auria “Hussein” cortes

Posted below is an interview with Lynn Price who is the editorial director for an independent commercial publisher, Behler Publications. She has done a beautiful job providing her perspective on the publishing industry and how writers can pique the interest of publishers.  

(twiddling thumbs)

Your back? Great. 

That post is one of the reasons I frequent their blog. The sense of humor and personal feel I get when reading Price’s posts is immeasurable. To me it demonstrates the personal attention an independent commercial book publisher can offer writers. 

What is the difference between an independent book publisher and a print on demand/vanity publisher?  

 I’ll make one slight correction: the terminology is independent commercial publisher.  This is an extremely loaded question and one I could (and do) talk/debate about ‘til the cows come home due to its explosive controversy and surrounding confusion. For the sake of brevity, I’ll attempt to keep this answer just to the facts. 

Print On Demand actually has two definitions because one begat the other. See? Already it gets confusing. 

Printing: Print On Demand is a printing process – more accurately called Digital Printing. This process allows for very small, quality print runs from 1 – 900 at an affordable price.  This is handy for printing up advanced reader galleys that go to trade magazine reviewers or for back list titles that still have demand but not enough to warrant a full web-based (offset) run. In the beginning, the quality was pretty horrible, but nowadays it’s difficult to tell the difference between the web based (offset) runs. One can tell because the ink is shiny on a digital book if you slant it toward the light. This technology begat the Print On Demand business plan. 

Print On Demand Business Plan: As with everything in life, money determines the business modality. This new ability to print tiny runs opened up brand new opportunities to become a publisher with very little capital. When one considers the costs of editing, cover art, interior design, marketing, sending books out to reviewers, distribution, and print runs, it’s easy to see that being a publisher is hideously expensive, and the publisher must do a lot of marketing so they don’t take a financial bath on their investment.  

The Print On Demand business plan is free from these worries because they don’t have the money at the outset, and their smaller budgets rule what they can afford. The first to go was paying advances. Out went hiring a talented and experienced editing team. So long to the $2500 cover art, bye bye to $1500 interior design, and most of all, sayonara 5,000 unit print runs (on average), and marketing. As with any business, when you crimp on quality and effort, you produce an inferior product. The publishing industry immediately saw the lack of quality and refused to review or stock these poorly edited, often unmarketable storylines, and poorly designed works.  

Because they only print a few books at a time, the publishers can’t gain any kind of national distribution for several reasons:

• The genre buyers know the books don’t have enough demand because they don’t have any marketing plans in place and can’t get them reviewed by the trade magazines.
• The retail prices are invariably higher than market because digital printing is more costly than doing a 5,000 unit offset run.
• PODs have a very tough time accepting returns because it eats into their budget. Books get printed and they have to be paid for regardless of whether they’re returned or not. PODs don’t have the capital to withstand those returns.

With these factors at play, they attract authors who, for whatever reason, are unwilling to go the route of submitting to commercial presses or agents, or have been rejected by every agent and editor in the industry. Since the POD business plan publisher has very little cash outlay, all the burden for marketing is exclusively shouldered by the authors.   

From a logical standpoint, one has to ask themselves why a company would spend what little money they have producing a product only to make another party responsible for the selling of the product. The answer is that writers love their books, and writers will work very hard to get their books into readers’ hands. The author is an unwitting, unpaid sales force, and POD publishers depend on them to make money, and it’s a very dicey way to do business. If every author refused to shoulder the responsibility for selling his book, that would be the end of the POD business plan. For that reason, many, many POD business plan companies have gone belly up. 

I have a more detailed and revealing discussion about the Print On Demand paradigm on our blog: http://behlerblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/pod-print-on-dime.html  

Vanity: This is pay to play publication, and the fees to play can be astronomical. Like the POD business plan, all marketing is done by the author, they have zero distribution other than the online databases, zero shelf space in the bookstores, their editing and cover art tends to be inferior, and the books aren’t returnable in many cases. The upside is that the author has total control over their book, which is risky because authors don’t understand the marketplace.   

What is the difference between an independent (commercial publisher and say Penguin Group or Random House?

If you’re talking about a small indie commercial press like us, I’d say about sixteen less zeroes in our bottom line and thousands of pounds lighter in terms of the weight we throw around within the industry. There are many indie commercial publishers that are making a huge impact on the industry, and on readers. In terms of clout, however, the power remains with the large houses. 

Numbers: The large houses’ size requires that they buy manuscripts that will sell at least 50,000 (and higher) units in order to stay on top. The smaller indie commercial presses don’t  require those huge sell-through numbers to stay afloat – but we would do the joy joy dance if we did.  

