2013: The year of self-publishing

Call 2013 the year of the self-published book, as hundreds of thousands marched to the drummer of their own words on their own terms — and the business world scrambled to catch up and capitalize on the trend.

By: Dianne Rinehart Book Reporter, Published on Fri Dec 27 2013

Georgie Binks was feeling pretty chuffed about her first foray into self-publishing — until 500 of her books arrived in 23 boxes.

“It was terrifying when they arrived,” says Binks, author of A Crack in the Pavement, which was turned down by 10 traditional publishers before she decided to go it alone. “I was trying to find a place for them in the garage, thinking about how much work it was going to be to sell them and worried that I would be looking at them six months from now.

“Fortunately, within two months, they were all gone.”

Binks then ordered 250 more — books she has to sell to bookstores, libraries, Amazon and other e-sites — before she can focus on writing her next novel.

The Toronto writer is part of the growing phenomenon of self-publishing. The year 2012 may have introduced us all to E.L. James and her initially self-published 50 Shades of Grey erotic trilogy, but 2013 was the year Grey hit more than 70 million in sales, making James the highest-earning author in the world (at more than $95 million) and spurring on wannabes with dreams of similar success.

Estimates put the number of self-publishing titles in Canada this year alone in the hundreds of thousands. And that’s growing, says Mike O’Connor, publisher of Insomniac Press and a York University instructor. “Compare that to the 20 to 30,000 (books) being published by (traditional) publishers a year,” he says. “It far outstrips that.”

There have been past success stories of self-publishing — David Chilton’s The Wealthy Barber in 1989 and the Looneyspoons cookbook by Janet and Greta Podleski in 1996 are frequently mentioned examples — but they were rare. With new technology/software and, more importantly, the popularity of ereaders such as Kindle and Kobo, self-publishing has never been easier.

Mark Lefebvre, director of self-publishing and author relations at Kobo, says there are at least 250,000 titles from self-published authors on his company’s site. “A year ago, it would have been a quarter of that.”

“They represent, on a weekly basis, 10 per cent of Kobo’s sales. That’s the equivalent to what Random House (the biggest publisher in Canada) does in weekly sales,” says Lefebvre.

In fact, of Kobo’s top 50 bestsellers in 2013, five to 10 are coming from Kobo’s own free upload for ebooks, kobo.com/writinglife, he says.

Meanwhile, at Kindle, 14 self-published titles have sold more than one million copies each in 2013, up from two titles last year.

So big is the self-publishing phenomenon that the Writers’ Union of Canada is — for the first time in its 40-year history — sending a referendum to its members to establish whether they would admit self-published authors, says the chair of the union, Dorris Heffron.

In the past, they were not eligible for membership because one of the criteria was that members had to be professionals: paid for their writing. But in a world where self-published authors can now become overnight millionaires, that criteria seems a bit moot.

“There are authors that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,” says Brittany Turner, a spokesperson with Amazon.com’s self-publishing platforms division.

One of those million-plus sellers is Hugh Howey, a former bookstore clerk who wrote and published a science fiction book called Wool. It was well received on Amazon.com with average reviews of 4.8 out of 5 stars and well over 5,000 reviews. It was later picked up by Simon & Schuster. “These books are right up next to John Grisham (on the site),” says Turner. “The reader can’t tell if they’re self-published.”

These times will be known as “the glory days of self-publishing,” says Judith Curr, publisher of Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster that identifies and signs self-publishing successes.

“It’s easier to be noticed now,” she says, despite the dramatic numbers of self-published books out there. “It’s going to be tougher from here on in (because of the sheer growth). That’s my prediction,” she says. “There’s no financial barrier to publishing a book anymore.”

Some businesses charge for the formatting and printing services they provide, but Amazon.com, for example, allows writers to upload books free in both eformats and text files, and prints and sells them on demand as each book is ordered. The company makes its money from a percentage of the sale of each book.

Print-on-demand technology means that, within six hours, you can go from having a file on your desktop computer to having a book available on Amazon around the world.

But that’s not the end of the work for a self-published author.

