I chose this as a primary research method to see how the process works in the real world.
I was curious to know the stages one must go through, right form content production through to distribution, hopefully to guide me with my own brief. After emailing some publishers, editors and authors within the Creative Industries for advice, sadly none responded- so I chose Geraint as he was easily accessible to me and still very knowledgeable. I conducted the interview partly as a learning perspective, also linking to the PPP module where interviewing people is on the horizon.
How did you find the experience of dealing with publishers?
Its different with everybody- it depends on the publisher- it depends on what you’re publishing. There are different entry levels, mainstream publishers who will sign you up for a deal, a contract, which is where place an order for x-number of books or an advance of money. That didn’t happen for me. I’m with an Independent publishers, which is generally a person doing it in their spare time or not making so much money- like an independent label in music.
How did you go about distribution and marketing (or was that all through the publishers?)
The one thing that you’ll find is that it really depends on the publisher, how much the marketing budget/department is, wether you have an agent because they sometimes do that for you. From my perspective its fairly low level- the publisher was the editor. So in terms of artistic input she was the editor, so she did a lot in terms of styling the book to what was publishable. There was nothing that challenging the principles of what I had written, just a little bit of ‘add stuff in here, move this around here’ so it was easy for me to agree too. Once what that was done, most of the publishers just leave you to it and expect you to do your own marketing but I had to do a lot of it myself. My publisher was fairly pro-active, she was canvasing to big stores such as Waterstone’s etc in London. Personally what I did was I looked at what opportunities I had, I wrote a book that was set in Estonia whilst living in Wales, so first I got in touch with the Wales Baltic Society who were very keen so I have a talk to them. I then went and spoke to the British Estonian Society who agreed to do a book launch, which was then attended by ‘Estonian World’ who ran a newspaper. I sent them a copy and they thankfully reviewed it, which meant i had a review in the Estonian English Language community which was accessible world wide. I found another community which was the original Estonian Community newspaper, but that was a bit of a dead end. Sometimes they don't always come off- i’ve been searching around here and the University book shop gave me a launch swell and I tapped up the local newspaper for a ‘local person does good’ report, so I managed to do that as well. Sometimes its odd what comes out- two of my friends got me connections with library’s, someone got me a talk in Leicester and one in Abergavenny in South Wales. The Leicester one I didn’t get any money for, but the Leister one they gave me enough money for the travel and maybe a bite to eat *laughs*.
So do you think all of the going to places and doing talks, helped to sell the book?
Yeah they would of done but theres only so much you can do via your own social circles word of mouth and one thing it did was to attract interest from other situations. I did the Estonian Embassy, I met the editor of Estonian World who then helped me sell copies in America and Canada where they have a lot of ex-pats, second generation Estonians. So it was a very niche distribution channel, you need to work out what your niche is exactly and where are the places you can use to tap into that. Not everybody responds, sometimes its good and sometimes its not.
You mentioned the publisher was also the Editor- from your perspective what did they do for you?
The editors role is to produce the book to a level where it is fit for publication because if they’re any good at their job, they should step back and be objective and not emotionally attached. The editor also had an input into the design of the cover, along side other things like putting mapping inside it, and the important thing for me was she got it into an ePub format and Mobi format, so it was possible to be transferable on Amazon Kindle and other readers. In the UK the Kindle is really successful, but in America not so much- so getting on both formats really did help a lot.
Did you have any input in the design or production of the book?
Yeah I had plenty of input into that, I proposed a picture which was painted by my mother who’s an artist. We discussed what would be a good cover and came up with an idea and found the picture, and she painted it. The publisher then edited it to make it darker, fitting the overall tone of the book more appropriately. She also had an input into the type of the book and the font. We started with a red font and then a white font, the white font was better as it stood out more. The title was also suggested by the publisher/editor, which was better than anything I came up with! *laughs* In two words it encapsulated the book in many levels, which was perfect, in all these cases I still had a chance to say no i’m not happy with that.
What was the process like of combining everything together?
There was a lot of back and forth- I’m in Aberystwyth, the Editor is in Hastings and the guy who was coding for ePublication was in Australia so there was a lot of emailing. It took about 12 months, if not 18 before it was in print. The actual editing process took about two months, maybe three for the fine tuning of it. I initially produced a manuscript which I thought was alright, then I got some additional readers to have a look at it and took most of their comments on board, and made amendments from that. I then presented it to the editor with some suggestions for change (such as the preface, not massively on the plot), it then gets read again and its such a cyclical thing until both sides are happy. Even when you go into the final edit, there are situations where you still need to do last minuet tweeks- but the arty stuff I left to her (the editor) really.
To your knowledge, did the editor have an ‘art team’ or a graphic designer to help her, or was it predominantly a one woman job?
This one particular editor did the work herself, I know bigger publication houses would have graphic designers, separate editors and editing teams. They would have a reading team, a decision team, a team also involved in the hardware side, the publishing etc, depending on how big the organisation is. In my case, it was a one stop shop.
In terms of production then, your publication is a soft back and perfect bound- did you have any input into those design decisions…?
I think it was possibly the case, this is how its going to be, and I was ‘okay that sounds great’ because I didn’t know any different. I wasn’t offered the option of a hard back but in the independent circle hard back books are harder to sell. You also have to bear in mind that the print run for an independent is really low in comparison to that of JK Rowling, and so its only when theres a large print run is that really an option it seems? Its an odd one really because sometimes they’ll produce a large run of soft backs and proceed it with some hardbacks because some people like it and are willing to pay for it, and some people will only produce hardbacks, but I went down the soft back road. It depends on who you are, its not a bad way of printing because I didn’t think we’d sell many hardbacks. Obviously cost was also an consideration which informed that decision, as the cost of a hardback is much more than what I did.
Okay brilliant, so do you have any advice for someone who is in the process of making a book?
Well once your content is sorted, find yourself an editor and they do most of it for you really!
What the interview taught me
- This is not the same for Photography/ Art books
- One size does not fit all
- From a Authors perspective, Mr Roberts seems relatively unaware of the design decisions that contribute to the outcome of the publication.
- Good to know what future clients are expecting from their editor, especially if this is a route I choose to progress down. Also what I need to do to make my publication successful.
- Most books are produced soft back with perfect bound for cost benefits rather than quality
- Agents take 15-20% so try and avoid this
- Do not relay purely on social circles, approach larger chains or photographic book stores as well(?). This may mean contacting Harley in the future or investigating copyright.
- Explore innovative marketing approaches, i.e.: Harley clubs and word of mouth for advertising.
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