Part 1 of this series shared three critical issues to ask any publisher before signing with them:
- Marketing – how would the publisher get word of my book out to potential readers?
- Distribution – how would the publisher get my book into potential readers’ hands?
- Career Development – what would the publisher do to help me become a better author?
This post deals with publisher #6, and all cards on the table going in, publisher #6 is Northern Lights Publishing which is owned by a small group of investors and employees and led by myself and wife/partner/Princess Susan.
Susan and I got out of our last company in 2016 and vowed never to start another one. There are days we wish we’d stuck to our vow, and so it goes.
Also back in 2016, Susan said she’d never seen me happier than when I was writing my stories and, as we’d never have to worry about money again, she wanted me to write full-time.
Oh, gosh darn, do I have to?
After kissing her profusely, I went to work. I had several novels completed and some 10-15 more near completion, so my real task was finding a publisher I could work with.
History
Unfortunately, my history got in the way. I was a bestselling trade-technical author at the height of the PC boom, had books with several publishing houses simultaneously, and knew that publishing industry well.
I also knew the science fiction/fantasy publishing industry at that time from close encounters with several top authors, editors, and publishers.
Knowing them was a paramount reason I didn’t attempt publication in the 1980s-90s and started a business instead.
Still, I figured things had changed and people moved on in twenty or so years.
Yes and No
Yes, people had moved on, no, the Big House publishing world had been taken over by corporations and the like.
Okay, I knew about corporations because the company we started had several international corporations as clients. I had (he offered) an above average understanding of business.
Business, in a nutshell, is about profit. No profit, no business. This is where more history got in the way.
I knew how difficult it was to get our last company established hence was willing to work with small, up and coming publishers using the theory “get in early, work well together, and both of you can grow to mutual benefit and satisfaction.”
I researched several publishers from micro/mini to Big 4.3, talked with a few hundred authors ranging from self-pubbed to blockbuster writers, and used my scientific training to analyze the results of said research.
WTF?
Back in 2016 (and no doubt pre-2016) the publishing landscape was a mess and companies like LuLu, CreateSpace, Draft2Digital (if they were around then) were to blame. Authoring and publishing were experiencing a Gold Rush. Anybody and everybody was going to write and publish a book, and it didn’t matter if they didn’t know their subject matter, hell, they had a book out so they had to be experts (that being a hold-over from the internet book, period. Anybody and everybody were experts and it didn’t matter the subject, they were experts because they said they were. Phphttt!).
And whenever there’s a gold rush, there will be hucksters and hustlers and hookers, sharks and snake-oil salesfolk, moving in to make you believe you can be the next Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Nora Roberts, James Patterson, take your pick, they’ll do their best to make you believe they can do it for you because they’re nice people, you’re nice people, and especially because you’re too naive and/or too starstruck and/or too ignorant of your own lack of talent to know any better.
And such was the landscape in 2016. I went to several conventions, stopped at every author table I found, and asked if I could skim some of their books.
They were thrilled! Someone interested in their work!!! Oh, yes, please do!
And with one or two exceptions, every book I picked up universally sucked (I wrote a six part series about this starting with Can I be honest about your writing? (Part 1 – Oh, the Vanity of it all!)), and I’m not talking tyops, grammar, format, and the like, I’m talking about the two biggies, storycrafting and storytelling. Miss those and you have words on paper or screen, not a story.
Not one worth reading, anyway.
In May-June 2022 and in the midst of publisher #5’s gone permanently to the dark side of the moon, having unpleasant experiences with publishers #1-#4, and recognizing my work didn’t fit any mass market program and, as a new author, my work would have to fit somewhere for any recognizable publishing house to take a risk on me. I understand risk. One way a business maximizes profit is by minimizing risk. I’m a new, untried, unproven author, I’m a risk.
FWIW, every name publisher, editor, and agent I sent my work to loved it…and quickly followed up their praise with “it’s not marketable because it didn’t fit into a nice, neat category or on a clearly marked shelf.” This is something I’ve heard from my regular readers frequently; You’re genre is “Joseph.” That’s great for branding, rotten for marketing.
Time to sit back and take a serious look at the options
Susan and I had a long discussion over some sangria (her) and Scotch (him). We reviewed our/my experiences and realized the problems we’d been experiencing dealt with neither the physical production of a book nor good content, they dealt with inept business people (very often) making moronic decisions due to lack of business experience or (even more often and usually couple with the previous) big egos.
I contacted some folks we knew from our business days, some other authors, some poets, some artists, blah blah blah. “We’re considering starting our own publishing company. Interested in joining us? We can’t fuck up any worse than the jokers we’ve encountered so far.”
Several people offered start up funding (yeeha). Northern Lights Publishing opened it’s doors in September 2022 complete with an underpaid staff (we’re working on that. They also receive first cut of the dividends when available) and published its first book in January 2023.
The big result? We showed a profit in 2023, our first year. It’s rare a startup anything shows a profit in its first year and it usually takes 3-5 years before any black appears in the ledger. The first half of our second year, 2024, also showed a distinct profit. In both cases, staff and funders took the first drink from the well. Susan and I are majority share holders (and pay ourselves last, if at all), staff comes next (as shareholders, not investors), funders and benefactors bring up the rear.
Is running a publishing company easy?
Hell, no!
Is it fun?
See response above.
Is it rewarding?
Ah, well…putting out good product that people are interested in at a price people can afford and receiving kudos for such?
Yeah, that’s worth it.
Northern Lights Publishing may (depending on how well we clear the marketing miasma) publish other authors’ novels starting in 2025. Several authors and poets have expressed interest, and one artist asked if we’d be interested in their coffee table book (didn’t get further than a conversation so far).
Northern Lights is also exploring starting up a yearly anthology series and an associated contest. Much of those plans depend on who well we do marketing (I have a series in the works about marketers who don’t, can’t, or won’t, while promising they do, can, and will).
So returning to the three things a publisher is suppose to do for you:
- Marketing – how would the publisher get word of my book out to potential readers?
- Distribution – how would the publisher get my book into potential readers’ hands?
- Career Development – what would the publisher do to help me become a better author?
Distribution we got covered (see 2023 Review). Our books are now in most public e-libraries, on zlibrary, in the Library of Congress, available internationally, and are carried or requestable through both independent and chain booksellers both print and ePub (especially ePub internationally).
Career Development we got covered. If you’re not familiar with the growth of my crafting and storytelling, or the diversity of my subject material, take a look at my Amazon page.
Marketing is this year’s big push. Probably into next year, as well. So far, we’re making some mistakes…and learning from them.
That, more than anything else, puts us lightyears ahead of all the other publishers we’ve encountered out there.