How To be a Successful writer in the modern world – an article by Kay Green, first published in The New Writer, autumn 2007, including a discussion with Rob Woods, Hastings Town Centre Manager.

How do you get to be a successful, professional writer – by that I mean one who can actually pay the rent and give up the waitressing job? My own first book, ‘Jung’s People’, was published in 2004, by Elastic Press – a small but respectable publishing house which champions many up-and-coming writers. It was tremendously exciting. We had a launch party, reviews popped up in magazines and all over the Internet, I got the chance to contribute to other anthologies and magazines as a result. I felt my life had really begun. Two years later the book was remaindered. There wasn’t much money around and I agreed to take the last two boxes of books in place of my last royalty cheque.

I set about placing these last treasured copies. My local independent bookshop took some on sale or return. The local branch of Ottakars took four and when they weren’t sold after two weeks, stashed them in their storeroom. Nothing proceeded to happen.

I decided to find out how big publishers go about selling books. The first step, it seemed, was to have an account with one of the big distributors so that chain stores can buy the books more easily. I approached Gardners. They gave me a trading application form. I had to agree to giving them 57% of the cover price of any books they sold. For the average small press publisher, this sort of figure would mean they would be losing money with every copy sold.

Perhaps, I thought, authors who are taken on by mainstream publishing houses do better. The Independent newspaper recently looked into the same issue. They reported that when a book is sold in a high street store for £14.99, the price paid is distributed thus:
Book seller (a shop, usually) £8.28
Distributor .75p
Promotions .37p
Publishers £1.49
Printer £1.49
Write-off stock £1.12
Author £1.49 (the author pays the taxman and his/her agent out of this)

These figures assume the favourable discounts that a mainstream publisher will get for printing and distribution. For a self-published or small press author it would be something like £6 to the printer, £8 or more to the shop and the distributor and the rest divided between promotions and the author – but promotions would be a higher figure – you can’t organise a book fair or reading for tuppence ha’penny (I know, I’ve tried!) For a small press author, the split between publisher and author is often 50% after expenses but expenses is usually around 100%!

So how on earth does a writer manage to make a career out of his or her book? Obviously the ideal way is for a mainstream publisher to take the book on and sell millions of copies, thus making the author’s cut of the profits a liveable wage – but only a very few books at the very top of a publisher’s list get the marketing and distribution that would allow them to sell a million.

Having digested this information, I went away and made a living in other ways for some years. (Writing remained as a hobby – I occasionally earned a few pounds but it was useful because it maintained small press world’s awareness of my activities.) And then one day it occurred to me that there was another option. I was vaguely aware that the Internet was changing the world. When I finally plucked up the courage to investigate, I realised that, using the Internet, it would be possible for small groups of writers, spread across the UK – across the world even – to get together and be a group marketing department for themselves, thus giving each individual author more clout. I looked, and sure enough they were out there doing it. So I set up my own group, we got a website, I produced some promotional anthologies for new writers under my own imprint and we were away … selling small numbers of books. We were happy, we were creating wonderful things together, but none of our group was actually confident that they’d said a final goodbye to waitressing.

I was now trying to make my way as a writer and small press publisher in Hastings, Sussex: It was slow going. About a year after we began producing our own books, the feeling was that little people weren’t wanted. The best of the independent bookshops we had been working with were closing or had closed. Everyone in the world was reading the same ten books. Ottakars had disappeared under the umbrella of Waterstones.

I spent months trying to get an account with Waterstones, in order to supply our books direct and avoid the distributors’ horrendous 57%. I visited the local store umpteen times, made phone calls, wrote letters. The manager of the store was keen but the system was designed to work in millions of books. I had to fill in what look like job applications for each of our books, and I promised to lead workshops in our local branch (unpaid) in return for the possibility of selling our books in that one branch. When I began to suspect that I wasn’t going to live long enough to get our books out on the High Street. I went in search of a better route into the local book market.

I have found that it is best for authors, however they are published, to take an interest in marketing their own works in two ways – internationally, via the Internet and locally – by means of their visible, flesh and blood presence. This applies to the self-published, the small press and even the mainstreamers: As I said above, getting a publishing contract doesn’t mean you’ve got an assured income. Putting in a bit of a marketing effort for yourself – setting up some interviews or book-signings in your high street for example, will encourage your publisher to take the book seriously and start a marketing drive of their own. So, how does an author go about making a splash locally?

First, you need to understand what is happening in the retail sector of your town. I spoke to Hastings Town Centre Manager Rob Woods. We discussed the kind of a profile other writers in our town had achieved for themselves and their books:

Rob: … I think if there is a problem of general awareness it can be explained by the fact that writing tends to be considered a solitary art-form. Books are intensely personal in nature and local writers tend to try and sell and promote their products individually. I can see no reason why “literary Hastings” could not be branded in the same way that other products are branded. Branding is just one component element of a wider marketing strategy.

