Lust in the City 2023 was held Saturday, November 4, at the Comstock Inn & Conference Center in Owosso, Michigan. This second iteration of the event first held last year in East Lansing showed great improvement over the 2022 event, although it wasn’t without its problems. Let’s be brutally honest: every event has problems. That’s the nature of the beast.

The event began on Friday evening with author “speed dating” for VIP members during which no books were sold or even evident in the room. The interesting idea proved fun. I believe everyone involved enjoyed it.

After breakfast on Saturday morning, most authors set up their tables. This is where the rubber meets the road. VIP attendees received early admission, then general ticket holders and anyone else wandering in off the street. As the event was held in a hotel conference room, the likelihood of anyone wandering in was infinitesimal. However, the organizer did a great job in publicizing Lust in the City and generating awareness. In short, we had a good crowd. Nothing to complain about there.

Lust in the City, as one might surmise from the event’s name, focuses on the romance genre. Although not affiliated with the Romance Writers of America, I can see a future alliance with that organization. Several of the participating authors are prolific, as demonstrated by the myriad titles on their tables. Having been previously informed by a merchandising executive that my own table showcasing most of my books that such a display resembled a supermarket shelf, I now only stock a handful of my latest titles. The books I displayed at the event were Champion of the Twin Moons, Knight of the Twin Moons, Double Cut, Russian Revival, and Focus. Usually, I sell more copies of Focus than anything else, but not this time.

In speaking with another author who complained of low book sales the previous month, the topic of business came up. Publishing is a business. This means readers expect and deserve a certain high level of quality. For authors who self-publish, that level must align with the quality put out by the big publishing houses. That generally means spending money, a lot of money.

Self-publishing authors who treat publishing as a business recognize that self-publishing confers upon the author all the responsibilities usually undertaken by a traditional publisher. These responsibilities include professional services and marketing. The author with whom I spoke had attempted to hire a voice actor to narrate her book to produce an audiobook. She posited that having an audiobook would increase book sales.

This is where the negotiation failed. The author did not treat the voice actor as a professional, offering a share of royalties of books sold. If you’ve ever hired a professional service provide, then you know no one works on spec. The pro requires payment of some kind at the time of service, not the promise of potential payment. With the knowledge that the book was already doing poorly (no copies sold in the last month), I fully empathized with the voice actor’s decision to decline the project, because a percentage of $0 is $0.

Pros don’t work for free unless they’re donating their time, skill, and service.

That author also admitted she did little with regard to marketing. This is where numbers mandate a different decision. Over 1 million books are published every year, adding to the tens of millions of books already available. An unknown or little known author who puts out a book or even a handful of books must find a way to distinguish those books from the sheer, overwhelming numbers of other books.

One way is to write to market, sticking to a niche or genre. In romance, that’s not necessarily helpful, because romance is the largest genre in terms of sales volume and the numbers of books. It’s an ocean, and an unknown or little known author is but a drop in that vast ocean.

Luckily for authors, we can “niche down” within our genres. We may select more specific categories and use keywords to help potential readers looking for literature like ours find our books. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than throwing the into the wilds of the internet and hoping someone will come across it. Savvy authors engage in marketing, too.

When it comes to marketing, I’m not savvy. I know that, so I hire a book marketing professional to take charge of that onerous task. Marketing is a full-time job, a job I cannot take on because I still have to earn an income and still have to write. Book marketing services come in basically two different flavors: social media marketing and advertisements. I find that advertisements work best for my book sales. Yes, this costs money.

Other marketing I do on my own. It, too, often costs money, because self-inflicted marketing includes registering as a vendor at various events throughout the year. That part of the effort has become an intricate dance, sussing out those events that offer a feasible balance between revenue and expenses. I don’t always choose profitable events. Other marketing efforts include this blog, an author blog on my author website, and a monthly newsletter (got to get cracking on those!). I also try to post regularly on the social media platforms I frequent. That, unfortunately, is not a sound marketing practice, because I ought to be posting on the social media platforms my readers frequent.

I own my errors, which doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ll change my ways. However, I do try to treat publishing as a business, because the most successful authors do that. And the only true measure of commercial success is counted in money.

#publishingindustry #selfpublishing #business #henhousepublishing

I received a message over the weekend—you know, those two days during which most folks do not focus on career-related work—from someone who asked to hire me to edit his manuscript then market the book. How flattering!

I declined the opportunity.

First, the potential client did not do his research and, at a minimum, check out my website or LinkedIn profile. I do not provide book marketing services. I never have.

Second, the potential client requested those services at a “highly professional level” in exchange for 20% of the royalties earned from future book sales. I don’t know a single professional, including myself, who will work for the promise of potential money. That’s called “working on spec.”

Any book published today must compete against millions—yes, millions—of books in the marketplace. Amazon alone lists more than 1 million books in its digital library. That means any book must have two of the three—a name brand author (e.g., Stephen King, Nora Roberts), a strategic marketing effort, a robust marketing budget—to stand out from the overwhelming competition. That marketing effort takes strategy, rigorous execution, and money. Marketing can only build awareness and, at the very best, generate demand. It cannot force people to buy. The speculative nature of marketing means that those who are expert at it deserve and should receive compensation regardless of whether the book actually achieves commercial success.

Traditional publishing companies publish on spec. Because no business stays in business for long if it can’t make a profit, traditional publishing companies only accept and publish those manuscripts they believe will generate profits for them. To produce books, publishers pay a cadre of professionals: editors, book designers, cover artists, etc. Those professionals don’t work on spec; they receive salaries and benefits whether the books the company produces sell or not. This continuous outlay of funds and the assumption of financial risk is why traditional publishing companies pay only a small percentage of royalties to authors.

When an author decides to self-publish, the author is the publisher and assumes all financial risk and hires the professionals needed to produce the quality product the reading public expects and deserves. This means the professionals that author hires expect and deserve to be paid for services rendered. They do not work on spec.

My basic thought is that if an author is not willing to invest his or her funds into the book, then the author should not expect readers to invest their hard-earned money into buying those books.

I realize that many authors do not have the budget to afford the expenses of editing, book design, and cover design on a whim. Many folks save to afford large purchases such as houses, cars, large appliances, and vacation journeys. Hiring professional services is no different. A savvy author knows those expenses are coming and saves up for them.

Publishing is a business. The professionals who work in the business, whether as employees of publishing companies or as freelance gig workers, expect and deserve payment for services rendered, not the promise of potential payment.

#henhousepublishing #freelanceservices #gigeconomy #editingservices #bookdesign #ghostwriting