It's my pleasure to present a two-part guest post from poet and novelist Deborah Bogen. She is a poet–a successful, multi-contest-winning literary poet–who decided to write a novel. When agents refused to take that novel, she decided to break free of literary publishing, and release it herself on Amazon Direct. This is the story of that transition.
If you're a writer and / or reader yourself, I'm sure you'll have many questions about the Kindle-publishing world: make sure to read Deborah's substantial advice on marketing in the comments. She's happy to answer any other questions you have.
Evolution: Poet to Novelist / Contest Chick to Indie Author.
by Deborah Bogen
Part Two — what happened after Deborah sent her novel out to agents.
Many responded, some asked for chapters and most of those praised the writing and even the story, but they all told me no. No, they could not sell this book to a publisher. This book they said had three major problems: 1) it had three protagonists and “young adults” like one character that they can totally identify with; 2) it was too realistic – no real witches, no dragons or magic; and 3) young adults would not want to read about the struggle three young people had in thwarting a large institution, the Church, in 13th century England.
There was not too much to say after that. “Wych” is the story of three siblings, they do live in England circa 1224 AD and they do need to save a beloved local healer from the Inquisition – which I drew quite realistically in the book. At this time the Inquisition was not yet burning and torturing people – mostly it locked them up – and I had to wonder if I had set it a few decades farther along so there would have been torture scenes, would it have sold better. But this was a real book about fighting injustice as a human-sized person, finding allies who could help and discovering that you have the strength to go up against a monolithic institution.
So what to do? I decided to publish it myself using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Printing and its paper affiliate CreateSpace. That involved learning a lot of new things, finding allies myself and (oh yes) going up against a monolithic institution, The Legacy Publishing World.
I did that – and am I making money hand over fist? Not yet, but that was only part of the goal. I wanted this book to live. I feel a loyalty to these characters who want to get into print. If you go to Amazon you can read reviews from readers who let me know that for them the book is worthwhile, wonderful even. Best for me is when someone mentions that getting to know Lyllie, Wyllym and Edric and the other characters was meaningful to them. Eventually I believe “The Wych of Lepyr Cove” will find lots of readers (it’s only been out 2 weeks.) But most of all I know I did the right thing, stepping away from the Legacy Publishing world.
Why? Because it opened my eyes to the tunnel vision that world sees through. Publishing houses want to populate book shelves with what has already sold well. For them there is no advantage in expanding horizons and discovering new genres that may interest a given section of the market. They are all about the money and they are all about keeping as much of it as they can, which does not really benefit writers or the reading public. One girl who read “Wych” wrote to me about how much she loved it. She said she loved that it “defiantly” was not what she usually got to read. She meant to write “definitely” of course, but I loved the Freudian mis-type and have taken it her words as my motto. There’s a bit of defiance in my stance, in my self-publication. It opened my eyes to my own psychological need for the blessing of Big Daddy, someone in power and in the know who would tell me I was okay, a real novelist. Someone who would open the door and let me into “agent/publisher” paradise.
I had to decide if I stood by my work and believed in the readers. Along the way there was a surprising and deafening silence from my “fellow poets.” A few, of course, were terrific, but many more who I know would be praising a new book of poems from a literary press have not had an encouraging word to say. I wish I was mature enough so that didn’t hurt a bit, but it does – a little. I am thankful for the other indie-authors out there who have welcomed me and helped me. They have given generously of their expertise and time and they let me know that we are also a kind of new species. We stepped out and bet on ourselves.
And now that I am beyond the confines of the walls around Legacy Publication – now that I am out here where we say “let’s just take this to the readers and see what they have to say,” I rather like it. I’m not bored, or complacent. I’m a little too old to learn all this stuff (new career at 63?) but the book came to me and now there are readers who say they are waiting for the next book in the trilogy.
That means I should sign off and get to work. You can always find me at www.deborahbogen.net if you want to chat – maybe you belong out here too.
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If you have questions, ask them here, and Deborah may be able to answer them. My first question is marketing and promotion. How have you been getting the word out about the novel? Do people simply find it on Amazon, or do you feel like you have to find the readers yourself? (See her response below)
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Deborah answered my question about marketing and self promotion, very fully, by email. I’m posting it here! As she says, she’s happy to answer your questions, too.
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Daniel –
what a great question: You have to find ways for the readers to find you and I am just learning that. Here are some ways:
1) when you publish with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP – for ebooks) and Createspace (Amazon owns them – for print books) you choose two categories for your book to be in – e.g., mine is listed under young adult, historical medieval fiction and historical mysteries. This means if someone goes searching around Amazon under those categories The Wych of Lepyr Cove (let’s just call it Wych) will come up BUT the position it holds in the list of books that do come up is based on many factors, including sales, reviews and others. You can change those categories at any time if you think a different category may find you more readers. Today Wych was 20th in kindle sales for young adult medieval books – that means it also got listed as a Hot New Release in that category. That does not mean I’m selling tons of books yet – but some.
2) you can also choose 7 search terms for your book – mine include “witch, leper, medieval, historical and some others” (it’s late and my memory stalls out after a day of work). Once again – you can change these at any time so you have to experiment to see what search terms seem to find your readers. I love the control aspect of all this – but of course the responsibility of figuring things out is also yours.
3) there’s a network of indie authors who help each other. We tweet news for each other and share on Facebook to help get the word out. I have found other indie authors to be very generous with their help.
4) I am contacting schools I have worked in and schools that might be interested. In one case, a professor I know is teaching a “literary citizenship” class. Her class will be downloading the book for free and they will probably write me Amazon reviews. Of course they may not all be favorable reviews but I believe in the book.
5) since I have just begun this process I will have more to tell in 6 months. Since my book takes place in the 13th century I am contacting history sites where other amateur medievalists hang out to tell them about the book. I just contacted two Renaissance Faires in my neck of the woods to see if I can place the paper copy books in their gift stores. You have to be creative and flexible.
6) my current challenge is not to be overwhelmed – to remember that this will take time and I have to pace myself. I also can’t wait to write the next book in the series – I love these characters. Wych is not a niche book. Although I listed it as Young Adult it’s great for smart 11 year olds and for interested 80 year olds (and there are some.) The books been out 2 weeks and if you look at the reviews on Amazon you will see the variety of readers. So I can’t expect the niche advantage (there is a niche advantage – if you write teenage medieval romance e.g., you get a lot of girl readers fast.) Wych is a more complicated story but I believe it has staying power if I can get it going. There are “amazon reviewers” you can send your book to – and lots of other sites to publicize books.
I’d be happy to stay in touch with writers who want to consider this professional move. I have a blog on my website that has been addressing both the nuts and bolts of the process and the deeper and quite real psychological issues associated with this change for me. I would have loved to be “official” in some way, to have had an agent take me on right away and sell me to a big publisher – I can’t say I would not have loved that. But the reality is the world of writing and books is changing rapidly – and publishers (at least the big ones) do not want to publish what is untested – a new thing for readers. Also, my friends who have had publishing contracts complain (constantly) that once their book came out they had to do the marketing themselves anyway. Also, Amazon gives 70% of the cost of most books to the author -that adds up nicely.
I look forward to readers questions and will answer any I can tomorrow.