How To Do What We Do

Friday, June 19th, 2009 | Posted by: Christopher Meeks

I did not intend to be a publisher. I intended to be a writer. My first job out of grad school, however, was as a senior editor for a small publisher. Everything you heard about publishing—the stress, the long hours, low pay—it’s true. Yet it was fun to see our books land on bestseller lists. The company, Prelude Press, originally began as a self-publishing enterprise by Peter McWilliams.

I’ve joined this enterprise because Henry Baum’s enthusiasm is infectious. I also joined because with big publishers tightening their belts more than ever and with my agent finding such frustration in getting two of my novels published, Henry’s approach here may be the right one.

Susan Salter Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times once wrote, “People have not stopped reading. The problem, most bookstore owners and publishers will tell you, is a distribution system that caters heavily to chains and wholesalers like Wal-Mart.” Self-publishers and small publishers are finding new ways to get to people. Backword books is yet another way.

Because I worked in publishing and was intimately acquainted with every step, I decided almost four years ago to start my own imprint, White Whisker Books. I’d do what I’d been trained to do, but this time for me.

I have not seen self-publishing as some great new way to “stick it to the man.” I haven’t seen it as romantic way, nor as a way to get rich, nor even as smart. Most self-published or print-on-demand (POD) books are terrible, thanks to too much ego and too little editing and attention to detail.

Yet because costs are so easy to control and because one does not have to print hundreds or thousands of books and ship them to a distributor, becoming your own publisher can be an option. It should be a last option, but if you are detail-oriented, it’s viable. You just need to do what the big publishers do, including:

1)      Hire an editor. Let someone question your writing and offer possibilities. I’m talking about a real editor, not a proofreader.

2)      Hire proofreaders when the editing is all done. Use a few. No one person finds everything.

3)      Hire a book designer. A good one. Have your designer come up with several options for a cover. The insides, including the copyright page, should look like it came from a large publisher, not from your cousin who learned some new do-it-yourself software over the weekend.

4)      Use market research. Show your possible book covers around. See what people think. Listen to what gets people interested. Also show your first page of the text to as many people as you can. Does it get them to want to read more?

5)      Select a publication date many months into the future. Create buzz and a publication party for it.

6)      Send out advance reading copies of your book to reviewers at least three months in advance.

And there’s more I could say but I won’t. So much of it is you treating yourself as a professional and finding out all you can how other publishers do things. Much of publishing is in the marketing, and that’s hard.

The authors involved  Backword Books are detail-oriented, hard working, and primarily dedicated and imaginative writers. Welcome to our world.