The PROS and Ex-CONS of Self-Publishing
I really didn’t meet up with any jailbirds in the creation of this blog post. But the self publishing pro that I met with turned many of my “negative” preconceptions into “positives”. And going from the CON column to the PRO column turns them into ex-CONS as far as I can see.
My own bad experience with a mainstream publisher (which I will relate soon in a separate post) made me want to take my fate into my own hands and explore the world of self-publishing. But while self-publishing puts power and control into the hands of the writer, it also puts responsibility on them, not just to write a good book but to do a good enough ongoing marketing job to get that book the attention the author believes it deserves. In the long term, the writer becomes entirely responsible for maintaining and building on any and all success achieved. They also get 70% of the profits, which is somewhat better than the traditional average of 18%.
A Potentially Scary Landscape
Not wanting to go blind and unarmed into the challenging frontier of self-publishing, I arranged an “information interview” with Mark Lefebvre, Kobo’s Director of Self-Publishing and Author Relations and the man behind kobowritinglife.com.
Mark had lots of sage advice, not only from the perspective of an executive for one of the biggest names in modern book retailing, but perhaps more relevantly, as a self-published author who has been there and done that.
He self-published his first book One Hand Screaming (as Mark Leslie) in 2004. In those days authors were loathe to confess to self-publishing, since it was regarded by most writers and writer’s organizations as the last resort of authors who weren’t good enough to attract the support and attention of a traditional publisher. “People considered self-publishing to be a career killer.”
That’s a big stigma for anyone to handle – especially writers who typically fight daily battles with self-doubt and motivation. In Mark Lefebvre, this manifested itself in a desire to have tangible evidence of his success as a writer. Over the years, Mark had a respectable track record as an author, selling stories to many magazine publishers, but since small press magazines have tiny print runs and extremely limited distribution, there was nothing on the shelves that Mark could show people to support his claim of being a writer. From an author’s perspective, this frustrated him.
Professionally, he was a database guy for Canada’s biggest bookstore chain, so Mark had a unique perspective on the publishing industry. He got to see what sold and got to meet well-published authors to talk to them about their triumphs and frustrations. After reading and enjoying the novels of Sean Costello, (published by Pocket Books in the 1990s) he got the chance to ask Sean personally when his next book was coming out and the author told him “It’s out now. It’s available through Ingram.” When Mark asked who had published it, Sean said, “Me. I published it.”
Mark related, “I thought Finders Keepers (the self-published book) was amazing. So I started asking how he did it.”
Few people were as well-positioned as Mark to test the waters of this new publishing avenue (given that Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, T.S. Elliot and many other famous writers all self-published, the actual act of self-publishing isn’t really new…but the methods – e-publishing and Print-on-Demand – offer a new, more acceptable and more inevitable way to go about it).
It turns out that Mark got in on the ground floor. The attitude toward self-publishing has undergone a complete sea change since 2004. Now even the major writer’s unions and professional organizations consider self-publishing credits to be acceptable pre-requisites for membership (within certain parameters).
Mark gladly provided a 2013 overview. “Stats have proven that [self-publishing] is not all that different than traditional publishing. The majority of stuff that is published never sells. Eighty per cent of the titles that a major publisher such as Random House produces will not sell, they will get returned. Five per cent of the titles will be the superstars, maybe less – maybe one per cent. They pay for all the ones that don’t succeed. Between when we launched Kobo Writing Life in July 2012 and the end of that year, there were six people that made over 100 thousand dollars in self-publishing just at Kobo.”
Tips from a Pro
“You shouldn’t be selective and only go with one retailer, you should go with all of them. Smashwords is different because they’re an aggregator….”
Naturally, since he has directed the development of Kobo’s self-publishing program, Mark gave me a number of very good reasons why he thought Kobo should be one of the essential retailers for every writer’s journey into the wilds of self-publishing. At Kobo Writing Life, self-published authors are not just part of the community, they are the community. Mark proudly showed off Kobo’s dashboard where author’s can not only track their earnings, but also their total sales per title in 140 countries around the world. He described some of the perks Kobo Writing Life makes available to members of their community that aren’t available to outsiders.
“What I do,” Mark said, “Is publish on three different platforms. I publish directly to Amazon using kdp, directly to Kobo using Kobo Writing Life and I use Smashwords to get my book into Nook because you have to have an American address to get into Nook. I also use Smashwords for IBooks, Sony and a bunch of other places you’ve probably never heard of.”
Come back and join me for an ongoing discussion of self-publishing and more tips from Mark Lefebvre.
And for those who won’t really be happy until I give you an actual ex-con, please check out Jackrabbit Parole by Stephen Reid.
Dream To Catch 
Another good reason to publish to Kobo: so I can buy your book. Seriously, I hate when books are only available on Amazon. I understand why authors do it, but as a reader I appreciate having other options.
I look forward to reading more of this discussion!
I know how you feel, Kate. I won’t buy anything from ITunes and for music, there aren’t many good options. I’d better hurry up and get that book out there if there’s a chance you might actually buy it lol!
Yeah, jeez, hurry up! 😉
Given that publicity and promotion are pretty much left in the hands of the writer even in traditional publishing, it seems like self-publishing is the natural next step. Particularly now that there’s Print-on-Demand…
Yeah, when the publicity budget is zero either way, at least now you’ll know how you didn’t spend it. But there are plenty of things we can do for ourselves just through diligence and perseverance that a traditional publisher would almost never do for you.
The big exception to that is smallish publishers like Chizine who – in additional to doing actual editing and doing breathtaking packaging – are very social media and event oriented. There are other writer-friendly publishers too – just not enough of them.