by john | Sep 25, 2017 | Business of publishing, Writing
Not really. But I have begin referring to myself as “Simon Cowell of small press publishing.” If you’d really like to see why, you can go check out the finalists of Son of a Pitch, an online query contest that gets things read by actual publishers. My pal Samantha, she of the menopausal superhero novels asked me to participate, so I read the 20 finalist queries, and the 250-word samples they submitted. Out of the finalists, who had been winnowed down through two previous rounds of judging, I requested three submissions.
Despite the rapidly growing size of our Falstaff Books catalog, I’m not an easy sell. Let’s be honest, most stuff gets rejected before it gets to me. We have multiple acquiring editors reading submissions at Falstaff, and they have to like it before it gets referred to me. Then I have to read the book and like it enough to put it into one of our very limited novel-length publications slots. Then I have to converse with the author and come to terms with them on a contract. Then they’ve sold a book.
But I’m the bottleneck. Probably 80% of submissions that come in are rejected before they get to me. I take less than half of what comes through our acquiring editors, and only about a third of what comes to me directly.
Yes, there are way to bypass the acquiring editors (the slush pile). Here’s how – meet me face to face and pitch me. I do open pitch sessions at any convention that will let me, but the downside to getting face time to pitch a publisher at a con is that it’s in front of a room full of people and you get my critique of your pitch right there on the spot. If you can stand it, come to Atomacon in November, I’m doing a 9AM Saturday morning pitch session. So now you have to pitch me in front of people, AND I’ll be pissy because it’s early.
I won’t really. By 9AM most day’s I’ve already been working for at least an hour.
We did one of these at Congregate in July, and one of the authors there is in the queue for a contract already. So it works.
But I’m not nice. I try not to be rude, but I really do channel my inner Simon Cowell. Now I never watched him on American Idol, but I’ve seen him on America’s Got Talent, and Simon is the tough judge. Not because he’s a dick, although he puts on that front to attract viewers. No, he’s the tough judge because he’s in the business of making money. He wants to turn records into dollars, just like I want to turn books into dollars. So if you show up with a half-assed pitch, or trying to pitch an unfinished book, I’m going to bounce you off the stage as fast as Simon will. But if you show up with something that you’ve obviously put a lot of work into, and you’ve researched our press, and you’ve done all the right things before you get there, then I’ll probably ask you for a submission.
Then the book has to be ready to submit, and it has to be awesome, but those are steps 2-27 of selling a book. First you have to get past Simon. And only about a third of the 20% that actually gets to me make it to contract.
And I accept a LOT more books than most publishers. So get your shit ready before you submit!
by john | Sep 20, 2017 | How to Sell Books, Promos/Giveaways
I wrote a couple of posts early in this series about how to build a mailing list with Incentivized and Organic Subscribers, and all that stuff remains true. If you missed them, the first part is here, and the second one is here. This won’t be about the philosophical elements of making a newsletter, this will be about the nuts and bolts, the mechanics, and what I personally do with my mailing lists to monetize them. Some of this is stuff I’ve gleaned from the internet, some of it I’ve come up with on my own, and fair chunk of it is from notes I took in a long conversation with my friend Stuart Jaffe. If you want to read some kickass adventure or supernatural mystery stuff, check him out. And if you sign up for his email list, you’ll get some free shit! Eric Asher is another person I use for a resource on promos and mailing lists, and he’s also got a deal or two running right now.
But how do I deal with my mailing list(s)? Well, that’s been the subject of a lot of thought over the past few days, as I’ve recently relocated my mailing list from Mailchimp to Mailerlite, because for the number of subscribers that I have (currently about 3,600 across four lists) Mailerlite is $20/month, where Mailchimp was $50, and going to $75 when I reach 5K. So that’s not an insignificant savings, especially given what I have in the marketing budget most months, which is frequently dryer lint. By the way, if you click on those links and sign up for Mailerlite, you get a discount and I get a kickback, so if this is helpful, that’s one way to show the love.
As I mentioned, I have four mailing lists, three of which are active, and one I’m just getting moving (slowly) on. The lists are – my newsletter, the Falstaff Books newsletter, and the ARC team for me & Falstaff. Yes, those links are the signup forms for the linked newsletters. Yes, you can get a metric ton of free ebooks just for signing up to all of those email lists and then auto-dropping. I mean, by my rough reckoning, if you signed up for all the lists that I’ve shown you here, you would get six complete novels, two short stories, one sampler anthology, and one anthology. All for free!
