In these times of self-publishing, ebooks, bookstore closures, agents turning into publishers, and the crumbling of the traditional publishing model—who needs a publisher?

May I offer an indie publisher’s perspective on that question?

First: Ask yourself if you know the industry. Many writers seem to have no clue about the changes in the publishing market. You need to do your research, learn book marketing, and educate yourself. One day your publisher is going to ask you, “What is your marketing plan?”, and if you say, “I can email my friends and do a book signing…”, there is a good chance your book will fail. No matter what path you take to publish, you will be responsible to market your book. Not the publisher—you.

Second: Ask yourself if want a publisher. You may feel you don’t need a publisher these days, as you can do much on your own. But a publisher can do it faster and better, and brings expertise to the process… so do you want a publisher? (And when I say “publisher” I mean the indie publisher, the new model publisher, the partner publisher, or someone who is not stuck in the old way of doing business. I do not mean the Big 6 or old-school, dying on the vine publishers who seem to think eBooks and news of thinking are evil.)

The fact is, a good publisher can do a few things for you that you can’t do on your own. But that will cost you something. You will give up part of your royalty to cover their services. Think of a publisher as someone who knows 50 people that you need to meet in order to get your book into reader’s hands. All a publisher does is make the introductions:

·      A publisher can get your book into bookstores. To sell with Ingram you need 10 titles before they will even talk to you.

NOTE: Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.

We’re on week three of tackling the Platform Monster. Week one we talked about numbers as in how big an author platform should be, and week two we took the first step toward achieving those numbers by acknowledging that growing a platform should be like playing with dominos. You move forward, tile by tile, focusing on one thing at a time until the big payoff when everything falls into place and you have your platform.

So now let’s dig deeper. Each week, we’ll take a look at one of those platform components (Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Speaking) and I’ll give insight into how to do them right and reap the biggest reward.

This week, we’re talking about WRITING ARTICLES.

I chose this one to start us off, because aside from blogging, it comes more naturally to most writers than, say, YouTube vlogging and public speaking. It also is one of the easiest ways to ensure your name gets in front of lots and lots of people.

Here’s my thinking…you Tweet something or write a blog post or throw something up onto the Internet, and unless you happen to be talking about a trending or searchable topic, it only gets read by your immediate audience. But with articles (especially print articles), your words will be read by a majority of that publication’s readership. And 99.9% of those readers are people that you haven’t met before. So while pitching articles and columns may be a bit outdated, it’s one of the best ways to get your words in front of NEW readers.

So how do you see success with articles? Here’s what I recommend:

1.      Take a look at what you write and identify the topics you specialize

It's not everyday that a debut novel becomes a bestseller, which is perhaps why people are curious as to why and how Crossing Oceans made its way on to the CBA, ECPA, Amazon, and PW Religion lists. 

Anyone who regularly follows the bestseller lists for a few months will notice that while the book titles change, the authors rarely do. People like Ted Dekker, Francine Rivers, Karen Kingsbury, etc show up there over and over—making it difficult for a new name to squeeze in. (This is true in the CBA as well as the general market).

There is, of course, no single way to turn a book into a bestseller. If there were, everyone would be doing it with every book. I can’t speak for the rest of debut novelist’s who were lucky enough to break in, but this is how it went for me:

·      I had a champion.

Actually several. It started with a top-notch agent, Chip MacGregor, who championed the book and sold it to Tyndale House. Karen Watson, Associate Publisher there, read a partial manuscript and became passionate about it. She took a risk and gave an untried author a chance.

 This wouldn’t have happened though if the idea had been poorly executed. It took years to hone my skills. Over the course of ten years, I'd written several manuscripts that were ultimately rejected, read every how-to writing book I could get my hands on, and aligned with the toughest critique partners I could find. 

Lucky for me, the rest of the team at Tyndale House also got excited and additional resources were thrown at the book. One "higher-up" from Tyndale commented it was one of the best debuts he’d  ever read. That’s the kind of excitement that helps sell a book.

·      I had a great editor.

 I doubt I have to convince writers how important this is. Kathy Olson saw my vision for the

Cherice wrote in to ask, "Can you explain how money is paid on a book publishing contract? I've got a contract in front of me, and I don't understand it."