Kay: Can you think of any towns which have taken an interest in their
contemporary writers?

Rob: No one town springs to mind but the success of the Hay Festival has encouraged other towns, the nearest being Folkestone, to celebrate the written word. Such festivals could become springboards for local writers although for them to survive financially they need the household names to attract visitors.

Kay: … What advice would you give to a writer who wants to raise their profile locally?

Rob: I agree that visual art is easier to promote. The answer … has its roots in effective marketing and its 5 key components – branding, advertising, events, internal and external communications and nowadays, e-technology. My advice therefore would be to come together to concentrate collectively on those 5 themes.

Kay: Bearing in mind that large town centre retailers don’t give much scope for selling original, small press books, do you think there is any hope for the continued presence of independent traders in modern town
centres? If not, where and how will local artists and writers sell their work?

Rob: Writers and independent stores alike should panic healthily about the impact of chain bookstores and the Internet … Independent book stores may have to make changes and offer a wider range of products – similar to the way in which public libraries are shaking off their old image and becoming community information points. I think it would be myopic on the part of independent booksellers not to embrace the pull of digital technology, especially for the younger market or to pick up on the growing links between visual, voice and the written arts in the same way that the major festivals do nowadays.

If that doesn’t happen, I think writers could have real difficulty selling their products.

-o0o-

So, attempting to panic healthily, I looked around for people in Hastings who were making headway in the way Rob suggested. Victoria Seymour, a social historian who has built a sound base for her books both in Hastings and on the web, had this to say:

It is evident from our own experiences that independent bookshops are few and decreasing in number. I looked elsewhere other than conventional book shops for outlets for my books from the start but it was easy for me. I write local social history and so museums, of which we have three in Hastings, and the Tourist Information Centre were obvious targets and they now stock my books.

Local community groups are another ready market. Such groups are in constant need of speakers; you can adapt the approach to your subject matter according to the audience. Many people think that they ‘have a book in them’ or are actually writing something so are happy to listen to how you ‘did it’, pay you a fee and expenses and buy your books.

Consider gift or novelty shops as outlets. I sold about 90 copies of my books from a modest hardware/gift shop in my village for Christmas, Mother’s Day and Easter gifts. That market has now dried up until I publish anther book but I continue to look for new opportunities.

Do get a website for your books and really work it when it is up and running; it’s a useful shop window and website ownership lends authenticity and still has a certain cachet, even thought the gloss has gone off the Internet to some extent.

I could bang on for ages about self-publishing, marketing and promoting your books but that is the newest title in my talk portfolio. See what I mean?

-o0o-

One of the results of listening to Victoria was last October’s Earlyworks Press/Royal Pictoria book fair in Hastings. Another was my appearance as a speaker at events such as the East Sussex County Library Readers and Writers Day at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill. Great fun, and a great opportunity to raise the profile of our books.

How do you go about – as Victoria put it – ‘really working’ your website? I asked Edward Clarke, advisor on e-commerce with the ebiz Centre in Hastings. Ebiz is one of many grant-funded organisations whose services are free to their clients. Their clients are small businesses. I point this out because writers, being self-employed, are small businesses – it’s surprising how rarely they know this and how rarely they use the facilities that are provided for businesses. Ed taught me just about all I know about the Internet, and was the inspiration behind the Booksy review – a website my writers’ club runs to promote small presses and independent bookshops, and to review new or little-known books.

As a result of my experiences I can confidently say that if you plan a career as a writer – even if you are a good old fashioned technophobe, see about getting yourself what is known as ‘an online presence’; and however much of a loner you may be by nature, your career is going to take off far faster if you go out and introduce yourself and your work to as many people and organisations as will give you the time of day.

This applies to you even if you aren’t published in book form yet. Why not send an article on your topic of interest to the local paper, and tell them there’s a book in the pipeline? If you can convince a newspaper that you are a writer, the publishers you approach are far more likely to believe it. Register your name (or pen-name) as a web domain and make yourself Googleable. – A domain costs around £15 a year and there are cheap and easy ways of setting up web pages. Once you have your website, mention it everywhere you go so that people will visit it. I’m going to do that now. Here are the websites mentioned in this article:

www.earlyworkspress.co.uk – Promoting independent writers and illustrators www.booksy.co.uk – The online review of small press and independent books www.victoriaseymour.com – social history in Hastings
www.ebizcentre.co.uk – supporting new and existing businesses through the use of the Internet

Good luck, and I hope I see your name around soon.