But how does it work? How do I get people onto the lists, and how do I deal with the lists once I’ve got them there. Okay, here’s what I do. It’s more than most people, and scale it back to fit your productivity, but remember that I release at least one new product every month, and sometimes more, plus I have a publishing company releasing at least two new books each month, usually more. So I have a lot of shit to notify people about. But here’s the plan.
1) Consistency – I’m a flake, and anyone that has worked with me knows it. I know it, and I also know that I can’t do the things I need to do if I’m flaking out all over the place. So I have an event set up in my calendar to write a newsletter every Wednesday. It’s also when I write these posts, so it kinda just gives me a couple hours in publisher headspace to do this kind of stuff. I do a John Hartness newsletter one week, then a Falstaff newsletter the following week. If for some reason I don’t have anything new coming out that week, the week before, or the week after, I skip a week. That doesn’t happen very often, between appearances, book releases, and audiobook releases, I have something hitting the virtual streets almost every week, so there’s something to talk about. But consistency is critical. If you go too long without sending out a newsletter, people forget about you. And obscurity is our enemy. So I send out a newsletter about every two weeks for each of my major newsletters. The ARC team is a whole different story, and one that I’m still working on. I’ll keep you posted.
2) The Funnel – This is what I learned from Stuart, setting up my automation. I know he didn’t invent the idea. He’s smart, but not that smart. But he was kind enough to take the time to sit down and explain the whole thing to me. So here’s what happens when someone signs up for my email newsletter, and this is another place in which Mailerlite has Mailchimp beat, hands down. This shit was so much easier to set up on Mailerlite that it wasn’t even funny.
Step 1 – Janet signs up for the newsletter. Janet gets a confirmation email with a link in it directing her to confirm that she’s a human and really wanted to sign up for this crap. Once she does that, she is sent to an Instafreebie page. Instafreebie is a website that automates ebook giveaways and integrates them with mailing lists. It lets me do all this without actually having to sit down and send people ebooks. I use it for all my mailing list giveaways. Yes, there is a referral link buried in that link, too, so if you sign up for Instafreebie and upload a book, I get a discount. Just assume that I have put referral links in every link in here, because I probably have. It doesn’t add anything to your cost, and if I am recommending that you sign up for a service, might as well get them to pay me for it, right?
Step 2 – But anyway, Janet goes to Instafreebie and gets her free ebook. Then the automation starts rolling. In a few days, Janet will get a second email, with another Instafreebie link, this one to a different free short story. She doesn’t have to sign up for anything extra, she doesn’t have to get the story. But it’s free, and it’s a story I like, so why not give it away?
Step 3 – Seven days later, Mailerlite runs an if/then sequence. If Janet opened the email, then she gets an email inviting her to join the Falstaff Books email list. This will get her two more free ebooks, plus another set of notifications. If she didn’t open the email, it will resend, to give her a little reminder to become an active fan and read all my shit (and get more free shit!).
Step 4 – Seven days after that, another step runs. If Janet didn’t open the email a second time, she’s removed from the list. I pay per subscriber, and if people aren’t reading the things I’m sending, then I would rather not pay to keep them around. If they are actively interested and just got busy, they can sign up again and get more free shit all over again. If Janet opened the email the second time it sent, she then gets invited to the Falstaff Books email list. To get more free shit. If she opened the Falstaff Books invite, then she gets another email inviting her to join Stuart’s email list and get his shit for free. Because we all like to work together, and a rising tide lifts all boats. So the more books Stuart sells, the more books I will eventually sell, because we’re all about training people to buy indie and small press books, and love us all. So I like pimping my friends.
If Janet didn’t open the Falstaff Books email, then nothing else happens. I don’t refer only moderately active subscribers to other folks, but I don’t boot them, either. If they’ve opened 2/3 of the emails I send, then I definitely want them around.
That’s the way my funnel is currently set up, and it’s constantly evolving. But I want to draw people in as much as I can, and engage them as much as I can. Those are the initial steps to building a list, signup forms, and creating a funnel to suck them into your loving arms forever.
We’re way over the thousand word limit I try to keep these at, but just a quick note – there’s a new Quincy Harker short story coming out soon, and I’m giving away 100 copies on Instafreebie. You don’t have to sign up for shit, just click this link and you can get a free Harker story. Now, you CAN sign up for the email list while you’re there, but it’s not required. There are 80 or so available as of this writing, so go get some free shit!
by john | Sep 18, 2017 | Uncategorized
So you might have missed it, because it isn’t something that I am promoting all that heavily, but I reinstalled the “Writer Services” tab on this site. I have a few skills that people are willing to pay for, but since the use of those skills is illegal in most states, I decided to whore myself out to help people get their books produced instead.
