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      Category : Self-Publishing

      • October 3, 2014

        My name is Jenny, and I'm an indie author (a guest blog)

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        Hi, I’m Jenny B. Jones, and I’m an indie author. It feels weird to say. Even weirder to say it on a literary agent’s blog. Chip (who is the literary agent who helped me land my traditional publishing deals) asked me to stop by and share a bit of my story. I asked him if I could share my Worst Date Ever Story, but he convinced me this one was more relevant. Before I jump into a discussion about why I went rogue, let me say this is just my story. For every point I make, you can find an author who can disprove it with her own experience. Traditional publishing has done a lot of things right by me, and I’m grateful for most of that season, cow book covers notwithstanding.

        WHY DID I CHOOSE TO GO INDIE? 

        I wrote nine books in traditional publishing. It’s humbling to admit, but I was not the queen of the bestsellers. I was more like the lady’s maid who helps the queen get into her corset and says things like, “No, that bustle does not make your butt look big.” I once heard Debbie Macomber say something to the effect of, “I’m not called to preach. I’m called to write.” Amen and testify. My gift is not in delivering spiritual messages, but in creating a story often about Christian characters and always from a Christian world view. I was always too secular for CBA and too sweet for secular. I heard this so often, I thought about working it into my next tattoo.

        Almost four years ago I left publishing. I thought at first I would take a year’s absence, then that year turned into “probably forever.” I had a full-time day job, and years of doing both gigs just wore me out. The last few years of traditional publishing wore me out. The return just wasn’t enough, and I was swimming

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      • May 27, 2014

        What advice would you give to an author thinking about marketing?

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        A longtime friend in the industry said she had been reading my blog for years, and decided to put a bunch of thoughts of mine together into an article for her authors who were asking about marketing. This was all built from things I’ve said on my blog numerous times, and I liked what she created, so I decided to reprint it here. Here’s the advice I give to authors wondering about marketing…

        First of all, your publisher isn’t going to do that much marketing. They love you and have invested heavily in your book, and they certainly want to see you succeed, but most of their marketing budget is earmarked for their current bestsellers. So that means YOU, the author, have to take charge of the marketing of your book. You’ve probably heard me say this before, but if you’re waiting for your publisher to create a great plan that will take you to the next level, you may be waiting a long time. Publishers are investing in fewer books to market, and they’re not hiring more marketing people… and that means the poor publicist who is working on your title is also working on 20 other titles. Show her (or him) some love, and say something about how much you appreciate her work, but plan to invest in your own marketing. Decide right now that you’re going to take charge of marketing for your book.

        Second, you’re probably wondering, How do I do that? Well, you need to become familiar with the process of marketing, so that you can begin to create an actual plan. To start, that means you may have to do some research. Let me suggest a couple books to consider. To understand the basics of marketing. Consider reading Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Ries and Trout, or a marketing textbook like Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing.

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      • May 1, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: The Future of Literary Agents in a Digital World

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        2014AmandaAmanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

         

        All this talk about hybrid authors and self-publishing, and there’s one question that is bound to surface:

        Are agents a dying breed?

        Maybe. I mean some freakish thing could happen that changes everything and puts the final set of nails in the Literary Agent coffin, but the way things are shaping up, my answer would be “no.” We aren’t a dying breed, and here’s why…

        AGENTS AND SMALL OR INDEPENDENT HOUSES

        I’m no expert on the history of the literary agent, but it’s quite clear that the role was developed out of necessity. The typewriter, and later email, made it ridiculously easy for anyone to pound out a terrible novel and send it to the best editors the industry had to offer. Those terrible novels would fill up the queue, thus suffocating the really great publishable novels. Editors, whose time is valuable and limited…and who also have a tendency to spend much more time analyzing a manuscript than an agent does…eventually turned to agents to help weed through the bad and find the good.

        While we tend to think that indie and small houses are there for the unagented, the fact of the matter is that these publishers are more than willing to work with agents. In fact, they many times welcome it. They love when someone else has vetted the material before they even have to give it a look. And consequently, an agent can many times get a faster response from them than your typical unagented author. Why? Because there is a sense of professional responsibility.

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      • April 28, 2014

        Having a Nite-cap with a Literary Agent

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        We’ve been taking the month of April and inviting writers to send in the questions they’d like to ask a literary agent. So if you could sit down one night, over a nite-cap, and ask a literary agent anything at all, what would you ask? These are the questions I’ve received recently…

        How important is it for my agent to be knowledgeable about the specific genre I write in? If he or she have the same contacts at publishing houses as most other agents, is it important to find an agent with genre-specific connections? For example, let’s say I typically write women’s fiction, but want to do a New Adult series, and my agent says she knows nothing about NA. Should I be concerned my proposal won’t get the right treatment from editors?

