This tiny post shows you some of the costs of being an independent author in today’s market, which is flooded with a whole lotta content that may only be read by one person (you). This reality check will also encourage you to do whatever it takes to promote your beautiful book, regardless of the cost.
Like it or not, when you write a book you are working on spec: you don’t get paid up front. Some are fortunate to have gotten an advance from a publishing company. Good for you! We all wish you continued success!
For most, though, you have the unique opportunity to spend hundreds of lonely hours to create a work of art from scratch. And just when you think you’re all done, the real work begins: promoting your book so people can find and purchase it, and say great things about it so other likeminded souls will buy it and sing your praises from the rooftops.
BOOK PROMOTION COSTS $$$
A sad fact: the cost of book promotion is too great for most authors to afford. Some of the best work I’ve ever read, or the finest artwork I’ve ever seen, did not reach a mainstream audience for lack of funding.
For those of you who have a budget for promoting your book, reviews can be expensive and time consuming. You must take considerable time to identify suitable book reviewers, find their contact information, contact them, send them or email them your book, then wait several months for a response, if you get one at all. Worse, they may hate your book.
If your work is at least commercially viable, you may get good reviews, especially of there’s a tie-in to a hot news topic.
Example: my novel, SUICIDE TANGO: My Year Killin’ It With A Shrink, has a direct tie-in with suicide in teens, adults and even children. It’s a very touchy subject, so I tread bravely and carefully, especially since many of my readers don’t know jack about suicide but they’re willing to post uninformed opinions about it and kick me to the curb every chance they get.
BOOK TRAILER AND AUTHOR INTERVIEW VIDEOS
These days, book trailers are the coolest teasers on the market, especially if you use a high-end production company to shoot and produce yours. You get real actors who audition for the parts, real sets and props, and the best digital video cam on the market: RED Dragon cams. Check out my YouTube channel to view videos.
EDITORIAL REVIEWERS
Rather than initially identify individual reviewers, my publisher and I decided to solicit editorial reviewers, which are companies that specialize in reviewing books and featuring them in their journals, catalogs and online websites and blogs. These well-established companies have on staff or hire good, seasoned reviewers to read your book and write a 250-500-word critique. Some reviews can be lengthier, but the average is 350 words.
Examples: Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Midwest Book Review, Chanticleer Reviews, Foreword Reviews.
For Kirkus Reviews, the publisher had to pay around $600. And for each of the others about $500-$700. Publisher’s Weekly (PW) did not charge a fee, but there’s no guarantee they will even consider my novel for review.
A sobering thought: with PW, if we bomb with my novel, that could blacklist my publisher and prevent them from sending future books for review. My name would be mud.
And let’s consider the time and money it takes to write cover letters, PR plans, and emails; drive to the UPS Store to mail books; order more books from the printer; fill out endless forms for the editorial reviewers. There are other smaller costs that add up over time. All these incidentals cost about $300-$500, depending on how many physical books you must send to multiple companies.
For my novel, we chose the top five editorial reviewers, so the cost so far has been over $3,000. Oh, there’s no guarantee the reviews of my book will be positive. In fact, some were downright shitty.
Yeah, really.
It’s a risk to spend all that money, but I am fully committed. So is my publisher, thank goodness!
You, too, must be 110% committed to your book project every step of the way, especially when you get to invest thousands of dollars in you and your beautiful work.
That’s just the way you must see it: investing money in yourself, your work, your time, your energy.
Are you worth it?
Heck, yeah!
BOOK EXPOS AND CONFERENCES
Face it, the best way to get your book in front of people is to be in front of people. Book expos and conferences are excellent vehicles for this.
My publisher also paid to attend other conferences in 2019, including the Independent Book Publishers Association conference in Chicago, but that was a waste of time and money.
You may not sell books at these meetings, seminars and conferences, but you will meet influential people who are eager to assist you in your endeavors. Don’t be shy; get out and meet everyone you can, let them hear your stories about authorship, your book(s), and then learn how you can participate in future events.
Remember: you are building long-term relationships, not something that will last only a week, so don’t expect immediate results.
DO YOU NEED A PR AGENCY?
A good PR agency is a force-multiplier, i.e. someone who knows a whole lotta someones who can get the word out about your book and influence a whole lot more someones to buy it. Rinse. Repeat.
A good PR firm will have very impressive mad-connects, and will employ them to your advantage.
We hired Tyson Cornell and his firm Rare Bird. They’ve worked with some of the hottest authors around. Unfortunately, Tyson Cornell and Rare Bird Lit RIPPED US OFF to the tune of $10,000. Please see the latest on that story here.
It’s a big financial risk we take because we are passionate about my novel and we are fully committed to getting the word out there. We know others will feel the same, because we’ve gotten great feedback and testimonials from more than a dozen people who’ve read earlier versions and made excellent comments and suggestions.
Thing is, we must get past the gatekeepers to find a much larger audience.
A GATEKEEPER CAN MAKE OR BREAK YOUR BOOK
Gatekeepers? You know, the social-media influencers who can make or break a book, movie, tv show, whatever. We authors put our heart and soul into a project, yet we have no say at all how gatekeepers or the pubic will respond to it.
Sometimes there is no way to predict how things will turn out, so you just have to go all in and see what happens.
Please study this great article by Michael Ellsberg: The Tim Ferriss Effect: Lessons From My Successful Book Launch. It’s from 2012 but the content is even more relevant today than it was seven years ago! You’ll be surprised to learn THE most effective way to market your book. Read and discover!
If you’re absolutely passionate about your work and you are 110% committed to it (i.e. doing whatever it takes!), then find a way to make your book the best it can be and carry on accordingly.
My editor gave me this quote. I live by it every day!
“The little step, long continued—the very gradual but persistent advance—is sure to attain its end.” —Lord Robert Montagu
THE COST OF NOT WRITING YOUR BOOK
All in, the cost of marketing and PR for my novel was a lot. To earn back this amount, I need to sell 5,000 copies of my novel. Like the zen master said, “We’ll see.”
Let’s hope you’re not turned off by this reality check on the real cost of being an author and promoting your book, because there are some great success stories about authors who spent next to nothing and had bestsellers. Witness Exhibit A: 50 Shades of Grey. Good for EL James! She is my hero!
Look at it this way, if you do not write your book and do whatever it takes to to promote it, using the resources you have now, then you will probably regret it for a long time.
So learn the craft of writing a great story and finding an audience for it. I guarantee you this: you will not regret it!
I CARRY ON BRAVELY!
Even though I don’t know how gatekeepers will receive my novel, I know I’ve done all I can to make it a great story. And I’m very proud to have done it.
Regardless of how SUICIDE TANGO performs, I am already knee-deep into my next two books: one a really cool thriller, Darlington, the other a book of poetry and tiny stories, Postcards from Rio. I am an author with much to say and share with the world, so I write and write and write.
I wish you well!
~Tripsy
ABOUT YOUR AUTHOR
Tripsy South is the author of the novel SUICIDE TANGO. Trained in physics at a cool surfer university, she lives and plays in Los Angeles where she’s a freestyle writer/editor and copywriter. Ring her here.