How to Publish a Book

It is better to know one subtitle intimately than one hundred superficially

Being the 29th edition of Assorted Nonsense, the official newsletter of Donovan Street Press Inc.

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How to Publish a Book

A friend of mine reached out recently wondering how to go about publishing a book. Since I have published a book (or four) I agreed to share what I know.

Now, I am completely allergic to presenting myself as anything other than precisely what I am so before we get into it here are my credentials to speak on the matter, such as they are:

• one traditionally published novel with a small indie press, sold about 2000 copies

• two indie published books: one memoir, one collection of short stories, sold rather less than the novel but still selling

• published a collection of short stories for my father, which has more than made its money back and is still selling

• started indie publishing company, Donovan Street Press Inc., three authors currently signed with books to come out later this year

• I spend just about every day working to grow Donovan Street Press Inc. (along with my own writing career) while trying to figure out just exactly how to make a go of it in this crazy industry in which the odds are decidedly stacked against writers

In other words, I’m no Terry Fallis/John Scalzi/Robert J. Sawyer (insert successful author here). So take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

In fact, I recently revised my author bio to read as follows:

Joe Mahoney is one of Canada’s least acclaimed writers. He has yet to win even a single measly award. However, he did come second place in a chess tournament once. His first novel, A Time and a Place, was published on October 1st 2017 by Five Rivers Press. His memoir, a behind-the-scenes glimpse of working at CBC Radio, Adventures in the Radio Trade, was published on August 1st 2023 by Donovan Street Press.

Joe has worked as a story editor on multiple radio, television and film projects, and bakes a mean lasagna.

He is a member of SF Canada, Canada’s National Association of Speculative Fiction Professionals, and SFWA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, and is best friends with a Sheltie.

Joe may not take his author’s bio very seriously, but rest assured he takes his coffee with cream and one quarter sugar.

It’s obviously tongue-in-cheek, a response to a writer’s bio I saw in the Toronto Star recently that I thought took itself a bit too seriously. It began with some phenomenal accolade, and just got worse from there (“so and so has 4 doctorates in nuclear physics and recently replaced the Archangel Gabriel as one of the greatest celestial beings ever to exist” etc.). I completely understand why some writers have bios like that, and I don’t fault them for it (I do reserve the right to poke a little fun at them though). Writers want (perhaps even need) to be taken seriously. Probably in some cases they’re not even responsible for their own press and bios. I just don’t feel like doing it myself right now, even if I did have some crazy accolade to trumpet (which I don’t). The writing and the publishing and the craft I take one hundred percent seriously; myself, no.

Anyway, here’s what I told my friend, more or less. She wasn’t really specific about what she wanted to accomplish, so I just told her what I know in fairly broad strokes, based on my somewhat limited experience. If you have more to add, or would have told her differently, by all means please share your thoughts in the comments.

Traditional Publishing:

It's unlikely that you’ll ever land an agent or a major publisher. It’s possible but very hard to do.  This is called traditional publishing and it's done in the following steps;

1. Write the manuscript

2. Perfect the manuscript as much as you can

3. Have the manuscript edited. Preferably for free by someone you know. To have a manuscript professionally edited can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, depending on the length. If you spend too much at the outset you’ll be behind financially before you even begin.

4. Submit the manuscript to publishers and agents. The names and contact info for publishers and agents can be found online and via social media.  

You have to be careful. There are tons of agents and publishers who are basically scam artists. They just want your money. They will make promises that are lies. There is one rule it is critical that you remember:

Money goes to the author, not the other way around

Never give an agent or a publisher money, no matter what they tell you. Never ever ever. 

If you do successfully land a respectable agent or publisher, congrats! They will guide you from that point on.  

If you DON’T successfully land a respectable agent or publisher, welcome to:

Indie Publishing:

This is the most common path to publishing these days. It's completely legitimate and some people are quite successful at it. You may make a bit of money at it, if you’re skilled and careful.

But it's important to know that many people LOSE money. There are many, many ways to spend too much self-publishing. I shall paraphrase the advice of my business manager: “Never spend money on anything unless we absolutely have to.”

(Our little indie publishing company, Donovan Street Press Inc., has a business manager because we take the financial part of the business very seriously. We believe that writing and publishing can be more than just an expensive hobby.)