First off, why am I doing this?
There are two reasons. The first is the most obvious – money. I have skills, people are willing to pay for those skills, and they want to pay someone. I think it should be me. Plus, let’s face it, Dragon Con was expensive. Even splitting the room cost with three other people, it’s not cheap. And I have a bunch of other events coming up that will take me out of town, and thus put me in a hotel, in the fall. So that costs money. Book sales are okay, but it hasn’t been the best quarter, and I could use a little extra cushion coming in. So if I can pick up a couple hundred bucks helping people produce good-looking ebooks and print books, I might as well.
The second is that there are a lot of people who want to self-publish, but don’t have the technical skills. It’s not a knock on anyone, it’s just a set of skills that they haven’t learned. I haven’t learned how to wire a house or build a brick wall. They may have learned these things. If I need a house wired, I call an electrician. If they need an ebook built, they call me. So I can help some folks with their ebook creation, make a good-looking product, and get paid in the process. Sounds like a win-win-win to me.
Now – what do I do?
Ebook Formatting
I take a Word document and I turn it into an ePub or .mobi file. EPub is what the world uses for their e-readers, mobi is what the kindle uses. Even if you’re only putting your book into Kindle Unlimited, you should still get an ePub made. You might need it in the future, and you may need it to email to reviewers, Patreon patrons, or just your mom.
I dunno. Maybe your mom really loves her Nook. It could happen.
I use a piece of software called Vellum, and it makes a very nice-looking ebook. Vellum lets me do the nice section breaks and page headers, as well as making nice drop caps at the beginning of chapters and after section breaks.
It also doesn’t take me very long, so I can do this work pretty cheaply. I charge $50 for basic ebook creation. This means it comes to me in MSWord, and I put it out the door as both an ePub file and a mobi file. If you have a bunch of illustrations, need to send me the file in something other than MSWord, or have a file over 150,000 words, we will negotiate a price.
Print Formatting
I use Vellum for print, too. It has four basic sizes that are available, and it makes a nice, basic, clean print book. This isn’t anything fancy, but it’s good for fiction books. I’ve used it on several of our novellas that we produce at Falstaff Books, as well as on my novel Fireheart. If you want something fancy and awesome, go to Clicking Keys. They have a much deeper suite of services, including edits and cover design. They are who I use for any of our books that require special interior formatting. But if you just need a basic book with page numbers and chapter headers and a clean interior design, I’ll do that for $50. If you want me to do both print and ebook formatting at the same time, I’ll do that for $75.
Those are the primary things I’m offering, but if you want more, I can also do newsletter setup, ebook uploads, keyword optimization, and social media setup. Those rates are all on the Writer Services page.
What I Don’t Do –
Freelance Editing – I tried it, it was a debacle. I’m a good developmental/story editor, but a shite copy editor. And now that I’m working as a publisher, I’m much more interested in mentoring through that avenue that any other, so if you have the next awesome novel, submit it to Falstaff Books and we’ll take a look at it.
Cover Design – I’m no cover artist. You can tell that from the early Bubba short story covers. I know good cover artists, and I’ll happily recommend them to you. But I ain’t them.
Complex Interiors – If you want a bunch of images, I’m not your guy. If you want chapters, text, and headers, I’m there. But let’s be honest, $50 isn’t getting you eight hours of an InDesign specialist. My services are intended to lend a hand, help people make cool ebooks and print books, and maybe make a few bucks.
So that’s the deal. In other news, Falstaff Books has a brand new Patreon! If you love the stuff coming out of the Misfit Toys, you can support us and get previews of ebooks, signed books, stickers, and other cool stuff! Check it out!
by john | Sep 14, 2017 | Promos/Giveaways
Hey there! Here’s a badass new book bundle that I’m part of along with some awesome writers including Gail Z. Martin, Mario Acevedo, Dean Wesley Smith, Quincy Allen, Jean Rabe, Kelly Harmon, Stuart Jaffe, and Mindy Klasky. It’s on sale wherever ebooks are sold, and also is available on BundleRabbit!
It includes Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 1, and eight other great books for as low as $2.99 for the whole set!
Get your bundle today!
by john | Sep 12, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Writing
Yeah, it might seem like an odd question for someone who runs a small press to ask, but bear with me.
