Pregnancy Center Conference today

Today I'll be leaving for the Rocky Mountain Conference. This is a conference especially for the staff and volunteers of pro-life pregnancy centers.

I'm hoping to talk with these staff members and volunteers about my book that was created especially for them: Deliver Me: Hope, Help, and Healing through True Stories of Unplanned Pregnancy.

Deliver Me came about because of my work on a board of directors of a small town pregnancy center. I found so many people, including my Christian friends, had no idea what we were doing in that center. They had a lot of misconceptions: that we were referring women for abortion, that we were encouraging promiscuity...

I wanted to gather true stories to showcase just what we were doing in that center. I wanted people to know the truth of what we were accomplishing. The stories of people who come to pregnancy centers are often hard stories filled with heartache, but so often through the help they receive these stories become beautiful.

That's what I wanted to share! That's what I want people to know. I wanted women and men to know that they could find caring, compassionate help. I wanted Christians to know they could confidently support their local pro-life pregnancy center. If you'll read these stories, I think you'll be convinced.

Those hard and beautiful stories fill the pages of Deliver Me. Fifty-four stories about women who want to keep their babies, men who have lost a child to abortion, women who have given a child for adoption, and more, each has a connection to a pro-life pregnancy center, a connection to compassionate help people found there. They show the picture of what pregnancy centers are really doing in and for our communities. Their story--that of the pregnancy centers--is beautiful. I hope you will check it out.

Deliver Me:

• won 2012 "Book of the Year" (Family/Relationships) from Christian Small Publishers Association
• was one of four finalists for the 2012 Golden Scroll Nonfiction Book of the Year

So I'm off to the Rocky Mountain Conference hoping to convince pregnancy center workers that Deliver Me is a valuable resource, both for their clients and their supporters.



3 Big Questions about Your Nonfiction Book - #3

The number three question of the 3 Big Questions after “Who is going to buy your book?” was this:

3. How are you going to reach them?

You’ve created a book or book idea that fills a need, solves a problem, or helps someone attain a desire, and you’ve identified who your reader/book-buyer is, but how are you going to get inside their world and let them know about your book?

There could probably be a million answers to this question. In the “old days,” publishers relied on print ads and possibly radio ads. But those are costly. Today, the internet has opened remarkable opportunities to reach people with similar interests, needs, problems, or desires. How can you take advantage of that? Where can you go find your potential buyers?

For my book idea, I’m still thinking pro-life pregnancy centers will be interested. And there are a ton of them I can contact to let them know about my book. But where else can I find potential reader/book-buyers? And how am I going to reach them?

How are you going to reach your potential reader/book-buyers?

Where are they? Where do they hang out?

• Internet discussions groups and forums?
• E-mail loops?
• Twitter?
• Facebook?
• U-Tube?
• Blogs?
• Have you used keywords in your website and blog to attract them through search engines?
• Can you podcast them or send them a newsletter?
• Where are your potential reader/book-buyers in the flesh? Do they gather for conventions or conferences? Do they have meetings? Do they want you as a speaker?
• What are the other million ideas you can come up with?

Who are your reader/book-buyers? Where are they? How are you going to reach them to tell them about your book?

If you can form a plan around these Big Questions in these three posts, you’ve got a marketing plan that has potential to sell your book.

3 Big Questions about Your Nonfiction Book - #2

The number two question of the 3 Big Questions I kept coming across as I studied how to sell things was this:

2. Who is going to buy your book?

Duh. Shouldn’t we, as authors, know this? But I know plenty of authors who (at least at the beginning) might say their book is for “everyone.” Nobody’s book is for everyone. Seriously, who is going to buy yours?

For my book, I thought pro-life pregnancy centers would buy my book. I thought they’d want it for clients and donors and others who misunderstood what they do or didn’t know what they do. This idea, again, got a chilly reception from professionals in the publishing industry.

Maybe I was creating a book for them, but would they buy it? Would they have the funds to buy it? What would they do with it after they bought it? Would they want copies for their clients or donors? Would that be compelling enough for them to buy my book?

What about your book? Who is going to buy your book?

Who is going to be your primary reader/book-buyer? Who will be attracted to its title and content? Who needs it? Who wants it? Who will need or want it so much that they're willing to fork out money to get it?

If you can’t answer these questions, you’re going to have a hard time selling your book. If you can answer them, you’re going to have ways to market and promote your book!

But after answering this question, there’s a bigger challenge awaiting…

3 Big Questions about Your Nonfiction Book - #1

After my major epiphany about the problem with my book, I started looking to learn more about how to shape a book that will sell.

At the beginning of this year I bought several books on copywriting and started studying. My thinking was this: “copywriting” is writing copy that helps businesses sell their products so if I can learn how to sell things, it will help me sell my books.

There’s so much I could say about what I’ve learned. And I intend let you in on all that, but it’s going to take some time. So to start, I want to give you three questions that kept coming up over and over. These became my “3 Big Questions” to ask. Here’s question number one:

1. What need does your book fill, what problem does it solve, or what desirable thing does it help your readers obtain?

Now, taking my book as an example, Where Grace Abounds: True Stories from Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers, can you see how I utterly failed to create a book idea that anyone would want to buy?

I may have a great idea for a book. And the comments and e-mails I get from people in pro-life work confirm that. But it is not shaped in a way that anyone walking into Barnes and Noble or any other bookseller would want to buy it. They wouldn’t even know to look for it. And if they saw it on the bookstore shelf, they wouldn’t think they needed to read it.

Can you see how I created a book based on something I wanted people to know? I could even think people need to know what’s going on in pro-life pregnancy centers.

If you remember the beginning of this story, I first wanted to write this book because I saw so much misunderstanding about what pro-life pregnancy centers do. People I encountered thought our pregnancy center helped women get abortions, which we didn’t. People thought we enabled promiscuity in young people. People thought we only helped unwed teenagers, not realizing many clients were in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and many were married.

