A veteran self-publisher’s case studies

Green Hill has been serving the growing community of Australian and New Zealand self-publishers for well over a decade. And I’ve been in self-publishing in one form or another for 30 years.

While we think we’ve seen it all, each month we seem to be faced with a new challenge or a twist on an old one. Don’t get me wrong – we love our authors! And they love us or at very least respect us. Most are intelligent and sophisticated and have met with good success in their publishing endeavours. But there’s been a few (actually more than a few) who have self-sabotaged their efforts to be a successful author. For simplicity, I’ve grouped these into four categories of the most common forms of self-publishing self-sabotage I know.

IMPORTANT NOTE: These case studies have had the names, locations, book genres, personal profiles fictionalised for the purpose of protecting actual author identities and their privacy.

 Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Bad self-publishing idea #1: I want to be a millionaire

The aspiring author called me and asked to meet. I love meeting authors, online or on the phone or in our offices! So I was looking forward to it. This author was referred by a happy author for whom we had previously published. Its always great to start a project conversation from the base point of a happy author recommendation.

He was a 40 year old, fit looking and a little intense at first greeting. Settling down over coffee I started to show him some of our most successful books including a childrens book that had been selling extremely well on Amazon in the US.

‘Hold on before you go on I’ve got one simple question to ask’ he said, quickly taking control of the meeting.

‘I want to know how much money my book will make. How much can I bank on?’

I explained that I didn’t even know what the book was about (what was his book concept and what was the genre). Nor did I know if he had written a book before, or if he was literate – if he could write. I just couldn’t  pull a financial projection out of the hat.

‘Ok. I want this book to make a million dollars. Can you guarantee that? Its a childrens book about a dog going to the beach. A friend of mine has done some illustrations.’

When I said I that I couldn’t give him any financial guarantee, with measured anger he retorted “OK I’m out’ and within another five minutes, after I felt it kind to further his own disillusion (for his own good) he was gone and gone for good.

Another author with a similar financial goal rebuked me for being negative and said I needed to think big, watch my words and make an appointment for counselling with him as he was a Neuro Linguistic Programmer (NLP). I clearly ‘needed help’. He’d never published a book before – I’d published thousands of books. But, doing his very first book, somehow he knew better.

We have many authors who have done well financially (and many that haven’t) and many more in between. We can certainly provide some advice about the financial potential of your book.

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Bad self-publishing idea #2: I had a dream

He was a senior retired professional writing his memoir of a long and successful life. The book would never be a best seller and he understood that and wanted the book to be a record for family, friends and work colleagues.

It was well written, edited and interesting.

But there was one issue. Sometime around 1992 he had a vivid dream that stuck in his consciousness for 30 years. It was emblematic of his life journey  from early childhood and without getting too Freudian, it wrapped together a whole range of sub-conscious realities in a very surrealistic way.

‘My dream needs to be on the cover… it says everything to me. It is a portrait of everything that has deeply impacted my life.’

Reluctantly we started the book design process with a creative brief where the author and book designer discuss the book creation process. Here the book designer gets the author to clearly outline what sort of book cover they’d like to see.

The dream seemed to be long and complex with people, sounds and characters bobbing in and out of ‘screen’. When asked, the author didn’t really know what the dream meant nor could he visually describe it – when he repeatedly tried the description varied from the last.

He didn’t know how to describe the dream. And the book designer didn’t have a clue what he was on about. The cover was dutifully produced to his satisfaction. Two years later we redesigned the cover at his request.

‘I was happy with the first cover but none of the readers had any idea what it was about’ he said.

‘I got a some negative feedback.’

There are a few of lessons here:

• never try to tell the whole story with a book cover
• don’t design a book cover for yourself, have it designed for the reader
• let a book design professional design the cover

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Bad self-publishing idea #3: My words are special

She was a talented actress who spent her early years in London, then Auckland working in TV and finally managing an advertising and PR agency out of Sydney. She was a confident, sharp and charismatic character but carried the scars of a personal life punctuated with a string of disappointments, failures and minor tragic events. I liked her and she liked me.

