Penny-pinching Planks

After all the excesses and jollity of Christmas it’s back to the cold, hard reality of work.  And as this is supposed to be a warts-and-all blog about self-publishing, that work includes totting up my Plank sales for 2017 and trying to work out how much I have made and whether I can yet afford that elegant villa in Ischia.  (Spoiler alert: I can’t.)  Calculating royalties is rather a dark art, as Amazon seems to pay an ever-changing percentage and I have negotiated different deals with different bookshops (for whom I have to order and then deliver copies, so have to take that cost off before I begin), but I’ve had a go.

• “Fatal Forgery”: 20 paperback copies at an average of £1.10 royalty each; 27 Kindle copies at £2.09 each; 9 audiobooks at £1.50 each
• “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”: 6 paperback copies at £1.10 royalty each; 13 Kindle copies at £2.09 each; 10 audiobooks at £1.50 each
• “Worm in the Blossom”: 4 paperback copies at £1.10 royalty each; 15 Kindle copies at £2.09 each
• “Portraits of Pretence”: 8 paperback copies at £1.25 royalty each; 20 Kindle copies at £2.79 each

That makes a grand total of £242.25 for the year.  Out of this will come tax, and then of course I have paid for cover design, promotional materials (such as bookmarks) and the big unknown: my writing time.  Ah well: it might just pay for a nice pair of sandals for that Ischian idyll.

The book-buyer’s marketplace

Whenever I give talks about writing – and I’ve spoken in libraries and bookshops, and to book groups, WI meetings and the Rotary Club – people are always fascinated to know about the economics of self-publishing.  Telling them how much it costs to self-publish – nothing! – always surprises them.  (Of course writing a book costs a great deal in time, and you might well choose to spend money on professional editing services, or a cover designer, or a pretty template for the layout of the interior, but you can actually upload a book to a self-publishing service for no payment at all.)  But what really surprises them is how little of the purchase price eventually makes its way back to the author.

If I sell a paperback via Amazon – cover prices are £7.99 and £8.99 for the Sam books – I eventually get about £1.30 of that sale.  If I supply bookshops directly – which entails me ordering the books myself and then selling them on to the bookshop – I get about 50p per book in the end (and, in one case, I am actually subsidising a bookshop because I think it’s the right thing to do, and I lose about 20p per copy that they take…).  And if I sell an e-book – Amazon lists them for about £3.10 – I eventually get about £1.10.  I’m not eyeing up that retirement villa just yet!

And a very interesting article on this subject – where to buy your books in order to best benefit the author – has appeared on the website of the Society of Authors.  It’s a very illuminating read and, as you might imagine, flies the flag for independent bookshops and local libraries.  If you have any choice at all in how you consume your reading material, it’s well worth having a read – some of the observations will surprise you.  (Although much of it is concerned with traditionally published books – they talk of buying in bulk from distributors, which is obviously only a pipe dream for the self-published – it is still useful to have the marketplace dissected in this way.)  Click here for the article.

The man from WH Smith, he say…

…no.  As you may remember, I took my latest book – “Susan in the City: The Cambridge News Years” – into our local branch of WH Smith.  They weren’t keen on considering the Plank books when I took those in, but I thought that a book by a local author, a collection of columns that had appeared in the local paper, might have local appeal.  I had visions of a lovely yellow display alongside the newspaper…  The manager said that he would put the proposal to head office, and perhaps then I should have heard the distant knell of doom.

Anyway, I called in today and was told that, in the “current challenging book market”, WH Smith does not want to take on any new books until the start of their new financial year, in September.  I nodded politely, but inside I was saying, “Whaaaaaaat?”.  As everyone in the book world knows, physical books – as opposed to e-books – have made a strong recovery in recent months: indeed, sales through bricks-and-mortar shops rose by 7% in 2016.  And as for the idea that WH Smith is not going to put out any new titles on their shelves until September – I suspect that this is piffle.  If that’s really the case, they’re going to kick themselves for missing out on the new Ian Rankin paperback (due out on 15 June) and the new Jamie Oliver hardback cookbook (due out on 24 August).

Mind you, I can see how taking on my title in one branch might be too great a risk for head office.  I was offering them five copies, with them keeping 35% of the cover price, on a sale or return basis.  So if their copies did not sell, they could return them to me in any condition and not pay my invoice for £25.97.  Thank goodness they spotted that threat to their commercial survival – and handed any sales to the other two local bookshops that are stocking it, and to the online retailer they really dread.  Harrumph.

(And in case you think this is simply an enormous bunch of sour grapes, it’s not the refusal that has annoyed me: it’s the dissembling.  It’s the same as the email I received earlier this year from a small airline that I use regularly, informing me that, “in order to improve the customer experience”, they will no longer be offering free drinks on their flights.  We all know they’re doing it to reduce costs and increase profits – and why not? they’re a commercial airline, not a charity – so why the mealy-mouthed not-justification?)

