Deborah Cooke: Author

Through most of my writing career, I’ve worked with two publishers simultaneously. I’ve done this because of my own interest in writing more than one series at a time. I like to switch back between settings and worlds and even kinds of stories, in order to keep my perspective fresh. I think it makes the individual books stronger.

Writing for two traditional publishing houses simultaneously has its challenges, though. As publication schedules accelerate, it becomes harder to keep both houses happy and to ensure that the two series are being published with similar levels of enthusiasm. In recent years, as a result, I have written for one publishing house – although I’m currently writing two different series for them.

But what has happened this year is that I have been self-publishing a number of my own Claire Delacroix backlist titles in digital editions. And recently I realized that the situation has some similarities to working for two different houses.

There are also a couple of differences:

1/ Publisher-Me is only publishing backlist. This is not the same as creating frontlist for two houses simultaneously – there is no writing to be done, for example, less promotion and fewer editorial obligations. Publisher-Me is almost like a former publisher, repackaging my backlist and making it available again.

2/ Publisher-Me delegates. I have someone to proof read the digital files of the books, someone to create covers, someone to format the digital editions. Publisher-Me gets the ball rolling, but then just does the uploading.

3/ These two variables together eliminate one of the big tensions of writing for two houses simultaneously. No matter how well you plan in advance, there are always things that crop up, and there are always times when you have to choose one publisher over the other. This is never any fun. In this situation, though, Publisher-Me doesn’t make any waves when Writer-Me pushes off a deadline. In fact, Publisher-Me has been quite reasonable about my preference for dragons.

If you are published with a traditional publisher, but want to have a second publisher, doing your own publishing digitally might be a good balance for you – whether you publish backlist or frontlist. Either way, some of the considerations that authors need to keep in mind when writing for two (or more) publishing houses will also apply:

1/ Read your contracts.
First and foremost, you need to ensure that you have the right to write for another publisher, whoever that publisher is. You’ll want to pay particular attention to your option clause and your author’s warrantees in your publishing contract(s). If you have representation and intend to publish new frontlist yourself, you’ll also want to ensure that your agency contract permits you to do that.

2/ Good fences make good neighbours.
It is often easier to work for two publishers when you write two kinds of work. The more clearly you can delineate the two and the more clearly you can define them, the better. You may wish to have separate websites, separate author brands, separate Facebook pages, etc. to further distinguish the two brands. If everyone understands their precise area of sovereignty, it’s less likely that there will be confusion or squabbles.

3/ Communicate.
If you have a publisher and an agent, and you want to continue working with both, you need to ensure that you build consensus for any plan, including a decision to self-publish. As a species, we don’t like to learn things by surprise and we’re not much for change. Valuable relationships need to be protected so talk to your partners before you do anything.

4/ Know your goals.
Decide what you want to achieve with your self-publishing plan, define how you will know when/if you succeed. You can want anything, from more regular payments, to greater exposure, to the chance to try something new – there are dozens of possibilities. But knowing what you want can help you to decide what to do at any decision point. It will also help you to present your plan to your business partners in a coherent fashion, and might encourage them to assist you. They might also see alternative paths than the one you’ve sketched out.

In my case, I’m self-publishing my Claire Delacroix backlist. I hear from readers frequently that they can only get one book of a trilogy which is out of print, or that they’ve just discovered my medieval romances and want to read them all. I don’t own all of my backlist, but the houses that own the rest of it are also releasing it digitally – essentially, I’m doing the same thing as those publishing houses, but doing it myself. So, I look at this publication as a service to my readers. Having this backlist available also gives my loyal readers new books to fill the time between frontlist Deborah Cooke releases – the fact is that readers can read a book faster than I can write the next one! I know that a number of Delacroix fans have followed me to Dragonfire, so it makes sense that some Dragonfire fans would be interested in the Delacroix work.

But it is kind of funny to think of myself as my own “other publisher”.

For those authors out there, have you published any works yourself while writing for another publisher? For you readers, do you follow authors across publishing houses, subgenres and author brands?