Hey folks,
How to Publish a Book has a guest blogger today. Michael J. Dixon
is the author of Kicking the Tyres, a book published in 2007. The following is his own "How to Publish a Book" story.
Enjoy!
Stacey
How to Publish
a Book
by Michael J. Dixon
‘Our Singapore
office, who asked for a box of filter catalogues, have just phoned up to say that someone has sent them twenty-five copies
of a book called “Kicking the Tyres”, by someone called Michael J Dixon. Is this something to do with you, Mike?’
‘What? Err…yes. Sorry.’
The monotony of the day job is broken.
Two weeks before, the first two hundred and fifty copies of my novel had arrived, hot from the printers. I had asked for delivery
to where I work, but hadn’t bargained on them being packed in the same sort of boxes that our trade catalogues are sent
out in. The question “How to publish a book”, which had occupied most of my spare time for the last year, had
suddenly become, “How to retrieve twenty-five copies of said book from the other side of the world”. I’d
never thought to count the boxes before piling them into the back of the car, but then I hadn’t actually meant to write
a novel at all…
It had all begun, three years before, when I’d woken up one Sunday morning
with the idea for a plot in my head. I’m an engineer, not a writer, so I’d dismissed it as the idle ramblings
of a disturbed mind. Engineer’s can’t write; most of the time we have enough trouble just talking to people. And
the question of how to publish a book had never even entered my head.
But the idea wouldn’t
go away. It echoed round in my head, all day Sunday so, come Monday lunchtime, sitting at my desk eating my cheese and pickle
sandwich (that’s what engineers eat), I surreptitiously opened Word, typed in some bare phrases and crude sentences
that summarised my “plot”…and pressed “Save”.
There; gone, forget it
now, back to the spanners.
But it was still there, even more vivid in my mind now, and come Tuesday
(more cheese and pickle) there I was again, ignoring the normal lunchtime office pursuits of abusing the photocopier and stealing
paperclips, fleshing out this plot and adding some characters.
And so it continued. The crunch finally
came when I had to make one of the characters say something. Writing dialogue just felt silly, something other people did.
I’d be no good at it.
But I wrote some, pressed “save” quickly, hid it away and
went off to do something manly (with a cheese and pickle sandwich). And next day, very sheepishly, re-opened the file. And
it wasn’t that bad; sure, some of it made me cringe, and some I deleted immediately…but some
of it was ok. So I wrote some more.
In retrospect, it’s absolutely not the way to write a book;
I effectively started from the middle and worked outwards, developing a style as I went and re-writing huge sections when
they no longer fitted. But the characters developed, became real in my mind to the point where I often knew what they would
do in the next crisis, and after about a year…I had a book!
So…how to publish? By this
time I’d read up on the web about agents, deals and publishers…and found out quite how small the margin is for
the author. Basically, for a small-run paperback book, the author ends up with between five and eight percent, so on a cover
price of £8.00, that’s about 50p. Put another way, on an initial run of 5000 copies, the author would make £2500…
if all the copies sold.
This was not attractive for something that had, by this time, taken three
years to write and I started to wonder right then why people published books the conventional way. I’m not a negotiator,
I can get the best price on a cheese and pickle sandwich but that’s about it, but with margins that small, an agent
seemed like a good idea. I read up on “submissions”, which seemed to be just a grand title for sample, produced
a synopsis (much harder than writing the book itself) and sent it off to a few who said they handled general fiction.
And while I waited for an answer, I looked some more at self-publishing. That was hard work, because most
of them don’t answer email, which took them straight off my list of possibles. The only one I found who I could actually
have a conversation with was Richard Fitts, the editor of www.authorsonline.co.uk, and he was very helpful. It looked as though there might be some sort of alternative to mainstream publishing.
And
then the rejections came, dozens of them, as many in fact as the number of “submissions” I’d sent out. I’d
read all sorts of nasty things about agents, but I have absolutely no quarrel with this lot; they all replied within a reasonable
time, they were all professional in their responses, and some of them added some specific comments. But they all said “no”,
or “no thanks”.