I wanted to showcase what we were really doing: helping anyone who needed help in their unplanned pregnancy, no matter the age, no judgments about their marital status. I wanted to set the record straight, but I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to inform people who needed our services that we had what they need. I wanted to let people who might support our efforts know what we really do. I wanted to inform other people about this great work in case they didn’t know what pro-life pregnancy centers do or in case they didn’t even know this work existed!

All noble intentions. But can you see the problem here? The above paragraph is loaded with “I want… I want… I want…” I may have wanted to do a lot of wonderful things, but the reader/book-buyer doesn’t care.

The reader/book-buyer is at the bookstore because they have “I wants.” Or “I needs.” And my book wasn’t playing into any of their wants or needs.

Even if my book, or the book you’re planning, does indeed help the reader/book-buyer with her or his wants and needs, they don’t know they need to read it!

If your nonfiction book, or mine, it isn’t couched in the setting for the reader/book-buyer’s wants and needs, they’re not going to find it, let alone buy it.

So, how will you answer the #1 of the 3 Big Questions for your book?

If you’re having trouble with that, go to your book store or visit one online and look at how the books on their shelves answer it.

• How-to books fill needs for information.
• Self-help books help people solve problems.
• Diet and money management books help readers obtain desirable things.
  

If your book doesn’t do one of these, how can you tweak it so that it does?

Major Epiphany: My Marketing Problem and How I Got a Clue

If you read my recent posts about my misadventures of trying to sell my book idea to editors and agents at writer’s conferences, you may have gotten a feel for how the publishing world can be so very discouraging. If you’re a writer, no doubt you've experienced that discouragement. If you haven’t yet, you will.

So, what can we do? Well, we can quit. Or, maybe some of us can’t.

I know what I wanted to do. I wanted to figure out why the book idea that I thought was such a great idea was getting such a chilly reception among publishing professionals. But how could I do that?

I have to admit sometimes I feel like I’m back in Junior High and I’m getting that paranoid feeling like when it seems everyone is whispering…until you walk in the room. Then suddenly everything’s quiet. You wonder what’s going on but no one will tell you. You try to figure it out, but the only conclusion you can come to is that they were whispering something about you. But no one will say what it’s about. Whatever’s going on, you’re the last person to know. All you can do is hope your best friend will let you in on it.

That’s how I felt about this book. I thought it was a great idea. But no one else seemed to. What did they know that I didn't? What did they see in it that I couldn't see? Was it going to be a major failure? Or could it possibly be one of those great stories writers dream about where every publisher in the world turns it down and so the author publishes it herself and it becomes a best-seller and sells ten million copies?

I knew publishing professionals were giving my book idea the cold shoulder, but I didn't know why. Obviously the pros saw something wrong, but I couldn't see what it was. Who could I ask, because no one was telling me?!

One day, on a writer’s e-mail loop, there was a question that allowed us to send in our book ideas for feedback, and so I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and sent my book idea out there. I told them about my great idea: a book filled with true stories from pro-life pregnancy centers!

I wish I could tell you who it was who wrote to me privately. I’d love to give her credit, God bless her. I wish I would have kept her note, and if I ever remember who it was I’ll let you know, but she was the friend who came to me privately and told me what was going on.

She said something like, “Dianne, you have a marketing problem. Nobody walks into Barnes and Noble thinking, ‘Gee, I’d like to read a book about pro-life pregnancy centers today.’”

Oh my. Major epiphany. This author, God bless her, finally let me in on the problem and put it in terms I could understand.

I have to tell you I chewed on that little piece of information for months. I knew instantly she was right, and I could finally see the problem with my great book idea. But it took me a while to see the situation clearly enough to begin to figure out how to, hopefully, fix it.

So with your book, or your great book idea, can you test it by removing my topic (pro-life pregnancy centers) and fill your topic into that blank and see if your great book idea is going to fly? Will people walking into Barnes and Noble be looking for your book?

This insight was a major turning point for me. I've learned a ton since then, and in my next posts I’ll give you three big questions to ask which should help you sort out whether you have a winner of a nonfiction book idea or, if not, how to tweak it so you do.

Searching for a Publisher: Misadventure #2

In my “Misadventure #1” post, I told you about a strange experience I had at a writer’s conference. Here’s the other:

A few years ago I took my one-sheet (a single page with all the information about my proposed book), to another writer’s conference. I looked forward to talking with editors and agents about my great idea for Where Grace Abounds: True Stories from Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers.

I had studied the conference brochure to see which publishing houses and agencies would be there and studied the editorial needs listed on the conference’s web site.

I was delighted with which publishers were being represented at the conference that year—some very big-name publishers, including the A #1 publisher on my list of possible publishers for my book. This publisher was part of a large Christian ministry which was actively doing some pro-life work. This seemed to me to be the best publisher for my book. “My book,” I thought, “fits right in with what they’re doing.” So I made the appointment with that editor plus appointments with three other good possibilities.

The big day came and there I was, sitting with the editor of the big-name ministry and publishing company. I was just sure this editor would love my book idea, would see its tremendous value, and would just be unable to contain himself until he got me to sign a publishing contract with his company.

Alas, when I told him about my great book idea, he seemed less than interested. He politely sort of encouraged me to maybe…um…try someplace else.

I really couldn’t understand why he wasn’t interested. I mean, seriously, all kidding aside, to this day I believe my book fits perfectly with that ministry and publishing house.

However I’ve been to enough conferences and sat across from enough editors that not much surprises me anymore. I’ve learned the hard way that in the span of a few short days at a conference a writer can go from the highest heights to the lowest lows. I’ve had editors and agents express great interest in some of my projects—which carried me to the highest highs—only to turn in the project after the conference and have nothing ever come of it.

I’ve also had some editors tell me very discouraging things about my writing projects—which carried me to the lowest lows—only to later find a publisher for that article or short story which confirmed the piece was at least as good as I thought it was.

