rocking horse « Robin Writes

A friend blogged on Indies Unlimited recently and a commenter mentioned “hybrid” publishing. She stated that’s what her company does, and while there are variations of what constitutes “hybrid” publishing, the most common definition is that an author uses a combination of methods to publishing his books. In other words, he might self-publish E-versions, and use a traditional press for paperback, or the other way around. The commenter seemed to think that by offering both trad publishing and author services, her company qualified as such.

The problem here—and, disclaimer, her company website says nothing about trad publishing, only “author services”—is that definitions are evolving and publishing houses, indies, are coming up with all kinds of combinations.

Checking out a publishing house is becoming more and more difficult, but it’s something you absolutely must do.

Two things that trad publishing comes right down to: you want someone who’s a competent professional, and you want someone who will not charge you to publish your book, for any reason.

Self-publishing has also taken some leaps and bounds in the last couple years. Authors used to write their books and then struggle with formatting, cover design, editing, and so forth, and finally produce a “self” published book. Now, every day, there are more and more author services companies popping up. An author can pay an editor, pay a cover designer, pay for copyright registration, pay for ISBN registration, and hire a publicist.

Sometimes, that’s an all-in-one company. Now, I ask you, if you pay a company to do all these things, is that really “self” publishing? Sure, you PAID them; but, in my opinion, it’s much better to vet your own people—editors and cover designers in particular. That, to me, is the definition of self-publishing.

And then there are the vanity presses and certain derivatives. The commenter mentioned above has had her company for somewhere between 6-8 years; it’s hard to say, even after some research. A few years back, I saw some posts on Absolute Write about the company’s unconventional methods of finding submissions and, at that time, authors of rejected manuscripts were offered paid services to improve that submission.

That’s a bit of a conflict of interest. Theoretically, you could tell everyone their books were bad, then make money by selling them “services.”

Now, technically, this isn’t a vanity press—a vanity press will charge you to publish your book, and may tack on extra charges for those same “services”—but it’s unethical, just the same. Truly, a publishing house can EITHER offer services, in which case it’s not a publishing house, OR publish books.

Fee for service is not always a bad thing, but if a company offers that along with trad publishing, you might want to be leery. It’s a red flag, just like a poorly spelled website or outrageous claims or even a brand-new publisher. Or, an even better example, a company several years old with only two titles . . .

Back when we had the bookstore, before starting RHP, we offered author services—just like a freelance editor, or a cover designer, etc. We didn’t ALSO publish books. It was quite an underwhelming success.

When I started RHP in October 2012, I was determined to run a professional, traditional publishing house. And I have. I do. No, we don’t offer advances, but we do pay royalties and we do NOT charge for anything at all.

Right about the time we started accepting submissions, someone on the forums at Absolute Write asked if anyone had heard of us. Of course not, we were just getting started—and that was a red flag. I knew it, wasn’t worried, because again, we’d just opened to submissions. Would I, myself, have submitted to a house that just opened? Probably not. But thankfully, many authors did. They took a chance.

It comes down to your choices. There are many helpful companies out there, and there are many scammers. And some don’t even seem like a scam, and maybe aren’t, but they can be expensive, both monetarily and professionally. When you refer to a vanity press or something similar as “my publisher,” people in the industry will assume that your book is, charitably, not very good. Right or wrong, you won’t be taken seriously as an author.

A reader asks, “As a writer, how often should I blog?”

Oh, mercy, there are as many schools of thought on this as there on comma usage . . . but in general, you don’t want to irritate people with a barrage of irrelevant content and, at the same time, you don’t want them to forget about you.

Let’s start with content. You can write about anything, of course, or you can use your blog as a journal of sorts. Now, some people might want to hear about your daily life, some won’t. “Relevant” content is simply something of value that most of your readers want.

You can blog about the writing process, your own writing career, or something at which you have expert status—if you’re an author, what is your book about? Make yourself an expert.

Who are your readers? That’s what you have to figure out. Look at the list of those who follow your blog, and see what they have in common. Look at past posts and see which get the most hits and the most comments. This will tell you what your followers want.

Then tailor your content to that. Don’t make every post a “buy my book” pitch, but you can certainly do that once in a while, and even mention it in passing. I’ve found the best way is to have permanent buy links in the sidebar of my blog. They’re there, they’re visible, and people can click if they want.

Frequency—again, that’s up to you and what you have to talk about. If you can create enough content to blog on a daily basis, go for it! Just be sure it’s interesting to your readers and not repetitive. And, too, watch the length. A blog post of two paragraphs often isn’t worth clicking on, and one that lasts for more than 1000 words can become tiresome to read.

I recommend blogging once a week, at minimum. Or even every two weeks, if you’re short on time. Once a month just isn’t frequent enough; your readers may well move on. Seven days a week might be too much.

And be consistent. Pick a day, or two days, or whatever, and make sure your blog is live on those days, every week. Most blogging platforms allow you to schedule posts; take advantage of that. Readers will start to look at those days and be expecting your post.

It might take some time to find what works best for you, and that’s okay. Experiment, and when you find your formula, let your blog take off.

I’m now posting four days a week here at Robin Writes; I’ve done the twice a week, three times, and even once weekly. The latter just doesn’t cut it for my readers . . . Why four days? Well, I’m experimenting again! I do two posts a week related to prepping, and two related to writing (one is answering a reader-sent question, like today’s). I split up the prepping because I realized I do two separate sub-topics: prepping in general, and our “journey” in moving out to the country and being self-sufficient.

Another tip is to write your blog posts all at once. I do mine on Sundays, my day off, when I have time to actually just write. Then I upload and schedule them, and I’m all finished!

Finally, keep a list, on your desktop where you can find it, of potential topics. That way, if something doesn’t come to mind right away, you can pull from that list and whip up a post pretty quickly.