Traditional publishers ruled the reading world before technology became common. Once an author finished a book, the next step was to find an agent and get a traditional publisher — generally in New York — to edit, produce, market and distribute books mostly into bookstores. While still a strong way to get your book published, things have changed over time.
Self-publishing was viewed as secondary, a cut below professional publishing. Those days have passed. The digital 21st century has brought about different ways to self-publish.
Three experienced local authors have recently written good books but skipped finding traditional publishers. Why?
The traditional industry today has three disadvantages: It takes nearly two years to get a book out, and there’s less editing and almost no marketing except for potential bestsellers. Authors do not pay publishers, but they must market and get about 10 percent from book sales.
When self-publishing, authors pay for editing, printing and marketing. They get less distribution but receive 60 percent to 70 percent of book sales.
I talked to Barbara Greenleaf, Hendrika DeVries and Jeanine Kitchel about their choices of self-publishing.
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Aging gets us sooner or later, no choice there. But add humor to that part of life and your spirits will likely rise along with your energy. Greenleaf’s “This Old Body: And 99 Other Reasons to Laugh at Life” entertains, informs and gives new perspectives on body changes and minds short of panicking.
Her writing career included working for Book of Knowledge and The New York Times, while prestigious houses such as Harper & Row published her books. She admits, “I was a snob about self-publishing.”
She discussed current publishing procedures being different: “Agents today want an author to have a huge social media following and write books that will lead to a series. It’s disheartening. Since I don’t personally know agents anymore, I picked names out of the Internet. After about 20 tries, I gave up — and am very happy I did.”
Greenleaf was surprised how quickly her book became printed and available in bookstores or through the Internet — no dealing with a publisher’s demands.
“With the myriad resources available now,” Greenleaf said, “I was pleasantly surprised that my hard costs for bringing the book into the market were less than I had anticipated.”
She has also become a popular speaker: “I’m having fun sharing personal essays on my aging. With a traditional publisher, one gets a short-term window for promotion — or even being in print. By self-publishing, I can set up my own book-and-author tours where and when I want. My books stay in print indefinitely because Amazon prints on demand.
“Authors are doing a bang-up job finding nontraditional avenues for getting their work before readers. That’s the secret sauce of self-publishing: Passion!”
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De Vries, who wrote “When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew …,” grew up in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Her father was sent to a German POW camp, and her mother suffered Nazi brutality. De Vries learned survival but with a high level of morality and feminine strength. Storytelling makes her life’s experiences of higher education and work as a therapist, teacher and writer fascinating and engaging.
Self-publishing resulted after questionable responses from several agents.
“It was as if World War II memoirs were of no interest to them,” she said. “One even said, ‘The Holocaust is passé.’ Another said that she might be able to sell a fiction novel about WWII, but not a memoir.”
Writing friends suggested the hybrid publisher, She Writes Press. De Vries said, “It helps you publish your book, but uses a traditional book distributor, Ingram Publisher Services, to get it out into the world.”
After learning about the needs to publish, she realized, “My work had just begun. I naively wondered what it would be. After all, the writing was done. I did not realize that in the months ahead I would be earning what felt like a Ph.D. in book publishing.”
The staff and friends helped teach and guide her in the process.
“They provided support whenever necessary,” she said. “As with any learning curve, it has been hard work but immensely satisfying.”
The book is out there, and De Vries is on the go to keep it there.
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Former journalist Kitchel wrote two travel memoirs when living in the Maya region of Mexico and running a bookstore. Before that, she and her husband had worked for several years in Silicon Valley jobs.
She talked about her novel, “Wheels Up: A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival”: “When writing about the cartels and corruption, fiction made more sense.”
The novel tells about Layla Navarro taking over her family’s large cartel because her drug uncle had been recaptured and her brother killed. She then uncovers a trafficking ring with chaos following one story after another in a real world.
Kitchel explained her choice of publishing: “I decided to give self-publishing a try rather than play the waiting game for an agent or publisher. I wanted my book out in the world, and self-publishing was the fastest way to do it. The late local Dan Poynter’s book, ‘Self-Publishing Manual,’ served as my Bible to locate a typesetter, find a cover artist, lean on friends to help with editing, hire a printer, play my own publicist and PR person, send out press releases and set up radio interviews. It was no simple task, but it did fill my days!”
After going through all this, she had two surprises.
“The biggest was how popular self-publishing has become in the past several years,” she said. “With Amazon’s rise and e-books’ entrance into the world, the publishing landscape is forever changed. The process is intense, but time getting the book out was shorter than if traditionally published.”
She also realized that “to be successful as an indie, one must wear many hats, not only as a writer, but marketer, social media guru and publicist. This quote sums it up, ‘Eighty percent of success is showing up.’ For writers, that means just sitting down and writing.”
— Noozhawk columnist Susan Miles Gulbransen — a Santa Barbara native, writer and book reviewer — teaches writing at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and through the Santa Barbara City College Continuing Education Division. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are her own.