The bottom line: Don’t let Discouragement get to you because: At a writer’s conference, the highs often are not as high as we think they are and the lows are never as low as we think they are. It all tends to level out in the afterglow of the conference.

So, although I was perplexed about why this editor was not at all interested in my great idea, I wasn’t devastated.

Several weeks later, I got out the tapes and CDs I had purchased at the conference. There are always so many great workshops to take you can’t possibly get to them all, so I attend some and buy the rest on CD. Because I was interested in working with that particular editor, I had purchased all the workshops he taught.

So there I was, sitting in my office listening to this man’s wisdom emanate from my boom box. He was talking about how some people end up having large ministries that are in the spotlight, but many others have “quiet ministries,” ministries that not too many people even notice. For example, he said, he had talked to a lady at this conference who wanted to write a book about pro-life pregnancy centers.

“Oh my,” I thought. “Here we go again. He’s talking about me.”

Now that, he went on to say, would be a very quiet ministry because, and this is how I remember it: “That book will never end up on the shelves of bookstores.”

Huh?

There it was. On tape.

I remember thinking, “Why not? Why wouldn’t my book be on bookstore shelves?!”

My next thought was, “Why would I want to partner with a publishing company that doesn’t see my book on the shelves in bookstores?”

Guess that explains his lack of interest in my book. Sort of.

Also, he’d said that to his whole workshop class. Did anyone know who he was talking about? Probably. I had my writer’s guidelines on the conference freebie table and had many people talking to me about writing stories for my book. It was no secret.

Sometimes the reactions we get from others, including editors and agents, baffle us.

I continue to believe in my book. I continue to believe in the power of these true stories from real people to help, encourage, and guide others who are going through unplanned pregnancies right now.

Am I kidding myself about whether this book can be successful? Do these professionals in the book publishing business see a failure of a book that I’m blind to?

At the same time I’m getting these chilly reactions from editors and agents, I’m getting e-mails from pro-life pregnancy center directors and volunteers (people who would actually, um, be buying the book) saying, “What a great idea! When and where can I buy a copy?”

Dismal Book Sales Numbers (and hints that you can improve yours)

In my last post, I told you the story of the author at a conference I attended who told me I’d done very well to sell 300 copies (at the time) of my Dear America book. He said most books don’t sell more than 100 copies.

Is that true?

A few years ago there were some numbers floating around writing circles. (I wish I could tell you where they originated, but I haven’t been able to find that information. I think they were in Publishers Weekly or some such publication, but I don’t know for sure.)

Author Randy Ingermanson (http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/) recapped them and analyzed them in his The Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine in August 2007. Here’s a portion of what Randy wrote:

In the last few months, it seems like everybody has been quoting the same set of horrifying numbers, a group of sales figures for books in the year 2004.

Why 2004? Because that is the most recent year for which reasonably accurate statistics are available…

Here are some of those brutal numbers.

In 2004, about 1.2 million books were in print.

80% of those books sold fewer than 100 copies.

98% sold fewer than 5000 copies.

Only a few hundred books sold more than 100,000 copies.

About 10 books sold over a million copies.

Randy noted that many of those book were self-published by authors who couldn’t find a traditional publisher and so self-published and ended up with cases of books molding in their garages. Randy also noted that not all of those books were published that year, and therefore might be on the waning end of their sales history.

So, is it terrific that I sold more than 300 copies of Dear America?

By some standards, perhaps I did pretty well.

But I know this: I need to do way better than that next time.

And so do you.

We need to do way better than that if we’re publishing with a traditional publisher (so they’ll want to publish us again!). And if we’re self- (independently) publishing, we need to do way better than that to make it feasible to publish, and then to go beyond “feasibility” to actually, um, make a profit. (This is not a sin.) Why is making a profit important? Just like the traditional publishers: so we can live to publish another book. And, so we can get our book in the hands of as many people as possible for them to read it because that is, after all, why we wrote it. Correct?

So I’ve been thinking, brainstorming, studying, and learning all I can about how to sell books. I’ve learned a ton. And yet I think I’ve only scratched the surface. I’ll share what I’ve learned so far and what I continue to learn as this blog continues.

Sharing what I’ve learned so you can do well with your book. That’s what I intend this blog to be all about.

Searching for a Publisher: Misadventure #1

So after this book decided it wouldn’t stay dead and it resurrected itself, I knew my first, best choice was to try to attract a traditional publisher. I felt this would give the book the best chance of success and the greatest exposure.

So I prepared to go to conferences and present my book idea to editors and agents. At the beginning, I had no idea what an adventure this would be!

I thought I had a great idea cooking in my brain and I thought several publishers would be really interested in it. But as I presented my idea at conferences, I had a couple of interesting misadventures. Two stand out.

Why would I tell you about these? Certainly not to criticize or embarrass anyone.

I share these experiences because, if you’re a writer/author or a wannabe writer or author, you no doubt have discovered (or soon will) that your biggest enemy is the big “D”: Discouragement.

Discouragement can be a real witch. I wonder how many books she’s managed to kill. I don’t want that to happen to you or your book. So hang in there.

I certainly felt discouragement after these two incidents. But if you’re going to stay in the writing game, then you’ve got to be able to overcome Discouragement and any obstacles she tries to throw in your path. I hope my experiences will let you know these things happen, they happen to all of us (not just you), and in the grand scheme of things, they’re not that big of a deal. You’re searching for a publisher, and if you run into a misadventure yourself, brush it off, (make sure your have a good, quality project), and move on.

So, for laughs, for enlightenment, for information, for whatever…here are a couple of my misadventures as I remember them:

At one conference I attended after I’d resurrected my “pro-life pregnancy center book,” on a break between workshops, I found myself standing near one of the faculty members, an author whom I knew had multiple books out.

