Marketing is the toughest part

by Clay Cunningham
(Cody, WY)

Yellowstone to Denali

I was able to write this book rather quickly, because it is a collection of 45 of my brief experiences as a National Park Ranger and Park Superintendent. The goal was to include the stories to give readers, contemplating a career with the National Park Service, some idea of what rangers and superintendents do. The main purpose for the book though was to show them the most direct route to becoming a ranger, because the competition is horrendous for the few permanent jobs available each year.

I had a mentor who was a very successful fiction writer that encouraged me and was sure an agent would take it on as a publishing project. However, after numerous manuscript mailings, that didn't happen. This book is a niche book with a relatively small audience of interested readers. I decided to publish it with Outskirts Press. That was a good experience, though somewhat expensive. Outskirts provides numerous covers you can choose from to place your designed cover, or in my case, a picture. They assigned a person that I worked with during the entire process of designing the layout, the book size, and you select what percentage of the book price that the seller would receive. Outskirt's advice was that retailers would be more responsive with a 40 to 50% return on their purchase price.

Outskirts is a publish on demand company and your book is listed with many of the online retailers. However, it is virtually impossible to get bookstores to stock your book because there is a no return policy. You could get retailers to stock the book if you agreed to take back unsold copies. I didn't do that. The printer was very responsive to any books I ordered, and the finished book looks very professional. Outskirts does a very good job of working with each client.

Like other self published authors, I too could have used a good editor to catch the various typos that somehow creep into my writing. In spite of the fact that I read the blue line copy very carefully, I still missed three minor typos that I know of now. I could have benefitted from having others read the blue lines, because all the typos that were found came from readers of the finished book.

Outskirts submitted my book in competition with the Independent Publishers of the Colorado EVVY Awards, and it won an award. However, I didn't notice any sudden surge in sales from the experience. I sold the majority of my books, and recovered my expenses with a little profit. Self published books are extremely hard to market, and I am not very good at that anyway.

I sent numerous copies to various newspapers adjacent to the parks I worked in as some of the stories were about experiences in their area. Most book editors didn't review the book because it was self published, and you are not considered a "real" author.

Recently the book has been picked up for re-production, marketing and sale by another company that is targeting libraries, research institutes, colleges and universities. That is the proper target market and additional sales are more probable.

While overall I consider the experience with Outskirts Press a good one, I would not self publish again. There are at least two more books I intend to write, for which I will seek an agent and/or a publisher.

Visit Clay at The Ranger Institute.