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Matty Dalrymple 11/2/21 Matty Dalrymple 11/2/21

Episode 104 - The Fourth Process of Publishing: Distribution with Orna Ross

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Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors joins me for the fourth of a series of seven episodes devoted to the Seven Processes of Publishing. This week the topic is distribution. As with the previous episodes in this series, we discuss ebook, print, and audio, including how to reach the most outlets in a way that is aligned with your business goals and that takes into account every indy author’s most limited resource: time.

We discuss the importance of not assuming that your own reading or listening habits are necessarily the habits of the readers and listeners you want to reach. And we discuss how making your print book available on a non-Amazon distributor is necessary but not sufficient for getting your book on the shelves of brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Orna Ross is the founder and head of the Alliance of Independent Authors, a non-profit professional business membership organization for self-publishing authors. ALLi provides trusted advice, supportive guidance, and a range of resources, within a welcoming community of authors and advisors.

Episode Links

From personal update:

Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing Podcast Episode 216 – Podcasting for Authors with Matty Dalrymple

For links to Matty's upcoming and recent events, click here.

From interview:

Episode 100 - Becoming the Relaxed Author with Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Episode 063 - Wide for the Win with Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Episode 020 - Working with Libraries & Bookstores with Mark Leslie Lefebvr

https://www.ornaross.com/

https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/

150 Self-Publishing Questions Answered: ALLi’s Writing, Publishing, & Book Marketing Tips for Authors and Poets (Publishing Guides for Indie Authors 5) (affiliate link)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to part four of our series on the Seven Processes of Publishing. And I am here again with Orna Ross. Say, Orna, how are you doing?

[00:00:08] Orna: I'm doing very well. How are you Matty?

[00:00:10] Matty: I'm doing great. Thank you.

[00:00:12] So, this fourth process that we're going to be talking about today is Distribution. And similarly to what we talked about in the last episode with production, we're going to be talking about ebooks, print books and audiobooks, and I'm going to start right out with ebooks.

[00:00:27] So, Orna, I'm just going to open it up to you for your recommendations, ALLi's recommendations for ebook distribution.

[00:00:35] Orna: Sure. So production and distribution are very closely aligned and particularly in digital publishing, a lot of the platforms that have set up to distribute our books have actually provided us with great tools for producing our books. And I did mention in our last show that the guiding rule of thumb is, be everywhere. Just get out there.

[00:01:02] And so with distribution and especially with digital and with ebooks and the audiobooks in particular, it is not that hard to be all over the place and it is worth your while to do that. Because a lot of the countries, territories, platforms and things that have just been starting up in the last while are in massive growth mode. And so if you're not there, if you're just kind of restricting yourself to what you know, you're missing out on stuff.

[00:01:35] So with ebooks in particular, this is our general recommendation, but we recognize that this isn't going to work for everybody, and everybody makes their own choices depending on their particular set of circumstances. But we would recommend that you use Amazon for the Amazon ecosystem as a general rule of thumb. So, when distributing your books on Amazon use the Amazon platforms, which are for your ebooks and print books, it's KDP and KDP Print. You load them both essentially to the same dashboard. For audiobooks, it's ACX, and that is a completely different platform and a completely different dashboard.

[00:02:19] And we recommend that you distribute non-exclusively. Non-exclusivity is a big deal at ALLi. It's one of our core recommendations because the basis of being an independent publisher means that you can respond to different conditions in the market. When things change, if you're a tied in with just one self-publishing platform, one distribution outlet, then you are no more independent than the author who has licensed all their rights to one trade publisher. There is no independence there. You're very dependent, in fact, and we have seen members who have suffered through having their books distributed on just one platform. So yeah, non-exclusively, Amazon for the ecosystem.

[00:03:14] And then when you get outside of Amazon, there are aggregators who will distribute your books for you. I know you use, Matty, very popular in the US is Draft2Digital. Fantastic organization and platform, and really easy to use. But there are lots of outlets that Draft2Digital doesn't reach. There is PublishDrive in Hungary. They have a really very broad reach into lots of different territories. And there is StreetLib in Italy, and they also have an extraordinary reach actually. We're talking literally hundreds of outlets. Some of these acts are very small. But the thing is you just need to upload your book there once. And then they look after the really widespread distribution of the books.

[00:04:06] And you can use these together. It isn't a matter of having to choose between them. So you can use, you can choose to use Draft2Digital, go to the various stores that they distributed to, use PublishDrive for the ones that they don't use StreetLib for the ones that they don't or have one aggregator and just use them for everything. Some people want the simplicity of just uploading their book once until they've used one, I gave her an even use us aggregator to distribute indirectly to Amazon.

[00:04:37] So the choice is yours, but our recommendation is if you want to maximize your revenue from your ebooks is to be out there as widely as possible. And as the outlier, you might call them, territories and platforms begin to rise, you're there. Your books are there.

[00:04:57] Now that just distributing a book isn't enough. Generally speaking, sometimes it is sometimes a book just takes off and I'll be reading those high something has happened, but you've don't know what it is. But generally speaking, you're going to need to do marketing. We'll be talking about that next time. But just distributing your book isn't enough. If you're not there, then you can't be accessed. If you're not in, you can't win as they say.

[00:05:19] So it's very little extra work, a bit like we were talking about having the different formats last time, for very little extra expense and very little extra time, you can really increase the possibility of your distribution. And so why not?

[00:05:37] Matty: You had talked in an earlier episode about the fact that when you're first starting out, sometimes it's better to get started simple and work your way up. And since I think a lot of people in the US and UK, and I'm sure other countries who are indy authors, their first sights are on Amazon, they may go to Amazon KDP, upload their ebook. And if they know that they're not going to have the mental bandwidth to go to other platforms for a period of time, they just want to get it up on Amazon, but they have long-term goals of being wide, are there pros and cons to turning on the exclusive button on KDP for a period of time, let's say for the 90-day period, or should you retain your wide ability right from the start, even if you're not capitalizing on it right away?

[00:06:27] Orna: There is a danger if you go KDP Select and then you pull your books, particularly if you're writing in series. And so if all the books are standalone, it doesn't apply so much, but it does a bit because from the reader's point of view, they're on a subscription model and they've just got to know you. They've just got to like you. They want more of your books and whoopsy-do, they're not available to them on subscription. They have to buy them, and they may not like that. So that's the danger if you kind of go in and pull out.

[00:06:59] It takes time to establish yourself on KDP, on the Amazon platform, or the wide platforms, no matter where you go, it's not as easy anymore if indeed it ever was. If there ever was this mythical golden age where you just put a book up and it sold in its gazillions, I'm not sure that ever really existed for any, for us all, but it certainly does not exist now, when books are just being put out by the new time, day in, day out. So it's going to take you time to build up whatever it is you're going to do.

[00:07:33] So I would say work out your strategy from day one, and then don't waste time building an audience in a place that isn't part of your ongoing strategy. Let each step build on the last step slowly but surely taking you where you want to go. Of course, if it doesn't make sense or something happens and then comes in, changes your mind, learn from your experiences, experiment, explore, all of that. Absolutely. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but I am saying that I've seen authors who have just about built a good following on KU suddenly decide, oh, I really should be wide. And then they pull out and then they get extremely frustrated because they didn't really recce that they had to start all over again.

[00:08:23] And you do. It's a different platform. It's a different outlet. The regions are different. You can't really transfer your readership across. So it's worth putting some thought into your process at the beginning. And then I would say, just confine yourself to that in the interest of simplicity.

[00:08:42] Matty: Well, one other episode of the podcast, then we're going to point people to is Episode 63, which was Mark Lefebvre, talking about WIDE FOR THE WIN. And Mark is usually such like a calm and friendly person, but he got quite exercised about it. So, that's a good one to watch as a companion to distribution to understand some of the ins and outs from someone who clearly appreciates the value of going wide.

[00:09:05] Other recommendations for ebooks beyond Amazon?

[00:09:09] Orna: Yes, absolutely. So, all of the aggregators that we were talking about there, PublishDrive, Draft2Digital and StreetLib, they're publishing to distributors that are worldwide, in different countries, from Mexico to the Philippines. So there will be all sorts of distributors that you may not have heard of. And particularly for our US friends, we're very Amazon-minded, but if you go somewhere like Germany, Tolino sells far more ebooks than Amazon, as an example. That's just one off the top of my head. So the idea here is, as I said, just getting them out there as widely as you possibly can. So use Amazon for the Amazon ecosystem and then use at least one other aggregator, ideally the three, to reach everybody else. And that will see your books distributed widely.

[00:10:10] There are a couple of other people though, that we feel it's worth going directly to. And each time you upload direct, it's a bit of a drag, you know, do recognize that the platforms work slightly differently, and you have to familiarize yourself with a number of them. Apple is one. Apple Books is a really good outlet for ebooks for all sorts of reasons, not least because people who purchase Apple devices very often stay on the Apple ecosystem. If you go directly to Apple again, you will have advantages that you won't have if you go to them through aggregators.

[00:10:53] Some of the aggregators also have arrangements with Apple, but just generally speaking, that is true. And also, it's a very good platform from the point of view, it's not as price sensitive at all as Amazon. So you could charge more for your ebooks. Its reach is fantastic and they're in far more countries than Amazon is in. And yeah, it really is well worth going direct to Apple if you have the bandwidth.

[00:11:25] Kobo, also another fantastic platform, coming out of Canada, but they have lots of partnerships with various distributors around the world and they've partnered in a really clever way that allowed them to grow and expand and get a real global reach very fast. So and if you can go directly to Kobo again, they run promotions that if you are a direct with them, it really makes a difference in terms all move in your books on the platform.

[00:12:00] Barnes and Noble in the US is still, I mean, this has all sorts of problems. Nook, its ebook distributor, had terrible problems. They've now relaunched as not going all that well, but nonetheless, they have a massive mailing list, people who are very into books. And if you are somebody who has done well on that platform, it can be well-worth file uploading directly.

[00:12:26] If you do upload direct to some of these platforms that I'm talking about, do reach out to them. They would like to hear from you and know what you're doing. And there are humans, there are algorithms as well, of course, but they're less algorithm driven than Amazon. And so lots of the books, for example, on Apple are human curated. And so promoting them and selling them and getting them out there is quite a different sort of setup to trying to do well on Amazon. It's different.

[00:12:56] There are some others I could mention, but I think that's enough for now. The only other one I would definitely mention is your own website. We are big in favor and seeing authors doing really well now with selling direct. So five years ago, even, direct selling from your own website was something that most readers didn't purchase ebooks direct. They wanted to buy from Amazon or wherever they normally bought their books. They didn't want to set up a different account. In short, they weren't as used to buying online as they are now. And the pandemic and lockdown and all of that has accelerated this development very much.

[00:13:36] Now readers love buying directly from authors. They love to feel that you've done better, they love to feel that kind of direct connection, and when you sell a book to a reader online yourself, you get their email address and so they become part of your asset base, which you don't get that information from the other distributors,

[00:13:56] So not by any means saying that you should go direct and not use the other distributors. Again, it isn't either or, it's both. But we're seeing people do better and better with direct. It's growing and growing as a proportion of successful indy authors' income. So really would urge you to think about it.

[00:14:17] Matty: Since a lot of people I think won't have the technical wherewithal to really understand how to set up a mechanism to feed digital data to customers, for example, I use PayHip. So it's not on my website, I have links to it from my website. Is that the approach you're recommending or, is that okay? Or is there a benefit to actually having something on your website and if so, what mechanism do you use to do that?

[00:14:45] Orna: Yeah, so you can use PayHip or Selz. To distribute on your own website, you need two things. You need the transaction engine, if you like, where the reader is going to come and actually pay the money, and then you need somebody to deliver the file. So it's a combination of PayHip, you probably use BookFunnel or somebody to do the actual file delivery. You can download any digital file using PayHip as far as I know. PayHip is a partner member and highly recommend as a really fantastic, an ALLi partner member, and so is BookFunnel.

[00:15:20] So, I think the best way to think about it is just do some research on this and we have an article on selling your books directly on the self-publishing advice site, which is SelfPublishingAdvice.org. If you just, or to Google "direct selling Alliance of Independent Authors," you'll get it.

[00:15:37] But essentially, what you need is, as I said, you need a transaction facility where you can take a credit card number or a PayPal or whatever, and then you need the delivery mechanism. And so you could use somebody like PayHip, which is a third party, and you pay them a percentage of the transaction payment on each file. I use personally and we use on the ALLi site WooCommerce, which is built into WordPress. If you have a WordPress site, you have access to a WooCommerce site. WooCommerce and BookFunnel then does the delivery.

[00:16:08] So essentially, you just have to think about how am I going to take the money? How am I going to handle the file? And it's a setup, it's something that most people can do for one book in a couple of hours. It's just a matter of working out what way you want to do it. Then you can sell that book for years and add to your bookstore on your website as time goes on.

[00:16:32] If you trade published, if you're published by a third party, it makes sense that your website is just kind of like a brochure. It really just tells the reader what you do and what your books are roughly about and gives them a sense of your author platform and you know who you are and what you do. But if you are an indy author, it makes total sense that your website is an actual distribution delivery mechanism. Because they land on your site somehow, read a blog or listen to your podcast, saw you at an event, whatever it might be, they go to your website. They're there, they're keen. They want to buy. And you're bringing them off somewhere else to buy. Why not have that sale yourself? It really does make sense. So, yeah, I would urge people to, if you're just starting out, think of your own website as the core of your activity and all the other distribution outlets as kind of a circle around that core.

[00:17:29] Orna: My book CREATIVE SELF-PUBLISHING talks about these processes and how they link together and how you set up so that you can kind of integrate and follow your readers where you want them to go. Because that's kind of what you're thinking about. I think when we start off, as authors, we do the first bit and then we do the next bit, we do the next bit, and it's kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. But if you're thinking, if you were a different sort of business, when you originally sit down with your business developer, they would be very sales-focused and they will be saying, what is your business, what is your website trying to do? How is it getting them over? How are you getting the email that you want, how are you getting... so, it can be very hard to unpick that and pull it all apart.

[00:18:16] The blog is a mechanism by which we try to integrate this. And I will talk about it a little bit more when we come to the marketing one and the whole idea of access marketing and the drawing them in through your own world, if you like, bringing them in to your funnel. But with a lot of people, I think it's trial and error and it all comes together in the end.

[00:18:41] You also can try different, I tried PayHip, and I tried Selz, and I actually ended up with WooCommerce. So I think there's a bit of experimentation here as well. The main thing is that you have your goal in mind. What is it you want them to do? Author sites fall into two. You either want to get the email as your number one, their email address, or you want to get the sale as your number one. And once you decide that, I think then you decide which bits you're putting together and what bits go out front.

[00:19:14] So, when we started off, we weren't clear where, we were all, you know, Dean Wesley Smith talks about writing in the dark. We were all publishing in the dark. We were doing our best. Now the tools tend to be better, so Aweber was designed as business minded tool. Now, there are tools that are just for authors, websites that are just for authors.

[00:19:37] But I do think that the key to it is what is your core goal? Because there can be three or four different things that you want to happen, but what's your number one? When the reader lands on your website or comes into your orbit, your social media or wherever that might be, what is it you want them to do? And setting up the signposting so that it's really clear and in a sense then letting go of all the other things that you kind of like them to do, but you have to forgo.

[00:20:05] Matty: Yep. Great advice.

[00:20:08] I did want to get back to something you had said about using some of the other platforms like PublishDrive and StreetLib. And even though those are based outside the US / UK sphere, I'm assuming you're recommending, even if you do not have translations, these are still worthwhile platforms to go to with English language books.

[00:20:27] Orna: Yes. They're not about translated books at all, they're all about books in English. They do have translation options as a different thing, but these are all just about distributing your English book. So PublishDrive and Streetlib can distribute your books to Amazon as well, as we said, though we recommend that you would go direct. Apple and all the other major distributors, as well as the minor ones. So they are for English books and English book distribution in countries around the world, because every single country has loads of people who read in English, either immigrants or people who know English. We are so lucky to be writing and publishing in the world language that is English, and so it takes advantage of that.

[00:21:11] Matty: Yeah. Anything else on the distribution of ebooks front?

[00:21:19] Orna: The only thing I would say is take it easy. Again, build step by step. So we spoke about not jumping into exclusivity, if we're going to jump back out of it, but you know, you don't have to publish on all these platforms at once, but you can leave that door open so that you can come back to them. And that's the way to proceed, I think, and get to know one platform and understand it. Then it's a bit easier next time out.

[00:21:46] It seems impossible to believe when you're on your first book, but by the time you're on your third book, production and distribution is actually the thing you will think about least. Once you've decided on your processes, then it's very straightforward. And it’s just literally repeat, whereas writing and marketing are constantly challenging and evolving. Production and distribution are actually the most straightforward part of self-publishing, even though when people talk about publishing a book, very often, what they really mean is production and distribution. And it is only one part of publishing, and in fact it is the most straightforward part.

[00:22:28] So, it literally is just learning by doing. So whatever you do, do it, because until you do it, you won't know. You'll hear people telling you, you should do this, and you shouldn't do that, and this is the other way to do it, and blah, blah, blah. This is something really where you can only learn by doing.

[00:22:48] Matty: And I think it's worth repeating something that I believe you said in the last episode, which is make notes about all this stuff, because with production and distribution tasks, depending on what your release schedule is, you might do it every month, but you might only do it every couple of years. And so, your make your way through it, and then you go back two years later and it's like you've never seen it before. So it's worth capturing the links and making the notes and can you use HTML in this platform's book description, but not in this book platform's book description? So, just making it so you don't have to start from scratch every time. So we've got to do these repetitive tasks.