Party for poison pens

Great excitement: I have just been invited to participate in “What’s Your Poison?”, the summer crime party held by local bookshop Heffers.  I missed it last year, as I was away on my writing retreat, but this year the stars are in alignment and on Thursday 6 July 2017 I will be rubbing shoulders with fellow crime addicts and writers.  Do come along if you’re around: they are always lovely events, with some terrific books on show.  And I will be handing out bookmarks!

I have been asked to prepare a three-minute reading from my latest book, which is “Portraits of Pretence”.  I don’t do readings that often; when I am asked to speak (quite rarely these days, as I have not been putting enough effort into chasing speaking opportunities, bad writer that I am) I tend to focus on the process rather than the product.  And people are usually so fascinated by the mechanics of self-publishing and print-on-demand that we run out of time.

But I do know that choosing the right excerpt is quite an art.  You need something that can stand alone (I don’t like doing big explanatory introductions) and yet tempt your listeners to buy the book so that they can read on; that gives a flavour of the main character and perhaps a couple of others; and that hints at the plot without giving anything away.  I’m going to have to give this some thought…

Pondering on price

“Portraits of Pretence” is gradually creeping out there…  I have now received my personal order of fifty copies, and have sent out three for review.  I have also, just now, delivered twelve to my local bookshop, as I thought it would be nice to give them a head-start before I publish on Amazon.

On their advice – the bookshop’s – I have increased the cover price of this book to £8.99.  The other three remain at £7.99, but I had noticed that the price of other paperbacks has risen, and £8.99 is now very much the norm – with some fatties and large format paperbacks going for as much as £12.99.  As part of the self-publishing plan is to look as normal as possible, I thought I should keep up with the pricing trend.

For those of you interested in the financial side of things, this extra pound makes quite a difference to me.  If Amazon sells one of my paperbacks with a cover price of £7.99 (regardless of how much Amazon actually charges – the discounting is their business), I eventually receive a royalty of 61p – i.e. 7.6%.  But if I stipulate a cover price of £8.99, my royalty jumps to £1.21, or 13.4%.  Heavens, why haven’t I done this sooner?  I’m not sure about going back and increasing the cover price of the first three, as when they were published – or certainly the first one at least – the standard cover price was £7.99.  I wonder what publishing houses do about this.

In the slough of despond

I usually try to keep this blog fairly optimistic, and indeed I generally find writing the Plank books and marketing them to be a great and enjoyable adventure.  But I did promise to be honest about the ups and downs of self-publishing, and today we’re down.

For over a year now I have been wooing a potential new high street outlet for paperback Sam, here in Cambridge.  I have been in to see the manager on at least half a dozen occasions, I’ve given him copies of “Fatal Forgery”, “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” and (on the day it was published) “Worm in the Blossom”.  He was very encouraging, but said that he would have to get permission from head office as his branch is part of a (very large, countrywide) chain.  In December 2015 he said that he had that permission, and I should come in this week – after the festive chaos and once things were back to normal – to arrange the taking into stock of quite a lot of copies.  He talked of a whole shelf dedicated to Sam, with the “local author” slant heavily promoted, and copies even showing face out (a big deal in the bookshop world, as you can imagine).  I was quietly jubilant, but did not tell anyone, being a bit superstitious like that.  The manager and I arranged a meeting for this morning.  I pedalled off – in the sleet, I might add – and when I arrived, he was not there.  Not only not there, but no longer employed by the business.  As of yesterday.  I was literally speechless.

So what to do next?  Start again with his replacement and hope that they are of the same mind?  Or give it up as a bad job and try somewhere else?  Just right now, I have treated myself to a jam doughnut and this confessional blog post.  I’ll probably be a bit grumpy for the rest of the day, and then get over it.  Ho hum.  I bet this never happens to JK Rowling.

Among friends

Yesterday evening I attended an after-hours crime fiction party at a local bookshops, Heffers, called “Murder under the Mistletoe”.  There were about a dozen “crime writers” there (still excited to be counted in that group) and lots of loyal readers taking advantage of the opportunity to get their book-based Christmas shopping done in a quiet bookshop, with us on hand to sign any of our books that they might buy.  (Personally I would sign anything, but apparently it’s frowned upon if it’s not your own book.)  It was such a pleasure to catch up with a couple of authors I met at my first such event in July – and a great thrill to hear that one of them was so enthused by my tales of self-publishing that she went straight home that very evening and started preparing her latest novel for self-publication.  (And this is someone who has had a “proper” publisher for years – she just thought that the idea of having total control over the whole process sounded so exciting.)  Quite by chance, she had the very first copy of this new self-published work in her bag, and we were able to coo over it together.  (It’s “The Corn Maiden” by Barbara Cleverly – I’ll be reading it over Christmas.)

