Deborah Cooke: Author

I thought we’d talk a bit today about a huge trend in publishing: authors digitally self-publishing their own work.

What this means is that the author makes an electronic edition of his or her work available, directly to readers, without involving a publisher at all. Self-publishing was called vanity publishing for a long time (and still is by some people) but the fact that the name has changed tells a great deal about evolving perceptions. Once upon a time, an author who wanted to self-publish a work would have to have it printed. Invariably this meant a garage, basement or spare room full of books, as well as a considerable financial investment. It was very hard to get distribution to bookstores for these self-published books, so, before the internet made direct-to-consumer sales much easier, authors who pursued this path spent a lot of weekends selling books out of the trunks of their cars. Ten years ago, self-publishing was a good way to spend $20,000 and a year or two trying to earn it back.

But the internet and digital e-readers have changed all of that. It’s now comparatively easy to self-publish a book digitally, and it certainly isn’t expensive. Amazon offers an interface to authors to create Kindle editions of their works. This doesn’t just create the digital edition of the book in the appropriate format – it instantly provides distribution of that book, throughout the Amazon network of companies. Smashwords offers a similar interface, then with their premium distribution program converts files to additional formats and distributes those digital books to Sony, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scrollmotion and Diesel. There is no upfront charge to using these services – they simply take a percentage of each sale made. And in fact, the percentage that they pay to the author is quite high compared to traditional publishing royalty rates, even traditional publishing royalty rates on digital sales.

I have self-published a number of books this year myself and have more in prep. By and large, the works I’ve published have been backlist, titles previously published in print but the rights to which have reverted to me. Let’s do some links here before we go on – fyi the Amazon and B&N links will show my traditionally published books which are also available digitally:

Claire Delacroix on Smashwords
Deborah Cooke on Smashwords
Claire Delacroix on Amazon
Deborah Cooke on Amazon
Claire Delacroix at B&N

Since I’ve been doing this for a few months, and I know lots of other authors who are, as well, I thought it would be good to look at the upside and the downside.

Advantages of Digital Self-Publishing:

1/ It’s easy and comparatively cheap for authors to distribute their work directly to readers. As mentioned above, this is a recent development.

2/ The reporting is excellent and far better than that offered by traditional publishers. Amazon, for example, allows authors to see their sales on a real time basis. Smashwords shows sales made from their own site on a real time basis, and updates quarterly from those booksellers to whom they distribute. This is still faster than the semi-annual reporting from traditional publishers, which is usually delayed for several months after the end of the reporting period.

3/ Payment is quick. Amazon pays monthly with roughly a 45 day delay for processing. Smashwords pays quarterly – they will issue payments on July 31 for sales acknowledged through June 30. This is far far more rapid and more reliable than payments from traditional publishers, which can be stretched over years. The timing of payments from traditional publishers is also hard to predict. For example, a contract might pay on Delivery & Acceptance – although the author delivers on (for example) February 1, the payment will follow the acceptance. It is hard to predict when one’s editor will get to the delivered book, whether there will be revisions, when those revisions will be reviewed and accepted – and how long it will take after that for the cheque to be received by the author.

4/ Royalties are high. 70% royalty rates are standard at Amazon for US sales, and Smashwords rates are similar. Traditional publishers currently are paying between 15% and 25% royalties on digital sales, sometimes calculated on gross sales, sometimes calculated on net sales. The prices of digital books from traditional publishers have remained close to the mass market price, but there’s still a disparity in terms of earnings per unit. For example, if an author prices their digital books at $2.99 each as I have done, the royalty payment for each unit sold is about $2. At 15% of gross, with a cover price of $6.99 on a digital release from a traditional house, the author’s royalty would be about $1. At 25% of gross, it would be $1.75 – and it only stands to reason that more units will sell of a work priced lower.

5/ The author has a lot more control, both over the work and over its marketing. This includes complete control over the cover design, distribution and pricing. The author can even remove the work from sale at any point.

6/There is no need for the author to have an agent. I hear this most often from unpublished or recently published authors, because it is very hard for an author without an established reader base and publishing contract to get good representation. But it’s also hard for authors to have good representation throughout their careers – at different points in time, we might need different skills from our agent or a different suite of contacts. Agents also retire or leave the business, so their clients (no matter how happy they might be) need to find new agents. I only need to spend five minutes among writers to realize how lucky I am – not only to have such a good agent, but that we’ve been working together since 1998.

7/ There are also options available to make self-published digital works available in print editions, in Print On Demand copies. POD means that each book is created when it is sold – by copying instead of by printing. This diminishes the upfront cost of printing a lot of books and storing them, but does increase the per-unit price. POD editions are usually taken out in trade paperback format to diminish that cost difference, as they tend to be marketed at between $10 and $15. Still, POD makes it possible for authors to make print editions available with far less investment than was traditionally the case. (And you don’t have to store them in your garage.)

8/ Digital self-publishing allows for long-tail marketing. This means that the book can find its audience over time. There is no cost in stocking it, and titles don’t need to be removed to make room for new books coming in. The digital edition can sit and wait to be discovered. Print titles, in contrast, tend to need to find their audience within two weeks of the onsale date. The book market is very crowded and it’s hard to get visibility in that narrow window of opportunity for any title that isn’t expected to hit the NYT list of bestselling books.

