Thirty Aprils ago, my wife Abby and I took our publishing chance. We’d already served for more than a decade at publishing companies. It was time to take a leap for ourselves by starting our own publishing venture. These days, it’s the kind of chance the book industry is coming to accept and embrace.
We came in through the periodicals door. In a way, publishing 48-page newsletters with sponsorship, subscribing, and art, one per month, was like creating a series of lit journals in size and frequency. The page count was modest, but our dreams were not. We wanted our stories to rule our world of business computers.
It reminds me of the place that a publishing strategist described in a podcast. Kathleen Schmidt said on Write-Minded that the bright spots in the industry are independent publishers.
“Those bright spots are the things that allow someone like me,” she said, “to think, hmm, I want to start a publishing company. This is what I want to do with it. This is how I want to go about it. And it doesn’t feel impossible. It feels very possible, because you have big publishers doing the same thing that they’ve always done, over and over again.”
Abby and I shared that kind of dream about break the boundaries of publishing, aimed at a spot in the tech firmament invisible to the big competition. We knew the players and loved the action. We’d take long road trips to West Texas together and talk about nothing but publishing for hundreds of miles.
Later on — when we were in the thick of authors, design, production, and distribution, projecting revenue and cash flow and grappling with printing costs and artwork that was missing but needed — we’d need to remind ourselves of the fun. We’re both classic movie fanatics. In one of the greatest classics, Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ character writes a letter explaining how he’s going to use his trust fund. “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper,” he tells his trustee. His minder goes apoplectic, repeating the phrase about fun. We’d say to one another, “I think it would be fun to run a newsletter.”
You have to like the action, as the sports fans say, to stay in publishing today. It’s a little like show business, in that the miracle is making a little profit while you practice what amounts to the commercial art of storytelling.
Yes, there are agents and publishers who will midwife careers and books. The biggest ones, with the most resources to deploy, are not changing much of their tactics, even here in a year where books are as likely to be opened on phones as in our laps. Abby and I found a niche, a rally point for readers we knew we could serve. We were small but ardent. You want that attribute of ardent in your publisher. Small also means nimble and focused. Just a few books a year from your publisher will serve your book better. An overwhelmed professional with too many books can’t help you find an audience like you’d expect.
Look for smaller
Just about all of us will do better by approaching a smaller publishing house. Advances will not be a part of this experience, and agents are optional. Even mid-size publishers are not paying until some books are sold. When your book deal becomes entirely about how many books are sold after release, email lists become important. Ask about email list sizes, and choose your independent publisher based on the size of their email list and their newsletter habits. Once they’re interested in your book, and you can get a dialogue going about signing with them, ask how many readers might open an email.
Distributors provide publishers with email lists in a new program. Ingram Publishing Services now has curated genre email lists, which can boost marketing potential. A mailing list can give a publisher a jump-start on becoming a niche publisher with a custom email list to really drive sales.
Above all, keep coming to the work for the fun. It might not seem to be a good time to write a newsletter once a month about your book series, characters, or your reading discoveries. But sharing the passions and insights is a key part of finding the joy in publication. There’s the joy of writing, and there is joy in publishing, too. Although those are very different things, one drives the other. The copywriting in laser-sharp summary makes the publishing discovery possible. The publication drives the revision and growth of the book, because you know an audience is in their seats, waiting for your curtain to rise.