[00:23:22] Orna: Absolutely, in your own words can make a big difference when it comes to facing in second time, third time. And the other thing I would say is, all of the platforms, their customer service is really excellent and very helpful. Don't be shy about using them. They really want to hear from you. They do not want you struggling and having a problem and trying to reinvent the wheel, when you know, a few words of advice from them can make a difference. So don't be afraid to ask your questions. First port of call is always the platforms themselves. If you're not having success then, do feel free to get in touch with us at ALLi and we'll see what we can do for you.

[00:24:03] Matty: Great. Should we move on to a distribution of print books next?

[00:24:08] Orna: Yes.

[00:24:10] Matty: So once again, what are your and ALLi's recommendations on that front?

[00:24:15] Orna: Yeah. So we spoke a little bit about this already when we talked about production in the last program. So yeah, when it comes to print, it's KDP Print for the Amazon ecosystem and it's IngramSpark for the rest of the world. So you very often hear people talking about 8,000 outlets worldwide. That is essentially where the Ingram catalog is picked up by distribution and wholesalers around the world. That enables a library, bookstore, or another book institution or business to access your book. And that's what you want.

[00:24:57] Distribution is all about just being there, just getting them out there. So we recommend that you use both that when you upload your book to Amazon KDP, you do not take expanded distribution. If you do take expanded distribution, that means that Amazon would send your book over to Ingram. And there are all sorts of issues that arise around that. But not least is the fact that if you have any interest in your book being picked up by bookstores, they are not likely to pick up KDP Amazon published books. They are much more likely to pick up a book if it's distributed by somebody else and that's to do with just marketplace realities in terms of how bookstores feel about Amazon's presence in the bookselling arena. So that's one reason, and there are other reasons too, so you don't take expanded or extended distribution in Amazon, and then you upload your book to IngramSpark.

[00:25:57] So you just, as we said at the production program, your interior file will do for both, you just need a slightly different cover. Their systems are quite different, and you just get your head around that and you just upload to the two, but you've only got two. It's not like on ebook world where you've got 200,000. So, it is relatively simple, and we are very lucky. I know that there are problems with the platforms and the platforms are not perfect, but they are amazing tools. There was no way an author could publish, print, and distribute it around the world, just ten years ago. Ten years ago, that was an actual impossibility. The only way you could then self-publish a printed book was to go to a printer, run off thousands of copies, and then you were left with the distribution headache. How am I going to actually get these to people? How am I going to let people know they exist?

[00:26:49] The fact that we have these tools, they're not perfect, they're getting better. Ingram is having trouble at the moment with the integrity of its catalog, I know, and some people are getting caught in that process and it can be very frustrating if you've planned your launch, and you find you can't do it because you get caught in some problem within the platform. But these platforms are working hard on our behalf. They're taking indy authors into places that we couldn't go before. And yeah, they really are fantastic tools. So, take your time and get used to them. I really recommend you use them.

[00:27:58] Matty: I wanted to use that as an entree to talk about discounting and returns. And we talked a little bit earlier about how by discounting we don't mean putting something on sale, but rather a discount that you as the publisher provide to the retailers when they're purchasing your book to sell it in a bookstore, for example. Can you talk a little bit about how that works and what considerations indy authors should take into account when they're considering the discounting options?

[00:28:24] Orna: Yes. So, the first thing to say, I think the most important thing to say, is we talk about using IngramSpark because it opens the potential for bookstores to access our books, and wholesalers and distributors to access our books. And Ingram is more satisfactory in some territories than in others. So in the US it's very straightforward. Outside of the US, depending on the country, it's less so. And even here in the UK, where it is the most developed outside of the US, Ingram would not be the first distributor of choice for most bookstores. So it's worth bearing in mind. What uploading your book to IngramSpark does is it gives you the opportunity to have your book chosen by a bookstore or a retailer.

[00:29:14] Now, bookselling of print books through bookstores is a crazy business and it's a miracle that anybody makes any money at all. First of all, it's done on sale or return basis. So, they take the books. If they sell them, you get paid. If they don't sell them, they send them back to you or destroy them. Hundreds of thousands, countless numbers of books are pulped each year because publishers don't want them back. As I said, it’s a crazy business.

[00:29:45] Say the book costs $10, then the wholesaler or distributor will take a percentage from that. By the time it gets to the bookstore, they want to discount 55% to sell your book, to put your book on a bookstore shelf. Very often indy authors, when they do the math, it just doesn't add up. They cannot make a profit, but they may decide to go ahead and do it anyway because it opens up a distribution outlet and they may develop that relationship, and then perhaps use a different form of print. Or lots and lots we've seen all sorts of different things happen, and there are different programs on the platform as well that can help you.

[00:30:30] You won't just get your book into bookstores, generally speaking, there's going to have to be some sort of marketing going at the receiver end. And what it does allow is that if there is an event that you're at, a literary festival or something like that, if you're running an event in a bookstore, and then sometimes just for some reason, a store does start to sell your books.

[00:30:59] So it's all about the ability to have it there, but it's not by any means guaranteeing that now my book is up on IngramSpark, now all the bookstores are going to start carrying my book. No. The main publishers have sales reps who are going in and persuading people at head office level in the chains and all the way down the chain to actually take their books this season. And bookselling is based very much on a front list and a back list kind of mentality, because they only have so much space on the shelf. This is why the launch is so important in traditional publishing. Your book only has a number of weeks to make it. If it doesn't start to really sell, then you're into the returns thing.

[00:31:44] So this is a very long-winded way of saying, unless you actually have a plan for bookstore distribution of your book, then you may want to forget about putting the higher level of discount that the bookstores demand, the 55% plus discount in Ingram. You may want to offer a lower discount and you may not want to take returns because all of that is set up with a bookstore in mind. But if you don't have an actual plan for bookstore sales, they are unlikely to suddenly take off by themselves, and then you're setting lower discounts for the books that do sell.
[00:32:25] Matty: At all. My books are non-returnable. I give the maximum discount I can and still make a profit, which in some cases is like 7 cents. But, as much discount as I can up to 55%, which I think is the standard retail discount. but turn off returns because I did get burned big time once at a bookstore event where they ordered way more books than they should. And then they all went back except a couple. And I think that event costs me like $150.

[00:32:54] And in my business plan, bookstores I'm kind of doing it as community outreach. I'm making it available as community outreach because it's not a significant part of my business, but of course I don't want to deter someone who is interested, but I'm not, it's not a market I'm going after.

[00:33:09] Orna: Very wise. And that's the way to do it. And the returns thing just doesn't work because when you get the books back, they're not even salable. Very often they're damaged. And it's actually a real environmental problem as well, undermining that whole business model. So, whether it will change or not in times to come, a lot of intelligent people have tried to improve this system, failed so far.

[00:33:34] But yeah, so that's really why, Matty, I would kind of urge listeners to do is to work out the plan. We all involve the idea of our books being at the front of a bookstore, but the truth is without the backing of a major publisher who has paid for that placement as part of their marketing on the authors' behalf, it's highly unlikely. And even those authors who have been trade published have got into bookstores that way, very often the book is there in the back, invisible to people, doesn't move, and just ends up being sent back. So for most indy authors, keep the focus on online selling from your own website, ebook selling, audiobook all much, much easier. Nothing is harder than print book through bookstore.

[00:34:28] Matty: One organization that I think is doing a good job of stepping into a needed spaces is Bookshop. So a bookshop.org being a group that people can order books through but print copies of books and a portion of the proceeds goes to indy bookstores. And if you're an affiliate, which I am, you can set up a shop, I've set up shop with my own books. And so if somebody buys one of my books through Bookshop, I'm getting a royalty, but I'm also getting a little bit of money as an affiliate. Is bookshop.org, an organization that ALLi recommends?

[00:35:01] Orna: Yes, we love them. They're great. And love the creative thinking behind the organization and the wish to shake up this world that does need a shaking up. So, yeah, they're a great organization.

[00:35:16] Matty: The other thing I've really liked about Bookshop is that I really wanted to get out of the business of packaging up and sending out books. Very occasionally people would purchase books. The one selling I actually do on my website is I do have it set up so that people can purchase signed copies, but it was a lot of trouble, and it didn't happen enough. Like I wasn't going to disappoint that many people. So what I ended up doing is pointing people to Bookshop, and then if they drop me a note, I'll send them a signed bookplate, because that's much easier to handle. And in the end, they have a book that's inscribed specifically to them. But yeah, just another, as you were saying, hold it up to your business plan, and I did not want to spend my time packaging up books and driving to the post authors. So a Bookshop was a nice alternative there.

[00:36:03] Orna: That's great. And then there are other people for whom packing up books and sending them to their beloved readers is their idea of heaven. They actually love it. And if that's you then by all means, and if you are determined to get your book into bookstores, we have seen indy authors do great things in bookstores. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I am saying too many indies think just putting their book up on IngramSpark is going to do it. It's not.

[00:36:30] Matty: Yeah. And for all these things, I always say, weigh the time you're going to spend with the benefit that you expect to get and then align your actions to match up to your goals.

[00:36:40] Orna: Absolutely.

[00:36:41] Matty: Would you consider pricing part of distribution, the determining the price for your books?

[00:36:47] Orna: Yeah, again, it's one of these crossover ones, isn't it? A crossover is between promotion and distribution. But yeah, the way I tend to think about it is that setting your base price is distribution and then setting your promotional pricing is promotion. So yes, I think deciding or experimenting to find out your ideal price point is part of becoming a good book distributor. And that is very often for people, a bit of trial and error.

[00:37:20] So this is the question that comes up in ALLi a lot. People hear from other people, I didn't buy your book because it was only 2 99, I just assumed it wasn't any good. And then people who think pricing is all about being cheaper go, that's crazy, nobody does that. But they actually do. And so people have very different relationships with money. And you need to get clear about your genre and where your typical readers fall around that. There are genres that are price sensitive and the big genres that are read by the whale readers tend to be more price sensitive. So the romance and fantasy and so on. There are other genres that are not price sensitive at all and there are genres where they really want quality books, something like say poetry, some really beautiful books that don't have very many words in them, but a huge amount of production has gone in and the pricing reflects that accordingly. So yeah. The main thing for you to know, first of all, is your readers typically, are they price sensitive?

[00:38:27] The other thing to be aware of. And I think I did mention this already, but just to say it again, because it's important, Amazon is the most price sensitive of the platforms. It's whole raison d'etre is you won't buy it cheaper anywhere else. So they will price match if your book is cheaper somewhere else. So just holding that awareness that your book doesn't have to be the same price on every platform, and it doesn't have to be the same price on your own website. You can't undercut Amazon on your own websites. They will just price match or lower. So you don't want to try to do that, but the opposite very often, if the reader who's on your website, it's not going to be running around comparing prices and seeing if the book feels like a reasonable buy to them, that would be quite happy to buy it directly from you for a bit more.

[00:39:14] So the main thing to do is play with your pricing as well. Don't feel it's set. And it's well worth seeing what your sweet spot is, and that can take a bit of trial and error. You want the place where the price doesn't put off volume, so that you're getting that sweet spot between the number of copies sold and the amount that you're charging for the book that delivers the most revenue for you. And as I said, we have had many times on I myself can attest to having put my prices up and having sold more copies when they were more expensive than when they were cheaper. So it definitely does happen.

[00:39:54] Matty: I'll point people to another Mark Lefebvre episode of The Indy Author Podcast, which was way back in 20 WORKING WITH LIBRARIES AND BOOKSTORES. So Mark had some great information to share about that. And then, I just spoke with J K Ellem about TAKING THE LONG VIEW FOR PUBLISHING SUCCESS, and he was encouraging me to put up the price of my novels. I don't know why this is such a mental block for me, but they're now 4 99 and I'm on the fence about going over $5.

[00:40:21] But I think my biggest pricing challenge is international pricing. So there are all these platforms that are now enabling reach into more and more countries. And oftentimes on platforms like Google Play is the craziest, because you can set your book price in all sorts of countries, and it could be a full-time job just to research what are reasonable prices. And normally they'll suggest the price. So you put in 4 99 for the US and then it'll suggest the price that you could charge in other countries in other currencies. But I have never been able to tell if they're strictly doing a dollar conversion into that currency, or if they're somehow factoring in that country's price tolerance. Do you have any insight into that?

[00:41:08] Orna: Yeah, unfortunately it's just a straight currency thing. So that leaves your book too expensive, generally speaking, in India or other countries such as you say that the price thing tolerance isn't high enough. Again, I would say not to get too hung up on this, and certainly not at the beginning. If you have a relationship in a particular country, if you find the difference are selling a lot in a particular country, then it's worth going in there and working at your pricing there just as you would in your home territory. But if they're selling little or nothing at all in those countries, then don't worry too much about it. It's unlikely that just changing the price is going to be the thing that will actually start or stop them selling. You would want to be going in and fixing up the price and fixing up some marketing as well, to have a plan in other words to make it worth your while to go to the bother of working out of what you feel that should be there.

[00:42:04] Matty: Yeah. Other thoughts about distribution of print books?

[00:42:10] Orna: I think that's it. It is the trickiest one to distribute yourself. It's much easier for you to distribute on your website. I'm talking about not a direct distribution, which is your few to distribute books and audio than it is print. Print is harder and you may not want to do that. And you can develop print partnerships, I think is something that we're seeing indy authors do more. So small indy publishers that are already working in print and have a print distribution outlet, some have worked out a good print strategy. It can be a good thing to team up with them and let them take that weight because print is different and it's harder. So unless you really want to go into print in a big way, I would say keep it simple, just KDP and IngramSpark it and it's available and then you can go from there.

[00:43:07] Matty: Okay, great. So now we're going to turn to distribution of audiobooks, and we covered this a little bit in the last episode about what platforms are available. Do you just want to do a quick recap of the distribution angle on that information?

[00:43:22] Orna: Yeah, so audio again, it's kind of Amazon and the rest. So in terms of distributing your books on Amazon and getting them available on Amazon, which also means Audible, and Audible is the biggest seller of audiobooks in the US by some margin estimates in some verticals, they say up to 90%, so that's a lot. So yeah, you go through ACX in terms of distributor, your book through, Amazon. I, I mentioned in the last program that there are issues around that, but nonetheless, we do recommend indy authors not to turn their back on, on that enormous platform. but not to go exclusive with ACX. So in other words, to keep your options open.

[00:44:11] There are lots of new options emerging in audio. Audiobooks are in growth almost everywhere in the world and there are lots of different platforms that are emerging to take advantage of that. So in addition to ACX, you may want to Findaway or Authors Republic or Soundwise or one of the other end distributors of audiobooks.

[00:44:38] It's not so much with eBooks the different aggregators, you can match them up, there are ones that some aggregators go to and others don't. There is overlap, but there are lots of different ones. With an audiobook distribution, ACX and one other, will suffice, will get you into the vast majority of the audiobook distribution outlets around the world.

[00:45:05] And don't neglect audiobook. It is as easy to download an audiobook as it is to download an ebook. And that's kind of hard for some people who are not used to audio to wrap their heads around, but basically, it's just a digital file. So once the device can take it and your mechanism, again, I do a shout out for BookFunnel here. They do a great job in terms of distributing audio directly for authors. And so don't shy away from audio because you're not an audio listener yourself, for example, or because you think it is hugely complex. From a distribution point of view, it is as easy to distribute an audiobook as it is an ebook.

[00:45:46] So do you remember, I was saying this a transaction method and then there's the download method. So BookFunnel provides the download mechanism, but you need to set up your payment facility and then you just give the BookFunnel link. And you don't have to do that. You can just provide your EPUB yourself and that should be downloaded, but for a not very significant annual sum, they look after all the "my ebook hasn't downloaded" emails that you don't want to be getting. And their system is just so well set up. They can also collect email addresses for you. So you can see exactly who did download or didn't, sometimes we make sales, and the person doesn't read the book, it happens, all of these kinds of things.

[00:46:34] So there's loads of things that BookFunnel can do for you that you can't do for yourself. It's a service that's well worth paying for, but it isn't essential. So all it is handling that download. There are many ways for you to take the transaction payment, which would be Selz or PayHip's the one that you use. There are lots of them and that will also deliver the download as part of the sale. I use WooCommerce and ALLi uses WooCommerce together with BookFunnel to ensure just ease of download.

[00:47:09] Matty: Any of those things where somebody might call you up and say, my download didn't complete or something like that. Like we were talking earlier about the fact that one of the things I wanted to get rid of was packaging up books. And you pointed out quite rightly that there's some people who would find that very gratifying. But I don't know that anybody really finds it gratifying to answer questions about why a file didn't download. And so any of those things, I think that the options for asking some other expert person and organization to help you do that, they're so affordable that from a business point of view, it would be hard to justify, no, I'm going to slog through that myself because I want to save the cost of having somebody else take care of it for me. Just pay the money and then spend that time writing more stuff.

[00:47:51] Orna: I totally agree with that. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:47:55] Matty: We had talked a little bit before, also about the difficulty of coordinating launches across media. I guess now we're sort of spilling into the next episodes, which are going to be about marketing and promotion, but we had said that it is very difficult, but it's very hard to anticipate when an audiobook is going to be available. So with eBooks, you can go on there and say, my launch date is December 1st or whatever it is. And you have control of that, but I don't know of any platform for audio that you don't just put it up there and then sit back and then pretty soon they say, your audiobooks up.

[00:48:28] And I think you could almost make a benefit of that by just making it like a separate launch. Because I think if you launch it all at once, there are certainly benefits to be had there. But, if you have to spread it out, then you can make a virtue of it by saying the audiobook isn't going to get lost in the availability of the ebook and the print book. I can kind of rev up the excitement for that again.