Here are the basic steps for indie publishing. The first three are the same as for traditional publishing:

1. Write the manuscript

2. Perfect the manuscript

3. Have the manuscript edited. Preferably for free by someone you know etc. etc.

The next steps are unique to Indie-publishing:

4. Design a cover. 

Some people can do this themselves with programs like Adobe Photoshop or Affinity or similar software. But it's difficult to design a professional looking cover yourself. We hire professionals. This generally costs hundreds of dollars, but it results in a professional looking cover that stands a chance of selling books. Avoid what a friend of mine calls “indie death covers.”

5. Design the interior of the book.  

Again, it's possible to do this yourself using a program like Adobe In Design or (the cheaper but less flexible) Vellum. I published my father's book, The Deer Yard and Other Stories, using Vellum.  

But generally we use professionals like Bibliofic Designs.  They can do both covers and book design.  It can cost hundreds or thousands depending on the book (Adventures in the Radio Trade was expensive because of the index, which is difficult to format).  

Once the cover and the interior of the book are complete, you will have the files and you can do whatever you like with them. We generally go through Amazon to actually publish them, though there are other places like Draft2Digital and Ingram Spark. Or you can publish direct to Kobo or Barnes and Noble etc.  

For all these places it is just a question of opening an account with them and uploading the files according to their usually quite detailed instructions.  

Once the files are uploaded, you choose when the book is on sale and how much you want to sell it for, and fill in additional information such as what the book is about, who it's for, and a bunch of other questions, such as your banking information so that these places can pay you when your book sells. 

The whole process is really quite straightforward.    

The difficult parts are:

• Writing the book

• Perfecting the book

• Editing the book properly (many indie books are not edited properly)

• Designing a decent cover

• Decent interior design 

• Selling the book

Marketing and selling books is incredibly challenging and frequently embarrassing.  

It's challenging because the competition is fierce. There are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of books published every year. Discoverability is a huge issue. How do you make your book stand out from others? Getting books into bookstores when you're an indie author is very hard, if not impossible.  I've had the most success handselling my books, attending craft fairs, and some minimal success through social media.  

The truth is your book will mostly sell to friends and family, and you'll be lucky if you sell over one hundred copies.  

It's embarrassing because you're always begging people to buy your book, and that gets old pretty quick.  

It's also challenging and dangerous because there are tons of sharks out there looking to take authors' money.  

Another sad truth is that the best way to make money in publishing is at the expense of authors.  The woods are full of so-called "marketers" who will promise that they can turn your book into a bestseller, or at least sell more copies than you can. But really, they're looking to make money off YOU, the author.  

Amazon will try to convince you to buy ads. Most authors will lose money buying ads on Amazon. 

Facebook will try to convince you to buy ads. Most authors will lose money buying ads on Facebook. 

LinkedIn will try… you get the idea.

I'm not saying it's impossible to make Amazon and Facebook etc. ads work, but it is difficult, and you will almost certainly not do it with a single book.  

If you still want to publish a book, here is the best course of action:

1. Write and perfect the best book you can

2. Get someone else to publish it for you, at their expense, via traditional publishing. If you can't do that...

3. Spend as little as possible getting the best editing and cover and interior design as you can.

4. Upload the completed files to Amazon or Draft2Digital or IngramSparks or Kobo or Barnes and Noble

5. Market it for free via social media

6. Hand sell it however you can, as cheaply as possible

7. Don't spend a single cent on anything you don't absolutely have to. 

And that's it! 

Good luck. :-)

Mini Book Review: Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Powerful, eminently readable book. The only book that's ever moved me to tears.

Hey, I did say it would be a mini-review.

Okay, I’ll give you a bit more. I was getting my hair cut and I asked the hair dresser, do you like to read?

She was in her early twenties, and she allowed that she did read, on occasion.

And then she told me about a book that had knocked her socks off. A teacher had recommended it, a teacher she respected, so she bought the book and read it, and to date it was the best book she’d ever read.

That book (obviously) was Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson.

I made a note of it and bought it myself later that day. And read it. And was not disappointed. It’s a great book.

And that’s how books are sold, by word of mouth. It’s the best way to sell them, I think. One of the only truly effective ways. I dream of writing a book so good that it sells itself via word of mouth.

Like Speak.

Book Distributors

Regular readers know that I’ve been exploring book distributors to understand how that side of the business works.

There are still a few to explore, including Prologue Inc., Nimbus Distribution, and Morning Dove Press.

Today we look at these guys:

Publishers Group West (PGW)

These folks have been in business over 40 years, since 1976. They’re based in Berkeley, California, but they have warehouses and offices in several other locations, including Toronto.