        Agents tend to work in certain genres. So we make connections with editors who work in those genres, and develop great relationships with people and publishers. So yes, it’s nice if you can work with an agent who has relationships with editors in the genres in which you write. That said, most agents are also willing to grow their business. So if you came to me with a really good proposal for a genre I’ve not worked before, I would admit that to you, and either say, “You might want to find another agent to do this one,” OR I might say, “You know, this isn’t a field I’ve done much work in, but I love this proposal — let me do some research, make some calls, and I’ll come back to you so we can develop a plan.”

        I noticed you were highly critical of agents who sell services to authors. I approached an agent I met at a conference to discuss my book. He rejected it for representation, but said they had an editor who could work on it, and I paid about $700 to

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      • April 24, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: The Future of Publishing According to Me

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        2014AmandaAmanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

        After spending the past number of weeks talking (and hailing) hybrid publishing (see posts here, here, here, and here), it begs a very important question…

        What is the future of publishing?

        As self-publishing continues to grow, as authors are offered more options to achieve their dreams, as traditional publishers continue to try and crack the e-publishing code, as start-ups focus primarily on e- and POD- publishing for their books, and as America’s reading habits evolve…where does that leave us?

        Where does that leave the book? The bookstore? The library?

        I’m no Predictor of the Future (well, okay, maybe I am a little), but I do have a few thoughts about where we’re headed…and I think it’s going to be an interesting ride.

        1. Eventually, it’s going to be fairly easy to get successful self-published books into bookstores. Someone, somewhere, with a ton of the right connections and enough money to give it a go is going to start a company that finds the best of the best in the self-publishing world and then presents those books to the buyers at B&N, Books-A-Million, Wal-Mart, etc. And because of this individual’s reputation and their product list of tried-and-true Amazon bestsellers, those stores are going to buy. And they’re going to shelve those books. This means that successful indie authors won’t ever have to partner with a publisher again to get their books into stores. They’ll just have to partner with an indie-friendly distributor. It‘s worth saying that there ARE venues that promise this kind of service,
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      • April 22, 2014

        If you could sit down to dinner with a literary agent…

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        Imagine this: You get to sit down to have dinner with the literary agent of your choosing. You can ask anything you want? So… what would you ask? I’ve been taking the entire month of April to let people send in the questions they’ve always wanted to ask a literary agent. Recent questions include…

        A friend of mine in our writers’ group asked me if she can be sued if she uses the name of a real town — i.e., Witch Hazel, Oregon, in her novel. Is that true?

        Okay– I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not giving you legal advice. If you need legal advice, go talk to an attorney. What you’re getting is my take as an agent… Sued? For what? No. You can be sued for defaming or libeling someone, but you can’t be sued for simply using the name of a town. Does she think she can’t say, “The plane flew to New York”? (But thanks for the call-out to my hometown of Witch Hazel!)

        It’s my understanding that publishers will often pay higher royalties for hardcover than softcover. Why is this?

        It’s true. The standard book contracts pays 10% of the retail price on the first 5000 hardcopies sold, 12.5% on the next 5000 copies, and 15% thereafter. A trade paper pays a flat 7.5%. The cost of the hardcover is higher, the production costs are a bit higher, people are willing to pay more, so there is more money to divide. Thus the royalties are higher. (By the way, most CBA publishers pay on net contracts, so it’s a bit different.)

        I’d like to know what goes on in a Pub Board meeting, and why does it sometimes take so long for them to make a decision on a book?

        The pub board is where a decision is made to publish or not publish a book. Usually it includes the editor presenting the project,

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      • April 17, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: How to Become a Hybrid Author, Part 2

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        2014AmandaAmanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

        Last week, we continued our discussion on Hybrid Authors by looking at what steps published authors should take if they want to become one. But what if you aren’t yet traditionally published? What’s the protocol for a self-published author who wants to cross over into the traditional publishing market?

        HOW SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHORS BECOME HYBRIDS

        There is lots and lots of advice out there as to how to hit it big time with self-publishing. From everything I’ve read, I’d say the common threads are:

        • Romance sells best
        • Covers matter
        • $0.99 to $2.99 is the ideal price range for ebooks
        • Authors do better when they start with a bang and release a bunch of books simultaneously
        • Authors keep their readers coming back by releasing new content every few months
        • Marketing becomes an author’s day job

        So there you have it. The super duper condensed version. I won’t waste your time by expanding on what can be found plastered all over author sites and forums, but instead I’ll focus on what’s appealing to publishers and what would make them bite.