“How to publish a book” was becoming more difficult than “How
to write a book”. By this time, “Kicking the Tyres” had been read by a small group of friends, and a strong
consensus of opinion had come back; “ It’s a jolly good read, and I couldn’t put it down…but it’s
too complicated and the ending doesn’t work”. My wife added one further remark (which didn’t seem to have
bothered the others); “There are far too many erect nipples in this book.”
This surprised
me; I didn’t think that was possible, but, while I spent the next year simplifying the plot and changing the ending…I
also reduced the nipple count. And mused some more on the “how to publish” question.
Then
I realised something; while self-publishing is a way of getting a few hundred copies printed, at a reasonable
price…it doesn’t get any cheaper the more you print. On an £8.00 cover price, you only ever make £2-3,
even if you sell ten thousand. Now, while this is a whole lot better than the 50p we mentioned above, it’s still not
an attractive business proposition in the long term. And if you distribute through any sort of bookseller (be it Amazon or
real shops), the profit drops even more.
A third option, however, gradually emerged; become your own
publisher and deal directly with a printer. Unlike self-publishers, printers have a sliding scale, depending on how many copies
you buy at a time. If you buy ten, the cost is higher than from your self-publisher. If you buy a few hundred, it’s
about the same, but if you buy five thousand it drops to around £1.50 per copy. Now we’re talking!
A
business plan emerged; buy 250 copies, direct from a printer, costing about £5.00 each, and sell for £8.00, at
a modest margin. Postage on internet orders will, of course eat up most of that profit, but the ones sold directly will counter
that. And the point at this stage is not to make a profit; it’s to gain experience of marketing and to get some confidence
that I can actually sell my own book. By the time I’ve shifted 250, and established a steady “number per week”
figure, I will have the confidence to buy 5000, and start making proper money.
And that is what I’m
doing. My landing is full of boxes (plus one in Singapore!) and I’m working my way through them, selling slowly but
surely and already making something like four times the profit that a “real” published author does per copy. And,
I suspect, with no more effort. From what I can tell, conventionally published new writers seem to end up doing most of their
own publicity, for a very lowly share of the profit.
So how do I sell them? How do people actually
find my book? The answer comes back to one of the basic tenets of writing; “write about something you know about”.
I wrote about horse-riding and racing cars (yes, ok, and erect nipples). Not only do I ride a horse, but I run a horse-trials
photography business, called www.situpandkick.com . We launched the book at an event (with prior agreement from the organisers), primed the cross-country commentator with
a free copy, put up posters and handed out leaflets. The result was fantastic! Henry, the commentator, filled in gaps in the
cross-country action by reading out extracts and, before long, copies were being brought out to me on the track for signing.
It was a wonderful feeling, and it continued:
A week later, I phoned someone with a question about
their order for photographs, and their mother, completely spontaneously, yelled across the room, “Tell him I’m
half way through his book and it’s really good!” It doesn’t get any better than that and the trick is to
harvest these comments, write them down and, better still, get permission to use it as a quote, with a name. It really brings
the book alive to the punters. I’ve found it’s really hard to get anyone to actually write a review for me but,
if you catch people just saying something nice and ask them “Can I use that?” they will usually look flattered,
smile and nod.
There was also the retired teacher I met last week, who fixed me with her beady eye
and started off with: “I’ve read your book…and I found three mistakes in it.” And she hadn’t
even bought it, she’d borrowed it off a friend! The subsequent conversation did, however, reveal that she had read all
the way to the end (despite the grammatical errors) and wanted to know if there would be a sequel.
The
answer is yes, definitely. The book now has a major presence on my website www.michaeljdixon.co.uk and a steadily growing group of supporters who want me to quit the day job and write it. I really can’t wait to do
it; the plot is mapped out and the characters are ready. I just need to get “Kicking the Tyres” firmly established
in its own little market place. I’m thoroughly enjoying all the effort and I’m meeting lots of fun people.
And I’m already making £3 per copy.