They are the largest exclusive distributor of independent publishers in North America, working with over 150 independent publishers.

In 2016, they became a part of the Ingram Content Group.

They market literary fiction, serious non-fiction, self-help, personal growth and natural health, travel, business, children, popular and counter-culture, and audio books.

They profess to offer “Total publishing coverage, from design consultation to international and domestic sales to customer service and reporting—sales and distribution support that generates results.”

It’s not clear at all what their requirements are, but their contact info is clear enough. They certainly make the short list; I’ll be reaching out to them for more information.

Re-Creative: a podcast about creativity and the works that inspire it

This week our podcast Re-Creative features (yet again!) science fiction writer John Scalzi. We call this episode “John Scalzi: the Prequel.”

Last week we featured a full length interview with Mr. Scalzi, one of the most popular science fiction writers working in the field today. As we discussed during that interview, I first met John back in 2003 at the World Science Fiction Convention held in Toronto, known as Torcon 3 (I also met my co-host on Re-Creative, Mark Rayner, for the first time at that same convention).

John Scalzi's first traditionally published book, Old Man's War, was just about to come out, and I interviewed him about being at his first ever science fiction convention (for a documentary I happened to be producing at the time for CBC Radio). It was John's first ever professional interview as a science fiction author.

John is allowing Mark and me to include that entire 9 minute interview in this episode, which also includes a bonus chat with one of the Grand Masters of science fiction, Laurence van Cott Niven, otherwise known as Larry Niven.

Here’s the link to this week’s episode: John Scalzi, the Prequel.

Future episodes of Re-Creative will feature Michael Antman, Catherine Fitzsimmons, Candas Jane Dorsey, Ira Nayman, Blair Young, Bruce Sterling, Tom Bradley, Hugh Spencer, Jenn Thorson, with plenty more guests on the way.

All previous episodes are available online, comprising the first 2 seasons, over 40 conversations with creative people from all walks of life about the art stoking their imaginative fires.

Featured Book

Adventures in the Radio Trade

"In dozens of amiable, frequently humorous vignettes... Mahoney fondly recalls his career as a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio technician in this memoir... amusing and highly informative."
— Kirkus Reviews

"What a wonderful book! If you love CBC Radio, you'll love Adventures in the Radio Trade. Joe Mahoney's honest, wise, and funny stories from his three decades in broadcasting make for absolutely delightful reading!
— Robert J. Sawyer, author of The Oppenheimer Alternative''

"No other book makes me love the CBC more."
— Gary Dunford, Page Six
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Adventures in the Radio Trade documents a life in radio, largely at Canada's public broadcaster. It's for people who love CBC Radio, those interested in the history of Canadian Broadcasting, and for those who want to hear about close encounters with numerous luminaries such as Margaret Atwood, J. Michael Straczynski, Stuart McLean, Joni Mitchell, Peter Gzowski and more. And it's for people who want to know how to make radio.

Crafted with gentle humour and thoughtfulness, this is more than just a glimpse into the internal workings of CBC Radio. It's also a prose ode to the people and shows that make CBC Radio great.

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Coming Soon from Donovan Street Press Inc.

The Gates of Polished Horn by Mark A. Rayner.

Huey and the Wasteland by Matt Watts

A Peculiar Symmetry by Tanah Haney

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Appearances

Coming up:

• I’ll be one of 46 authors at the Greater Moncton Riverview and Dieppe Book Fair this coming Saturday July 27th. It’s being held at the Riverview Lion’s Club in Riverview from 10am to 4pm. Hope to see you there!

• Book Signing with Partridge Island Publishing in the Area 506 Container Market in Saint John, NB Monday Aug 5th, 2024

• Book Signing with Partridge Island Publishing in the Area 506 Container Market in Saint John, NBFriday Sept 27th, 2024

• Donovan Street Press Inc. will be at a Pitch the Publisher Event Area 506 Container Market Saint John, NB. Saturday Sept 21st 2024

I will also be at three Athena’s Touch Craft Fairs this fall, dates yet to be determined, at the Riverview Lion’s Club in Riverview

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Follow Joe Mahoney and Donovan Street Press Inc. on: Goodreads, Bluesky, Threads, Mastadon, Facebook, and Instagram

This has been the twenty-ninth edition of Assorted Nonsense, the official newsletter of Donovan Street Press Inc.