And meeting readers – what a treat!  One very kind lady came dashing over and asked, “Where’s the third?  I’ve read the first two and loved them and have been waiting for the third!”  Well, what can you say?  I somehow refrained from showering her with kisses, and simply grinned so broadly that I looked slightly manic and handed over a “Blossom”.  “Lovely colour,” she said, and – this was the best bit – started reading it straight away.  Now, don’t tell anyone as this is something of a guilty secret, but I am longing for the day when I get on a train or tube and see someone reading one of my books.  Well, this was very nearly as good.  Reader, I purred.

So for Sam and Martha, it has been a great week: they made new friends in Histon library and met old ones in Heffers.  And I am so fired with excitement that I am devoting the whole of today and the weekend to “Plank 4”; Sam has just discovered a body in a boarding-house, and I’m longing to know what he’s going to do about it.

Ever onwards (until 1830, that is)

“Worm in the Blossom” is done – it’s on the shelves (real and virtual) and I’m talking about it to everyone who will listen (and a few who start to edge away…).  But Sam is not one to sit idle, and he knows as well as I do that he has four more stories to tell.  I work best to deadlines, and so I have set the next one: 21 October 2016.  You can see it on the countdown clock, which now shows a lovely big fat twelve months.

So what happens now?  My first task today is to set up my “Plank 4” files in Scrivener, my writing program.  This entails copying across my character studies, for easy reference – so that I always know, for instance, how old Sam is, and how many siblings (living and dead) are in the Wilson household- and creating some blank chapter files.  I then ease into the research in a gentle fashion by reading up about the year concerned, which this time round is 1827.  I create a diary of all the key events that might have impacted on Sam and his circle, and for some reason I also enjoy researching the weather – I’d hate Martha to miss a good tornado or stinging fog.  I make notes and notes and notes and notes.  If they are expanding on general topics – such as Regency fashion or the servant structure – they go into my general “Plank research” files.  If they apply specifically to “Plank 4”, I make a new file for them.  For instance, “Worm in the Blossom” generated a lot of information about the law surrounding fratricide that I probably won’t use again, so that’s not in the general “Plank research” files.

And what of this blog?  I imagine that things will go quieter for a while, although I will of course update you on developments like my talk in Toppings, and sales figures for “Worm” (as of this morning, thirteen paperbacks and four Kindle books sold through Amazon – I daren’t go in and check the bookshops just yet…). But do stick with us: Sam, Martha, William and I are going nowhere.  Except maybe France…

Demand is building

Maybe my confidence in the Plank books is growing, or maybe I’m becoming less shy as I age, but either way I am being much more “out there” with “Worm in the Blossom” than I was with “Fatal Forgery” or even “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  As I told you the other day I now have one proper printed copy of “Worm” in my fevered possession.  It’s a proof copy, but the only giveaway is that it says PROOF in big black letters on the last page – from the outside it looks like a proper copy.  And I keep it in my bag at all times, pulling it out to show friends, colleagues, booksellers and other random people I vaguely know – such as the lady running the chocolate shop where I spend much of my disposable income.

The exciting outcome is that I actually have firm pre-orders: ten copies for one bookshop, five for another, and one for a colleague.

One little tip for anyone else who sells books directly, as I do – perhaps at library speaking events or village fairs.  You don’t want people handling the stock, so you need to sacrifice one or two copies for potential buyers to leaf through.  Originally I put stickers on these saying “Proof copy”, but when someone said they they liked it and would buy one “when the book actually comes out”, I realised that it was giving the wrong impression – that the book was only at the proofing stage.  So now my stickers on the mauled books say “Author’s copy”, and that works much better.

A sort-of launch event

You have all been very patient as I vanished on holiday and trundled around eastern Europe on trains of varying degrees of decrepitude – at one point we were overtaken by a horse and cart, so that says it all really.  But now I am back, and we’re very much in the final straight heading for the publication of “Worm in the Blossom”.  So just what am I doing in this last month?

Well, I suppose I should be honest and say that I have here, in my sweaty little paw, my very own first copy of “Worm”.  I always order a proof copy to check for paper quality, cover colour and so on, and I am very pleased.  The reason for ordering so far ahead is that, as with much of self-publishing, you have to count backwards.  I am publishing officially on 16 October, which means that on that day I want to deliver copies to the bookshops that so kindly take Plank onto their shelves.  In order to have those copies in time, I need to order them from CreateSpace (the publishing people), which means having them delivered from America.  Postage is killingly expensive, so I try to avoid the top-rate speedy delivery and go instead for a slower – cheaper – service, which means ordering further ahead of time.  So although “Worm” is to all intents and purposes now finished, it’s not yet “published”.  In order to buy my own copies, I have to publish – but then I sneakily do not make it available through any sales channels, so no-one else can find it.  And in this final month, I also get cracking on the e-book versions – basically a rather painstaking formatting exercise – so that they too can be launched as close as possible to that 16 October date.

And the sort-of launch party?  Well, Toppings – a wonderful independent bookshop in Ely, with a fabulous programme of events – is giving me a whirl on 26 October, which is pretty close and I think counts as a launch event.  Click here to see details – but be warned that my face is VERY large!