weekend and write your life story and then go pay somebody to put it in print for you here, because not much is going to happen with that.

Yeah, a weekend is not enough to put out your best work.

No, absolutely not. Absolutely. Okay, well, when you are ready— when you're ready to talk more about publishing, Vanessa told you where to find us. And we, for example, we are not podcasting experts, which is why we have Paul. So we want to thank him today for, as always, being our amazing producer, and thanks to our executive producer Emily Carpenter-Polskamp of Little Red Communications. We'll see you next time. We hope that you gained some valuable insights into the world of book publishing.

Head over to broadbookgroup.com to learn more about us and all our services, and be sure to check out all our social media @BroadBookGroup.

Until then, keep Keep publishing!