Marketing and Distribution: Since the large houses have a larger checkbook, they are able to buy end caps, shelf face-outs, advertising in magazines and television – costing thousands. The fallacy is that authors think they’ll get this kind of treatment, and the truth of the matter is that they won’t. These big advertising dollars are spent on the big money authors. They do, however have great distribution, but, as with all publishing these days, it’s still up to the author to get out there and create demand.  

Likewise, the savvy indie commercial presses will sign with a good independent distributor who has a sales team pitching their titles to the genre buyers at the corporate and local levels in all states. They’ll also pitch to the libraries and indie bookstores.  

Any author investigating a publisher should always, always, always ask who their distributor is. If they say Ingram or Baker & Taylor, be aware that these are not distributors that have a sales force. They are centralized warehouse distributors who sell to the bookstores when an order is placed. 

Genre: The large houses publish all genres, and this allows/requires them to hire editors of all genres. The indie commercial press has a specific genre that they publish, and the editors are specialized at editing that particular genre. It’s all very niche and very cozy. Because we’re small and publish in a narrow field, we buy some extremely great work that the large houses may pass on because they don’t feel it will have a large sell through in the hundreds of thousands.   

Questions about Behler Publications  

Behler Publications accepts unagented manuscripts. Do unagented scripts receive the same consideration as agented one’s?

It depends upon the manuscript and the agent. I have some agents for whom I will clear the desk because they submit consistently good work, they’re prepared, and write great proposals. Because agents know my tastes and are better prepared, they receive heavier consideration. Having said this, I have, on numerous occasions, cleared the decks for a well written query from an author. However, the cases where we sign unagented authors are growing smaller as more agents submit to us.  

Once a manuscript has been submitted, what can authors expect from the process?

I read their first 30 pages. If I’m wild about it, I’ll ask to see a full book proposal that includes title comparisons, PR plan, and completed manuscript. If I’m still wild about it, I’ll talk with the author on the phone to get a better picture of their personality, their intent for their book, and give them a chance to ask me any questions they may have. Then I take it to my submissions committee that is comprised of our distributor, sales teams, and editors, where it’s kicked around until it’s black and blue around the edges. If it survives this, I sit and think on it for another week before offering a contract.  

Is there a particular voice and/or genre that Behler Publications publishes most?

We’re leaning very heavily toward the nonfiction genre these days. I haven’t accepted fiction in ages. I look for the personal journey that knocks me out of my socks and makes me think for days after I finish reading the work. I like controversy. I like to get people talking and thinking about social issues that permeate themselves in the human condition – things like health, aging, death, illness, disabilities, etc. Most of all, I love to laugh and be surprised. Those are the elements that keep readers engaged.  

Advice for writers 

Writing a query that piques the interest of a publisher isn’t easy. What advice do you have for writers in regards to writing compelling query letters?

Writing a query or cover letter is agonizing. I speak at seminars that deal with this very issue, so it’s nearly impossible to answer this in a paragraph. The most important thing is to pitch your story to me in a single paragraph, and here’s what I look for: 

A)          Intro the characters

B)          Intro dilemma

C)          Present teasers or resolutions  Secondly, I need a word count and genre.  

Lastly, tell me why you’re the best person to have written this book. What special qualifications do you have that give you a great platform? Are you the doc who practices alternative medicine in your practice? Are you the mom of a child whose bipolar disorder is the worst case doctors have ever seen? Are you the broadcast journalist who broke one of the most riveting stories in the country? Are you the caretaker of a disabled Hollywood mogul? 

While it’s true that every editor is looking for a great book, we have to look for a great platform as well in order to create demand for the book.  The trick is to keep this cover letter to a page. If you’ve piqued our interest, we’ll ask for more.  

Submitting proposal after proposal and receiving rejection after rejection can be a blow to a writer’s self-esteem. What can writers do to keep from jumping off a ledge?

Wear a seat belt? Okay that was flip. But I say that because I’ve been there. I’m a writer, and I’ve experienced every bit of angst and frustration. If a writer has received roughly 100 rejections, then it’s time to consider that the work could be flawed. Many writers are working with independent editors these days because the competition is so rough. Writers should be members of good, solid writing groups – either online or in person. These are goldmines in terms of getting honest feedback and help with writing query letters.  

Attend writer’s conferences and network. Contrary to what people say, editors and agents aren’t really harbingers of evil that had their hearts genetically removed in utero. We love talking to fellow writers, and the best place to do this is at conferences. Get appointments with editors and agents and have your work critiqued. For instance, I’ll be speaking at the SDSU Writer’s Conference in San Diego next week, and I received six submissions to critique. These aren’t submissions to our company, but simply honest feedback from myself, other editors, and agents. You just can’t get that kind of feedback anywhere else.  

Lastly, the biggest solace I found when making the submissions rounds was to write another book. 

The following two posts offer a quick glance at the books recently published by Behler Publications. To review addtional titles click here and here.  

Click HERE to read more industry interviews.  

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