[00:48:49] Orna: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, traditionally again, and we can learn a lot from traditional publishing and how they do things. It was always the hardback launch and then the soft back launch, and they were seen as two different publicity opportunities. And it's the same for us. You can have your ebook launch, then do your print, then do your audio. There's nothing to stop you doing that. And all the while you're collecting reviews, hopefully, and blurb quotes and things that can be used in the next launch. And then very often if you've had two prior launches and then have your audio launch, at that point, you can begin to reach out to media and stuff because you've got some demonstrable feedback and reviews and things. So yeah, you could definitely make a virtue of a staggered launch.

[00:49:37] As you say, there's also something to be said for they all go up at the same time. They're all in favor of it. At the same time, you're not getting the emails saying why does he have your book out? All of that kind of thing. But the staggered launch if you're just looking at it from a marketing perspective, it makes sense to actually stagger your launches.

[00:49:56] Matty: Do you have any thoughts about audio to libraries?

[00:50:01] Orna: Yes. It's becoming much more popular, digital audio. So libraries always liked audio. They've had CD ROM and CD and tapes and things going way back when and digital audio is now really popular. So in terms of reaching that library market, Overdrive has traditionally been the distributor for ebook, and they are also active in audio. There are lots of people coming into that market to provide that bridge. Kobo is involved as well.

[00:50:37] So yeah, again, it's just a matter of making sure that you have widely distributed. If you've used the various services that we're talking about, then you will find yourself in the right place. If you haven't, then you're just not there so it won't happen for you. Being there doesn't guarantee that it will happen, but it makes it possible.

[00:50:59] Matty: Yeah. We did talk about audio quite a bit in the previous episode, but are there any other aspects of audio distribution that you want to highlight?

[00:51:10] Orna: No, except I probably want to just say again, what I said at the beginning is not to neglect audio as a format that is easily distributed on your own website. And I suppose the other thing is not to neglect audio overall because I do hear indy authors saying, oh, I don't listen to audiobooks, who listens to audiobooks. To recognize this really is a growth market. The other thing that I hear a lot when it comes to audiobook distribution is authors are selling their audio rights to audiobook "publishers" who are really distributors, who are taking them I'm out there and paying very little for the privilege.

[00:51:52] So when you speak to an author about that very often than say, oh, for me, audiobooks are just the jam. So I concentrated on my eBooks and anything that happens with audiobooks is. But I would say that every format, audiobooks really have the potential to do extremely well for indy authors. And I think we're not taking advantage of that enough. So I would say, think again if one of the audiobook distributors does approach you and offers you a bit of a lump sum to give over all your rights, some of them for a very long term for very low percentages. These are not good deals in the main and, it's worth, okay, you get the book, you get the audiobook made, you get maybe a good narrator, a narrator that you're happy with and so on, but maybe not. My point is don't undervalue your audio rights. They are very valuable.

[00:52:59] Matty: I will put in a plug for the ALLi Watchdog desk. Is that open only to members to ping that group.

[00:53:08] Orna: And we have an outreach aspect to the Watchdog desk where we do a ratings list. So you can look up a publisher or a distributor or any service and see what the ALLi rating is for that service, so that's available to everybody. In terms of actually looking at your contract and saying, this contract's a bad one, your advance is too small, percentages or there's no reversion clause, that kind of stuff, and that's for members only.

[00:53:38] Matty: Great. Well, thank you once again for talking through distribution. What number were we up to there? The fourth in our series of the seven processes of publishing. So three more to go stay tuned for that. And please let everyone know where they can find out all about you and the Alliance of Independent Authors online.

[00:53:55] Orna: So the Alliance of Independent Authors, which is a nonprofit association for self-publishing writers, is at www.AllianceIndependentAuthors.org, and I'm Orna Ross and I'm at OrnaRoss.com.

[00:54:11] Matty: Thank you, Orna.

[00:54:13] Orna: Thanks Matty. Bye now.

Matty Dalrymple 10/26/21 Matty Dalrymple 10/26/21

Episode 103 - The Third Process of Publishing: Production with Orna Ross

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Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors joins me for the third of a series of seven episodes devoted to the Seven Processes of Publishing: Production. We talk about the production process for ebooks, print books, and audiobooks, including how the requirements for text-centric books is becoming increasingly easy for indy authors to meet; the expanding options for print, including easy-to-produce hardcover editions; and the opportunities that audio opens to indy authors. And we discuss what I have always thought of as the thorny question of ISBNs—those identifiers attached to each iteration of each of your works—and I discover that the answer is actually quite straightforward.

Episode Links

Introduction:

Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin

Episode 065 - X-raying Your Plot with Tiffany Yates Martin

Episode 053 - What Authors can Learn from TV and Movies with Tiffany Yates Martin

Episode 074 - Perspectives on Personal Branding

Episode 100 - Becoming the Relaxed Author with Mark Leslie Lefebvre

For links to Matty's upcoming and recent events, click here.

Interview:

https://www.ornaross.com/

https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/

150 Self-Publishing Questions Answered: ALLi’s Writing, Publishing, & Book Marketing Tips for Authors and Poets (Publishing Guides for Indie Authors 5) (affiliate link)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome back to part three of our series on the seven processes of publishing. And I'm here again with Orna Ross. Hey, Orna. How are you doing?

Orna: I'm doing very well, Matty, how are you?

Matty: I'm doing great, thank you.

[00:00:12] So today we're going to be talking about production and we're going to be talking about kind of the big three of production, so production of e-books, production of print books, and production of audio books. And then we'll address the thorny question of ISBNs.

[00:00:27] So I wanted to start out with e-books because I think that's probably the first foray that a lot of indy authors make into publishing and into the production process. So what do you and ALLi have to say about recommended partners? How you go about the ebook process? What advice do you have?

[00:00:46] Orna: Yeah, so you're absolutely right. Most authors start there. And it's actually our advice that they should because making an e-book is relatively simple when compared to the other two big formats, which are print and audio. So, yeah, in terms of production, you and I were talking about this when we were discussing how the processes break down across the seven different processes of publishing that we're looking at here and how the tools that we've got now as indy authors very often bringing a number of these processes together.

[00:01:21] So in terms of creating an e-book, it has never been easier, I think it's fair to say. And it's also standardized a lot in recent years. So you can do it in a very detailed sort of way, or you can do the simplest way. And we recommend when you're starting out to keep it simple. And what you're mainly looking to create when it comes to an e-book is the epub format. And I think we may have mentioned this last time. epub 3 is now the e-book standard and can be used on practically every platform. There are advantages to using a particular ebook for different platforms and keeping a track of that marketing wise and everything. This is not something you need to worry about at the beginning.

[00:02:08] And then in terms of the actual creation of it, there are just such great tools now that make this very easy. So lots of people use Vellum if they work on a Mac. That has made things almost laughably easy. It's as easy to make an epub and a print book, lots of different formats of books, with them as it is to just create a Word document.

[00:02:33] But speaking all of the wonderful classic Word document, which most of us need to use anyway because of the editing process, most editors are going to ask you to work in Word because that's the format that's really most widely, I think almost universally accepted in the editing space because it is so easy to track changes there. So you will end up with a Word document usually after the editing process. Now when you went to upload your book to Amazon KDP or a variety of other platforms, they will actually transform your Word document into an epub for you. So the production of e-books has just become easier and easier.

[00:03:20] And different indy authors swear by different tools. So, I mean, I use Vellum, so I tend to talk about it, but I hasten to say there are lots and lots of others. Reedsy does a great editor, which will create a fine e-book for you. There's Jutoh. There's Calibre. Lots of people have their own particular favorites. And lots of these softwares are partner members of ALLi. They're really widely accepted and they're constantly improving. Scrivener is another tool that allows you to create perfect e-books, you know, very highly stylized.

[00:03:59] So some of the tools will keep you very tight. So Vellum, for example, tries to save indy authors from ourselves by giving very few options in terms of headings and layout and so on. Others are much more sensitive, and you can make a lot more changes and things.

[00:04:17] So it very much depends on what you want to do. I would say, bear in mind that as verbal people, we may not be visual. So keeping things, I think with an e-book, particularly if it is a straightforward text e-book and like most novels and straightforward how-to nonfiction, simplicity is the best way to go. You want formatting to be invisible. You want the readers not to see it.

[00:04:45] Matty: Yeah. I am also a happy user of Vellum and I do like the fact that they don't let you go too far astray. And I'm sure there are ways to do this in many of the different packages that encourage more. Manipulation of it, but I love going in there, I've picked a style and Vellum for my fiction work and a style and Vellum for my non-fiction work. And I know that as long as I keep picking that style, that all the books across the series will look consistent. So that's a nice plus of that.

[00:05:11] And you had mentioned the fact that epub is sort of the industry standard, but you can have a Kindle epub, you could have a Nook epub, you can have different flavors of epub. Can you talk about that a little bit?

[00:05:24] Orna: Yes, so, Vellum again will produce a particular epub for the platform that you are working with. And this is not so much that the platform requires a different production process or that you end up with a particularly different file, but it's very useful when it comes to the distribution, which is the next stage of the process that we'll be talking about, which you're able to trace back which book sold and you're able to keep tabs on your books because you'll know the Apple one is connected to the Apple store. The Kobo one is connected to the Kobo store. And so at the end, when you're adding links and things to take people, you can actually get a clear idea of where the book is selling by tracking the format.

[00:06:14] And there are little differences in the platforms and just having little tweaks that make a difference. But quite honestly, as a beginner, I would not get too hung up on this. If you use Vellum, it makes it really easy. It spits it up for you. If you don't, forget about it. It's not important to know at this point, you know where at the beginning, I always think, you've got to go through the production process at least once, all the different stages of it. That's the most important thing. And if we get too hung up on some of the details, we can actually stop ourselves in our tracks and spend too long worrying about things that don't really make that much difference until you've got a few books up and running anyway.

[00:06:59] Matty: Yeah, I think that is great advice. Better to spend the time writing than to spend the time figuring out how to make a new header and some formatting software.

[00:07:08] We had talked about the fact that epub has become the standard and mobi used to be the standard for Kindle based books. The one place where at least fairly recently I found mobi was still helpful to have is when people are sideloading books from their computer. So let's say I have my books up on PayHip. So if a Kindle reader downloads a file from PayHip, at least until fairly recently, it was better for them to have a mobi because it was easier for them to get onto their Kindle from their email or wherever they're downloading it from. Is that still true or is that starting to be a thing of the past?

[00:07:50] Orna: It's still true for those who have Kindles of a certain age. So it's still convenient from that point of view. But, you know, this is definitely going to disappear over time.

[00:08:03] Matty: So any other cautions you have about the production of e-books, any helpful tips or tricks on the ebook front? Why don't we start talking about ISBNs now, because I know that's always a question. So let's start out. ISBNs for e-books. What do you think?

[00:08:19] Orna: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So ISBNs are how the book industry keeps track of which format of the book it's got. So if you ever want your book to be distributed by a library, if you ever want your book to be picked up by a bookstore, your e-book I mean, then it needs to have an ISBN. So, yes. And it also makes you the publisher of record for that book. And so we 100%, no ambiguity, say yes for the small cost involved. It is well worth having your own ISBN for your e-books. One for an ebook. One for your print in its different formats. One for your audio book.

[00:09:11] So the whole point, if you think about what the ISBN is for, it is the book identification number. Say a library wants to distribute your book, your e-book, to its patrons and they want to acquire your e-book in order to do that. Well, if they go looking for your e-book and you only find an ISBN for your print book, then they simply can't get out your e-book. Because they're not going to go to the trouble of sending you an email and saying, hi, we're the library, we want your e-book. It doesn't work like that. So, yeah, it's important, we feel.

[00:09:47] Matty: So for my print books, I do have ISBNs that I've purchased through Bowker. And I think that one of the interesting things I learned early in the process is that one ISBN from Bowker, I don't know what it is, 125 bucks or something like that. It sounds ridiculous. But then you can buy like a hundred for not very much more. If you buy them in quantity, even if you are just planning on publishing a couple of books, it pays you to get a batch. Can you provide some maybe more updated information on that?

[00:10:18] Orna: Yes, absolutely. You're absolutely right. You know, ISBNs and the cost of them is something that troubles American and UK citizens but doesn't trouble French citizens at all, because ISBNs are provided free by their library service. So there are lots of countries in the world where you don't have to pay for ISBNs. It's just some people. Nielsen is the company in the UK and Australia and Commonwealth countries generally and Bowker in the US.

[00:10:50] So yes, buy in bulk because you pretty quickly to start to go through them. You're going to need one for your e-book, as we said, one if you do paperback, hardback, large print, and one for your audio book. And then once you start to produce a few books. And then you'll probably sometime do an upgrade or and update and upgrade to such a degree that you need to do a new edition, in which case you will need a new ISBN. So think of this just as one of the costs of doing business.

[00:11:20] And definitely buy in bulk everywhere. It pays to buy in bulk, and I think they're more expensive in the US than anywhere else in the world. They are pricey enough there. But if you think about the overall costs in relation to other things, it's not that expensive when you consider the that is what makes you the publisher of record in the eyes of the world compared to not having it.

[00:11:47] It also allows, for ALLi, this is important. It may not be that important for an individual indy author, but for some people it would be, it allows us to be counted, you know, all the statistics that are done around publishing use ISBN for the research. It's very hard to get up what's going on with the ISBNs. So the fact that we are purchasing our own puts us in there and people know what's going on, are able to evaluate and give us information about what's happening in the indy author world.

[00:12:22] Matty: I think I know what the answer to this is going to be, but I'm going to ask, because I've never heard this actually addressed, that when people start hearing about bulk purchase of ISBNs, and you can buy them in big bulk because publishers of various sides are buying them in bulk themselves. I can imagine it would be tempting to say, you know what, let's have all the writers in my writer's group go in and buy a bunch of ISBNS and then we'll all share the pool. But I'm assuming you can't do that because the purchase is affiliated with an imprint. Is that true?

[00:12:54] Orna: Yeah, the purchases affiliated with the publisher. So if you all go together, and you're in Writers' Group Illinois or whatever, then Writers' Group Illinois becomes the publisher. So when you actually make your application, you have to put down the imprint name, the publisher name, all of these details. And so if you buy one bulk group of ISBNs and there will be one publisher name on that and everybody else who's using that will fall under that agreement.

[00:13:25] Matty: I had one more question about ISBNs for e-books. So again, I have Bowker ISBN for all my print books and that's always the advice I hear from people, i.e., they don't recommend that you allow Amazon to assign your ISBN. But for my e-books, I distribute to most platforms on Draft2Digital, and they will provide an ISBN that then moves on to the library platforms because Draft2Digital is how I'm distributing to library platforms like Overdrive, for example. What is the danger of using an ISBN from an aggregator like Draft2Digital?

[00:14:04] Orna: Well, in future times, if somebody wants to trace back that book and find out who the publisher is, supposing they wanted to license the rights and they didn't know, for example, how to get at you, and I know they probably could find you relatively easily on the internet because of your website and so on, but just supposing for whatever reason, you no longer exist. And it's your heirs, for example. So they want to get in touch. It's Draft2Digital, they'll end up with, because Draft2Digital owns that ISBN. So Draft2Digital is the publisher of record for that e-book. So, yeah, we would really recommend that you use one of your own purchased ISBNs on the e-books as well as the print.

[00:14:51] And yeah, you will hear varying opinions about that, but I think a lot of this arises from almost a sense like an e-book isn't quite a real book or something. You know, why would you give different advice for print and e-books? If you think about just from a publication perspective, as opposed to from a saving money perspective. From a business perspective, why is an e-book, which would probably actually generate you more money at the end of the day, something that you wouldn't actually want to have your own ISBN for. I don't quite follow the logic, I guess,

[00:15:29] Matty: Is the considerations for not using an ISBN that would be assigned by Amazon KDP, for example, is that different? Is Amazon taking on more ownership by providing the ISBN than Draft2Digital is taking on by providing their ISBN?

[00:15:44] Orna: No, they don't take on more, but there is a reason that all of the services are "kindly" providing us with "free" ISBNs. There is an advantage to owning the ISBN and that's why they are claiming that advantage for their business rather than you are claiming it for your business.

[00:16:06] Matty: So that we don't make the production segment of this all about ISBNs, I don't want to have to title this, "Everything You Wanted to Know about ISBNs but Were Afraid to Ask," let's move on to print books. So same question that we started out with for the e-books. Is there an approach, a platform, vendors that you and ALLi recommend for print books?

[00:16:25] Orna: Yeah. When it comes to print, using just two platforms is easy, right? And it’s the same PDF interior that you will use for both. It's KDP Print for the Amazon ecosystem and IngramSpark for kind of rest of world. And you use the same interior, generally speaking. They both know are doing a hard backs in most countries. They're both doing obviously your straightforward paperback and large print is an option with both now as well. But it's a distribution issue as to why you need both, and it's advised that you do.

[00:17:06] So essentially to create a print book, you are literally physically creating a file that produces the interior, the pages, and a file that produces the cover. And KDP Print and IngramSpark require slightly different cover production, so you need a different cover for each of them, and then you just upload them to the platforms. And when you upload to Amazon, you don’t go for an expanded distribution in Amazon. And then it would distribute around the world through IngramSpark, and it will distribute on Amazon online retail store through KDP Print.

[00:17:53] Matty: Currently I have regular print and large print for my books and the investment to make the large print was fairly small because I just went into Vellum and I picked one of the large print formats and I hit generate, and then there was the interior. And I'm not even sure I paid my designer that much more to provide me with a large print cover along with all the other covers, the regular print, the e-book, the audio book and all that. When you're doing hardcover, is there more work on the author side to set that up?

