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From a Novelist Who Left HarperCollins
by Jim Munroe
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Webmaster Note: I recently had occasion to correspond with Jim Munroe. Jim is a missionary on the subject of diy publishing, a brilliant writer who can (and sometimes does) publish traditionally, but seems to have a hell of a lot more fun publishing untraditionally. You Should Make One Too The rise of indie music offers a potential model. Ten years ago, if someone put out their own album people would say, "Oh, I guess they couldn't get a record deal." Nowadays -- after years of undeniably great independent releases, consciousness of media ownership, and a self-sustaining community -- public perception of indie rock has shifted. Now, people would be just as likely to say, "Oh, cool. Major labels suck." The same shift could happen in publishing. The Economic Argument While the publishing industry isn't nearly as exploitive or as lucrative as the music biz, looking at the numbers involved can be interesting. Based on the common royalty of 10%, and a unit price of $20, an author must sell 5000 books (a bestseller in Canada) to make $10,000. Going by this, if an author is living solely off of her writing, she would have to write a bestseller every six months to sustain an income over the poverty level: $20,000. As entertaining a vision as this is, a hunched over figure scribbling away in her hovel, such a person has never existed. How then, do Canadian authors survive? Well, second jobs as professors, spouses, and a lot of them sell the foreign rights to their books -- specifically to our neighbour down south. (I received $15, 000 from the sale of Flyboy.) While I haven't anything against this, we have to admit that our authors are fairly dependent on the US market and that this probably has cultural repercussions. The Writing Stage The trick to novel writing is maintaining faith in yourself as a writer and of the importance of what you are doing. You have a lifetime of conditioning to fight, which will keep telling you that you are wasting your time putting hundreds of hours into something you may never get paid for. Another voice will snidely remind you of all the novels uncompleted, and all the completed novels unpublished, and all the published novels unsuccessful. Another will tell you that the very stuff of your being is unworthy, your soul too thin and your brain too thick. These voices are not yours -- they're the echoes of the status quo, ground in by endless repetition. You can fight them with a good argument or you can get a partial lobotomy. Steal Jim's logo When I've told some people about do-it-yourself publishing, they've said: "But Jim, I don't have a logo! How could a book survive in today's fast-paced world without the authenticity and recognition that a brand imbues?" Well, as we believe that hoarding credibility is as unpleasant as hoarding money, No Media Kings invites you to steal our logo. (See Jim's logo at top. Then steal.) Do It Yourself Book Production by Hamish MacDonald The first thing I learned about self-publishing is that the literary world considers it roughly equivalent to defecating in the middle of a formal dinner party. No grants, no awards, no memberships-none of this is open to the self-published, because such work is not considered "professional" (though few Canadian authors live off their writing income). One possible explanation given to me for this attitude is that self-published works don’t make any money for publishers. Another, I was told, is that much self-published work is crap-it looks like crap, and it’s had crap attention paid to the details. I can’t do anything about the former; the media moguls have their ground. But if you want to sidestep them and hope for a literary Blair Witch effect, I can help you with the latter, the details of publishing a book. And if you’ve bothered to write a book, do yourself the favour of admitting that you want to affect others by sharing it. It sounds trite to say, but most buyers do judge a book by its cover. But don’t worry: you can produce a "professional" book by being creative, decisive, and smart. In this guide, I’ll help you focus your efforts this way by sharing what I learned while producing my first book. DIY Book Distribution I'm not going to blow sunshine up your ass -- distribution is a tough nut to crack for self-publishers. A printer is getting the money up front, so they'll cheerfully print a book of soup can labels for you if that's what turns your crank. But the distributor gets a percentage of the sales, so they'll want to be sure that there's gonna be sales to take a percentage from. Option: Distributing your book yourself... DIY Book Promotion It's been a long, strange journey, but I've gone from being a person who loathed being subjected to marketing to being someone who's fairly comfortable with subjecting others to my peculiar brand of promotion.... "Launch" is your bestest friend. Not only a great excuse for a party, they're easy and cheap to organize and make a great focal point for media attention. Talk to the owner of a bar and they'll be only too happy to allow you to pack their establishment with potential drinkers, especially on a day that's not Friday or Saturday. Media can talk about you now outside the context of a review, because you're having an event. Make a flyer and give them to your friends, make a poster and put 'em where you put posters. Sell your books. If you're not having a launch, I'll expect a very good reason why not on my desk on Monday.... Keep your Hype-to-Content ratio balanced and you can't go wrong. DIY Book Touring Have your hometown launches lost their pungent melange of terror? Do you find that you show up for them without jittery nerves, several feet away from the precipice of emotional collapse? Do you find that afterwards you’re not drained to the point of not knowing who you are anymore? Then you might want to turn it up to eleven... and get in the van. Spreading your cultural virus from the scene whence you sprang to elsewhere is holy work. Although I’ve only toured with my books, you can -- and should -- tour with anything: zine, flea circus, cartoon sculptures, medical equipment museum. What’s more essential than having a mass-produced commodity such as a CD or book is having realistic expectations of what the road has to offer. In my experience, the fabled groupies and big sales are in short supply. The things that are in good supply are interesting folks, great conversations and neat places. If you expect as much from a tour as you do from a roadtrip, then you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised. If you expect a perpetual ego orgasm, then, well -- you’ll get a well-deserved kick in the ass. The POD option Even though POD companies tout very low prices to publish your book, as low as $99, the real price is hidden in all the add-on "options." Want to design and submit your own cover? Extra money. Want someone at the POD company to design your cover? Extra money. Want an ISBN number? Extra money. Folks, all the add-on items are actually essential elements in the creation of your book. $99 bucks to publish a book sounds great, but remember, you get what you pay for.... Keep in mind that in order to get even the slightest amount of press attention, you'll have to send out between 50 and 100 review copies of your book, and most likely more. If the cover price of your book is $12.95, and you get a 30% discount, you'll have to shell out $453.25 to order just 50 copies of your book. And who knows what the shipping costs will be. Please, please do the math before you even consider going the POD route. Once you do the math, even conservatively, you'll see that POD is BS in the hot, humid summer sun. Visit No Media Kings, Jim's amazing website.
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