tidwell « 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.

Do you get those invites? To virtual book events, on Facebook? I’m not a fan, maybe because I have too much else going to spend more time on Facebook “attending” an event. Just don’t like them. If you do, that’s okay, I won’t hold it against you—but I doubt I’ll accept, either. Nothing personal.

Another event I’ve seen cropping up a lot lately, and ‘tis the season, and all that, is multiple invites for the very same event. Now, I usually don’t post an “event” unless I’m the only author attending, or unless I’m attending as a publisher.

First, Facebook lists the poster as the “host.” If I’m going to an event, the venue is usually the host. Like a library or bookstore. Festivals, on the other hand, have multiple items and vendors, like farmers’ markets and toy festivals or horror conventions, etc.

Typically, the venue posts the event, and I’ll share it; sometimes they’ll send me a .pdf flyer and I’ll post that as a photo. All the information is there, without the hassle of creating an event.

The problem comes when EVERYONE involved creates an event and invites EVERYONE to said event. Of course I’m going to that event, my name is listed there! Why should I respond, or how should I respond, to the invite? There’s no “um, yes, I’ll be there, I’m on the program” option.

Second, when I do create an event, I invite people who actually live in the area and/or who may be in town at that time. It’s a little irksome to see, when inviting willy-nilly from a friends’ list, people who live 1000 miles away and who click “going.” I mean, really?? Often, they add “will be there in spirit!” or something like that. Or maybe they click “going” because they’d like to go, or like the event itself. Hard to say.

Imagine that you and a friend are hosting a party. A real-life one. Would you send each other invitations? No. Would you like getting RSVPs from people who obviously aren’t going to be able to come because, say, they live in another country? No again.

So what’s the difference? Nothing that I can see.

This kind of goes along with the “like for like” events and invitation to “like” Facebook pages. I don’t like that either.

Why?

Because those aren’t “real” likes. If someone likes your page because you like his, is it much different than trading book reviews? Nothing unethical about it, really, but it can quickly become tiresome. And when those people who are liking you only for a kickback get tired of seeing your feed or decide to cull their list a bit, off you go, because they have no idea who you are or what you wrote. And they aren’t interested. They’re only interested in numbers.

Let’s say you have a thousand likes on your author page. Great! Has it helped sales? How many of those 1000 people have bought your book? It’s hard to tell, right? But let’s play numbers. Have you sold to 10% of them? That’s 100 books. Maybe some you sold to directly, maybe they bought online somewhere. That’s pretty good. Then again, maybe at an event, you sell two books. Maybe the attendance is 200 at a multi-author event, which comes to 1%. Maybe it’s an individual signing and you sell four books out of the 25 that you brought along. That’s about 20%.

As a side note: often, people will TELL you that they bought the book. But they didn’t. Really.

Sales is just a number—it’s the percentage that counts. But those doing like-for-like want to gain likes and sell their own books. They aren’t interested in selling yours, unless they read it and loved it. In that case, they might actually read your posts and share them. And that is exposure. The liking itself is nothing.

Now, anyone at all can like my pages or follow me on Twitter. Any exposure is good, right? But I have particular rules for following back on Twitter, and on Facebook, I’ll like a page only if it’s interesting to me. Or, well, okay, a close friend or colleague.

Look at your shares—how are those doing? Because that’s where the exposure comes from. Be honest. Like what you like, because you like it. It’s the same thing as going to a conference, planning to sell books, and doing “trades,” where you buy someone’s book because he bought yours. A neverending circle.

I get invites every day to like pages, but I seldom do, simply because I can’t keep up with I’ve got now—particularly those pages whose owners still think that social media is real time and they can check in a post and comment once a week, if that. You know the ones, who comment on a week-old post that everyone else has long forgotten about. And, too, the ones that I’m simply not interested in; why would I care about a “local business” in Timbuktu? My liking them, virtually, will do little to nothing for that business.

So be selective with invites, events, and likes. You’ll cut down clutter on your newsfeed and shave off some time in your social media promotions. Remember, all the marketing you do, particularly online, should be aimed at the ONE reader. Narrow it down and do everything you can to pull in that ONE reader. Like the pages they like, post about the things they like and are interested in—this is what will increase your sales and the effectiveness of your online promotion.