Her novel held promise with a major traditional publishing company finally dropping it after they’d sent her so many positive signals over an 18 month period even flying her to Melbourne for a meet-up discussion. She was disappointed but philosophical.

‘I’ve had a f#c$^*g gut-full – I’m going to self-publish now – let’s get it going.’

Our first step with this book was to get our senior editor to do an editing assessment – a quick read-through of a chapter or two and give a professional opinion on the writing and how it might be improved. The book was good but suffered from some relatively minor but frequent issues. These seemed to spoil the reader experience. The errors although minor were a little jarring. We suggested a low level edit of the book.

Her response;

‘my words are special – no-one’s going to touch them – I used to be an editor myself you know.’

‘I don’t want anyone meddling with my words – its my voice’.

Its remarkable how often we hear these very words. They possibly reveal why the traditional publishing company in Melbourne ‘dropped’ her. Perhaps she was unwilling for her work to be edited. I’ve never gotten to the bottom of it.

So the book was dutifully published. At the book launch someone in the audience pointed out a typo on page 123. The book died a swift natural death. The little foxes spoil the vines.

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Bad self-publishing idea #4: The media is the message

Jake was 29 years old, a university drop-out and after working most of his adult life as a barista and in tourism, then building simple websites, had launched his own company. He gained a license from a German company to sell their software products into Australia and New Zealand. He lived in northern NSW in a trendy seaside town loaded with nouveau riche and old-money and was busy recruiting staff who would help him customise the software for Aussie users. He’d started to turn a serious dollar and the value of his new car although leased, would have been enough to buy a modest apartment on the far outskirts of Adelaide.

He was focussed on using his book as a business lever. He wanted the book to be picked up by IT professionals and entrepreneurs seeking a software solution in a narrow market niche. He was unknown. And the book would get him noticed. He could write and did have something new to say. At very least he could give away his book to corporate software buyers and other influencers. He also wanted to get conference speaking gigs. This was an ideal self-publishing scenario for Green Hill – he was an author who was intelligent, capable, focussed, well funded and strategic.

One ‘small’ issue. He wanted the production values of his book to be top-notch.

‘The book needs to be hardback, full colour, I want the cover to be silver, because silver means wealth and gold foil because that’s big among the Chinese’ he said.

‘Inside I want transparent paper on a few pages, and die-cutting on the cover. Can the corners of the book be rounded? Can I get the edges of the book printed? I’ve seen that on a cookbook,’

‘And I want to be photographed… I’m going to Frankfurt, and want a photo there at the river as a backdrop’ he enthused.

Cool man! In the Age of Aquarius the media is now the message, right?

You get the idea. Marshall McLuhan in his iconic work The Medium is the Massage (sic) a few decades ago, brought the theory of “media is the message” to a receptive world audience.

If you have a quality product you need a fancy book… right? You need a quality print job… right? If you have an innovative product you need a crazy innovate book… right? The Medium is The Massage had pages of text in reverse that could only be read in a mirror.

Wrong*. That’s ‘wrong’ full-stop.

Jakes’ book was quoted at $135 per copy for a short-run print. The price made it unsalable and the print method made it unmarketable. He printed just 100 copies and the response to the book was poor. He’s still got 75 copies in his garage.

Not surprisingly Jake is a success. The 75 copies are stacked next to the Porsche. But his book didn’t help at all. Often authors go overboard on print in an attempt to bring an impressive book to market. Often sophisticated readers will question glossy book printing wondering ‘what’s the author trying to hide?’ or ‘its all smoke and mirrors, does the book and author have any substance?’*

We’ve developed our own success hierarchy in this respect starting from the top in order of importance:

• Book concept and quality of writing (the author’s responsibility)
• Design (Green Hill’s responsibility)
• Print and distribution (Green Hill working with the author, printers and distributors to get it right).

Another way of viewing this is a successful book is built upon the foundation of the book concept and the quality of its writing. Self-publishing success looks much like this:

* Footnote: If your book features art, photography, fashion, a cookbook or anything that fits the classic coffee-table book mode, then high production values are justified or even essential.

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