[00:18:28] Orna: It's exactly the same. It's just, again, the same interior file and you would just need a slightly different cover for the hard back, generally speaking. And it's just the same thing. When you're actually setting up a paperback to simultaneously set up large print and the hard back it is not difficult. And is recommended because there are lots of people who only read large print for eyesight reasons, libraries like large print, and as you say, it's very little extra costs and very little extra effort.

[00:19:06] And so our advice is always as a general rule of thumb to be in as many formats as possible and as many territories as possible. It just makes sense just to be where the readers are. So sometimes authors will say to us, but I never read our hard print or I'm not going to buy a hardback because blah, blah, blah. Fine. But, you know, the readers are there and it's about, if they want to buy a hard back present of your book that they loved for their mum at Christmas or whatever, because they liked it so much, and you don't have one, well, why not? For very little extra effort, as we said, you can have that.

[00:19:44] Continuing on the print production thing. I think the other big question that comes up for people is whether to use print on demand or consignment print, you know, do their own offset print run. And this is a sort of an ongoing debate in the indy author community. And I think for most indy authors, print on demand is the way to go because it means you don't have to invest in expensive inventory upfront. For some people, though, if you've got a distribution outlet worked out and you are distributing in bulk or to lots of outlets and through bookstores or whatever it might be, it can make sense to actually run consignment print.

[00:20:32] And because your cost per book is much lower, it makes it easier in terms of getting a profit. Sometimes with print on demand, and particularly if your book is complex or has a lot of illustrations or it's very long, the economics of print on demand can just mean that it barely works. And it's certainly impossible for indy authors to compete on price when it comes to the average novel that or the average how-to nonfiction or a straightforward nonfiction memoir, whatever. Trade publishers with their economies of scale and their consignment runs are going to be cheaper than us every time. And it isn't right for us to expect the print on demand can deliver a similar sort of price.

[00:21:20] So in terms of pricing very often, you're best to just add on the profits you want to make per book on top of your costs when it comes to print. That's a straightforward way of doing it as any other. And your readers are likely to buy online and may not be overly price sensitive. So don't worry too much about the price of your print book, because people are willing to pay more money for print. e-book tends to be very price sensitive, particularly e-books on Amazon.

[00:21:52] Matty: When you're uploading your print books, the platforms are quite clear about what the production cost is for the print book based on basically, I guess, how long it is and I'm sure there are other considerations. So you can very clearly see, oh, it's costing me this much. There's also a small fee for e-books, I guess, based on the length of the book and the file size. I assume like 10 cents per book, just to be safe, I believe, with my books that are about 80,000 words and don't include any fancy graphics or anything like that. Are there other costs associated with that, especially on the print side, that authors should keep in mind, other than that number that shows up as the production costs that the retailer or the producer is charging?

[00:22:40] Orna: Just to say on that e-book pricing, that's a delivery charge and it's very much related to the size of the file. And sometimes the size of our file can be very big because of illustrations and stuff like that. In other words, the pictures and stuff in the file are bigger than they need to be, thereby making the book far more expensive to deliver than it needs to be. And this is something to watch out for in the production of your e-book. And it's something that's worth discussing with your designer to make sure that the pictures are optimized for size.

[00:23:19] So the pricing of print and the selling of print is an absolute minefield because it's done based on this crazy system, if it's done through bookstores, of discounts. And so the wholesaler gets a discount. Distributor gets a discount. The retailer gets a discount. And the author gets whatever's left over in the end. So it's really, really tricky and difficult to work out how much is going to be left for you, because they're talking about that use of the word "discount" means the trade discounts.

[00:23:57] So say it will cost $10. The distributor takes the discount of up to 55%, sometimes, of that and before anything happens at all. So they're not talking, when they talk about trade discounts, so this is how they get paid, they're not talking about the book is actually discounted at retail, which it often is as well. Very often, the author is getting a very small percentage of a book that is sold through bookstores because so many of the people are getting their percentage from that book.

[00:24:39] So I think for most indy author to really focus on the selling of your books online, selling your e-books and print books online, and audio books, makes life a lot easier, a lot more straightforward, particularly at the beginning. When you're getting into distributing through bookstores, selling through bookstores, producing books for bookstores, because you will produce them differently if you have decent orders for bookstores, and when you're getting into that, that definitely is more advanced stuff.

[00:25:10] At the beginning, your production question is just literally making the epubs, making the PDFs, making the covers. It literally is a production question. And then putting them out there on the platforms, then you start thinking about how you're going to distribute them.

[00:25:28] Matty: Right. What are you finding in terms of the quality? If you look at the quality of a print on demand hard cover as a reader, what's your reaction quality-wise?

[00:25:40] Orna: It's just getting better and better. Like print on demand, what used to be awful, I remember when it was a palpable quality difference between the two. We also often hear people say, IngramSpark books are better quality or Amazon books are better quality, or I have problems with Amazon. I never have problems with Ingram or vice versa. Just from our vantage point of kind of seeing the overview, we can quite safely say that there is very little to choose between them. That you can run into, and I think this is important from a production point of view to bear in mind, you can run into production problems at any time with print.

[00:26:18] Funny things can happen with machinery. These machines are incredible. They are pumping out, it's extraordinary that they can do what they do, they're pumping out books such a rate of knots, each one individual and different, so things can and do go wrong. It's amazing that they don't go wrong more often, to be honest. Customer service on both Ingram on the Amazon side are really good about it. If something does go wrong with your batch of books, if a reader ever says to you, you know, that the book they got, they weren't happy with or anything, they will replace those or you. They don't want that happening and you definitely don't want it happening.

[00:26:54] So it's a good idea to spot check your print. Definitely proof your print yourself at the beginning. Take your time. By the time you get round to proofing print, very often you're tired. You've been through a lot, especially the first time. You're also a bit overwhelmed and a bit confused and you may not even know what you're looking for. But it's really important that you proof, that you sit down and read through the thing and you're sick of it by now, but you need to read it through again from start to finish like a reader and just make sure that everything is where it ought to be.

[00:27:31] Look at the contents page. Sometimes that gets left off for some reason. Your ancillary, your back matter or your front matter. Make sure your ISBN matches, that it is the one that's supposed to be there. And all of those kinds of spot checks are really important. For e-books, of course, as I said, sometimes by the time it gets right to the print book, you just flick it and think, oh yeah, that looks lovely. I'm delighted with that. It's great. So do check.

[00:27:58] Matty: Yeah. I try to make it a practice whenever I upload any new files on print, on either KDP or IngramSpark, I'll page through the whole thing. And I'm paging through it pretty fast. But I look at it all just in case.

[00:28:13] The funniest production experience I've had, this was more of a as a consumer than as an author. But I thought I kind of had a sense of how KDP print on demand must work. And at one point I needed to order a copy of my own book and I didn't feel like waiting for an author copy so I just placed an order as a customer. And pretty soon my Amazon Delivery Day box showed up that had my book, my coffee mug, a thing of toothpaste and something else.

[00:28:40] I'm like, how did that happen? How did they get a print on demand book into a box with my other stuff? And someday I do want to find somebody who's affiliated with Amazon who can explain that to me because in my corporate world, I supported the distribution center of an online retailer and so I'm especially interested in that kind of stuff, but I thought I have to rethink my whole idea about how they're doing it.

[00:29:39] Anything else you want to share about print books before you move on to audio books?

[00:29:43] Orna: Just to say that what you did there, purchasing the book as a customer, I think is worth doing. It's worth getting the author copy and then also just buying a copy and just to make sure. I would just say, just be really careful, yeah, just check and recheck and check again is the advice I'd like to give.

[00:30:00] Matty: It is nice to always interact with your products as a customer when at all possible. So you can sometimes see things. For example, I had put my book up on Amazon in the UK. And I was going to send my sister, who lives in the UK, a copy as a thank you because she had helped me out with it, and it was 9.99. So I put it in my cart and then I went to check out and it said, books over 10 pounds ship free. So I was like, good to know.

[00:30:25] So I went into Amazon KDP for the UK. I changed the price to 10 pounds and now it was cheaper for any customer because any customer who is just buying one book is now going to benefit from the fact that for one penny more, they don't have to pay shipping and handling. So it's nice to get the reader perspective.

[00:30:43] Orna: But it's a fantastic example of something you just could not have known if you hadn't done that. And yeah, I really do encourage everybody to use every platform that you're publishing on this is e-book, audio, print, whichever, do become a user, if only briefly. You will have your own preferred way of reading on your own for readers and all the rest of them to get outside your comfort zone and use every platform as a reader, just to see what goes on because they're not all same. They’re really quite different. The experience could be quite different from the reader perspective. So that is, I think, probably one of the best examples I've ever heard of that.

[00:31:25] Matty: So onto audio books. So the same question, any recommendations for platforms or vendors or services that you went ALLi recommend?

[00:31:34] Orna: Yeah. So, again, as in e-books and online, print on demand, Amazon is the world leader in audio books. There has been, and I'm not going to get into this on your show because we're very much focused here on the actual nuts and bolts of production and distribution and the processes of publishing, but from a campaign perspective, there have been a number of problems with the two, which is ACX, Audiobook Creation Exchange, which supplies books up to recently to Audible and Apple, which up to recently most of the audio book market in the US, the UK, most of the places where audiobooks are most sold.

[00:32:19] So there has been a problem with that supplier and they are being challenged by a number of authors in terms of payments and so on. But ALLi still recommends that you use ACX to produce audio books because they are a leader and we're hoping that they will continue to make changes that improve the situation there.

[00:32:41] However in the wake of that, and really it was happening anyway, as it has happened with e-books, there have been a number of alternative services that have come along in recent times. Most notably, I would say, Findaway Voices, who also offer a way to sell your books directly online through Authors Direct. You can sell your audio books online through them, and Findaway is the actual tool that you use to put the audio books together.

[00:33:10] So in terms of production, what are we talking about with an audio book? Again, you need to cover, it's the same as print and e-book. And for each of these formats, you need different kinds of covers. So an audio book cover is a square. And when you're designing your book, you need to, we talked about that when we discussed design, you need to take these things into consideration. So you need your cover and then you need your sound file. The sound file has lots of different requirements on all the platforms in order for it to pass quality control.

[00:33:42] So you need a narrator to actually speak your words. Some authors do this themselves, both again, as with cover design, hiring a professional is recommended. Unless you are already a skilled voice actor, it's very difficult for you to do justice to particularly fiction. Nonfiction is easier and readers are more forgiving of the author reading non-fiction. But again, you need to be good, not a boring monotone. You need to know what you're doing. You need to know voice. Audio is skilled work. People train to do it. It's just picking up the book of doing it yourself is not the same thing. So recommendation is to get a skilled narrator.

[00:34:25] So between the costs of production, narration, narration is expensive. It's generally charged per hour, finished hours produced. So what ACX did, Audiobook Creation Exchange, the exchange part was about bringing author and narrators together and allowing them to come into a royalty sharing agreement, which would mean that there was no big upfront expense for the author. Findaway has now also introduced a marketplace for this as possible. There are also marketplaces, too.

[00:35:05] Our recommendation is, if you can afford it, to actually pay the narrator and own, you know, have the rights to the audio. And saying that, recognizing that it is a big expense. However, the return on audio is much higher. So it's a matter of like anything else working out your return on investment rather than just thinking about what you're going to be spending. And owning those rights outright, you need to work out how many copies do I need to sell before I move into profits? That is your real question. And for most authors that we have seen who are cognizant of the value of their audio book rights, they are doing extremely well.

[00:35:48] There is an unfortunate sort of attitude in the indy community that audio books are jam, you know, they're kind of extra, and I think that's a mistake. In the old days, yes, a publishing house for them, audio was a subsidiary right because they have to kind of sell the rights to an actual audio production company because they produce things like tapes and CDs and stuff like that. We're dealing with digital audio and a digital audio file is just as easily sold from your website, directly online, and picked up by the reader. There are all sorts of great tools that will allow you to do that.

[00:36:25] We've mentioned BookFunnel before and I would do a shout out for BookFunnel again here with audio. They're really fantastic in terms of delivering it directly on to the listener's device, whatever that might be. We want a fantastic customer service operation that allows that to happen.

[00:36:41] But there are lots of other tools. Soundwise is a very interesting audio company, Authors Republic also. So there's lots going on in the audio space and I would recommend people to get stuck in and think about what they want to do with their audio books. Because for lots of our members now, in terms of financial return, e-books first because they're so much cheaper to produce, but audio books are moving rapidly into second place for lots and lots of indy authors. Because yes, there is that upfront payment, but once you've earned back from that, you begin to really see a good return on audio.

[00:37:20] And there's such growth in the audio book market, whereas the e-book market in the US particularly, also in the UK and beginning to in other parts of the world, it's there, you know, it's fairly set. There is some growth, but it's slow. Whereas audio books are still growing rapidly. Young people love them. People are commuting listen to them. They used to be for older people, people who couldn't read, the sight issue again, but they've completely moved out of that now.

[00:37:51] Matty: You had mentioned ALLi's recommendation of ACX for production. Is it possible to use ACX for production and still take advantage of some of these other platforms?

[00:38:01] Orna: I should have mentioned, as always, non-exclusivity is our recommendation always. So ACX, one of the problems we have with them is KDP will encourage you to go exclusive into KDP Select, but they won't punish you if you don't. ACX does to some degree, and your return on your books really drops with Audible if you don't go exclusive. So it goes down to 25% versus 40 if you are exclusive. Nonetheless, we recommend non-exclusive and going wide in audio as in everything else, because it's a slower build but over time you will see far more results because, I'm not going to go into now, but exclusivity generally is not a good look, whether it's ebook, print, or for audio. So yes, use ACX but also use the others.

[00:39:04] Matty: There's sort of a comparable thing here, I think, between in the e-book world, there's KDP and Draft2Digital as an example. In the print world there's KDP and IngramSpark. In the audio world there's ACX and Findaway as an example of an alternative. Am I understanding that correctly?

[00:39:25] Orna: That's exactly right. And then it's not either, or it's both. So, yeah, instead of thinking of it as do I use this one or I do I use that one, when the answer is always use both. Use as many as you can, time and money allowing, as many formats, as many outlets, that is the general rule of thumb.

[00:39:45] Matty: Yeah. I'm realizing I may rethink how I'm treating my audio books because for the last two I hired a narrator directly. I paid them directly based on finished hour. And then they graciously loaded those documents onto Findaway for me. But I realized I'm I think distributing to Amazon through Findaway rather than I could uncheck it on. Findaway, I think, and go in and load it on ACX but choose the non-exclusive option on ACX. Note to self to fix that.

[00:40:23] Orna: Because you will already be on the reduced rate of 25%, but then you will also be paying Findaway's 30% of the 25. Also like most of the platforms there's often by going direct you can be put in for things that you won't necessarily be able to avail of if you are distributed by the aggregator. And this is again a general rule, it doesn't apply across the board, but most platforms when you upload directly, there are marketing tools and things that you can take advantage of, and you get communications and things from those services that when you go through aggregators you don't. So, yeah, but I definitely would recommend you go direct to ACX. It does make sense.

[00:41:11] Matty: I'm realizing that another benefit I think, is that for the books before Findaway became a thing, early on when I was doing audio books and I was doing them all through ACX, then pretty soon they would show up link to my e-book and for all my other books that were distributed that way, if somebody buys the e-book, they get the audio book for a vastly reduced rate. And so, especially when the e-books were on sale, like let's say I ran a sale for an e-book at 99 cents. And then people could always add on the audio book for 7.49, I think. So it was a good deal. And I don't see that for the books that I've done through Findaway, but I imagine that if I went direct to ACX, perhaps that option would show up for those books as well.

[00:41:55] Orna: Exactly. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. And that it's true for all the platforms, generally speaking, when it comes to aggregators. And then on Amazon, you've got this nice link between the e-book and the audio book through Whispersync so if you leave off the audio book and then you want to read your book and bed at night, it'll actually pick up where you left off on the audio, and then you get up the next morning, get into your car, and it would pick up where you left off on the e-book the previous nights. So all of that is very, very nice from a reader or listener's perspective.

[00:42:30] Matty: This is one of these things where whenever I learn something like this, and I'm always weighing retrospectively the pros and cons of now going back and fixing it, or just having this be a lesson learned going forward. I don't know that there's an answer to this question. It's just, the perennial question of indy authors is you learn a better way and then you have to weigh do you go back and fix it or do you just figure, well, that's water under the bridge. I'm just going to apply that lesson going forward.

[00:42:55] Orna: Yeah, it's a hard one. My general rule, and this has nothing to do with ALLi, this is just me as an author, my general rule is if there's money involved, I do it retrospectively. If it's just a lot of administration, unless it's something important, I generally say, okay, live and learn.

[00:43:14] Matty: Yeah, that sounds like a good measuring stick to use. And based on what you'd said earlier, ISBN for audio books as well, or do you purchase those through Bowker or Nielsen?

[00:43:25] Orna: Yeah, what's the same just audio book. It's just another format to the same distributor for the same ISBN agency.

[00:43:33] Matty: Yup. So each time you register an ISBN, you assign it to the title. One of the questions is what's the medium, and so you would just assign one of the ISBN, but you would assign it as an audio book.

[00:43:42] Orna: That's exactly right.

[00:43:46] Matty: Other thoughts about production for audio books?

[00:43:50] Orna: Quality is really important. So you will be rejected if the quality isn't there. It's another reason to work with narrators who have proper microphones and record in proper conditions and stuff like that. So quality control is high. There are lots of delays at the moment at ACX. So do not plan a launch based on an assumption that your audio book is going to be ready in a very short time, because at the moment it's taking them quite a long time to get, in some cases it's been months. It's just worth taking note of.