9/ On a related note, there is room for experimentation in digital publishing. Because of the lack of investment in creating physical books, digital publishing can work very well for books that are perceived to have too small of an audience to make it worth publishing them in print editions. Backlist is a perfect example of this: my backlist titles do exist in print in the world, but only in used copies. It is unclear to anyone how many additional readers are interested in my Claire Delacroix backlist titles – digitally self-publishing them IMO is the ideal way to find out. I know authors, too, who have published new work – i.e. books that have not been previously published – and in many cases, these are works that traditional publishers perceived to be risky or to have an appeal to only a niche market. They were clearly afraid that demand would be so low that they wouldn’t break even on producing the book. They might be right or they might be wrong. Digital self-publishing is a good way to find out. Digital publishing is also good for works that are of different lengths than common in traditional publishing – if an author writes long or short, compared to what is sought in print publishing, it doesn’t matter in digital publishing.

10/ Finally, digital publishing allows for second chances. A traditionally published book essentially has one kick at the can – one release date, one cover and one chance to make it. After that, publishers are ready to move on to the next title. This makes sense for traditional publishers, as they have large publishing lists and can afford to have some percentage of them “under-perform”. It’s also expensive to repackage and re-release a book. Authors, though, are often less happy to walk away from their own books. Individual authors have very small publishing lists, maybe only one or two titles released per year, so we would like to see them all succeed. Digital publishing makes it easy to give a work a second chance. You can upload a new cover, change the price, change the copy, even change the work itself in a new edition, without very much expense. Sometimes the tweak makes all the difference.

Disadvantages of Digital Self-Publishing:

1/ Having complete responsibility for the release of the work is daunting to some writers. There is no one else on the team, and this can feel isolating to those people who like the camaraderie of working with others and sharing ideas. My own sense is that this tends to be felt more by authors who have not been traditionally published – they believe that traditional publishing houses do far more than they actually tend to do for the majority of their authors.

2/ The promotion of the work is also the author’s complete responsibility. For a new work, the author may choose to send review copies, plus there are (at a minimum) blog tours and Facebook pages and websites to keep updated. Again, this tends to be seen as a burden more by authors who have not been traditionally published. All traditionally published authors have taken responsibility for all or some of these promotional responsibilities over the course of their careers. Ten years ago, I would have been far more worried by this promotional expectation – now, it’s part of what I do anyway.

3/ Editorial responsibility for the work is entirely in the author’s hands. This is not an issue for previously published books, as they have been revised, line edited and copy edited. For new work, however, it may be necessary (or wise) for the author to hire a freelance editor to review the work, and possibly also a freelance copy editor. This is money out of pocket in advance of publication. On the other side of the coin, it can be argued that many authors are already taking on this expense and obligation – at least of critique partners and beta readers, if not editors and copy editors – regardless of how they are published. There are editors and houses who do not have a strong editorial process for the works they publish, and much of this responsibility in a number of cases has already shifted to the author’s shoulders. I have a very intense editorial process with my editor, and I do rely upon her input, but I’m coming to see how rare that situation is.

4/ Cover design is another cost to come out of the author’s pocket, unless he or she is talented with graphic design. Even then, there may be stock images to acquire for the cover image. Cover design is a very interesting process, and there are many ideas about what individual elements convey about story details to readers. I’m personally fascinated with cover art and cover design, so being even more involved in this phase of production is exciting for me. Some authors are less thrilled with it.

5/ Many digitally published works are only available digitally. This means that those readers who do not like digital editions and/or those who prefer paper books will not be the audience for these works. Readers who buy digital books but like to have physical copies of their “keepers” may also be disappointed. To my thinking, it probably makes sense for authors to offer POD editions of those previously unpublished works that they choose to publish digitally. There is a lot of set-up for POD and some cost, as well.

6/ One of the big disadvantages with digital publishing done by anyone – which is also an issue with print publishing – is visibility. How do readers find new works to read? Once upon a time, they saw books displayed in bookstores and on newsstands. Now many do not visit bookstores and newsstands are more likely to stock magazines. Most of the online booksellers have been steadily improving their “recommended reads”, trying to digitally replicate the act of browsing and that of bookstore employees making referrals – “if you love Author A, you’ll also love Author B”. This technology will steadily improve, but in the meantime, there are millions of digital books in the databases of big online bookstores. Getting your book noticed, no matter who publishes it, remains a challenge.

7/ Some people and/or writing organizations do not believe this is “real” publishing.

8/ It is not yet clear (to me, at least) how traditionally publishers will respond to the notion of “their” authors (i.e. the ones that they are actively publishing) also pursuing digital self-publishing. It is possible that there will be a perception of the author having conflicting alliances. Most of the authors I know who are doing very well with digital self-publishing are no longer being traditionally published, or they have no interest in being traditionally published. There have been several high-profile incidents of authors “choosing” one avenue over the other. Is it going to be a case of either-or?

In conclusion, I see digital self-publishing as an exciting opportunity for authors. We all have stories that traditional publishers believed were too risky, and often they are stories that we particularly loved. Maybe our readers will love them too. Many of us have backlist titles, which may not have a demand high enough to justify another print run – on the other hand, if the digitally published edition sells really well, that could provide the evidence necessary to generate enthusiasm in that print run. Many of us also have linked stories which were never sold, and digital publishing offers us the opportunity to continue or complete those series as we had originally intended. As someone who writes a lot of linked series, but contracts for the books in smaller groups, I find it very reassuring that I have this option available for finishing those tales, should the need arise.

I hope traditional publishers don’t decide that authors need to choose between digital self-publishing and traditional publishing, because it seems to me that the combination is the best way to build visibility for an author in the marketplace. Digital novellas, for example, could be a good way to keep a brand or series visible to readers in between the releases of print titles, or secondary characters could have their stories told in spin-off digital works. An author could also try different kinds of stories – vampires or werewolves, for example – to broaden the appeal of his or her brand. To me, this seems to be win-win.

What do you think about digital self-publishing? Have you bought/read any books released by authors? If you’re an author, have you self-published any works, either new work or backlist?