Want your book published? There are several different ways and independent bookstores are showing signs of rebounding.
“Talent plus perseverance equals luck.” – filmmaker Steven Soderbergh
For literary minded-people, publishing a book can be a lifetime achievement that could earn you significant cash. But since publishing your work is terribly difficult and competitive, you could also end up tearing your hair out.
Richmond has plenty of authors. The nonprofit James River Writers helps out with seminars and advice and has 525 members, some living as far away as Texas and California. “We’ve seen a 15% increase outside of Virginia,” according to Katharine Herndon, the group’s executive director.
Central Virginia is home to a number of small and middle-sized publishing firms, plus an academic house like the University of Virginia Press.
But the book world is a cruel mistress. Many would-be authors face intense competition and bitter disappointment. Luckily, there are several ways to get published, if you have the stomach for it.
Among them are traditional publishing houses that pay advances and have professional staffs to edit, design and promote the book. Or you could try to publish your book on your own, but you’ll have to find the publisher and pay for everything out of your own pocket. Or there is a “hybrid” model that can be catered to the project, combining aspects of both.
Think you have the goods? Go the traditional route with a “Big Five” publisher (Harper Collins, Macmillan Publishers, Random House, Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House). This could be financially rewarding but you most likely will need to hire a literary agent to even get you through the door. One example of a successful local author who has traveled this path in the nonfiction world is Dean King ("Skeletons on the Zahara") whose new book, "Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship that Saved Yosemite" will be published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, on March 21.
These big publishers vet thousands of books a year so the field is highly competitive. You also may lose control of your project. Typically, you would need a solid book proposal as well as an effective marketing strategy. However, this route affords the likelihood of a cash advance. Half of that comes when you sign a contract and the other half when your manuscript is accepted. If it is rejected, you may have to pay the first half back.
Royalties are a distinct possibility but they depend on how well your book sells. Getting royalties depends on selling an agreed upon number of books. If you are talented and lucky, sales will be so lucrative you’ll get royalties for years. But very few make it that far. “So many of our authors are frustrated. They want a traditional deal,” says Robert Pruett, who runs Brandylane Publishers, Inc. in downtown Richmond.
Maintaining control
If it’s too hard to go the traditional route, or if your book idea is intended for a limited audience, you can try other methods. Although you have to pay out of pocket, you maintain control of the project and could earn far more money than with a traditional firm that would take a percentage of the revenue. This method is called “self-publishing.”
There’s also a third, hybrid model that combines up-front payments with considerable editorial help. It can put the author in touch with support services such as copyediting, or help with book design, and might even involve supplemental money.
One advocate of the hybrid model is Wayne Dementi, head of Dementi Milestone Publishing in the Richmond area. He says prices vary according to the intended audience and the type of book. On average, the author’s payment to his firm would be about $6,500 with Dementi getting 15% and the rest going to freelance support specialists that he contacts.
The prices can vary according to how much work is required: a simple edit for grammar is the cheapest, but fact checking costs more, Dementi says. He described himself as a “micro publisher” with his biggest contribution being that “I come up with the business plan,” he says. The firm handles about 200 books a year.
One Richmond-area writer who has worked through nearly all of the publishing approaches is Kris Spisak, who released a novel last year titled “The Baba Yaga Mask.” She also has produced several nonfiction books on writing tips and storytelling, including “Get a Grip on your Grammar: 250 Writing and Editing Reminders for the Curious and Confused” that came out in 2017. Next came “The Novel Editing Workbook” and “The Family Story Workbook” – for people who want to write family histories – in 2020.
Spisak used a traditional publisher for her first book and self-published the next two. “Baba Yaga,”about a hard-traveling grandmother of Ukrainian descent, went through a traditional publisher. She recently signed a contract for a sequel to “Baba Yaga” that is due out in 2024.
“If you want complete control, go independent” she says.
An important asset is her agent, who she describes as a “great partner.” If you’re looking for help finding an agent, James River Writers has been known to hold workshops and invite agents and writers to come together and talk through the logistics of finding a professional advocate for your work.
Self-publishing has a wide variety of expenses that the author will likely need to pay. “A quality editor might cost from $1,000 to $2,000,” Spisak says.
Jim Bacon is the former editor and publisher of Virginia Business magazine and puts out the conservative leaning political blog “Bacon’s Rebellion.”
In 2010, he collected his thoughts on excessive government spending and produced a work titled “How Runaway Deficits and the Age Wave will bankrupt the Federal Government and Devastate Retirement for Baby Boomers Unless We Act Now.”
