Top 5 Tips for Beginning Authors

1- Negotiate the price for you to buy your own book! Some publishers are really cheap, offering only 20 or 25% discount off the RETAIL price of your own book! See if you can’t get a larger discount, if not the wholesale price that other vendors are likely paying. See if you can convince your publisher to treat YOU as a vendor - Coming up with some great special event ideas, and assuring the publisher that you would order frequently may convince them if they seem reluctant or try to assert that none of their other authors enjoy that benefit.
2- Understand that YOU are responsible for marketing yourself and your title. Although all publishers do some degree of marketing, understand that just doing the paperwork and legwork it takes to get titles into stores is tons of work, not to mention the costs of producing and printing your book. Anyone at the publisher’s working on your marketing likely has many other titles to market as well. And of course there is constant marketing of the company as a whole. There are lots of “fly by night” publishers out there, and it takes work to be taken seriously in this highly competitive industry. Besides, no one can sell your “baby” like YOU can! Don’t forget that you, as a personality, are just as marketable (therefore important) as your book.
3- Treat being an author just as you would any other profession! This is one of the few professions in which expectations are often way out of line with reality. In most professions, when you just start out, you expect to learn, work hard, grow slowly, and build a reputation. You don’t expect lines of people trailing out onto the sidewalk to meet you when you’ve only been in sales or engineering, or whatever for a year or so. Yet inexperienced authors seem to think that once they sign a contract, BINGO! Instant success and gigs on TV and lines out the doors of Barnes & Nobles across the country! We all love rags to riches stories and tales of unknown authors becoming NY Times best sellers, but that is hardly the norm. In fact, you’ve entered into one of the TOUGHEST and most competitive professions there is. There are over 176,000 new titles available every year in this country alone! Also, keep all communications with your publisher on a friendly and professional level. Keep your perspective and trust your publisher when you are feeling uncertain or impatient. There is nothing worse than an author freaking out about something they really don’t understand in the process of book production and publishing. Harassing your publisher, letting them know what the author’s spouse, mom, or know it all neighbor thinks about what should be happening, and similar communications are exceedingly unprofessional and will only hinder the process and possibly damage relations with the person who is providing the author with a product that enables him or her to build an entire career.
*Note – Be prepared to tell your friend’s, family, spouses, etc. to keep their distance when it comes to telling you what to do or making “helpful suggestions” for your title. While friends, family, and colleagues are invaluable at helping you to be creative and sell books, plan events, etc. they have no place interfering with your professional relationship with your publisher! If you are a teacher, your spouse wouldn’t presume to tell you to call your principal and tell him what he should be doing for you. If you’re a salesperson, your mom wouldn’t presume to tell you what to tell your boss about your sales strategies. Don’t allow them to treat your new writing career as anything other than a “real” profession!
4- Don’t expect to sit back and let your publisher all the work. By investing the thousands of dollars it takes to produce a book, by doing the incredible and time consuming amount of paperwork and money it takes to simply get your title into stores, and by providing you with a product, your publisher has already done his or her work! Now it’s time to take your product and run with it. This is really building upon number two, but it cannot be emphasized enough. Remember that there are lots of folks with the time and money to enable them to “dabble” at writing books. That’s one of the big problems in this business. So many titles and authors are constantly vying for the attention of a given store or buyer on a weekly basis and most of them won’t even be around after 6 months. By the way, did you know that the typical “shelf life” of a title in a big chain store is only three months? Longetivity of the title and of the author are one of the key factors in building relations and sales with a vendor and with communities. There is no instant gratification in this industry. If you aren’t serious about building and marketing yourself and your title for years on end, please step out and allow those who ARE serious a clear path to their own dreams and destinies.
5- Have an understanding of TIME in the industry. This ties into number three. There’s nothing worse than an author who is constantly nagging his or her publisher about a title or a timeline. Getting a book designed, getting it ready for digital submission, getting it printed, mailing sample copies out, generating marketing materials, getting those materials out to vendors, jumping through different hoops for each separate vendor, any kind of event, getting distribution – all this takes an INCREDIBLE amount of time, work, and money! If your publisher isn’t one of the big guys, then it will be double the work to get your book into bookstores. Remember, your title is competing with hundreds of other titles coming across vendor desks every single week, even from just “local” authors in the area – the work it takes to make you and your title stand out takes time. It often takes several contacts with the same vendor to even make a small sale. Rather than huffing and puffing and complaining about your slack publisher, it would behoove you to get out there yourself, and shake your tail feathers, putting together special events in your town that can get you some attention and press and make the bookstores seek YOU! Many a title that was rejected by a chain store suddenly finds a big welcome after the press covers a special event featuring the author and title in question.

*BONUS TIP – That last one reminded me of the importance of special events. If you really want to make money, and be a professional and not just a dabbler in this industry, then you have to be seen at many different events. Nowadays all professionals are expected to be guest speakers in local civic and business groups, they are expected to be involved in their communities, they are expected to be seen as experts in their field. Writers are no exception! You would be surprised how easy it is to participate in local festivals, to create an event at a school or church, or to host something for a local organization. All it takes is a lot of legwork, creativity, and a little courage thrown in. Remember, people LOVE books and writers. Having a published book is often like your very own free ticket into a new level of experiences. At the end of every week, you should ask yourself, “What have I done this week to promote myself or this title?” You would be amazed at how even simply paying for a booth to sell your product at a local show or event can result in more sales than you would make in months having your title only in bookstores.