[00:44:22] If you find a narrator you like, it can be worthwhile sticking with that person and developing a relationship. And I think it's another art form. So there's a lot of learning. I would really recommend that you would have gone through the e-book process at least once, if not twice and print before turning to audio. Trying to learn all three at once on a first book, I mean, it can be done. It has been done by better people than me, but certainly I would get myself into a right old tizzy if I tried to do them all at once, because they are very different processes. The audio is very different from others.

[00:45:02] So from that point of view, I think, there's no rush here. That's what I always tried to impart for people who are starting out. You feel like you're in a hurry, you feel like I've got to get my first book done, then I'd go to my second, my third, and I've got to get into all these different formats and so on. And all of that is true. You do need to do all that if you're going to have a successful indy author business. But you don't need to do it all at once. And you're much better, and much more likely to stay there, if you ease off a bit, in terms of the time pressure. Give yourself the time to enjoy the process and to learn the process and embed it.

[00:45:41] The other tip I would give you is write everything down in your own language. All of the platforms are fantastic, you know, pages where they tell you what to do and how to do it, and they really are very good and very clear. But there are lots of things you will learn along the way that you may forget next time out. So just write everything down for yourself in your own way.

[00:46:02] On this is good because once you've started producing a few books, and you start to see an income flow, you may well assign the upload or even aspects of the production of the books to an assistant or somebody else. And so if you have your process very clearly documented, that's really helpful for them.

[00:46:24] Matty: Great. Well, I think that is a great note to end our discussion about production on. So, Orna, thank you so much. Please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and ALLi and all you offer on this.

[00:46:36] Orna: Yes. So ALLi is the Alliance of Independent Authors and we're at AllianceIndependentAuthors.org because we're a non-profit organization. And I'm Orna Ross. I wrote novels and poetry. I had also some nonfiction and I'm at OrnaRoss.com.

[00:46:55] Matty: Great. Thank you, Orna.

[00:46:57] Orna: Thanks, Matty.

Matty Dalrymple 10/19/21 Matty Dalrymple 10/19/21

Episode 102 - The Second Process of Publishing: Design with Orna Ross

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Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors joins me for the second of a series of seven episodes devoted to the Seven Processes of Publishing. This week the focus is on Design. We talk about cover design, and how it needs to be not a work of art but a billboard that will appeal to your target readers. We discuss the importance of a professional cover designer who will understand the tropes of your genre and options for making that path affordable. And we talk about book formatting, including the tools that are available to indy authors to effortlessly create the various file types needed by the online platforms.

Episode Links

Personal Update

Alliance of Independent Authors SelfPubCon

For links to Matty's upcoming and recent events, click here.

Interview

https://www.ornaross.com/

https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/

150 Self-Publishing Questions Answered: ALLi’s Writing, Publishing, & Book Marketing Tips for Authors and Poets (Publishing Guides for Indie Authors 5) (affiliate link)

Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to this second in the series of the Seven Processes of Publishing and I'm here with Orna Ross. Hey Orna, how are you doing?

[00:00:08] Orna: Hi, Matty. I'm very well. How are you?

[00:00:10] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. As I mentioned, we're on to the second of the seven processes, the first being Editorial, and now we're on to Design.

[00:00:19] And this is really, what does the inside and what does the outside of the book look like? And I'm going to start out with cover design. And one of the things that I thought was very interesting, I'm going to use this as kind of an entree to this conversation is, in the book 150 SELF PUBLISHING QUESTIONS ANSWERED, which is where much of this material can also be found, there was the conversation about cover design: billboard or work of art. Do you want to talk a little bit about what you think of when you think of cover design, billboard, or work of art?

[00:00:51] Orna: Yeah. The function of a cover design is so sophisticated now and covers are so beautiful. I mean, to see just how much design has moved on. It's really interesting to look back at covers say 10 years ago and just what is possible now is just amazing. Digital publishing has enabled extraordinarily beautiful covers. But it isn't really the function of a cover to be beautiful. That is all very well. But if it doesn't work as a cover if it doesn't do the billboard thing, then it's a failure, no matter how beautiful the cover is.

[00:01:34] So I think we've got to always be thinking about our cover as the vehicle that will cause the reader to look further into the book. A cover doesn't actually sell a book, but what it does is it's the first step towards the sale, and that's what we've got to think of. It. It's got to be an attractor. It's got to speak to the reader that you want to attract to your books. There's absolutely no point in somebody picking up the book because they like the cover if they don't read it. I mean, it's fine, but it's not what you're after. You want them to pick up the book and go further. You want that cover to speak about some emotional connection that you are trying to have with the reader. It's really a bridge between your heart and the reader's heart. That's what the cover should be.

[00:02:30] Matty: Are there some markers that people can look for or red flags they should watch out for if they're starting to think through, maybe they're finishing up their first book and they're thinking through what they want the cover to look like, they're thinking that they might want to ask a professional cover designer for, any tips to lead them more to the billboard than to the work of art?

[00:02:50] Orna: Yeah. So I think in these early stages of the publishing process, the same thing we were talking about editorial last time, you're moving from being the writer of the book, which calls on all sorts of skills and ways of being in relation to the material, into being the publisher of the book, which calls for a completely different set of skills and ways of relating to the material.

[00:03:16] So the first thing is to begin that process of objectivity that we talked about last time in relation to editorial. So with the editorial, it's about creating a distance through time or space and all the ways that we've discussed then. For cover design, it's the same. You've got to take two steps back and ask yourself all sorts of questions about the reader and what's going to attract the reader. But the main thing to do I think is to look at other authors in your genre. So go online. Go to the top 10, look at the book covers that are there. See what is actually attracting your ideal readers right at this moment and begin to break the cover down in your mind.

[00:04:02] So look at, okay, that's the image. That's the author name. That's the title. What sort of fonts are being used? What sort of colors are being used? And why? What are these, what's this image? What are these colors. What's the overall mood? What's it saying to the reader? Why were these particular choices made? What does this cover have in common with the other nine at the top 10? These kinds of questions I think are well worth beginning the exploration, long before you're finished your book, as you're writing.

[00:04:38] Matty: I think it kind of fun exercise is to subscribe to the reader email newsletters like BookBub and similar in your genre. Because a couple of times I found, you know, I'm subscribed to thriller, suspense, mystery kind of that set of genres. And it's surprising how often there are two and sometimes three almost identical covers in the list. And the one that I bring up a lot because I've collected a bunch of examples on The Indy Author Facebook page is the historical book with a woman in the red outfit from the back during World War II with the World War II planes in the sky and an identifiable architectural feature from either London or Paris in the background.

[00:05:21] And they're so similar. I mean, not similar in the sense of plagiaristically similar, but it is sending a very clear signal of, if you like this book with the woman in the red dress, you're going to like this book with a woman in the red dress, too. And it's very clear when you look through book lists like that, that are genre based, in addition to looking at the online retail pages, what those tropes are in your genre.

[00:05:45] Orna: Definitely. And I think it can be quite a process for some authors to get from the normal kind of relationship that a writer has with their own material to understanding that. So this is the kind of thing that if your trade published, you criticize your publisher for, but when you become an indy author and become a good publisher yourself, you actually begin to see the value all the time, like, why publishers do it. Because you're thinking about the reader or you're thinking they've got five or 10 seconds that they're going to spend looking at this cover.

[00:06:17] So there is no room for subtlety and, very often authors talk about, for example, she had a red dress on in the cover, but my heroine never wore a red dress all the way through. And that's not what a cover is about. It isn't about reflecting your book in that way. It's just about getting all the shorthand signifiers that say to the reader, this is a book you're going to enjoy. And it can be quite a journey for some writers to go from how they relate to their book as a writer to that.

[00:06:54] Matty: I think an interesting analogy is to think of it as like visual keywords. I don't think anyone's ever putting together their keywords and saying, I can't use that set of keywords. Everyone else has used those. I want a different and fresh set of keywords. No, you want to find all the keywords that match the other books that you. it would be comparably interesting to your readers. And the cover can be like the visual version of keywords.

[00:07:15] Orna: Such a good way to think about it. It really is. And that's because you're taking the art of it away and it is because we're thinking of either our own art in our own work or the artwork that's making up the image in the cover. That's really good. I'm going to, I'm going to use that one, Matty.

[00:07:34] Matty: You had mentioned the importance of thinking about why the covers work, looking through the top 10 in your genre and looking for the similarities and why they work. That's probably going to be comfortable to people who are not only writers but also have kind of an artistic bent. But if that's not your thing, are there any resources people can use to better understand the why of that?

[00:07:56] Orna: Yeah, we have a post on the Self-Publishing Advice blog, which is selfpublishingadvice.org and it's how to commission a designer. And in fact, we have a few key, big posts on design and book design and what it is and why it matters, so it's definitely worth checking those out.

[00:08:18] I think understanding cover design to becoming good at commissioning a designer and I suppose this is a good place to say, don't do your own book design please, unless you already are a book designer. Even if you're a graphic designer, don't do it unless you understand the composition of book design, because it's not just again about how it looks, it's about much more than that.

[00:08:44] But I think to understand that it's a process as well, commissioning good design, and as I spoke of in relation to editorial, I think we skip over the research process that is necessary here. So the more time that you spend looking at them, the more you're going to get a sense of the why, if you like, which lies behind those design choices.

[00:09:10] And it can also be an interesting exercise to read the book description in relation to the design of the cover and just see the way in which certain tropes and things that turn up again and again in book descriptions in your genre will also be turning up in the actual visuals. And all of this helps you to understand those kind of trigger points that make the reader take the action. So when you're thinking about your why, you're thinking about why would a reader actually, why would my ideal reader pick up this book?

[00:09:49] Matty: There are some conventions and I'm not going to remember them specifically, but for example, the type of font that's used, like serif versus sans serif font, or size of the font and things like that, that as a non-graphic designer, I might be responding to that as a reader, but I don't fully understand as an author, and so I think if people can maybe follow book design blogs or just keep a finger on the pulse of that. Or at least, maybe ask your book cover designer, when you get it back and the font is way bigger than you think looks nice, ask them why they did it. And they'll say, oh, so it will show up in a thumbnail, or whatever their answer is, to use that interaction as a learning experience as well.

[00:10:36] Orna: Definitely. Romance books for example, will tend to have swirlier fonts than techno thrillers. And that's a very kind of obvious distinction, but that kind of thing is going on all the time, and authors would say, why is the title bigger than my name, or why is my name bigger than the title? Usual convention would be, if you're an established author who has a platform that it in itself is going to attract readership, then the author name gets more billing. If it's your first book, first time out then your well-chosen title is probably going to get more billing. So there are things like that going on as well.

[00:11:16] But what I find with most writers is that they love design, you know, the creativity around design, they actually like to follow book design blogs and to learn more about book design and what's going on there because it is actually quite fascinating.

[00:11:31] Matty: It is interesting to see the effect, and then why, have professionals explain why it's giving the effect that it has? I know a lot of book cover designers will ask clients or prospective clients to provide them with covers that they like. Might that lead down the wrong path if the author doesn't have a good sense themselves about it?

[00:11:54] Orna: I think the question they usually tend to ask for is the covers that you want the end design to emulate onto to explain why. So again, it's back to this question of why, so an experienced designer would be able to take all your amateur author kind of assessments of the covers, and from that get a sense of something that should go into the cover, of which they will obviously know the genre tropes and stuff like that, because you would have chosen a designer who is suitable for your genre. Did we say that point? That's really important that you get a designer who has experience in your actual genre, so they'll be able to take your responses and your sense of what you're doing.

[00:12:41] And designers are very good at ignoring you as well. You'll find we'll come up with all sorts of things, ideas and stuff, and they'll kind of ignore that and they come out with something. And the power of a good visual is very powerful, but of course you may not always love what they come up with.

[00:13:00] My own designer who I've worked with since I began indy publishing, which is now a decade ago, she has said to me that it is really important to her always that as well as everything else working, that the author likes that the end result is really key for her. And I think for me, as I said, publishing, also one of the reasons I left trade publishing was I hated the covers that they did so much. And I know why they did them, and I know how they were positioning the book in the marketplace, and I know which was successful and worked and all of that. And I'm grateful for that part, but I also know it's horrible to hate your cover because you just never feel great handing the book over to somebody or inviting them to read it.

[00:13:45] So I think as an indy author, one of the perks of the job is that you love your covers. So they have to work commercially, but you also have to like them. So if you don't, it's back to the drawing board. And most designers will give you couple of worlds and won't settle it down too much at the start. It can be exploratory and stuff at the beginning, so there's room to change things up.

[00:14:11] Matty: I had an interesting experience with my first Ann Kinnear cover. It was the first book I had published, and at the time I think that when the designer asked me to provide covers that I liked, there's an edition of the Patricia Highsmith books where there's an image, but it's not a clear image, it's an architectural detail that's used as a design element. So if you look carefully, you realize it's a spiral staircase or something like that, but when you're just glancing at it, it just looks like a design element. And I love the covers of those books. And I gave him those, I said, I love this idea of the architectural element as a design feature, and I gave him the summary of the book, which is this woman who can sense spirits and has a consulting business around that.

[00:14:58] And so I got the first one back and it was a Gothic house on a hill with a creepy tree, a moon and then hands around a crystal ball. I was like, no, no! Where's my design element? And looking back, I realize that would have been a totally legitimate, and this was like an experienced, pretty well-known cover designer, that would have been a totally legitimate choice depending on how I wanted to position my book.

[00:15:29] But part of my pitch for my book was that sure she can talk to dead people, but it's in the context of this otherwise very normal world. She has a consulting business, that's like a CPA and she has a business manager and it's not like the woo-woo Ouija board kind of thing. And so I feel like if I had gone with that, I probably would have sold a lot of books initially, but then the story wouldn't have paid off the expectation that the cover set.

[00:15:58] And so, I initially did find a cover designer who did the single architectural element. And even though I recognize that I may be losing some sales because they don't jump out at people the way hands around a crystal ball would, I feel like the story's paying off the expectations the cover sets, and like you're saying, I just love showing people those books because I love the design. Any thoughts about that story?

[00:16:24] Orna: Yes, very much because back to my story of why I didn't like the covers, it was the trade publishing thing. It was very much that. So the book sold well, but I very much felt I wasn't building a readership because it was always this disjunction and people were constantly saying to me, I only bought your book because somebody said I should. I would never would have thought I would enjoy it because of the cover, but I actually did enjoy it. And of course the contrary happened probably more often. People bought the book expecting one sort of reading experience and got quite a different reading experience.

[00:17:02] And I think it's shortsighted, and I understand why trade publishing does it because they mostly are working through the bookstore model and you've only got a short period of time in which to move the books off the shelf, or the booksellers sending them back, and so you do this. But I think in the long-term it doesn't do the author or the publisher any favors really, because you're not building that readership. And in these days where you've got customer reviews, when people get a book that the reading experience doesn't match the cover and they're very quick to say, you know, you get your one-star review, not because the book is bad, but because the reader expected something quite different.

[00:17:45] So, I think it's really, it's the single most important thing I think is that you're positioning your book correctly in the marketplace. And as we said, that takes a bit of research. That is a skill. That's not something that most of us as authors, lots of authors, are not very visual, we're verbal and not brilliant on visuals. And so that whole way in which the visual elements of the cover are positioning your book is something that you need, it's a skill you need to develop, and your designer can hopefully help you to do that.

[00:18:21] Matty: So for people who are convinced that a professional is the way to go but they don't have boatloads of cash to sink into it, let's start with the most expensive, tips about working with a professional designer who's creating a cover specifically for your book, and then if you could work through some of the maybe more financial accessible options as well.

[00:18:41] Orna: Yeah. I think the main thing in terms of saving money and making sure it's as cost-effective as possible in terms of the designer that you're working with is to respect their time. So the more you can give them up front, so we've spoken about providing your book description and providing a sense of what you want the cover to convey and having a clear idea of who your target reader is and going for somebody who already has experience in your genre and giving them some samples of book covers that you like yourself and explaining why. All of these things that we have discussed, these are ways in which you can actually make sure the process is as cost-effective as possible, because if it takes extra time or the designer has to do lots of different rounds, actually, sometimes it means that it's more expensive, but it can also mean it's over, because there's something about the nature of the whole commissioning and design and production process that, it's a way, even if you have to go back at it too many times, it kind of goes out the window, and taking care of that level is important.

[00:19:48] And pre-made designs are a possibility that some people use. So these are not templates that are just a made up beforehand, but what they are is designs that a designer has produced in advance. They are relatively inexpensive, they are there, and you choose it, and the designer sells it to you with maybe some small modifications or no modifications, you're happy with it, off you go. It's a unique design, it's not going to turn up somewhere else. It's not like they're selling it and it's not like they print and sell a hundred of them. And it could be a more cost-effective option.

[00:20:25] You can try some of the marketplace sites where you can actually get designs, and sometimes good designs, really quite cheaply. So Fiverr and places like that. You need to be careful there though that you know what you're doing and that you have a very clear idea of the brief and that you are hiring somebody that's able to deliver. But you can actually get surprisingly cost-effective cover designs. And some designers who work in different countries where the cost of living is not so high, and they are prepared to actually give you really quite amazingly good cover designs at a really reasonable price.

[00:21:07] So those are some of the ways in which you can make sure that it doesn't cost you a ridiculous amount of money.