I can’t remember what started the conversation, but I believe he was asking the writers around him about their books or articles. When he asked me, I told him briefly about Dear America: A Letter of Comfort and Hope to a Grieving Nation. I can’t remember why we were talking sales numbers, but for some reason I ended up telling him I’d sold about 300 copies at that time.

He told me that was really good.

Personally, I thought that was pretty dismal.

He told me that most books don’t sell more than 100 copies. He added some of his books had sold less than 100 copies.

I was stunned.

All of his books (as far as I know) are published by traditional publishers. I thought surely his books would have sold at least several thousand copies. Minimum.

(Silently I wondered, if some of his traditionally published books sold less than 100 copies, how did he manage to continue getting publishing contracts from traditional publishers? But he has. And continues to, as far as I know.)

When it was time for the workshops to start, I made my way into his classroom and found an empty seat. When he began to teach, he made a comment about a lady he had talked to earlier. Then he paused, scanned the room while saying, “I hope she’s not in here.”

I didn’t know if he was going to talk about me or somebody else. When scanning the room, I thought he looked right at me. I didn’t know if I should raise my hand and say, “Here I am.”

When he then told the room about our conversation, I knew he was talking about me. And I was sitting right there!

He told them “that lady” was very disappointed that she had only sold 300 copies of her book and that she really had done quite well.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I glanced at my friend who also knew he was talking about me. She shrugged, indicating she didn’t know what I should do either. So I slinked down in my chair and kept my head low. Sure was glad I hadn’t raised my hand.

That whole incident just felt weird. Why would he tell a whole classroom of wannabe authors most books don’t sell more than 100 copies? I could understand if he’d followed with ways to sell more books, but… I don’t know. It was just weird.

So, any lessons learned? Perhaps just this: If you’re going to talk about something in your workshop, assume the person you’re talking about is listening and make sure you’re polite.

(I’m wondering if that author is reading this right now and recognizing himself. Uh oh.)

That’s not the only time that has happened to me. I’ll tell you the other time in “Misadventure #2.”

But first, would you like to know more about those dismal book sales numbers? Whether you’re publishing independently or traditionally, you need to know book sales numbers. Knowing is the first step to making your sales numbers better. I’ll tell you what I know about sales numbers next time.

You MUST Know what Type of Publishing Company You’re Working With

I’m amazed when I talk with an author who is so excited that they have a publishing company that wants to publish their book and, when I ask which publisher, they name a company I know to be a self- or independent-publishing company. These authors act as if they’ve landed a contract with a traditional publisher, and I think they believe they have, but they haven’t. I have to wonder if they know the difference. In some cases I don’t think so.

(I’m not talking here about experienced, self-/independently-publishing authors who know exactly what they’re doing.)

Here’s the scoop:

Don’t assume that just because a publisher tells you they want to publish your book that you’re hooked up with a traditional publisher. You have to know what type of publisher you’re working with!

If a traditional publisher tells you they want to publish your book, that usually is a pretty good thing.

If a self-, independent-, or subsidy-publisher tells you they want to publish your book, that’s not the same thing!

Having a self-, independent-, or subsidy-publisher tell you they want to publish your book, or even asking one of these if they think you should publish your book (asking if it is of publishable quality, or if they think it will sell), is a little like having a car salesman tell you that you should buy a new car. Or asking a car salesman if you should buy a new car. Selling cars is this person’s business. It’s how he makes his money. Of course he’ll tell you that you need a new car!

A self-, independent-, or subsidy-publisher will most likely tell you they want to publish your book or that you should publish your book. It’s their business. It’s what they do. It’s how they make their money. Why would they tell you no?

One big, important difference to keep in mind between traditional publishers and self-publishing companies:

A traditional publisher only makes money if the book sells. They fork out money (usually a lot of it) to publish your book and they need to do more than break even, they need to make a profit to stay in business and publish the next book. This means they won’t take on a book they don’t think will sell. And it means they will help sell the book (at least a little) once it’s published.

In contrast, a self-publishing company makes its money from you. Once you’ve paid them to do the work of publishing your book, and you have your book in your hands, they could care less if it sells. They’ve already been paid. Selling books to earn back what you’ve invested and hopefully make a profit is entirely up to you.

Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing

If you’re considering self-publishing, you need to make sure you understand the differences between that and traditional publishing. Here are some pros and cons to self-publishing:

• It’s hard to break in to traditional publishers but anybody can hire a self-publishing company. These used to be called “vanity publishers” because anyone who simply wanted to see their name on the cover of a book could hire one—and they’d publish whatever you sent them: typos, goofs, bad information, bad grammar and all. Today, most self-publishing companies are better than that and self-published books are overcoming that stigma, but you still need to know what you’re doing before you publish your own book if you want to end up with a quality product that you can sell.
  
• Some traditional publishers only accept book proposals from agents but you never need an agent to get your foot in the door of an independent publishing company.


• With traditional publishers, authors may make little in royalties. Authors who self-publish stand to make a lot more. You price the book. You find out what each unit (copy of the book) is going to cost you to produce. You keep the difference. You’ve paid the bills and you keep all the proceeds. (Note: Some publishers are “subsidy publishers” which means you pay part of the costs and they pay part, then you get part of the proceeds and they keep part of the proceeds. How much each party gets is negotiated up front.)


• Traditional publishers often do little to promote the book—it’s pretty much all up to the author to sell every last copy. Self-publishing companies might help to varying degrees. If they say they will help you promote your book, you should find out exactly what they will do because some consider listing it on Amazon.com as fulfilling that part of your agreement. Simply listing your book on Amazon.com or in a catalog or on their web site is not going to do much to sell your book. In all of these cases, a prospective buyer/reader still needs to know about your book before they know to go to Amazon.com or a catalog or a web site to order it. Again, know what you’re getting into before you get into it. (I hope this blog is helping. That’s why I’m writing it!)


