I’ll continue posting my notes from the 2009 LDStorymakers conference, with fun with verbs coming on Tuesdays and Thursdays!

Self-Publishing panel
Moderator: CS Bezas
Panel Members: Gary Hansen, Joyce DiPastena (blog), Marsha Ward (blog), Sarah Eden, Tanya Parker Mills

Panelists’ intros:
Sarah Eden: Writes historical fiction, author of Seeking Persephone. Published 9 novels, from Arizona, Print on Demand (POD) expertise. As a fiction author, she makes things up, so she may lie at any time on this panel. Whitney finalist 2008

Joyce DiPastena: 2007 Whitney finalist Loyalty’s Web
self-published, picked up by Leavenwood Press and republished.

Marsha Ward: Western fiction (The Man from Shenandoah, Ride to Raton and Trail of Storms) Journalism background with LDS newspapers, over 900 publishing credits, national contest wins, came to self publishing in a unique way (whiche she touches on later).

Tanya Parker Mills: The Reckoning Whitney finalist 2008, had her first novel rejected and found herself blocked in her second novel, and knew she had to get it out there. From Washington.

Gary Hansen: Wet Desert, a Novel, Whitney 2007 finalist, suspense/thriller (national, but “LDS-friendly”).

Something pertinent to know about self-publishing

• Gary: Once he’d been frustrated on national market, he took the “go into the bookstore and find your section—genre, cost, etc.” Picked price point and went through self publishers to find a cost-effective place: found a self-pubbed book in Costco and contacted author—actually printed it himself. Sold through first print run (2600) and into second.
• Tanya: POD, Booksurge because of its Amazon ties. It’s so hard to get pubbed by traditional publishers (mainstream contemporary fiction, non LDS, going for national market). Self-pub has increased b/c it’s more affordable now. Rarely do you get picked up like Eragon did. Tremendous marketing as self-pub plus lucking out in a coincidence. What she would have done differently: she would’ve done differently: set up a distributor.
• Marsha: the valid reasons to self-publish:
  • Poetry collections (for friends and family and other interested parties)
  • Family histories
  • Autobios/memoirs (unless you’re famous!)
  • You’re giving seminars, how-to books, public speaking—tremendous back-of-the-room sales.
  • Personally: she had a health crisis and thought she was running out of time. Getting good responses editorially, but negative marketing reports (Western novels are too niche). Chose not to become her own publishing company—POD/Publish assistance people. Researched to know what they would and wouldn’t give her, looked at customer feedback, went with iUniverse. Was going to go through traditional publisher for 3rd in series, but too mch lag time for her fans (guy came up to her in the grocery store)
• Joyce: also writing to national market but “LDS friendly”—Medieval romance. Lots of positive response on national market, but they didn’t know what to do with it. Agent called her: too much plot to be a romance and not enough pageantry to be a historical. She put it away for years and years and kept trying to write a straight romance, but it wasn’t working—she kept throwing in other plot lines (I guess non romance plot lines). Ended up with these books sitting around, and she realized she could die with books in drawer or take a chance on self publishing to see if there’s an audience. She turned to Marsha for help, also went with iUniverse POD—knew she couldn’t go out and sell her own books (Gary has a garage full of books!). To her surprise, she began attracting a readership of people that were interested in the cross-genre. Finalist at Whitneys: editor took notice of that and reprinted her book. Be realistic about your marketing talents. Can you push the books on your own, or are you too shy? Online?
• Sarah—Butter pecan is the best therapy for writer agony. Cheetos can be consumed at VERY large quantities at 3 AM. You need to do your research. There are so many options in self-pub—diff companies, methods. Traps: vanity presses. Options: book sizes (bigger book: more words per page, fewer pages, lower cost). Know what you want first so you can find a company that will provide that in a way that is affordable and satisfying to you. Talk to people who’ve done it before because they know things that the companies won’t tell you. Look at their books in person.
• Marsha: google [“company name” sucks] to check them out.