        Publishers in New York aren’t easily impressed by sales numbers. Many times they say that ebook or self-pubbed sales aren’t large enough to warrant traditional publication. And then when those sales numbers are large and impressive, you many times find them saying that the author has fully tapped the market and there is nothing more the publisher could do.

        So there seems to be this sweet spot…this magical sales range that is large enough to warrant publisher attention and small enough

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      • April 16, 2014

        If I could sit down with a literary agent and ask ANYTHING…

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        This month I’m trying to get to all the questions people say they’d like to ask an agent, if they could just sit down with him or her for a few minutes and talk privately. Here are questions that people have asked recently…

        Are the low costs of e-books costing authors money?

        Sure. I mean, if a retailer sells a book for $20, the royalty is higher than if he sells it for $10. The average e-book is way down — many below $5, and often you’ll see specials where the books are 99 cents. That doesn’t leave much for an author. The argument is made that people want a deal, and the low prices build readership by finding readers who will spend a dollar or two without even thinking about it. And I think that’s true, to a point… but at some point, we have educated readers that they only need to spend a buck or two on a book, and that means the only people really making money are the bestselling authors.

        I’m thinking of setting up my own publishing company. Do I need to trademark or copyright the company? Is there a contract template for doing that?

        If you’re just doing it to keep the words “Amazon Publishing” off your title page, then create a business name, do a search to make sure the name & domain are available and not a copyright infringement, and start a bank account in the name of the company. In some states you’ll have to register the company name, so check your local laws, or talk with an attorney if you have greater legal questions. (For the record, I’m not an attorney, nor am I giving you legal advice.) You can find people willing to sell you all sorts of business-planning materials, but most authors who start their own companies simply start them online with a domain name and a bank

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      • April 10, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: How to Become a Hybrid Author

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        2014AmandaAmanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

        A couple weeks ago, I shared one of my oddities…whenever I hear “hybrid author” I can’t help but think of the movie Underworld. As silly as the post was, I stand by it 100%. The similarities between hybrid authors and the vampire-werewolf hybrid depicted in the movie are shockingly and hilariously real, folks. Real. Real. Real.

        And hybrid authors ARE taking over in a weird sense. They may not be the majority (yet), and all of them certainly aren’t millionaires, but they’re happy. And they’re profitable. And that’s a major WIN, folks. A huge win.

        So how do they do it? How do you become this mystical creature? This Hybrid Author?

        It looks a bit different for everyone, but for authors who have started on the traditional side and are considering making the leap, here are some thoughts…

        HOW TRADITIONAL AUTHORS BECOME HYBRIDS

        First, you need an author career with some sort of momentum. Maybe you have a couple books that are contracted or maybe you have releases lined up every six months or every year for the next few years? The logistics don’t matter so much as the fact that you are publishing with a traditional publishing house (one that can and does get books into bookstores) and will continue to do so.

        When you have this, here’s how you make the switch…

        1. Take a look at your contracts. Look specifically at the Non-Compete clause. You don’t want to end up in a situation where your publisher feels as though your self-pubbed books are competing with

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      • March 27, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: How the Movie “UNDERWORLD” Perfectly Portrays Today’s Publishing World

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        2014Amanda

        Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

         

        Have you seen Underworld?

        In this rather awesome and yet equally terrible movie, the vampires and the lycans are at odds (duh). The vampires are snooty and privileged and literally SLEEPING UNDERGROUND while the world passes them by.  The lycans, on the other hand, are rule-breakers and thugs. They do what they want and for obvious reasons don’t get along with the vamps.

        There is a particularly attractive lycan-hunting vampire girl who is tracking a lowly human that most women my age would know as Ben from Felicity. Ben from Felicity is being followed by lycans, and the hot vamp chick wants to know why. The truth is soon revealed when the lycans bite Ben from Felicity and turn him. By now the hot vampire lady is torn! She has grown to care for Ben from Felicity, and how can she love her enemy?! She eventually decides to get over herself and love him anyway, but then he is once again injured and near death (wimp). She does what she has been warned not to do and bites him, thus making him both vampire and lycan–a creation that is rumored to be stronger than either species. They call him a hybrid. Eventually, he is able to bring about peace between the clans.

        So why do I bring this up? Why walk you through the ENTIRE movie premise?

        Because it adequately portrays what’s happening in publishing, and every time I hear the term “hybrid author,” I immediately think of Ben from Felicity (and I wanted you to

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