The Midnight Hare, almost flying
Page One, this is. Quite sparse, unlike the rest of illustrations to the story. The Midnight Hare is now entered on Nielsen, and an A6 greetings card has been ordered, an image of the front and back cover, which I am going to use as part of the publicity material, because that is the stage the book is at, after all this time. I should have put the book on Nielsen months ago, apparently, not just a few weeks before publication day, which I have fairly randomly chosen as June 21st. I didn’t really want to do anything until I had actual copies of the book, which should arrive within the next fortnight or so. However, each day now I set myself some task to carry out. I tried to look at the possibility of WooCommerce, for selling on-line, I was just trawling the Internet, and woosh, it was a bit like being attacked by an enormous cat, I was captured before I was in any way prepared: I shall have to tread a tad more carefully before committing myself. It would take me much less time to fill in forms if I read the instructions more carefully. I would organise my other site, Moonwuzo Books, much better if I had read my WordPress manual right through. Indeedy. However, this has all been a very interesting learning experience, even if it is a process of realising how much more I have still to learn. Now I am trawling through the differences between distributors and wholesellers, and when to approach the one and then the other. However, firstly I am going to concentrate on local outlets, as I have sold work there before, and this is after all a book set in the landscape of the Borders.
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Sounds like there is so much to think about – and to get to grips with!
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Think of it like this. Manufacturers -> Distrubutors -> Wholesalers -> Retailers. In most cases, each step after manufacturering adds about 18% to the end price. The help a little?
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Yes, Ray, little by little by little it mounts up/disappears….a lot of my customers will be local businesses, which is 33% discount. I set the price at round about the usual for a smallish print-run book. No way will I make a fortune, but I hope to get my actual print-money back within a year, and it has been such an interesting experience. I don’t have to totally rely on my work income these days, thank goodness. I just wanted to have control over the whole process. It’s quite a strange little book, I don’t think it follows many of the present market trends; however, I never offered it to a publisher at all, and this responsibility for the process has been good for me. Thanks so much for sharing information which seems based on your own experience.
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For a long time in my career, I made books — from editing through design and printing and finishing — for Eastman Kodak. I spent six years in Hong Kong doing that. Often I would commute between HK and Singapore or somewhere in China. As far as control goes, if you have the talent and skills to make a book that’s one thing, but I used to babysit so many authors who wanted control but didn’t know the basics.
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I got the feeling you knew about this process… I’ve had quite a few books published, that’s partly how I made a sort of living, writing children’s books, both with large publishers and also with a small publisher doing local children’s books – creating one’s own legends about the places in the North East and Scotland. I could have gone along this latter route, and also could have send this recent book to larger publishers, but I thought being totally in control of the whole process was good for me. By the way, really enjoy reading your blog entries, I am kind of skimming through past favourite sites at the moment, and then will return to one or two when I have caught up. Hope your plans to get away for the summer come to fruition. Thanks for the information you gave me.
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You appear to have the knowledge to go it alone, which is one thing. So many of the people that I read have almost no knowledge. They just want control, which for them is a sort of shorthand for “I couldn’t find a publisher.” Big difference between what you are doing and what they are doing.
Thank you for that. I wish I could monetize it a little bit, but I don’t write about photo gear.
We are going to be away for a little bit. In two places that should be a little cooler. The problem with New Orleans summers is that they last from about April to Christmas and it feels like you are wearing a hot, wet blanket. OTH, living in a steam room means that your wrinkle melt away and you get a sort of glow. Heh, heh, heh.
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