• Traditional publishers today often expect the author to spend the advance given on promoting the book. If you’re publishing independently, you didn’t get an advance. But you’re still going to have to dig in your pocket to come up with any promotional money you’re going to spend. It’s best to include this, and a specific promotion plan, in your budget from the get-go.


• You have to pay all expenses to publish the book, but you have complete control and you keep all the profits (if any).


• You won’t have the professional book publishing people in a traditional publishing house to help you, but your self-publishing company should provide the same professional services, such as:
  - editing your book, including editing for content as well as for grammar;
  - designing your cover;
  - making your book pretty on the inside—fonts, headers, page numbers, etc.;
  - help with the “back cover copy.” (The information printed on the back cover of the book.)
  - Help with the title? Traditional publishers work on titles, but you’ll have to ask your self-publishing company about that.
  - Marketing help to help you sell the book after it’s published. Different packages are probably available for different prices, so ask. Packages might include setting up interviews on radio, TV, blog tours, book signings and more. Any expenses will be yours.


• A traditional publisher will be able to get your book into the distributors, which makes it available to bookstores nationwide. A good self-publishing company will also have access to distributors.


• Some self-publishing companies go to trade shows, others do not. You should find out if you’ll be able to attend those shows you wish to before you sign with a company.


• Some authors see having professionals design their book cover as a con because the author usually has no input or right of refusal for the book cover. When you self-publish you have complete control. Your self-publishing company will work with you, but you may not have marketing/sales professionals behind you directing, so you’ll need to make sure you have professionals helping make sure you end up with a cover that will be attractive. Buyer/readers really do judge a book by its cover.


• Dittos the above with your title.


• Self-publishing gives you complete control over design, pricing, and every detail of your book, but make sure you have professionals helping you create a high quality product that will sell.


• Sometimes traditional publishers will also foot the bill for advertisements in print publications or on radio. You’re self-publishing, so you’re on your own.


• Traditional publishers will get your book to book reviewers. Check with your self-publishing company to see if they do the same.


• Traditional publishers will take 12 to 24 months from contract to get your book published. You can have your self-published book in your hands in a couple months, or even quicker.

Pros and Cons of Publishing with a Traditional Publisher

Some authors are soured with traditional publishers for many reasons, including the following:

Cons:

• It’s hard to break in to traditional publishers. Getting your proposal noticed when it’s sitting in a huge stack of other proposals (known as the “slush pile”) is pretty challenging.
• Some traditional publishers only accept book proposals from agents. (Sometimes there are ways around this rule, such as meeting an editor at a writer’s conference.)
• The authors make little in royalties. At a recent writer’s conference, I heard one multi-published author say that his book sells about 5,000 copies per year (that’s a lot) and it’s the bestselling title for his small press publisher. He has a traditional book deal with a straight 10% of the net royalties. So how big is his annual royalty check? $500. Do the math. That $ .10 per book sold. (That’s pretty pathetic.) Could you live on $500 a year?
• Traditional publishers often do little to promote the book—it’s pretty much all up to the author to sell every last copy.
• Traditional publishers today often expect the author to spend the advance given on promoting the book. (After doing so, what is the author supposed to live on?)

Pros:

• The publisher pays all expenses to publish the book.
• Professional book publishing people (people who know what works well and what doesn’t):
  - edit your book. Includes editing for content as well as for grammar;
  - design your cover;
  - make your book pretty on the inside—fonts, headers, page numbers, etc.;
  - help with the “back cover copy.” (The information printed on the back cover of the book.);
  - help with the title—by the marketing people who know what sells.
• Sometimes you’ll get marketing help to help you sell the book after it’s published. This might include setting up interviews on radio, maybe even TV, blog tours, possibly book signings at book stores…that sort of thing. Unless you’re really famous and are going to sell a lot of books, chances are those bookstore signings will be local to you and if you travel anywhere, you’ll pay your own expenses.
• A traditional publisher will be able to get your book into the distributors, which makes it available to bookstores nationwide. This can be tricky to accomplish on your own.
• Sometimes traditional publishers will also foot the bill for advertisements in print publications or on radio. Perhaps you’ve seen or heard some books advertised this way. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one day it was your book?
• Traditional publishers will get your book to book reviewers, and that’s a good thing.
• Your traditional publishing company should attend at least some of the trade show where they interact with bookstore owners and try to talk them into carrying your book. This, too, is a good thing.

More Cons:

• Some authors see having professionals design their book cover as a con because the author usually has no input or right of refusal for the book cover. This can be frustrating if you really don’t like what the publisher comes up with.
• Some authors like the title they have for their book and don’t like it when the publisher changes the title. Again, authors usually don’t have any say in this.
• Once you turn in your manuscript and complete all the requested edits, you have little say over what happens with your book. Some authors don’t like that. Self-publishing gives you complete control over everything—but you pay for it all and if you have professionals helping you, you’re paying them.
• Traditional publishers will take 12 to 24 months from contract to get your book published (unless it’s rare and they fast-track it).

There may be more pros and cons—these are just what I thought of today. If I think of more, I might come back and edit this post or post on this topic again.

I hope this begins to get your brain spinning with things you need to consider before choosing whether to attempt to find a traditional publisher or to self-publish.

What is a “Traditional Publisher”? What is “Self-Publishing”?

In the publishing business, it used to be that there were basically two kinds of publishers: “regular” publishers and “vanity” publishers. Today, there are many different kinds of publishers that still basically fall under those two categories, but the problem is that the lines between them are increasingly blurred. So to keep things simple, we’ll still divide things into two groups and we’ll define them this way:

Traditional Publisher: Pays you an advance and royalties. A traditional publisher takes your manuscript and publishes it for you. The company pays all the expenses of publishing your book, including creating a cover, editing, designing the interior, etc., and in return pays you a percentage of the sales (royalties).