Questions:
Don Lee: How do you distribute your books?
Gary: In order to get into big stores, you have to go through distributors—Ingram or Baker and Taylor. In the bookstore, they’re very worried about Returns—they don’t want any obligations—they can return unsold books to them without cost. You have to have that method or they won’t take it. Getting a distributor—just like getting an agent or editor. BIG step. If you get there, bookstores can at least order it from any bookstore in the country. Distribution is critical.

Roger Nielsen: What was your initial investment, Gary?

• Gary: Obviously, POD has big advantages, but his goal was a low cost (equal to trad pubbed books)—you have to sell cheap to distributors ($4.50 for a $10 book). 363 pages with small font to keep page count down—setup fee ~$3000, and then the books are cheap. The more you print, the cheaper they are per book. You’re tempted to print like 10,000 so they’ll be $1.50.
• Tanya: with POD and digital presses, you pay upfront. I decided to get the total design freedom package—control cover design and copy, paid a little more. $1367 including that package. No warehousing, order from Amazon and they print and send it. $1367 is for set up and a few books she’d ordered for herself.
• Comment from LC Lewis: Sometimes booksurge gives you a promo pkg with 30 free books if you sign up for marketing.
• Marsha: Paid iUniverse. Purchased rights to cover images from Corbis $300, royalty-free to use forever. Last package cost $399. Commissioned painting for second book at $300. Ordered 200 copies of her first and 25 each of the others. Distribution: website, blog, building writing community, a lot of contacts, list of people who wanted her next book. Sell autographed copies from her website, you can get it from bookstores, Amazon, iUniverse, ebook on Books on Board. Book trailer.
• Comment from Roger again: BYU is getting a very specialized machine to do this—prints from PDF $0.04/pg, 300 p book in 4 minutes.
• Sarah: That’s the kind of machine most PODs use. initial fee (CreateSpace, connected to BookSurge) just under $2/book, plus $0.008/pg. Printing only—$39 per title—gets your ISBN number, per-page cost below $0.01/pg. Economies of scale.

LC Lewis—Amazon sets price for BookSurge?

• Tanya—yes. I wanted it at $14.99, they set it at $17.99.
• Gary got to set his own MSRP (retail), they set their discount. Amazon has to get their margin, 55%—you have to sell it at $6.79 for a $14.95 price.
• Sarah—CreateSpace—you set your own prices. Take into account shipping costs! Supply and demand. CreateSpace, part of Amazon, qualifies for SuperSaver shipping (her original POD company was too expensive with shipping)
• Tanya—Two issues ago Writers’ Digest was all about self-publishing

I know some people have said it’s a good idea to create a separate company that isn’t you to be the publisher. Does that help?

• Sarah—In a way it does. One of the cons of self-publishing—people pick up a book that’s self pubbed, they think it’s self pubbed because it’s bad. If it says “Published by Sarah Eden,” it’s not good in their minds.
• Gary—I came up with a press. I named it Hole Shot Press—I didn’t want people to be able to tell it’s self-pubbed.

Any tax tips?

• Gary—You have to keep track of your income if you make money (which has not been an issue for me yet). When you sell direct to a customer in your state, you have to pay sales tax. You have to get a state sales tax number.
• Sarah—I get royalties instead of profits with CreateSpace. It’s a 1099. But don’t forget to subtract your expenses.
• Cindy—As always, consult your tax advisers.

Roger—WriteWise or any of these other groups experience?
No

Any marketing tips so people can hear about your book?
Joyce—[dubbed marketing guru by . . . Marsha at the beginning of the panel] Websites, blogs. I like to do contests because that builds up a mailing list of people who enter. Then she can send them info. One tip she read: a reader who has never head of an author before needs to see the title of the book at least 10 times before they’ll consider buying a book from an unknown author. Her goal isn’t always a sale, it’s to get her book’s name out there.

About the conference: LDStorymakers is a writing contest geared to LDS writers. The conference covers both the niche, regional publishers that cater to the LDS market as well as national publishers.