“You set up your own book signings,” says Binks, who makes $16.50 for every book she sells — though only 55 per cent of that when she sells through her tables at Indigo because they take a larger cut. Even at the reduced rate it still works out to more than the $2 or so other authors make per copy from publishers who have to subtract the printing, marketing, publicity and distribution costs.

“You physically get your books into every store. I have it in four libraries now in Toronto and Ottawa, but I made those calls. I have another couple of hundred to call. I created my press release, made all the media calls, organized my book launch, formatted for Kobo and Kindle. A very close, talented friend made a video to promote the book.”

Binks has also made use of social media and sent her book, about a pregnant woman who makes a haunting choice, to reviewers (many papers do not publish reviews of self-published books, but the New York Times does; “who knows magic can happen,” Binks says) and to a Hollywood agent, “because I think it would make a great movie.”

Authors who do this type of marketing “get to a place where they can make money for large publishers,” notes Insomniac’s O’Connor. “They have big, well-established readerships. Publishers don’t have to take that risk to build that readership.”

In fact, Atria’s Curr assigned one of her editors to focus solely on finding authors writing in their new adult categorywho had already built up a fan base. This year, they signed up 18 books by eight authors, including Torontonian K.A. (Kathleen) Tucker. Atria takes over the ebooks, reworks if necessary, and republishes them in paperback and ebook versions.

It’s good business for Atria and good business for the authors. “If you’ve self-published one or two, and you’ve got six to eight other books you want to write (you’re hampered) by the fact it’s a full-time job just publishing and marketing books,” Curr notes. “Atria takes over that part and leaves the authors to focus on writing.”

Consider Tucker. She has published three books, which Atria has taken on: 10 Tiny Breaths, which sold 40,000 copies in the first three weeks, Four Seconds to Lose and One Tiny Lie. She was also busy finalizing the fourth book in her contract, Five Ways to Fall, when she spoke with the Star. Atria has already signed her to another four-book contract.

“She’s totally somebody to watch,” says Curr. “Her books are very emotional with a little bit of suspense. She is someone who has a big future as an author outside of anything to do with her beginnings.”

What Atria looks for is not only how many online reviews an author receives, but “how emotionally connected they are with the story line or characters.”

Proof of that connection was clear this fall when Atria took Tucker and three of its American signees on a book tour, which included a stop at the Yorkdale Indigo. “Some young women had been there since lunchtime waiting for these authors to turn up,” Curr notes. And they were a marketers’ dream: “Pretty much everyone was under 40 and they were buying bags of books. Even though they’d already read them as ebooks, they wanted them on their shelves.”

Atria’s business plan tries to honour “the fact (the author) began their career independently of anyone else,” says Curr. “They’re like indie film producers who go to studios and maintain their creative independence. We’re creating platforms on which they can stand, but we’re not dictating to them. That’s an important distinction. We’re learning a lot about how to publish these authors.”

Some self-published authors who have already found success choose to keep the rights to self-publish ebook versions of their titles or continue to self-publish other titles that have gained fans, all while working with publishers on new titles and genres.

Turner, for example, has an idea for a book in a Young Adult series she is writing. She’ll write that before moving on to her second contract with Atria and she’ll self-publish it, since Atria doesn’t publish the YA genre.

“There’s a new phenomena called hybrid authors,” says Amazon’s Turner. “A lot of big authors are doing one book with one publisher and the next one they’ll self-publish. Once you have a lot of fans the royalty difference is huge.”

Still, not everyone is as enthusiastic about the trend to self-publishing. Carolyn Wood, executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers, doesn’t think traditional publishers see it as an opportunity, despite forays into the field by Simon & Schuster and Penguin.

“Our members — most traditional independent publishers — object to self-publishers co-opting that term,” she says.

“They need to call it author publishing. They are not independent publishers.”

And while she concedes it’s easier than ever to get a book published digitally, “it’s no easier than it ever was to have it be a giant seller.”

Kobo’s Lefebvre agrees. He reminds potential authors that 50 Shades of Grey and Wool are the exceptions. “Not every book published is a Stephen King.”