The advance you receive is an advance on those royalties. In other words, the traditional publishing company calculates how many books they think your book will sell in the first year after it hits the shelves and pays you that in advance. When your book actually hits the bookstore shelves, it must “earn back” that amount. You won’t receive a royalty check until your book earns back that advance. Then you’ll receive royalties on the additional sales.
It is my understanding that few books actually earn out their advance, so don’t be spending those future royalty checks before you receive them.

Self-publishing: Is sometimes called independent publishing, subsidy publishing, or POD (print-on-demand) publishing. Some people still sometimes call it vanity publishing.

In self-publishing or independent-publishing, YOU pay all the expenses of publishing your book (which can be a hefty amount, so please, please, please know what you’re doing before you go there).

In subsidy publishing, YOU pay part of the expenses of publishing your book and the company pays part. How much each party pays varies with each company.

For my purposes in this blog, I’m grouping all the publishers into only two groups:

Traditional Publishers: pay you advance and/or royalties and all the expenses of publishing your book and do not ask for one penny towards publishing your book.

Self- or Independent-Publishers: if you pay ANY of the expenses to publish your book—that means if you have any out-of-pocket expenses—then this is not a traditional publisher and has moved into the category of a self-publishing company.

When it’s Time to Start Searching for a Publisher

When I had collected several excellent, heart-tugging stories that were just what I had envisioned for my book, it was time to begin thinking about putting together a book proposal.

In the publishing industry, the way most books are sold are through “book proposals.” Writing a book proposal is quite involved, takes a lot of work (as it should, because there’s a lot riding on a book proposal), and frankly, by the time you’ve written the book proposal you’re more than halfway done with writing the book.

Because I want this blog to be instructional, helping writers reach their writing goals, I’m planning to take several "Side Trips" along the way of telling the story of this book. The first "Side Trip" we’ll take will be several posts on “how to write a book proposal.” I will post this information in parts, taking it one step at a time. My plan is to intersperse these how-to-write-a-book-proposal parts in between the pieces of the story of the book.

That way, if you’re reading because you’re enjoying the story of how this book came to be, you can skip the how-to teaching so you won’t be bored with this technical stuff.

On the other hand, if you’re reading this blog to learn how to write a book proposal, you can follow that label and get the information you want.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Wait a minute. I thought this was a self-publishing adventure. If you are self-publishing this book, then why are you writing a book proposal to present to an editor, publisher, or agent?

Good question.

Answer: I didn’t always plan to self-publish this book. My first, best choice was to find a traditional publisher for it. I had in the back of my mind that I might end up self-publishing it, but I promised myself that I would try everything possible to find a traditional publisher first. Only after I had exhausted every possibility for finding a traditional publisher would I begin to look into self-publishing this book.

At the time I’m writing this, that’s about where I am—though not entirely. When I started this blog I had made the monumental decision to self-publish this book. Now I’ve been set back even on that decision. How? By there being a possibility—albeit remote—that I may find a traditional publisher after all. Even that seems to be a long story. (We’ll get to it. Eventually…) But while I’m waiting for these recent developments to play out, I’ll continue telling this story.

I know what you’re thinking: Why look for a traditional publisher first? Why not just self-publish?

Answer: There are a lot of pros and cons to going with a traditional publisher. There are a lot of pros and cons to self-publishing. There are just different pros and different cons for each. We’ll discuss those next.

Getting Started

After I made the monumental (at least to me) decision to resurrect this book, I evaluated what I needed to get started. First need: stories.

I wrote up writer’s guidelines describing what I was doing and letting writers know that I wanted stories.

I was a member of a writer’s e-mail loop and the loop often posted writing opportunities. However they only posted opportunities that paid writers for their work. I feel strongly that a writer should be paid. I wanted to pay my writers. So in the guidelines I promised to pay $20.00 per story plus one copy of the book per contributor. I didn’t know how many stories I would get or where I’d get the money to pay for them, but I felt strongly about paying my writers. Twenty dollars may not sound like much, but I didn’t know how I’d pay that much let alone more. (And that’s more than I sometimes get paid.) So I promised to pay that fee per story and trusted God to provide the funds. It was an act of faith.

I posted my guidelines on my web site along with a Permissions Form for people to sign whose stories were being told stating we had their permission to tell their story.

I made stacks of copies of my guidelines and took them to writer’s conferences I attended and mailed them to several other writers conferences. Somehow a few folks who wrote marketing columns for writer’s magazines heard about my project and published the information in their columns. Word was getting out.

And the stories started coming in.

Meanwhile, friends introduced me to people they knew who worked in pregnancy centers. They had stories. And they were willing to share them. I interviewed several people and recorded and transcribed their stories. They were great stories—just what I was hoping for.

I received many encouraging notes, comments, and e-mails encouraging me to continue with this book. “It is needed,” many of them said. People seemed to love the idea. Too bad editors at publishing houses and literary agents I talked to didn’t seem to be of the same mind.

Resurrection

One day in early 2004 as I drove through Denver on my way to Salt Lake City, I pressed “seek” on my radio, searching for something interesting to listen to. My radio stopped on a station airing the Focus on the Family program. That would do. I listened.

I had heard of their Project Ultrasound initiative, and that’s what they were talking about that day. As a matter of fact, that day they were officially launching that project. They wanted to put ultrasounds in pregnancy centers across the nation. That would involve more than just raising money to buy the machines; pregnancy centers would also need trained medical staff to operate them. It was a big project. There was a lot of work to do. But when women see that shadow of their child, and hear his or her beating heart, many of them opt to carry the child to term.

It renewed all my desires to write this book, Where Grace Abounds.

I talked to the LORD about it. Did He want me to pursue this book after all? How could I know?

In the end I decided the only way to discern His will was for me to move forward with the book.

“I’m going to do this book, LORD ,” I told Him. “If you want it to become a reality, You’re going to have to open the doors for it. But I will make this promise: this time, I won’t quit.”