It is easier now than it has ever been to make money self-publishing. There are more ways to dissect the market, more tools to create and distribute a quality product, and more people making a solid living self-publishing their own work than ever before. So why would you want to work with a publisher? Particularly a small press, which might not be able to do anything better for you than you could do yourself.
I teach classes on this shit. I’ll be teaching this very thing as a workshop at Penned Con in St. Louis at the end of the month. That workshop is about choosing a path to publication, and it dissects the decision-making process about going indie, small press, or shopping a book to agents and then New York. Since I’ve never sold a book to a Big 5 publisher, or any other press that doesn’t accept unaccented submissions, I can’t say a whole lot about that.
I know, it’s never stopped me before. 🙂 It won’t this time, either. Don’t worry.
But for today, let’s look at the reasons you might want to use a small press publisher over self-publishing.
You don’t want to learn how to do all that shit.
There’s nothing wrong with that as a response. I’ve been at this for seven years and I still can’t design a decent cover wrap. Hell, I can barely design a serviceable cover at all. But I do know how to hire those people. But there are parts of the process that are non-writing related that you have to learn when you are a publisher, whether you are the entirety of the client list, or you have dozens of writers in your stable. You need to learn how to build an ebook, how to create a cover, how to create a cover wrap, how to navigate ISBNs, deal with CreateSpace, deal with Ingram, find an audiobook producer, navigate ACX, upload to Amazon, get the book listed on all other ebook distribution sites, and make decisions about pricing, exclusivity, and all sorts of other market factors.
That’s a lot of shit. If you have a family and a day job, you might just not have the bandwidth to learn all that shit, no matter how intelligent you are. My buddy AJ Hartley is a hell of a writer. He publishes with several big houses, and has had quite a successful career to this point. He also has a day job and a kid to raise, and his wife has a thriving career as well. He should never self-publish (I’m sure he’s glad to hear this, since he also has never wanted to), because he has too much other shit going on in his life. It’s all I can do to get him to send out his newsletter. 🙂 Love ya, buddy.
So not wanting to learn how to do all the things a publisher does is a perfectly valid reason to give up part of your royalties. Conversely, if you are very interested in how the sausage gets made, selling one book or one series to a publisher and following it through the creation and distribution process can also be a great way to learn.
You want to learn to be a better writer.
This is why Bell Bridge Books publishes The Black Knight Chronicles. I have often said that I consider working with Deb Dixon and Bell Bridge to be my MFA writing program, with a fair side of editing classes thrown in. I couldn’t have learned as much in five years of college as I did in the two years we spent taking the first three Black Knight books apart and rebuilding them. Every book I do with Deb, I learn more about story, pacing, plotting, building a series, and writing good, tight fiction. I sincerely hope that someday some of my Falstaff authors say the same thing about their work with me and my team. If you’re not learning, you’re pushing up daisies. So if you can find a bunch of people who you like working with that will help you grow in your craft, then the amount of money you “lose” by working with a publisher is insignificant in comparison to the increased earnings you’ll see down the road.
Let’s also be clear: I 100% made more money on The Black Knight Chronicles with Bell Bridge than I would have on my own, even if I had stayed 100% indie and pushed books out as fast as I can. In addition to the education I’ve gained, getting a Kindle Daily Deal feature several times sure doesn’t hurt!
You need a confidence boost.
It’s a tough world, and a lot of the time it feels like nobody is on your side. A good publisher will always be on your side. Sure, the interest is also partially self-serving, since you selling more books makes money for both of you, but that’s not a bad thing. I’m a fan of enlightened self-interest. It’s a motivation that I understand. So I try to be a cheerleader for my authors. I suck at it, so I usually give them a little Simon Cowell-style tough love and then bring in somebody else to be all huggy, but I try. But whenever you get down, and think it’s too much and you should give up, having a publisher behind you gives you at least one person who really wants you to succeed. And they believe that you can. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have wasted the ink sending you a contract. And they sure as hell wouldn’t have spent time editing your work, and building a cover, and doing all the other shit that we do. Even if we don’t put any money where our mouth is as far as an advance, we do put a lot of time, blood, sweat, and tears into making every book the best it can be. That’s another thing that a publisher does – we spend a fair amount of time as career counselor and cheerleader for our authors. Because a happy author is a productive author. And a productive author writes better.
There are a ton of people out there who’ll tell you why you don’t need a publisher today. And everything they say is correct.
But I don’t need a Krispy Kreme doughnut, either. Like, ever. But damn, a lot of times I want one.