[00:21:14] Matty: One thing that I had not thought of before, but I was so excited about this realization that I've mentioned it a couple of times on the podcast already, but the idea that image design and typography are sort of two different skills. And so I thought of it because you were mentioning the fact that designers who are working in other countries where the cost of living is lower can often be less expensive, but oftentimes English isn't their first language. And I know with one of my designers, I almost put a book out that had a typo in the back cover text, because English wasn't his native language.

[00:21:48] And not only just the correctness of it, but I do think it is a completely different skillset. And I feel really fortunate that my current cover designer for the Ann Kinnear books is very good at both of those. But if I were spinning up a new series or going to a new designer, I would definitely consider having somebody do the design and then, I actually feel like I would have more of a flair for typography. I don't have any flair for the visual design part but working in some other way on the typography part, so you're sure you're getting the best of both worlds.

[00:22:21] Orna: Yeah. Any creative kind of ways of approaching it that makes sense, it's the joy being indy, do whatever works for you best. And some of us are working with very tight budgets, especially at the beginning. So this is an area where you can spend thousands if you're not careful. You do need to be careful, and you do need to remember that it is just the function of the cover to sell the book to the reader and to get their interest. So not to overspend is important.

[00:22:52] Matty: I wanted to grab a couple of my books because I wanted to use them to illustrate something.

[00:22:57] One was your comment about getting on a cover designer's schedule early. And I definitely found that with my current designer for my Ann Kinnear books, and I'll describe it so people are listening can follow along. So this is the cover that I ended up after I rejected the house on the hill with the creepy tree and the crystal ball.

[00:23:16] So it's a, a brass doorknocker in the shape of a hand. And I've had this rebranded a couple of times, mainly just by having the font changed. So when it first came out, it was a scripty font. And then there was this brief period where it was this kind of big, jagged font. And then, I just recently got it rebranded with this font that I think does a nice job of combining a classic look, but sort of retro as well.

[00:23:42] Orna: The whole cover, elegant is the word that jumps out at me. It's beautiful.

[00:23:47] Matty: Thank you. And I liked it because people who have the earlier versions would recognize this as the same book they have, but it's still freshened up. And then the nice thing about that was, once I'd established this, I just want, you know, I want a central design element, then it was very easy to basically just find photos. So the second one is a kind of similar thing in this case, it's the doorknob that's the central design element. I have one that has an aviation theme and so a broken aviation instrument is the central theme. And then this padlock has a connection to the story as well.

[00:24:23] And so, if I have to book my cover designer far in advance, I could be only partway through the story, and she says, okay, you're at the top of the list, and I can say, there's a padlock on it. And so it saves her time, and it saves me money because she doesn't have to start from scratch each time. She knows it's going to be this font and it's going to be this placement, and once we've decided what the central image is, it's a relatively fast process. So that ability to kind of repeat a design I think is a time and cost savings.

[00:24:57] And then the other book I wanted to show is the first of my Lizzy Ballard series. And I had gotten the designer for this from 99designs and I did an open contest. So with the Ann Kinnear books, I had a really clear idea of what I wanted the cover to look like. For the Lizzy Ballard books, I didn't have clue one what I wanted the cover to look like. And so I did an open contest and so I was getting a lot of entries and then I could vote and tell people which ones I liked and didn't like and ended up with one that I love. But I found it was very dark, and the subtleties that I loved about it in the design made it not successful as a book cover because it really faded into the background. And so fairly recently I went back to the designer, and I said, could you brighten it up a bit? And he came back with a cover that was brighter, and also, I think more consistent with the covers of two and three, which he also did.

[00:25:49] Being able to loop back and freshen up covers, I think, or regroup a little bit, if it's not working is important. What are some markers that people should be looking out for that would make them revisit a cover?

[00:26:04] Orna: Well, if you're not selling, if you're not converting, particularly if you know that you've had people land on your page but not convert, or land on your cover and not go any further, I think that's the big one. And I had that experience with the cover. When we changed the cover, it was an instant change. So I had commissioned the cover. It was a mother and a daughter story. I'd wanted a mother and daughter on the cover and the designer did exactly what I asked. And I liked the cover. They liked the cover, blah, blah, blah. Just did not work, just died a death. And we changed it and immediately the sales started. So it totally was a cover issue, and the replacement was completely different. It was completely different.

[00:26:50] If you're not selling, I would say, do look at your cover. First of all, also fresh in your descriptions, but do look up at your cover. And if it is vastly different to what's around it, so covers change over time. And if your book is looking very different in a lineup, you might want to think about why that is, compared to other books in its genre. And you might be happy to leave it, if it's selling well. And sometimes standing out can be a good thing. Not being the fourth red dress but being like different to can actually be a good thing.

[00:27:28] So there's no hard and fast rule about covers on, it's not a science, it's very much an art. And so it's very difficult to give absolute instructions about what does work and what doesn't work, because while you are going for a certain effect. It's an emotional response and it's not going to be the same for everyone.

[00:27:50] If you get feedback on a cover, people find it distasteful or inappropriate or whatever. I mean, if it's one person, not at all. But if you're getting regular feedback from people that they have to get beyond the cover and people will tell you that. It's something that readers will say to you. I really had to get beyond your cover. And I'm so glad that I did because blah, blah, blah. That might make you want to look at it again.

[00:28:18] And the other thing that happens is covers get stale. Like you, any book I've had that's been around for a good while has had a refresh. They've all been refreshed over time. I think you love it one year, but three years later, you don't necessarily cause it's like fashion. Why do we suddenly start wearing yellow? And you look around and everybody's wearing yellow, and you realize, oh gosh, I was caught again by fashion. It's like that, you don't know why these trends change, but they do change and your book, begins to feel stale. And if it's feeling that way to you, it's probably feeling that way to readers as well. So those are some of the multiple reasons why you might make a change.

[00:29:33] Matty: Are there any differences in advice you would give about cover design if someone is only planning on publishing an ebook or they want maybe different covers for ebook or print. Any distinction that people should make based on the medium in which the book is going to be printed?

[00:29:51] Orna: I think it's best to have consistency across audio, print, and ebook, and keep them consistent, generally speaking. If you're only doing ebook, then you can get away with a very simple cover. The ebooks, people don't have quite the same cover expectations, and they're not going to hold it in their hand. And digital audio is the same, not going to hold it in their hand. When a book is going into print, the cover, everything about the design becomes more complex, and will take more of your time, more of your energy to get it right. So with an ebook, you can get away with a simpler sort of approach.

[00:30:29] And I think you need to also decide, we had an interesting thing within ALLi with some of our covers where there was a discussion about making them more like self-help, self-improvement, or more like an organization's instructional books. Authority on the one side versus friendliness on the other end, which you're going to go for.

[00:30:55] And these are also the kinds of decisions that you have to make as an author whereby you might not be making the decision that is just about which cover is going to sell more. You might have other reasons why you will want your covers to convey something to the reader that you need to keep in mind. I think the most important thing with the cover is to have the confidence to go with your gut and then have the confidence to change it if it doesn't work out. But across formats, I feel myself that keeping it consistent is good.

[00:31:27] Matty: What kind of elements where you debating or considerations where you debating between the authoritative organizationally sponsored thing versus the self-help, and which did you come down on?

[00:31:40] Orna: We decided to go with the authority thing, for now anyway, because a lot of the books that we publish, they're not quick, fast reads. And we do have a short guide series, which are quick reads about one specific thing, like getting a book into libraries or getting your first reviews or ISBN, just short, sharp, just one thing. So we do have books like that.

[00:32:04] But our general guides tend to be quite longer, they take in a glossary, you know, the organization has done a lot of work, done a lot of research around best practice and so on. And we felt that should be reflected in the books as well as just saying, okay, we might get more sales if we had a more kind of sexy puppy picture or something on it but at the end of the day, it's like what you were talking about earlier. There is the expectation then, and you'd almost need to have slightly different books when they opened up, you know? So, yeah, we went for the authority in the end.

[00:32:46] Matty: I had to ask about rights because I couldn't really talk to you without talking about IP and rights. So when it comes to materials that are used in a book cover, what should an author keep an eye on and what do they need to keep tabs on or manage themselves versus what can they rely on a cover designer to keep tabs on and manage?

[00:33:07] Orna: Well, I think, as businesspeople, we need to keep rights issues to the front of our minds, always, in terms of respecting our own rights and also respecting the rights of other creative professionals, and so there is a fairly standard sort of rights set up with the images that are provided for your book cover. So your designer generally retains the rights but gives you the publishing licensing rights. And so you can do what you need to do as the author. Sometimes authors want to buy those rights out, in which case you should be prepared to pay more because, as I say, it's about respecting other creative professionals' work.

[00:33:52] Sometimes designers can get very uptight about what you can and can't do, but actually that's often because they don't understand book publishing and what is necessary. So, you know, reproducing postcards, posters, this kind of thing, you need to ensure that you have the rights to do all of the things that you need to do to market the book and use the cover appropriately within the marketing of your book. So these are all things that you need to be aware of as you go through the process. And really, the onus is on you as always with rights issues, to make sure that you're properly informed and that you're following best practices.

[00:34:35] Matty: I understand that it's still not all that common for an author and cover designer to have a contract, which kind of surprised me. Can some of these things, if in the spec that you provide to the cover designer, you include things in that email, let's say, like, I assume you'll pull visual resources from these sites, or just be aware, I'm planning on printing this on mugs and magnets. So, you know, I'm expecting to use it beyond just the book cover. Is that a reasonable step for authors to take to try to protect themselves on these things?

[00:35:09] Orna: Yeah, I think so. I'm a great believer in getting as much information as possible in upfront so everybody knows where they stand, and with anyone who's experienced these, there's very little that's going to cause any problems around rights because it's all very well worked out in terms of his normal best practices, very established. So there shouldn't be any issues. But sometimes you have inexperienced designers or inexperienced publishers who don't quite know what's what. So, yeah, once it's written down in an email, that's as good as a fancy contract to doubly signed and exchanged. Once it's written, it's there in writing and it's clear that you agreed. what your contract expectations were.

[00:35:54] The main thing I think is to educate yourself so you know what your expectations should be. And so you're going in with confidence that what you're asking for is reasonable. And if you have any questions about anything like that, ALLi can always help, so don't hesitate to ask.

[00:36:12] Matty: One of the things that I like about working with professionals through platforms like Reedsy or Upwork, those are the two primary ones I use, is that assuming you're keeping your communications to those platforms as they encourage you to do, you have a history of all of that. And so if there turns out to be some question, you can go back and say, no, on June 1st, 2019, I told you that I was going to be using this on t-shirts and mugs, and there isn't any question. That log will always be there.

[00:36:40] Orna: Absolutely. I think it's well worth paying the price for the split of marketplaces just for that alone. And they always have these safeguards built in to protect both you and the person you're hiring. As a publisher, you can find yourself hiring quite a few people across the seven stages of the process. So if you are using a platform like that, it's also much easier to keep track of what's going on than it is on conventional email.

[00:37:16] Matty: So we've talked a little bit about how you can get a good, high quality and professional exterior that's going to appeal to the readers that you want to reach. So we wanted to talk also about the other side of design, which is book formatting. And I think that this conversation has probably changed a lot over the last five years or so. I know for me, the way I go about this has definitely changed because of the tools that are more readily accessible to authors themselves to deal with this. Do you have recommendations or does ALLi have recommendations about how people go about this?

[00:37:49] Orna: It depends on what you want as an outcome. So most authors of straightforward text-based books, like novels or a straightforward type to nonfiction or something that doesn't have illustrations. And what most of us are looking for is the simplest, most cost effective, most non-noticeable interior. So if you don't notice anything too much about the interior because everything is just fine and it's not going to trip anybody up and it looks good. It's clean, it's crisp, the reader can read it and they're happy with it.

[00:38:24] And the tools are just amazing now. I mean, you can get just fantastic formatting for your ebook and there are no excuses anymore really, just brilliant, brilliant tools. You mentioned Vellum. I'm a Vellum believer as well. And it's fantastic software, but there are lots of them. And we have a directory of approved partners and formatters and softwares in there. And if you want something a bit more unusual, though, or if you do illustration books or you're a children's author or poet and your needs may be different, and you may need to hire a professional who will lay out the book in a certain way.

[00:39:07] I've heard authors say that they don't like using software because your book ends up looking like so many other books and readers don't like that. But to be honest, I don't think we just even notice that. A lot of the time, readers have not conscious even of design and formatting, unless it doesn't work or unless it is calling attention to itself for all the wrong reasons. I don't think readers tend to notice it. So I wouldn't let that be a worry, myself.

[00:39:36] So if you're a novelist, if you're a non-fiction writer who's doing a straight textbook, I really would recommend that you wrap your head around one of the many good formatting solutions that are out there, and you save yourself a ton of money. But more than that, you get the thing that the indy author loves, which is control. So if you pay a formatter or if you pay a typesetter for your print book, then that's it. You get the files; they have set up the files. You often don't know what tool they use to do it, and if you need to change anything, you have to go back and ask for it again. And you have to pay. And it's not just the money. It's also the inconvenience.

[00:40:18] Whereas if you have done the formatting yourself using one of these tools, then you just hop in and make your change. So if you find a typo or something, that doesn't require you to be sending files off to somebody else to get them to do and send it back, which is work they don't even want to be doing really. And I think that's our core recommendation really.

[00:40:37] But, if it's a specialist book, then it's going to need specialist treatment. And also, we have members who just love making really beautiful books, you know, so the interior is extremely important to them, and they want all the individual elements, and they take a real interest in making the book, which is very much part of their creation process. If that's you, then that's a different thing.

[00:41:05] Matty: When I weigh the satisfaction, I would get out of doing that with the time and effort, I choose not to do it, but I can understand why people would want to make that effort for a print book. But for an ebook, it just seems like trying to do it yourself. I don't know. I remember listening to a cooking show once and they said that they had tried to make Triscuits. I'm like, why would you try to make Triscuits? Like, just buy Triscuits. They're pretty much perfect the way they are. You don't need designer Triscuits.

[00:41:33] And I think of eBooks the same way. It's going to look different anyway, right? It's not like you do an ebook and then it's beautiful and that's how every reader is going to see it. No, it's going to be different if they're on a phone or an iPad or a Kindle or a Nook or how big they've made the font or which font they've selected. So I imagine there are people who are focused on that for the print book but are willing to let it go for the ebook. Or are they also spending that much time on the ebook as well?

[00:41:57] Orna: Again, depends. So you're absolutely right I think again, when it comes to a fairly straightforward book, but if you're a children's author, for example, you will take a lot of interest, more and more. It wasn't an issue for a long time, but now kids grow up, you know, they're born with iPads in their hand. So you may find yourself spending just as much time on the ebook design and making sure as much as possible that it works the way you want it to work. And so on.

[00:42:30] So on there is fixed format E books also, which people are sometimes creating. So it does depend. There are certain kinds of textbooks that are heavily illustrated that people will take a lot of trouble on the ebook, just as much as own on the print book. And I think that's something we're seeing more and more as technology gets better and better, and the reading technology, I mean, more than the production technology. As it improves, then the same sort of care that's going into print books is now going into e-books.

[00:43:08] Matty: One of the other benefits that I see of a program like Vellum and many others I'm sure are that you press a button and you get all the different types of files you need so that you get an epub, you can get the files that depending on the metadata you've entered are specific to upload to Amazon, specific upload to Barnes and Noble, Google Play, all the different platforms. So that, for example, if you get to the end of an e-book and someone clicks on a link to get the next in the series they're being sent to the appropriate store, not some store they want to have nothing to do with.

[00:43:39] And one of those was always mobi files. So can you talk a little bit about, the brief history of mobi files and what the status of mobi files is today and how they're used?

[00:43:48] Orna: Yeah. I think mobi is probably on the way out. So it's not something to worry about. And new authors, if you haven't heard about it before, don't worry. And so mobi was, it was Amazon's proprietorial format, not was, it is, it's still very live. Don't get me wrong, it's still there, but you had to have mobi files for publishing on Kindle for some years and you no longer do, you can publish on Kindle using an epub file.

[00:44:21] So mobi is, it's still in existence, but it's not something we need to worry about. And I think epub has become the standard electronic file and it’s cross-referrable. As you rightly say, Vellum provides the different ones for the different stores, but in theory an epub file travels across all the different requirements across the web. And if you can create an epub file now, you should pretty much be able to go anywhere with that file. and see it uploaded, and see it uploaded well.

[00:44:57] Matty:

[00:44:57] The one area where I find I still need mobis is when I'm sending in like an emailing copy to someone who's using a Kindle and they need to sideload it. Is that still a thing or is that kind of an old-fashioned issue to be worrying about?

[00:45:12] Orna: Well, it is a thing because lots of people have Kindles forever. Kindle isn't like similar technology that's changed after a year and which will remain nameless, you know, that you upgrade all the time. The Kindle readers, and readers generally, they come very attached to their reader. Kobo as well. You know, whatever your reader is, you become very attached to it, and you see they're very simple technology, so they don't tend to break. And so readers whose Kindle can only read mobi need that mobi file.

[00:45:46] Matty: The last thing that I wanted to talk about, well, actually there may be two more things. There are two more things. The next to the last thing I wanted to talk about was large print. So I know when I first started using an e-reader, I thought, oh, well, this is perfect. You know, the people who used to have to rely on the small percentage of books that ended up being offered in large print now are going to go to Kindle. That's so nice for them. And then, via our mutual friend, Joanna Penn, I was hearing that she was having good luck with a large print, and I decided to do that too, because the time investment and the money investment was fairly small. I just had to go back to my cover designer and ask for a large print version of the book. And I had to generate a large print interior that using Vellum. Is large print something that you continue to see being worth authors investing their time in?