Where Grace Abounds was resurrected that day.

Christmas Surprise

It was almost Christmas, December 23, 2003, when I got one of those a surprise e-mails in my inbox. In one of those delightful twists, it was from my friend who had directed the pregnancy center in the town where I used to live and where I had served on the Board of Directors.

We had lost touch. Now she had found me and was getting back in touch.

She’d been living in Colorado Springs. She filled me in on her life. And oh by the way, you know how she found my e-mail address? She explained that she was perusing the shelves of the Family Christian Bookstore in Colorado Springs when she came across my Dear America book!

She was thrilled to see my book on the store shelves. She’d found my e-mail address in the back of the book, and that’s how she got in touch with me.

I still wanted her story. I still wanted to write this book. I had set the book aside, but it was never far from my mind or heart.

And hearing from her stirred my desire to see this book in print all over again.

Marketing my book, Dear America

I had heard over and over at writers conferences that an author must sell her own book. The promotion is all up to her. Don’t expect the publisher to do anything. If they do, that’s all gravy. The author must work hard to sell her own book.

I had listened. I had believed. I never doubted.

So when I had my book in my hands, I started in doing everything I could think of to sell it. I let everyone I knew know I had a book out. And I sold a few copies.

I set up book signings. The Christian bookstore in the town where I had served on the pregnancy center’s Board had closed, so I set up a book signing in a popular gift store on main street.

I had since moved to an even smaller town which also had no bookstore. I talked to the owner of a gift shop there and set up another signing.

One day while in Colorado Springs, I stopped in and talked to the manager of a Family Christian Bookstore and he also said yes to a book signing! Me? At a national chain signing books?! Whoo-hoo! I’d hit the big time.

I set up several more book signings.

I had heard and read from other authors that you can’t just set up a table and sit behind it and expect people to come over and buy a book. That might work for Frank Peretti. Or Bill Clinton. But not for a no-name like Dianne E. Butts. So I did my best to crawl out of my shell and approach people. I smiled. I talked with them about my book and about writing and publishing and whatever interested them.

Many friends showed up to support me. Some even bought a copy. Mostly though, they created a crowd. That’s a good thing, because then other people in the store would come over to see why the crowd had gathered.

I had a big poster made of my book cover at Office Max and put a dish of chocolates on my book table. I mean, I did everything to sell my book. Right?

Seven must indeed be a lucky number because it seemed no matter where I held a book signing, I sold seven copies. Exactly.

I’ve heard that’s doing pretty well, actually. I’ve heard many authors say they’ve held book signings and didn’t sell a single copy.

I wasn’t getting rich but I guessed I was doing okay. I was earning back some of the money I had invested in getting the book published. It was trickling in…six dollars and ninety-five cents at a time.

Some of the stores even asked me to sign additional copies to leave at the store. Imagine! My little book on the shelves of Family Christian Bookstore in Colorado Springs!

Wow.

I handed out fliers. I sent out a newsletter. I bought an ad. A friend was traveling to Ground Zero with her daughter on spring break and she took a dozen copies with to give away.

Later that year I told people about my newly published book in my Christmas letter. I mean, I did everything I knew how to do to sell my book.

This book marketing thing was harder than I thought it would be. I spent a lot of time. Put in a lot of effort. Even spent some on stamps and ads and fliers and that big poster of my book cover.

And I ended up selling a couple hundred copies of Dear America. A couple years later, when I’d sold three hundred (of the five hundred) copies I’d had printed, I hit the break-even point.

No profit. Just break even. (On expenses, that is. Not on getting paid anything for my time either for writing or for marketing the book.)

I’d learn later that this is not an usual tale for a self-published book. As a matter of fact, by some standards, I’d done pretty well.

Dear America

The book idea I had called, Where Grace Abounds: True Stories from Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers, or my “pregnancy center book” was on the shelf. But writing went on. I continued to sell magazine articles and submit to compilation books.

Then September 11th, 2001, happened.

In the weeks following I kept thinking of all the things I would like to tell folks in the aftermath…like why I still believe in a good God even when bad things happen. And what I’ve learned about getting through the grief of losing a loved one. And about the differences between Muslims and Christians and what they believe about God and Jesus. And about how we can know God through the story told in the Bible. And there was more.

I’d write a letter, I thought, if I had anyone to send it to.

I mentioned this idea off-handedly in an e-mail to a friend who directs a writer’s conference. She e-mailed back and said, “If you’ll write it, I’ll publish it.”

What?! I was floored.

“Uh… Okay,” I told her, and I was off and running. I wanted my letter to America to be short and easy to read. And it was—65 pages. The writing went quickly.

Marlene Bagnull, director of the Colorado and Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Conferences and owner of the small publisher Ampelos Press, edited it and typeset it and found Jo Hardesty to create my cover. I had an ISBN and bar code and I was set!

Did I get an advance? No.

Would I get royalties? No.

I paid for the editing and typesetting and cover and the ISBN and the bar code and the printing…

Hmm. Well, I guess that’s okay. I would also keep all the proceeds from the book sales, right? Yes.

I guess this was a “self-publishing” project. Not sure I really understood that up front. But, well…okay.

(Looking back I cannot believe I didn’t have anything in writing. No contract. Nothing that said this is what each person involved will do and this is how much it will cost. I’m normally a real stickler for getting it writing. My goodness! What happened here?! The only answer I can give is that I didn’t know enough to even know what questions to ask or what to ask for (like a contract). I had heard someone say she would publish my book, I had a publisher, and away we went! She did a good job, I think. I didn't get taken or anything like that. But I don’t really think I understood at the time how on my own I really was. Anyway…)

Six months to the day after September 11th, on March 11, 2002, I picked up my books, Dear America: A Letter of Comfort and Hope to a Grieving Nation, from the printer.

I had my first book in my hands.

How thrilling! How frightening.

One question nagged me: Uh oh. Now what?