The work was self-published with help from The Oaklea Press in the Richmond area. Bacon says he paid $20,000 out of pocket for the effort.
His next project involved ghost writing a history of Richmond’s Massey family that built great wealth in the coal industry and gave much of it to Richmond charities or nonprofits such as the Massey Cancer Center. The principal source was the late E. Morgan Massey, who lived both in a large home on Monument Avenue and on the Florida Coast. Massey had editorial control and paid Bacon with the understanding that the author would be free to write a smaller book using some of the same material for a commercial audience. That book stirred some controversy though, because it offered many details about Donald Blankenship, the former head of Massey Energy, which was notorious for mine safety and labor union problems.
The author detailed a massive explosion in 2010 at the Upper Big Branch, a Massey coal mine in West Virginia. It killed 29 miners, the highest number in 40 years in the United States. The disaster and subsequent trial of Blankenship in federal court drew global media attention. E. Morgan Massey had left the firm before it happened. (Full disclosure: In 2012, I published a book about the same subject. My publisher was St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan.)
Last summer, Bacon self-published his first novel, a highly imaginative work about colonizing the moon in the year 2075. Taking a cue from the American Revolution, the book, “Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three,” features a lunar colony revolting against its political and economic adversaries back on earth (London, anyone)? The book, available through Amazon, runs a whopping 500 pages.
Bacon says he used a website called Fiverr to recruit freelance help for editing and art help from around the world. “A freelancer can be in the Philippines or Pakistan. I used a freelance artist from England. Fiverr is great.”
Yet there is a downside. Herndon of James River Writers noted a website called Writer Beware that warns of the dangers of losing too much control of the process. The site, established by the Science Fiction Writers of America, notes that there are myriad rip-off schemes. Far flung authors, editors or artists can steal contracted work and not pay for it or just vanish; the site claims that many of the bad actors are in the Philippines.
Bacon says he wishes he had more time to hawk the book but he got tied up running his blog. “I never got around to promoting it,” he says.
Turnaround since pandemic
Interest in books and the publishing industry, especially in independent book stores, seems to be growing despite several decades of woe.
Big chains such as Barnes & Noble and the massive online retailer Amazon had the market power to overwhelm smaller, independent bookstores and they did. Barnes & Noble went through a massive shake-up and shuttered many stores, including some in the Richmond area; but after being bought by a hedge fund, the company reportedly is experiencing an unexpected turnaround (and some growth) primarily by focusing on books and readers, according to a recent Los Angeles Times article, which suggests that part of this may be due to a record surge in book sales since the start of the pandemic; 825.7 million print books sold in 2021 was a 9% increase, and a record for the sales-tracking service, NPD BookScan.
Corporate behemoth Amazon is still often viewed by booksellers as the real problem, partly because its digital sales tentacles are so great that the company can get almost anything the customer wants, immediately. Additionally, it has a vast trove of consumer data on its customers and easily bypasses independent bookstores in its marketing efforts. As book production became more personalized and global -- the demand for audiobooks and ebooks continues to grow, further helping the online giant.
Understandably, Amazon has impacted how authors operate by offering new forms of electronic book production, which can be done very quickly and authors could make more money than with traditional publishers. This plan appealed to some writers partly because of its speed and efficiency; it might take old-fashioned publishers nine months to place an accepted manuscript into print, then it might take months for advance checks to show up in the mail.
On the positive side, The New York Times published a story last summer about how independent book stores are beginning to bounce back after years of struggling. One sign is that seriously downsized Barnes & Noble has started to team up with local authors and independent stores to help market their work --- again proving that thinking local, on a community level, works better than rigid corporate conformity. “Today virtually the entire publishing world is rooting for Barnes & Noble – including most independent booksellers,” wrote Elizabeth A. Harris.
Here in book-loving Richmond, the opening of new independent stores such as the Book Bar in downtown Richmond is another sign of hope. Also Ward Tefft, former owner of Chop Suey Books in Carytown, is returning to publishing with a newly named small imprint, NoHow Books (formerly Chop Suey Books Books).
Tefft told Style Weekly that his first release scheduled for April will be a chronicle of artist Hamilton Glass's 2020 city-wide mural project, Mending Walls, as an art book featuring the work of over 20 local muralists.
“Filled with color photographs and full-page spreads, 'Mending Walls' perfectly captures Richmond at an important crossroads,” Tefft told Style. “Just as monuments to white supremacy were falling, and collaborative works of art were emblazoned across the city.”