[00:46:36] Orna: Yes. It's like so many things, when something new comes along and people think that's the death of an old thing. And we generally seems to happen as it sits in beside what was already there. And people don't move, and readers particularly are quite a conservative bunch. They're not quick to, some are, but there's a great big tranche of readers who don't read on ebook and don't ever intend to. So large print, I think like you, I completely agree, it's very little extra investment to create a large print edition, to create a hardback edition, using Vellum and all the other tools.

[00:47:16] So why wouldn't you? If there are readers out there who only like to read in large print or only can read in large print, so it's an accessibility issue as well, you're providing books for readers who can only read large print. They can't read small print. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you do that? We are seeing people doing really well with their large print books. Yeah.

[00:47:39] Matty: You had mentioned the other thing that I wanted to talk about, which was hardcover. So it's something that I keep considering. And the times that I've seen illustrations of other people who have gotten hard cover books, it hasn't been appealing to me because it's been just the cover printed on the cover, and it looks like a textbook to me. And it's like unpleasant flashbacks to grade school or junior high textbooks. But I understand that you can also get a dust jacket. I'm just curious as to your opinion on where hard covers are going. Is it worth it?

[00:48:16] Orna: Again, I think it is worth it. I think those kinds of things that you had, I think that's more a US thing, by the way, it must be something to do with US textbooks. I think it's more US associations outside of America. But the other thing is don't assume because you feel that way, that the reader feels that way.

[00:48:36] And again, it isn't a lot of money. It's not a lot of extra investment. And the thing about hardbacks is there isn't a rush to buy hardbacks in the sense that they generally cost more money and so on. But it can be really nice and showcase the thing. At some people accountably do well in hardback. So providing it as we're so lucky to have these print on demand tools that we can for very little, I mean, this sort of stuff used to cost thousands. You would have to that your minimum investment would be $2,000 to $3,000. And now that will be for a tiny book and then you had the whole distribution headache. We don't have any of that.

[00:49:20] Matty: Well, this is sort of a preview because our next episode is going to be on production, and we might be able to get into a little bit about where bookstores and libraries like to buy their books from and where they don't like to buy their books from.

[00:49:35] So Orna, thank you so much for that perspective on design. please let the listeners know where they could go to find out more about you and your work online.

[00:49:42] Orna: Sure. So I'm Orna Ross. I'm at OrnaRoss.com. And I'm also director of The Alliance of Independent Authors and that's an association for self-publishing writers and you'd find us at AllianceIndependentAuthors.org.

[00:50:00] Matty: Great. Thank you so much. And everyone should stay tuned for the next episode where we will be talking about production. Thank you, Orna.

[00:50:07] Orna: Thank you.

Matty Dalrymple 10/12/21 Matty Dalrymple 10/12/21

Episode 101 - The First Process of Publishing: Editorial with Orna Ross

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In this week's episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors joins me for the first of a series of seven episodes devoted to the Seven Processes of Publishing. This week the focus is on Editorial. We talk about the different stages of editing, and the importance of distinguishing the deepening and development process from the correction and clarification process. We discuss how you can gain distance from your work by experiencing it in a different time, place, or format. We discuss the different types of professional editing, and how to balance your opinion of your work with the opinions of others.

Episode Links

Personal Update

Alliance of Independent Authors SelfPubCon

Interview

https://www.ornaross.com/

https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/

150 Self-Publishing Questions Answered: ALLi’s Writing, Publishing, & Book Marketing Tips for Authors and Poets (Publishing Guides for Indie Authors 5)

Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: We're here for the first of our series of the seven processes of publishing. So, hello, Orna for rejoining us on The Indy Author Podcast!

[00:00:08] Orna: Hi Matty, delighted to be here, for this big project.

[00:00:12] Matty: Yeah, I'm delighted to have you back. And today in this first episode, we are going to be talking about the editorial process, but I thought that because ALLi doesn't consider the writing part specific to the seven processes of publishing, that's pre publishing, but I didn't want to overlook the writing portion. So obviously we could do another seven episodes on writing, but I thought just to ease us into the editorial discussion, are there any parts of the writing process that you think are especially important to prepare yourself and your manuscript best for the publishing processes that follow?

[00:00:51] Orna: Yeah. Sure, so obviously writing is the most important thing. By not including it in the publishing process is not in any way to say that it is a stage to be rushed or anything like that. On the contrary. So, I mean, officially the publishing process begins when you bring in the professional editors. But obviously writing still goes on after that, and we talk about that in a few moments, when we look at the formal editorial process, if you like. But it's really important to prepare your manuscript really, really well when you're a self-publishing writer. So it's always important, to do the very best you can.

[00:01:34] So, there are seven stages as you so rightly said to the writing process itself. And those end stages of the process for a self-publishing writer are more intense, I think, because you are going to be publishing your own work and that in a sense means that you have to get to a higher degree of perfection before somebody else sees it.

[00:01:59] So very often when you're submitting to traditional publishing, there is a whole series of sending it out, getting feedback, getting it back, getting it rejected, and if you're lucky, in the rejections, people will pick out some aspects. Or even if they don't, very often when it comes back, you'll read it again and you'll think, okay, I'll polish it up another bit before I send it out again. So very often there's self-editing processes going on in the submission. When you know you're going to publish yourself, you can rush things. I think that's the main thing I would like to say is, take it easy at the end.

[00:02:36] So after your first draft there at least two other drafts that you need to do. The first one is the deepening draft and it's best done when you've completed a first draft to your own satisfaction. It's best to put it away for a while and get some distance and then do a deepening draft.

[00:02:55] And the deepening draft is an elaboration. The first draft is for you to see what's there, explain it to yourself. The second, the deepening draft is about explaining it to everybody else. And so you identify gaps. And I think the most useful thing to do in this draft is to look at bits that you really like, pick out their shining qualities and then try to bring those qualities to the bits that you're not so happy with. So it's an elevation process, really.

[00:03:22] And so I always recommend that people go through, they begin after the first draft, after they rested the first draft, they begin by picking out the bits you like. Our inner critic is so alive that the first thing we want to do is correct, but actually strengthening your strengths is better, is equally important, but I actually think it's more important. You could argue that it's equally important, but for me, I think it's more important to recognize your strengths and to develop those and augment the awesome. This is how I like to think of it.

[00:03:56] And then the next draft is clearing the crap, so the correction draft then comes afterwards, the fixing up. And there's a lot of information and advice there about the correction, but not so much about strengthening what's good. And all of us as writers, we have strengths and weaknesses, and it really does help us to develop our craft and to recognize which aspects we are good at and which ones we need more support in. So the deepening draft, then the editing, the self-editing and clarification draft, and then there's all the finishing actions that we need to take to wrap it up as it were.

[00:04:39] And then I think the other thing that really is good to do before it goes to a professional editor is to get some form of beta reading done, whereby you send it out to some trusted people who know what they're talking about. You could give it to your family and friends, and you will get feedback there, that's fine, if you want to, if you have kind of family and friends that want to read it or will finish it or whatever. I don't. But if you do, great.

[00:05:05] I know that for a lot of people, they have family members kind of the first reader and their ideal reader. That's great if you have that. But go beyond that. Go to people who actually have some expertise, either who read a lot in your genre, or who actually are writers themselves in your genre or have worked as editors. The more they know about your specific kind of book, the more useful their feedback can be.

[00:05:30] So, send it out to I would say at least five trusted others and get some feedback. And as always with feedback, read it, absorb it, and see what makes sense to you. If a few people are saying the same thing, it's usually something to take note of and make some changes accordingly.

[00:05:49] They may suggest ideas for what you should do. You may accept that idea straight up, but more often what you'll do is say, I don't love the solution, but I do see the problem and then get stuck in there and solving it in your own way. And then you should be ready for a professional edit.

[00:06:08] Matty: I felt that one thing that I've learned over time is among my pool of people, my pre edit readers, my beta readers, I've started to realize what their focus is, what the focus of each of them is. So I have one beta reader who is great at the big picture, who can step back and say, I really felt like about a third of the way through there needed to be something else big that happened in order to sustain me through the following chapters. And so I'm always sure to give that person an early copy.

[00:06:40] And then I had the reader that's, more, I found a typo on page 75, and so I give that person later. So I think it's also important to adjust when you involve each of the readers at the point when their strengths and reading are going to do you the most good. Because it doesn't really help me to find the typos when I'm still trying to figure out the plot. And it doesn't really help me to find out a great plot idea when I'm at the end and it would be harder to adjust.

[00:07:05] Orna: Terrific tip. Yeah, really good. And I mean, this is great when you establish a team, when you've done more than one book, when you have a few books under your belt, and you get used to working with the same people. Yeah, it's fantastic when that happens, and you have dedicated readers. Because the relationship improves on their ability to read your work and to understand what you're trying to do, all of that improves as the relationship becomes more long-term so, yeah, that's really great.

[00:07:34] Matty: I always think it's interesting to hear people talk about writing because I'm almost always astounded, I'll hear authors whose work I love talk about it, and I just want to say, seriously, you can create a book doing that? I mean, the thing that strikes me every time is, I've interviewed a lot of crime fiction and thriller authors on the podcast and almost all of them are of the, and that I was so surprised when I found out who the murderer was family. And I think how can you possibly do that?

[00:08:03] And for me, I've always found that doing this full-time now and needing to be as efficient as I can, the more I outlined ahead of time, the fewer unproductive paths I went through, and that worked pretty well until the book that I'm trying to finish for the editor now. And so this is my, I guess, eighth or ninth novel. And I felt like it was getting more and more efficient by sort of going through and doing a very high level, you know, the whole story in 10,000 words, and then fleshing it out a little more. Now it's the whole story in 30,000 words and doing passes through it.

[00:08:41] But this time I feel like I stretched it out too long and now I'm really struggling to retain my interest in what is probably the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, I don't even know any more, pass through it. So I think it's just something that people have to keep an eye on and not get locked in and realize that something might've worked for three books and maybe not so much anymore and it's time to rethink.

[00:09:04] Orna: It's funny, isn't it? The way writing goes like that, and I think that kind of thing happens before leveling up. So usually a change in your process, a change in your way of doing things is a breakthrough at the craft level. It's usually my experience there's something there that's about to change and be different. So it's actually quite an exciting time. But finding your way through to a whole new way of doing things, it can feel quite painful actually, because you can feel a bit lost and confused until it rights itself.

[00:09:38] Matty: And I think the beta readers can play a great role in that, especially if they're trusted colleagues, but also generally fans of your work, because you can get done with the almost final draft and think, oh my God, this is so boring, who would want to read it? And then give it to people, and you can, it's very therapeutic to hear, as you said, you know, what you're good at.

[00:10:00] Orna: Yeah, and they see things you didn't see. And Michael La Ronn, I think I may have said this the last time I was on your podcast, but it really struck me and I'm always quoting him. Michael La Ronn is one of the ALLi team here. Novelist and nonfiction writer and poetry, he writes across the three genres, and he has a saying that the worst judge of a book is its author.

[00:10:24] Just forget it. If you're bored it does not mean somebody else is bored, if you think it's fantastic, it does not mean somebody else, or even you tomorrow, are going to think it's fantastic. Your opinion really isn't important at all. Just keep on moving through the process.

[00:10:41] Matty: Yeah. It's what the readers think that really counts in the end.

[00:10:45] Orna: Sure. And even then, what's it going to be? Some of them are going to like it and some of them aren't going to like it, and what do you even do with that except do the next book? So it is constantly that kind of keeping your eye on what needs to be done next rather than getting too lost. And I see this with new writers, I suppose I'm speaking particularly to people who may be listening who are on their first book, because I do see this a lot with people who are starting out. But there's great energy for the first draft and even a second or third pass through. But then there could be a reluctance to finish and get on with it, as it were, and you can get stuck in the writing and rewriting.

[00:11:30] And I'm not suggesting that's what's happening here with you at all because you're very experienced, that's different. But there can be a fear about putting your book out for the first time and you can get caught in a perfectionism that's not really improving it very much. You're just going round and round in circles really, and anything, any major improvements you're going to make has been done. There's nothing else for you to do. And the most useful thing for you as a writer is actually to get it up, get it out there, publish it, get some readers, get their feedback, get going on book number two. It's going to be much better for your development as a writer than doing another pass.

[00:12:07] Matty: Yeah. And I also liked the advice about letting it sit for a while because you can, if you're just slogging away, slogging away, slogging away, at some point, you're not going to have any new ideas. And I know you and Michael, although I think you have different recommendations for the duration of time to let it sit, but both have that common recommendation about letting it sit for some time.

[00:12:27] Orna: Yes. I suggest much longer than he does. You know, he had a heart attack when I was saying, if you can, leave it for a year and we'll go away and work on something else. But of course, Michael doesn't take Michael anything like that, it takes me a year to put a book together. It doesn't take him anything like that. So, I do think it's very useful to go away and work on something else and come back because we get so closed to the work, particularly, if we've been drafting and redrafting and you just don't see it clearly. And working on something else actually improves you craft a little bit, so when you come back, you're a bit better than you were when you were there previously. But it's really, you want enough distance to approach it like a reader rather than the person who authored it.

[00:13:17] Matty: It is fun sometimes, and I think I had this conversation with someone on the podcast fairly recently about going back. Of course, if you ever reread something you've put out before, like if you're preparing for a reading or something like that, and of course you're going to see things you want to fix, but then every once in a while, you do come across the things that are like, whoa, that's pretty good. I'm pretty proud of it. So that's fun too.

[00:13:44] So let's assume we've taken all these steps, we're at the point where it's as good as we and our beta readers can make it, and now we're looking at the professional edit. So talk a little bit about the different types of professional edits that are out there and what the differences are among them.

[00:13:59] Orna: Yeah. So, I mean, I think we touched on it a little bit already. I think of them as three. People break them down in different ways. So the way in which we break them down is threefold.

[00:14:09] So you've got the big picture and editor who looks at the work as a whole. And there's all sorts of names for these different editors, so it can be a bit confusing at first when you come to it, because the UK terms and the US terms can be a bit different and then the people have different terms for it. But essentially, we're looking at the development of the novel. So, the book could be nonfiction book either that we're talking about or poetry books.

[00:14:35] So we're looking at the book as a whole, its structure and if it is fiction, whether the characterization is consistent, consistency generally, repetition. Repetition of effect at this level, at the developmental level, so you have, a tendency for revelations to come in the same sort of way each time it happens, for example. And we all have favorite tics and things, that we don't even know that we have.

[00:15:04] This is the big picture person. And, really, really, the most important editing for a first book, for new writers who are publishing for the first time. It's expensive and a lot of writers resist actually forking out for this kind of work, but I can't stress how important it is and how much to view it not just as a publishing expense, which it is, but to view it as an investment in your writing craft.

[00:15:39] So lots of authors go off and do MFAs, MAs in creative writing. Honestly, the investment in a good developmental edit of a book that you've already done is a better investment in terms of learning what you need to learn to progress you to the next level. I'm not saying you shouldn't do MFAs or MAs, but I'm just saying if you have to choose between one or the other, I know which one I think is more important. It's just so important to begin to understand a book at that level, at that big picture level, it really develops your craft as a writer.

[00:16:17] The next level then I think of as being on the kind of the paragraph and sentence level. It's called copy editing, and again, there are lots of different terms for it. But the editor here is looking more at the actual structure of your sentences and your paragraphs, your chapters, but particularly how you use words, making sure that grammar is okay, again, calling repetitions, smaller kinds of repetitions, the repetitions of words or phrases that you tend to overuse, all that kind of thing.

[00:16:52] And then the third and final stage is proofreading and that's at the word level where things are being corrected, proofreading, typos, and again, grammatical infelicities or misspellings or all of that.

[00:17:08] So I think the overall thing to say about the three kinds of editing is language is a very complex substance. If you're an artist who is working with mud or something, it's different. Language is very, very complex and it's very detailed, and we need professional help to see how we're using it. Our brain when we look at our own work goes into a sort of a blur zone. Working with editorial professionals really helps us to sharpen our awareness of language and how we use it generally, as well as obviously specifically improving that particular book so the reader can enjoy it. So all of this is about making what was in your head as clear, as crystal clear as possible for the reader to understand it.

[00:18:00] Matty: I had a question, this is going to be a little selfish because this is the situation, I find myself in now, but I think this is probably a scenario that other people share as well. But basically, I'm budgeting for one edit, and I have an editor that I've worked with on several books and in general, the copy-editing aspect isn't that intensive. And in fact, in some cases I've just told him it's generally cases where I'm trying to favor grammatical correctness over ease of reading in a genre type fiction book. And, I've even said to him, just highlight the parts that I need to work on because I can fix that myself. What I need is more of the big picture, more of the developmental edit.

[00:18:40] And so, as an example, in one of the books that he edited, there was a storyline that I had wrapped up at the end, but he was saying, this is supposed to be more of a thriller. You've wrapped it up, but it could be wrapped up much more excitingly. And so we had a conversation about sort of weighing adding some excitement with plausibility and how to balance that, so it was satisfying but also plausible. And so that's always what I'm looking for from my editor. And then for the proofread, I have some beta readers who are excellent proofreaders. So I generally just give them the final copy to get the proofread done.

[00:19:16] But the situation I'm in now is that my book is eventually going to be, let's say, 80, 85,000 words. And I probably have about 70,000 words of fairly final copy. So in a way, I want to give it to him as-is because if he says, oh, this whole subplot is just not working at all. I don't really want to have polished it up, taking the time to polish it up before I give it to him. So there's always this balance between giving them as much as possible so you get that professional perspective, but not so much that you've overworked something. Do you have any advice on that front?

