RNFF readers
will remember my post last fall about speaking at the inaugural meeting of Duke
University’s “Unsuitable” events series,
talks by professionals in the romance field that engage students and members of
the Durham community in a discussion of women’s interests and popular fiction. As
I live so far from North Carolina, I’ve not been able to attend any of the subsequent
talks in the series, but I’m pleased to report that students from Duke
instructors and romance authors Laura Florand and Katherine Ashe’s “The Romance
Novel” (HST 248S.01) class have offered to give RNFF readers a sneak peak by
reporting about “Unsuitable” events and speakers.
Please join
me in welcoming guest blogger Katherine Berko, who will talk about attending
UNSUITABLE #4 on March 2nd, a talk by romance author and self-publisher Courtney Milan.
“UNSUITABLE
Event Number Four: Publishing Without a Publisher” was about to commence at
Duke University, and New York Times-bestselling
historical romance novelist Courtney Milan sat in a midnight blue dress, a few
scraps of scribbled notes in front of her, ready to enlighten both
undergraduate students and Durham locals about her journey to becoming a
self-published author. Little did audience
members know that Milan was about
to give them a combination math lesson, autobiographical story, and business
speech, cracking jokes all the while.
Yet what less could be expected of a woman who studied chemistry and
math as an undergrad while simultaneously running a data collection for HTML,
went to law school, served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice O’Connor, taught
as a professor of law, and who now had done a full 360, choosing to write
romance novels in the heart of the Rocky Mountains? How did she manage to do all of that? Well, as Milan unashamedly admitted, “I’m really
smart. I’m a girl so I’m not supposed to
say that,” she chuckled, “but I’m actually really smart.”
Milan began her talk by explaining how the ability to
publish a book digitally has revolutionized the self-publishing world. No longer are a minute percentage of people
self-published; with the popularity of digital books, it is increasingly easy
for writers to self-publish their work.
Milan elaborated on the pros of being self-published: the first pro she
shared was that there is a direct-financial benefit to digital sales. With a publisher, an author gets around 17.5%
of the purchase price in revenue. But when self-publishing, an author receives about
70% of the purchase price. Another
benefit to self-publishing is the increased author control over publication
timing. Milan explained that books get published much quicker sans publisher
because there are no committees to run them through. Publishers also often do
not share important data with their authors, such as where books are selling,
where they aren’t selling, etc. This brought
Milan to her next point: the publisher’s goal.
The goal of a publisher is to maximize income, not
necessarily for the author but
instead for the company. Milan confided, a twinkle in her eyes:
“Hypothetically, you can sell more copies than your publisher.” Then she shared numbers for a recent novel of
hers, which happened to be both self-published as well as published through a
publisher. From July through September
of 2014, Milan’s publisher sold 1,845 copies of her book. Meanwhile, in the same time frame, Milan
managed to sell 10,363 copies! Let’s not
forget the catch: Milan only gets 17.5% of that $1,845 that her publisher
sold! How could anyone make a living on
that? Luckily, Milan’s savvy brain also
snatches 70% of that $10,363 she managed
to sell. Of course, it’s not this way
for every self-published novelist out there.
As Milan admitted, “No matter how you publish, it’s not easy.”
Milan explained of the hundreds of thousands of brand-new
books published every year, 50% of them do not sell a single copy. Daunting?
Of course! However, this should
not frighten writers from the realm of self-publishing, as many of the authors
of the aforementioned digital books write poorly Some of those non-selling
books are good, though, and yet they
still do not sell. Why not? Milan explained, “If you want to make a
living as a writer, you must think of yourself as a small business and think of
your work as an art.” A big reason why many
self-published authors don’t sell is because “something about their business
sucks.” Milan instructs listeners that
all businesses require capital when they first start out, and becoming a writer
is no exception to this rule. Then Milan
reminded her audience that yes, while writing requires capital at the start, a
writer does not have to be best-selling to earn that investment, and then some,
back. “50 Shades of Gray has sold a fuck-load of copies,” Milan said, eyes
bulging. “That means 1.4% of the world
population bought a copy!” However, Milan then went on to reassure people that
they need not sell their book to 1.4 % of the world in order to be successes. To
make a living, one only needs 0.0001% of the world’s population to purchase
one’s books: not so bad after all, right?
Why did Milan ultimately
crossover from being with a publisher to self-publishing? She was a success with HQN, one of the best
publishers, and quit! Everybody was shocked by what she did. But Milan
had already published four books with HQN, so she had avid followers, which are
the key to success. Milan quit because
she’d made very little money from her traditionally-published books, and her
publishers pissed her off. They tried to
remove all the elements in her story that somebody could object to. For
example, they asked her to remove a gay character from one of her novels. Milan objected: “These elements are often
what we get most excited about.” She
also emphasized that while most publishers are this way, there are still some
good ones. Another reason Milan left was
it’s easier to take creative risks without a publisher, be that risk a
character in the story or a cover.
Romance novelists often despise their covers, which are selected by their
publisher and who can blame these novelists?
Who would want an image of a rapist advertising their book? A novel’s cover is its marketing device.
Milan told people to understand that: “Super successful
self-published books would generally be successful if published by
publishers.” Essentially, Milan
explained that a writer should choose whether to self-publish or go with a
publisher based on his/her temperament.
Ask yourself: are you a person more stressed by responsibilities or by
not being in control? If the answer to
the question is the latter (which happens to be Milan’s answer), then
self-publishing is for you. “The amount
of non-writing stuff you have to do is huge,” Milan explained. This
“stuff” includes finding somebody to design your cover, somebody to edit
your book, and many other tasks. Milan’s
biggest hurdle as a self-publisher is finding good people to work with who will
not quit. She pays her workers a lot of
money because she is “hard to work with.”
As a closing piece of advice for aspiring authors, Milan
said the best person to receive guidance from is somebody who succeeded in
marketing their book last year as a new author. This is because the book market is extremely
volatile. And to make writers feel
better about themselves Milan reminded, “The world sucks right now for both
types of publishers.” This is because
everything is constantly changing.
However, on the bright side for novelists, “Authors, in general, are being
treated better because of self-publishing,” Milan happily told her listeners.
So go forth, remember to view your writing as both a business and an art, and
look to your temperament to decide what publishing is best for you.
Katherine Berko is a New York City native attending Duke University. She loves to write and hopes to one day publish her own books. Aside from writing, Katherine also enjoys singing opera, as she graduated from LaGuardia High School of the Arts. She travels as much as she can, from the ruins of Machu Picchu to the pagodas of Myanmar.
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