More Than Just an Idea – Stories Needed

If you’re a writer, you know the first thing you have to do is have more than just an idea to sell a book.

Okay, if you’re an established, successful writer, you can pitch an idea and sometimes an editor, agent, or publisher will say, “Yeah! I love it. I’ll send you a contract.” It can happen.

But for those of us who are yet to be established, who don’t have a track record of successful books, that ain’t gonna happen. You can dream, but your chances of that happening for you are, well, you might as well go buy a lotto ticket.

So, how do you sell your book idea? First, you have to have some material. Stuff that you can write up (so editors, agents, and publishers can actually see some of your writing). Then you develop that into a book proposal.

So, I knew the first order of business for me to make this book a reality, was to gather some stories from pregnancy centers that I could actually write up.

If I can write up some awesome stories, then I can show editors and publishers what I have in mind, I thought. Then they’ll understand what a valuable book this is and what a great idea I’ve had!

So I set out to gather some stories. I still have that list of possibilities…dated July 6, 2000.

First on my list was contacting my friend who was the director of the pregnancy center where I had served on the Board of Directors. I knew she had one story in particular I wanted. I dug out old issues of the pregnancy center’s newsletters to search for more stories. I called other members of the Board of Directors, and a couple had a story they might share.

Then I e-mailed a friend down in Arkansas who I’d talked to about this book idea. She had mentioned she had friends who directed a pregnancy center there. Surely she would have a story. My friend gave me their e-mail address and promised to mention me to them.

I e-mailed right away. I wrote a length explanation of my great idea and asked if they had any stories they might share with me. After some time passed and I got no answer, I e-mail again. No answer. I talked to my friend again and she didn’t know why they weren’t answering. I e-mail several more times. A writer has to persevere, right? I never did get a response. I finally gave up.

I followed up with the story leads that were closer to home. I called a friend in the next town over who worked at a pregnancy center there. She had some stories, but she had thought about writing a book, too.

That’s okay. No problem. Two different books by two different authors would no doubt turn out totally different. And there’s always room in the market for more than one book on a great idea.

I asked around every place I could think of for stories. I called pregnancy centers. Somewhere, it has been so long now I can’t remember where…or how…but somewhere I ran into this:

“No. We cannot share stories of our clients! There are privacy issues. We promise confidentiality. No, you can’t have our stories.”

Uh-oh. The foundation for my great-idea dream book began to crumble.

Privacy issues. Was that why the place in Arkansas had never responded?

I never wanted to, or intended to, step on the privacy of any client. I had hoped some clients would want to tell their stories and how the pregnancy center had helped them. But, with their identities protected, the only way I could get to the clients was through the pregnancy center workers. Couldn’t they ask a few clients if they’d be willing to share their stories with me?

No.

No?

Absolutely not.

It seemed like and felt like the people in the pregnancy centers didn’t trust me. They didn’t know me. Of course they didn’t trust me.

Time passed. The director of the pregnancy center where I sat on the board who had the great story I wanted had moved away. The center was struggling to stay open.

Turns out, I didn’t get a single story.

I thought it was a great idea. But I got nowhere.

What else could I do? I laid the project aside.

What I Thought Was a Great Idea

Have you ever had what you thought was a great idea?

For me, it all started back in 2000. That’s when I had what I thought was a great idea.

But let me back up and tell you how I came upon this great idea.

I had been a writer for more than ten years, writing for magazines—mostly Christian ones—and for compilation books. I was having a pretty good go of it, with more than a hundred articles in magazines and my work in four books at the time. But I had always wanted to write books. I had an occasional idea, but none had yet come to fruition.

Meanwhile, in my off time, I did charitable work, including sitting on the Board of Directors of a small-town pregnancy center. It was interesting and fulfilling work, but it had its own frustrations.

I remember one day riding home from Bible study with a friend when I mentioned the pregnancy center and the work we were doing there—providing material, emotional, and spiritual support for people in unplanned pregnancies. All our services were free. As I talked, I noticed my friend got strangely quiet. Then I realized she always got strangely quiet when I talked about the pregnancy center. So I asked her what was up.

Driving along, she stared out her side window, her lips pressed into a thin line. It took her a while to find the words. Finally she hissed, “I won’t support that place!”

Surprised, I asked, “Why not?”

“Because I believe abortion is wrong,” she spit, “and that place refers women for abortion!”

I just wanted to bury my face in my hands and shake my head. “No we don’t,” I told her. “We will help women carry their baby. We’ll help with material needs, like giving them maternity clothes, and baby clothes and furniture, and diapers. We’ll give them free pregnancy tests and help them get medical help. We’ll help them place it for adoption if that’s what they want. We’ll talk with them about sexual integrity. We’ll even talk with them about abortion. But our center will not help them obtain one—we won’t refer anyone for abortion.”

She shook her head. It seemed whatever I was saying about the pregnancy center, she wasn’t buying it. Finally she said, “Well, you’re just helping those little girls be promiscuous!”

Ay.

That was my first encounter with how some people view pregnancy centers. It sure opened my eyes.

So, as a writer, what did I want to do? Of course I thought I’d write about it.

Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if I could tell some of the true stories that come out of pregnancy centers? I thought I could collect stories and write a compilation book, like those Chicken Soup for the Soul books. True stories! Heart-warming. Hopeful. Inspiring. Tear-jerking, because that’s what the true stories are. Stories that make you want to cheer! Or hug someone. Or hang your head and cry.

I thought if I compiled a book filled with true stories, then I could tell the world of the wonderful work that was happening inside these pregnancy centers.

I thought the pregnancy center people would be thrilled to have their story told. I thought Christians would be excited to hear of the wonderful Christian work being done so quietly there.

I thought the pregnancy centers would be behind me. I thought the Christians would be behind me. I thought Christian publishers would love the idea.

I thought it was a great idea.

I had another think coming.