[00:19:54] Orna: Yeah, I do. I know exactly what you're talking about because you can waste our other, as well as money, you can waste our most valuable resource, which is time. And if you're going to lose big chunks, particularly in the developmental process, you don't want to have polished it too finely. And this is what I find again happens a lot with beginner writers and stuff, they can spend a lot of time polishing the small stuff way too soon, long before the other stuff has been organized.

[00:20:24] So, yeah, I mean, the other thing that your question really highlights, and I think it's so important to say this is, this is not linear, and this is never straightforward. So it's always a little bit messy and it's always a balancing of different needs and we don't have infinite resources, time or money, for this edit, and so we're always balancing. And so, yes, I think if what we're asking for is a developmental edit, then there's not a lot of point in getting very stuck in certainly at the proofreading level.

[00:20:57] The problem with not doing it well enough at the copy edit level is that there can be a lack of clarity. So sometimes if the words are loose it's because something else is loose. And so while we do want to protect our time and protect our money and so on, sometimes it's nothing for it except to get stuck in. And I know this is a really unsatisfactory answer because the answer is, as it so often is with publishing and indeed with writing, is it depends.

[00:21:28] And really you are the best judge. If you feel that giving it to him as it is, you have the skills to do the copyedit when the time is right and that it is written well enough for him to be clear about what happens there, because sometimes if we haven't done, if we haven't gotten in there at the paragraph level, it's blurry. It's not clear what you're trying to achieve. It's not clear what you're saying, for example, about a character. Or your setup might be very clear in your own mind, but because you haven't done the work at word level, it's not actually that clear to the reader what's going on there.

[00:22:07] So as long as you don't have that kind of thing happening, as long as there's clarity there, then particularly if you feel there will be recommendations about, you know, that needs to be more exciting and you’re going to have to add in text, remove bodies of text, then yes, I think you could go ahead and give it in what might be a rawer state than you ever have before.

[00:22:33] Matty: It's interesting too, that you had mentioned earlier that even the terminology that's used for these different kinds of edits is different, and so when people are going out to look for an editor, there's not a guarantee that their expectation when they say "developmental edit" or "copy edit" or well, I think "proofread" people probably have a common understanding, but developmental editor, copy editor, other terms for that, that the terminology they're using is the same as the professional they're speaking with. Are there any recommendations you have for people to make sure that the author and the editor have a common understanding of what the expectation is?

[00:23:07] Orna: Yes. You're absolutely right and the other thing that comes in here that also adds to this challenge for the author who's seeking the best possible professional, is that some editors offer different kinds of editing, but they really are best at one type than they are they're better at than. Sometimes the testimonials on their website are general sorts of glowing testimonials, but you're not necessarily getting the full picture because obviously their website is there to sell their services and that's 100% the way it should be from their perspective.

[00:23:42] So I recommend to treat the hiring of an editor like you treat taking on a spouse for life. You know, it's a really huge decision. Do not rush it. Really do your research. So when you get to the point, first of all, have a look around and create a list of possible editors for your work. And then when you're seriously considering somebody, really investigate that person, first of all, in dialogue with them, so ask lots of questions and see what kind of answers you get. If there's somebody that does samples, get a sample, so you see what's there. Some editors don't do that. Lots do.

[00:24:27] And even if you feel this is the right editor for me, go through that process, do take your time. Look at the testimonials on their website. And then contact the authors. Ask the author what kind of edit they did, what they most valued about it, ask them about their weaker points. You know, we feel very grateful to our editors because they really do improve our books. They are the great unsung heroes of the publishing industry. They are just amazing, and I love the fact that indy authors now are really bringing their editors to the forefront, foregrounding them in their acknowledgements and so on, which didn't always happen in the past, they were very invisible. So I think that this is all marvelous.

[00:25:09] But having said that, every professional is good at some things and not so good at others. So have that discussion with the authors on the website, or if you come across an editor who's tying in to an author's book and you think they would be right for you. So in other words, do your research. Really don't take somebody on until you've answered a lot of questions up front because by the time you get the service, it is too late.

[00:25:37] And also recognize that even with all of that, it may be that you'll end up with an editor that isn't perfectly right for you. And also that sometimes they're right for the first book and the second book, but then not so much after that. So don't be afraid to change your editor, and if you are changing, you'll probably go through the same process again.

[00:25:59] Don't take your friend's recommendation, my editor is great. Sure, they probably are great for them, and they might be great for you, but do not take that for granted. They may not be at all.

[00:26:14] Ideally, you should be working with an editor who's experienced in your genre. There are trope and particularly some genres have very strong tropes that you need to be following and your editor can really help you with that kind of thing if they're experienced in that genre. If they're not, they can't, they won't know, so that's important.

[00:26:35] Matty: I can speak to that from an editorial point of view because I made a brief foray into providing editing services. And the manuscript that was brought to me was a fantasy book, which I not only don't write, but I don't read. And I wasn't sure about it. So we did a sample edit, and in this case, I charged, it was like $50 for 5,000 words or something like that. And I made some comments, and I stand by the comments I made, but I didn't have that pool of knowledge to be able to say, if you think about how so-and-so handled it in such and such, whereas in more like the crime, fiction, mystery, suspense genre, if I were having that conversation, I could have a conversation that would be meaningful for the client. So we both agreed that we weren't going to go ahead. We were both happy with the decision not to go ahead with that. But it did make me realize the importance of having someone who's familiar with your genre, so you're all speaking the same language. Also the idea of paying for a sample edit I think is well worth it.

[00:27:36] Orna: I do too, because even though you guys didn't decide to go ahead, I'm sure she got value from that experience. And you did too. So, I think that's the thing about writing and editing and the relationship and the relationships indeed, because over time you will have had relationships with lots of different editors, is that it is an unfolding and that is a learning. And every single book, every project is an opportunity, is a learning opportunity and I think that is the way to approach the editing process, to open yourself wide up as an author to this being a learning process.

[00:28:12] And, again, I know after you've done it a few times, this becomes much easier. At the beginning, our very first book, our baby, which has been pulled up from the bowels of our toes. Bad biology there, but you know what I mean? And we're so emotionally attached, and it can be difficult to get any sort of editorial response. It can be difficult to take it in the right way.

[00:28:41] So a lot of self-care, I think, when you're going into your first dealings with a professional editor. Again, depending on the editor, some are super sensitive and say all the right things, and some writers say, I don't need you to say all that, give me the hard stuff, you know. And then other writers, particularly at the beginning, no matter how sensitively it's couched, it hurts at some level. And you’ve got to know yourself and if you are that kind of person, you have to take time and care of yourself in that process, or you won't get beyond it.

[00:29:16] And you can trust that after you've done this once or twice, it stops hurting, actually. And you get to the point, you cannot wait for your editor's feedback, and you want it to be as tough, for them to really go there, that's what you actually want. That can be impossible to imagine when you're starting out, but it totally does get to that. So yeah, look after yourself in the editing process, if you're a sensitive and particularly if it's your first book.

[00:30:15] Matty: There's a great episode I'd like to refer people to, which is Episode 88, which was "How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin." And one of the things we talked about was the idea that an editor, or a reader for that matter, their comments are about their reaction to your book, not about you. And so if you can look at an editor's input and say, oh, it's interesting that they thought this character wasn't well-developed when I felt he was a fully fleshed out person. Not, I can't believe that they didn't think I did a good job developing this character. If you can think of it as almost like market research. It's a professional market research of your book on what their experience was while they were reading it. That could help soothe the sting a little bit.

[00:30:57] Orna: Yeah. Any tricks, anything you can do that helps you through that at the beginning, especially. And for me it is wearing that learner's hat and really trying to open your heart as well as your mind to what's being said. Because the editors sometimes may slightly miss the mark. But the fact that they've raised something nearly always means it's worth your attention, to turn your attention to whatever it is they've raised.

[00:31:28] And sometimes we take the editorial report, take it away and don't go back to the editor. But most editors will be very open to you saying, I saw it this way. You see it that way. Could we go a little bit more deeply into this? I mean, they won't do that if you're doing it for 25 things, but if you've got a genuine query about something and you don't quite get what they're saying, or you really feel they got it wrong and you'd like to tease it out with them a little bit, most editors are very open to that.

[00:32:05] Matty: I had an example of that with Ann Kinnear 4, which was "A Furnace for Your Foe," and it takes place on Mount Desert Island. And my editor was questioning, he was saying, it's quite a coincidence that this group of people just happens to already know this group of people. And my position was, it's a small community, especially off season, the population is like 10,000 and these are both people who are running in the fancy upper echelons of that society. So it would be actually weird if they didn't know each other. But what I took from that is I haven't set up the context for people to understand that it's a small, insular community. You know, it wasn't that that was the wrong decision for me to make. It was that I hadn't set it up effectively for the reader. So I think that's a good example of what you're talking about.

[00:32:51] Orna: It's a really good example. And it's those things we don't know we don't know. We take it for granted that it's there because it's so much in our head, we don't realize that we failed to mention it or failed to develop it enough. Brilliant example.

[00:33:06] Matty: I did have a question. Earlier you were saying that sometimes the person who is an editor for a couple of books becomes not the right editor for subsequent books. And if you're in a situation where you're writing a series and you've decided to switch editors, what's the best way to ensure that the new editor is sufficiently familiar with the previous books that they can make the transition and not have the effect be jarring? You know, you want it to be a seamless transition for you and your readers. How can you enable an editor to do that?

[00:33:36] Orna: Yes. A series, it's tricky. So I will preface it by saying that ideally, same editor from beginning to end of series. That is the ideal and that happens most of the time. But there are all sorts of reasons why that might not happen, and it doesn't happen sometimes. So it might be that the relationship just deteriorates. It might be that your editor decides to stop editing and wants to become a skydiver. There are all sorts of reasons. So the thing is, if you are asking somebody to pick up books three or four or five of the series, then they need to read book 1, 2, 3, and 4. And that may very well end up costing you money. Because ideally, they should have a good lead in and full understanding. And the best way for them to have full understanding is to read the full books.

[00:34:30] And some authors think that if they want the business, they should read the books. Well, the better the editor is, the less likely that's going to happen. So it's going to cost you, probably to switch editor mid run. You can brief them very well, and probably both is ideal. You should give them a good indication of where everything came from before the book that they're receiving now and where you intended to go if you know that, which you probably do, where things are going to go in subsequent books.

[00:35:01] So in short, it's a headache. It's a headache to switch mid series. And if you have to do it, it's like everything in life, preparation cuts out lots of problems down the road. So the more you can actually give your editor to prepare them for the job of it, picking up the series, the better. Yeah, so there isn't really an easy answer for that.

[00:35:27] Matty: One idea I thought was good, and I think this came from the "150 Self-Publishing Questions Answered," was basically hiring them as if they were doing a proofread. You know, if you have to come up with a way to quantify the value of them reading through a series, that that would be one approach. I mean, hopefully they don't actually find a bunch of typos, but I would think they would be sort of reading at a speed and depth that would be equivalent to proofreading, because proofreaders probably aren't assessing plot structure. They're breezing along looking for the missing comma. And that's what you need your editor to do. Is that something that seems like a reasonable way if you do find you need to pay for a read of those earlier books?

[00:36:12] Orna: Absolutely. I mean, you're not paying for them to developmentally edit those books. Absolutely not. And you may find that they may not even charge you the full cost of a proofread for all of those.

[00:36:24] You might want to get them to do a proofread while they're there, because every book, you can find millions of typos. No book can be over edited, really. Books just stop because everybody has had enough of them and doesn't want to invest any more time and energy into them. And it's time to move on to the next one. But every book's improvable no matter how good it is. So, yeah, it's a good way to approach this.

[00:36:49] Matty: One thing I have found is that there are two times when I want my book to be proofread. One is right before I upload it to the platforms. And one way I've done that, and I think an economical way, is to send a note out to writers' groups I belong to and say, for the first one or two people who get in touch with me, I will give you a pre-publication copy of the book, ebook or PDF or whatever, and I'll pay you a $5 bounty per typo up to $50. And there's always a couple of people who are interested in doing that and I always pay them $50. Don't tell, but I always pay them $50 regardless of how many typos they find.

[00:37:28] And then the other time I really want somebody to take another look at it is if I ever have my book open in Vellum, for example, when I was proofing, proof listening, I guess you'd call it, the audio book I had Vellum open and every once in a while, I'd see a missing comma or I'd see I use the word evidently too many times or whatever, and I could just make it right there in Vellum. So it was ready to generate an updated version. But my fear is always that I do something in the process, I do an unintentional cut and paste or something like that. And so after I've done that kind of work, I send a note out to a private Facebook group and say, I'll give a free copy of the book and all you have to do is read it and tell me if there's like an inexplicably chunk of text right in the middle of a chapter that makes no sense with the surrounding texts. And so those are some economical ways people can get some editorial help, right at the end when it's just the tiny cleanup.

[00:38:24] Orna: That's fantastic. That's really, really, really nice. And I know what you mean about introducing errors. I'm terrible. If I crack open that file again, I'm off again because I actually love editing. That's the part of writing that I enjoy the most. And yeah, introduce a whole new error, then I need a whole new proofread. Don't do what I do.

[00:38:48] Matty: So the last thing I wanted to ask about with regard to editorial is that the "150 Self-publishing Questions Answered" has some great suggestions about how you can gain distance from your work. How do you gain that kind of distance, and at what point do you recommend doing that?

[00:39:07] Orna: Obviously, there's just leaving time, which we discussed earlier. There is the text to speech function, which you can play and hear. I think that's probably one of the most useful, when you get this mechanical auto robotic voice reading the text and it picks up on your mistakes. That's a really good one.

[00:39:29] Matty: Another one was the idea of editing actually in a different location.

[00:39:35] Orna: Yes. Michael does that, I think. He has a writing place and an editing place. Yeah. Any trick you can think of. Who was telling me they read backwards when it comes to proofreading? Yeah. They go backwards through the sentences, so they're just reading words, not meaning.

[00:39:51] Matty: That sounds awful. More power to them if they can do it.

[00:39:57] Orna: All of this is awful. And one of the things I really liked for me, I only did it briefly and I won't do it ongoing for other reasons, I just find it exhausting and it's not the best use of my time, but I did find narrating my own audio was fantastic in terms of picking up the errors. So I think definitely getting it into a different format is great.

[00:40:23] Another thing is to really pump up the text size so that you're looking at it in 24 point or something. Anything where you just break that habit of the brain, which is to skim right over the mistakes. It'll be interesting. I'm sure your listeners will probably have other ideas.

[00:40:43] Matty: I have a friend who uploads her books to KDP Print and then gets a print proof. And not just for the final proofread either, but she can read through that and then she says she can pick up plot issues and things like that that you would never otherwise, because she is being able to read it as a reader.

[00:41:02] Orna: I always do my editing on hardcopy. I think that's just my age. I grew up with typewriters and cut and paste meaning actually cutting the pages up and sticking them back together. So I always do my editing and I look forward to printing it off. And since we've had POD, it's just been fantastic to actually get it looking like a book rather than it typewritten form.

[00:41:27] Matty: And that's probably cheaper. I'm guessing that ordering an author proof of a book from KDP, for example, maybe the same as true on IngramSpark, is cheaper than the toner you'd spend.

[00:41:40] Orna: It probably is. It's certainly there's little or no difference. It's just that experience of reading it as a book really helps to for the stuff to jump out.

[00:41:56] Matty: I did hear an author interview, and I'm not sure I'm getting this right, so I won't say who the author was just in case I'm conveying this incorrectly, but she either retyped or rewrote, hand wrote her book. Like when she thought she was done, she reentered it or rewrote it. And she said, yeah, I'd never do that again. But it did help her. I think she was just assessing the cost / benefit ratio and decided it didn't help her that much. But she said she did catch things that she fixed in the final manuscript.

[00:42:28] Orna: Did she have a print version beside her, and then she was retyping it?

[00:42:32] Matty: I believe so. Yeah.

[00:42:34] Orna: Yeah. Yeah, we can do these things. With all this technology that helps us to go faster, faster, faster. But the thing about editing is it's slower, slower, slower. And I think that's the thing, is to edit well, you've got to change your pace and you've got to change your push. And in the good old days, the bad old days that I was talking about a minute ago, that's what you have to do. You cut it up. You changed it. You did your corrections in pen, and then you typed it up again and then you did it again and again, until you were happy with it. And that's how loads of people wrote loads of books back in the day.

[00:43:15] So it can be done. I suppose the point I'm trying to make is whatever gets you to pay the right level of attention and to slow down and really see the thing as a separate thing from the original creation, then just do it.

[00:43:33] Matty: Yep. Well, I think that's a great note to wrap up our conversation about editorial on Please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and ALLi online.

[00:43:44] Orna: Sure. I'm Orna Ross at OrnaRoss.com and I write fiction and nonfiction and poetry. And I cover all my doings, my personal, doing some writings over there. And I'm director at The Alliance of Independent Authors, the professional organization for self-publishing authors, and we're at AllianceIndependentAuthors.org.

[00:44:11] Matty: Great, well, Orna, thank you so much. And next up is going to be design, so people will want to listen to the second of the seven processes in the next episode.

[00:44:20] Orna: Fantastic. Thanks so much, Matty.

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Podcast Show Notes

On The Indy Author Podcast, we discuss the writing craft, the publishing voyage, and how we can navigate our way to the readers who will love our books. Click the links below for the show notes for episodes since 200, including summaries and transcripts.

Episode 104 - The Fourth Process of Publishing: Distribution with Orna Ross

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Episode 103 - The Third Process of Publishing: Production with Orna Ross

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Episode 102 - The Second Process of Publishing: Design with Orna Ross

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Episode 101 - The First Process of Publishing: Editorial with Orna Ross

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