Happy to, Charice. First, most authors are paid an advance against royalties when signing a book contract. There's a long tradition of publishers paying advances to authors, since it allows the author to survive while he or she is working on a book. This isn't free money — it's sort of a no-interest loan that will be earned back after your book releases. Let's say the contract calls for a total advance of $20,000. Typically you'd get one-third of this on signing, another third upon turning in the completed work, and the last third upon publication. (That said, there are a million ways to divide the advance. Some pay half on signing, some pay a percentage when the author completes the bio and marketing forms, etc.) So when your book releases, you're now in the red $20,000 to the publisher. You've been paid that amount, but you haven't earned anything back yet. 

Second, as your book sells you are credited with  money for each sale. That's your royalty money, and with each sale it slowly reduces that $20,000 debt. Most trade publishers in the general market (that would include Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, etc.) pay a standard royalty on hardcover books: 10% of the book's retail price on the first 5000 copies sold, 12.5% on the next 5000 copies sold, and 15% thereafter. Royalties for most trade-paper books are 7.5% of the retail price, and mass market books pay a bit less than that. (Be aware: Most CBA publishers don't pay on the retail price of the book — they pay on the net price, which is the amount of money the publisher actually receives from the bookstore. And you negotiate royalties on each book.

Two comments from the interview caught my attention; comments that deal with life and creativity. Author/editor Kevin Kelly brought up a statement Brooks made about some of his early work. Brooks called the IBM 360 OS “the worst computer programming language ever devised by anybody, anywhere.” When Kelly asked him about the frank self-appraisal, Brooks said:

"You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.”

This bit of honesty is difficult for some to swallow. People in my profession are often insecure about their work and become defensive. Who can blame them? They work alone and try to create from nothing a piece of work that will entertain, educate, and please not only readers but a phalanx of editors, pub boards, professional reviewers, amateur reviewers, bookstore managers, and more. Sometimes writing for publication seems akin to baring one’s back for flogging. So, we become sensitive souls; tender in all the wrong places.

Writing, however, is a craft and an art, one which requires the writer to have the guts to commit to self-examination. You need to know this: I am the poster boy for insecurity. I always have been. I’ve felt that way in every career I’ve had–and I’ve had several of them. Yet I’ve learned that creative growth comes

Two comments from the interview caught my attention; comments that deal with life and creativity. Author/editor Kevin Kelly brought up a statement Brooks made about some of his early work. Brooks called the IBM 360 OS “the worst computer programming language ever devised by anybody, anywhere.” When Kelly asked him about the frank self-appraisal, Brooks said:

"You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.”

This bit of honesty is difficult for some to swallow. People in my profession are often insecure about their work and become defensive. Who can blame them? They work alone and try to create from nothing a piece of work that will entertain, educate, and please not only readers but a phalanx of editors, pub boards, professional reviewers, amateur reviewers, bookstore managers, and more. Sometimes writing for publication seems akin to baring one’s back for flogging. So, we become sensitive souls; tender in all the wrong places.

Writing, however, is a craft and an art, one which requires the writer to have the guts to commit to self-examination. You need to know this: I am the poster boy for insecurity. I always have been. I’ve felt that way in every career I’ve had–and I’ve had several of them. Yet I’ve learned that creative growth comes

NOTE: Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.

So now you know what to shoot for in terms of numbers (if you missed it, last Thursday we talked about how big an author platform should be). But as many of you pointed out, those numbers seem impossible. The time and effort required to grow such a following had some of you envisioning yourself with an impressive platform sometime in the year 2030. While others flat out admitted that they didn’t have a single sales bone in their body. You’re artists, after all. And artists don’t always make the most sociable, friendly, outgoing, spin doctoring bunch.

So what’s the secret? How can these numbers be achieved?

Let me explain it like this…most authors, when embarking on a quest to tackle the platform demon, treat it like spaghetti. They throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. They start a Facebook group, a Twitter account, a blog, a website, a Goodreads account, a newsletter and on and on and on until they feel they have all of the possible platform-building areas covered.

And then they’re surprised when nothing happens. When their Facebook group hovers around 50 followers—most of which are personal or family friends. When their Twitter account has more spam followers than real followers and their website stats don’t climb above 30 visits a day. They’re surprised by this, because they’re doing everything they’re supposed to do and nothing is working. And more than anything, they’re exhausted. They’ve spread themselves so thin, they can barely keep track of what was said where. At this point, most give up. They tried their best, and it didn’t work.

But platform is nothing like spaghetti. It’s more like a game of dominos (as in the game in