As part of Sunderland Libraries Literature Festival, I was asked to give a talk about my experience of publishing local history. There’s a video, which I’ll add at the end of this post, but I thought it might be useful to also have a written version, so here we are.
What Does a Publisher Do?
A publisher sorts a lot of the logistics surrounding a book being published. They’ll take care of the physical production of the book, which is everything from design, typesetting, to layout and proofreading. They’ll also get your book into local shops, create an ebook version (if that’s part of their deal), do marketing and send out press releases.
If you don’t know where to begin with the things I’ve just mentioned then a publisher is worth their weight in gold, because you won’t need to worry about anything.
Often though publishing teams can be based elsewhere and not know your part of the country as well as you do, so you’re still the best person to work your book. If you have media contacts or know people in local shops who might stock your book then it’s still worth you doing that yourself.
Pitching Your Idea
Whether you’ve already written your book or if it’s in the idea stage, you need to be able to convince a publisher that it’s worth taking on and that usually means writing a pitch. Publishers get sent stuff all the time, so it’s about making yourself stand out from everyone else. A commissioning editor will often have to sell your idea to their sales team, so it’s important you give them as much information and help as you can. Here are some things to think about when you’re pitching your idea.
Target the Right Publisher
Are you sending it to the right publisher? You might want to send your idea to more than one, so make sure your idea fits with their core offering. With local history you might want to look publishers like The History Press, Amberley, Pen & Sword and so on.
Write a Synopsis
If you’re pitching an idea, you’ll need to write a synopsis of it, something that sums up the whole book in about 150 words, but still gives enough information to leave a reader wanting to know more – it’s a tricky balance. If you’ve written your book already you should still write a synopsis, but it also makes sense to include a sample chapter of it alongside your pitch. Don’t send the whole book, just send something that represents what the core of the book is, at its best.
Why Should You Write the Book?
You don’t need to be qualified in the educational sense, necessarily, but you should have good reasons for being the person best placed to write your book. Do you have great connections with local history groups who can help you market it? Is it something you’ve been researching for years and you have material no-one else has? It can be hard to see your own merits sometimes because to you it’s just the thing you’ve been doing, but give careful thought to all the work you’ve put in over the years that might apply directly or as a transferrable, related skill.
Include Important Details
How long will your book be and how many images will it have? If you’re a first-timer then this might seem like a how long is a piece of string question. In which case, look at books already published by your chosen publisher, and estimate your word-count and images to be around the same. The publisher may have specific formats, 40,000 words and 50 black and white images, for example, in which case you’ll need to make sure you can fulfil their particular requirements.
Realistic Expectations
Most books aren’t money-makers. Even though it can seem exciting to have a book published through a reputable publisher, it’s wise to keep your expectations realistic. Despite what films have taught us, there’s usually little to no advance for books that have a fairly limited market, and most of the popular publishers of local history have a woeful 8 to 10% commission to the author on hardcopy sales.
The best way to make money from a published book, if that’s your aim, is to sell it yourself at talks, events and a book launch. You’ll usually be able to buy copies of your book for 50% off the RRP, so even then, profits are modest. You might also run into the problem of Amazon offering large discounts at times, meaning you’d potentially be selling your book at a higher cost than someone could get it online.
Another thing to be realistic about is the delivery time. If your book is ready to go, great. If not, the publisher will want to know how long it’ll take you to write and deliver it to them in its final format. One thing I’ve found is that getting the associated images and permission to use them can sometimes be trickier and take longer than the research and writing. The key thing here is to give yourself more time than you think you need.
If you’re thinking in terms of a publication time and working backwards, then remember there’s a considerable amount of time – around 4 to 6 months has been my experience – from a publisher receiving the finished book to actual publication.
The publisher will use the date you give to form part of your contract, and there can be penalties for not delivering on time, like a reduction in an already small commission, so make sure you know you can supply everything you need to in time.
Questions
Before putting the talk together I asked anyone to get in touch who might have questions about working with a publisher, so I’ll answer three of those now.
Do you get free books?
Yes, but how many will depend on what the deal is with the specific publisher and it’s not usually many, maybe 6-10. Once you’ve proven you can deliver what you’ve said you can, you might be able to negotiate more next time.
Can I choose my own title
This is a bit of a yes and no answer. You should definitely have a title and subtitle in mind and include it in your pitch, but publishers like something that’s descriptive. For example, the title of my first book when I pitched it was The People Who Mackem. The History Press wanted to change that to, Sunderland Industrial Giant, Recollections of Working Life, which although it’s hard to let go of your own title because you think you’re a genius, was definitely the right move because theirs is much more descriptive of what the book is, and nobody south of York knows what a Mackem is.
Can I choose my own cover design?
With the cover, their designers will usually handle everything, but like with all things I think it’s a compromise really. I wasn’t keen on the first Sunderland Industrial Giant cover – even though the design was great, it made it look like it was going to be a bit of a depressing read, which I felt didn’t really fit with the book, so I sent a mockup based around some of their other styles of books and they used that to make a much better version than mine and we settled on that!
Why Use a Publisher For Local History
If having a book published is purely for you to make some extra cash, then you’re possibly better off self-publishing. Although it’s not my direct experience, I’ve got friends who’ve self-published and the mark-up on any sales is greater, so if you work your book hard there’s no reason why you can’t make a good profit, but bear in mind you’d have an outlay for the costs of things like designing and printing the book, so you’d need to recoup those before you’d be making a profit.
If you can get a foot in the door with a publisher though, aside from any money you might make, it’s a great reputation builder, and that can really open doors for you to publish other work or to make inroads elsewhere. It’s easier to tell someone, ‘I’m the author of such and such’ or send them a copy of your book than it is to try and describe what it is you do. For most people, seeing some tangible evidence that you’re capable of writing and publishing a book is enough to start a conversation about other work. It’s also really nice to have a relationship with publishers – they’re often quite small teams and it’s great to know that if you’ve got a question, or another idea, you can just pick up the phone or fire off an email to someone who will already know what you’re about, so you’re not starting from scratch every time.
Having an idea is a great start, but good ideas are ten a penny and it takes a lot of work to get to the finished article, which is where people can fall by the wayside.
If you don’t try, you’ll never know, so it’s worth writing a pitch and sending it off. Even if it ultimately doesn’t make it to publication, that’s not a failure, it could just be the wrong time for the publisher, or they might be able to send you some really useful feedback. But you never know, you might just get that email back telling you your idea has been successful and a contract will follow in the post. And there’s nothing quite like that feeling of opening the first copy of your book when it’s hot off the press.
