Meet the MasterMinds: Dan Poynter on Publishing
 Dan
Poynter is an authority on self-publishing and low-cost
book promotion. A frequent speaker, prolific best-selling
writer, successful publisher and publishing consultant,
Poynter has written 29 books, and hundreds of articles and
reports. His books include The Self-Publishing Manual
and Writing Nonfiction: Turning Thoughts into
Books.
Poynter served as vice-president of the Publishers
Marketing Association, worked as a freelance writer, and
was a magazine editor for ten years. He has coached writers
and publishers since 1969, and has experienced every phase
of the writing-publishing business.
The Publishers Marketing Association presented
Poynter with the Benjamin Franklin Award for Lifetime Achievement
for his many years of helping people to market their books.
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MCNews: How do you find time to travel,
serve on boards, operate your business and do all the writing
you do each year?
Poynter: Through organization, discipline
and machinery. The trick is to do two or more things at
one time. For example, while driving, I often compose articles,
ads or book sections on a rubber-backed clipboard I have
in my car. Turn off your radio and make use of commute time.
I carry my current manuscript around in a
binder to take advantage of unexpected free moments throughout
the day, I take a cellular telephone when I go for walks
in the hills around my home, and I have a notebook computer
to work on promotion and to check my e-mail when on the
road.
MCNews: How should a consultant go about
choosing an area of focus for a book?
Poynter: You must be a participant
in something through years of experience. Write what you
know, and capitalize on your expertise. Surely someone will
pay to know what you know.
When I get the spark of an idea for a book,
I explore the market: I visit bookstores, see what is available
on Amazon.com and research sales figures. Then, I draft
the back cover sales copy of the intended book to focus
on who my audience will be and what I will give them. I
want to write a book that will help a lot of people, but
I do not want to write on a subject already adequately covered.
MCNews: How do you get some certainty about
the marketability of a book before you invest a huge amount
in the project?
Poynter: To have confidence that your
material is good, the secret is Peer Review. Ken Blanchard,
co-author of The One Minute Manager, says "I don't
write my books, my friends write them for me." He explains
that he jots down some ideas and sends them off to friends
for comment. They send back lots of good ideas that he then
puts into his manuscript. Ken is being very generous, of
course, and what he is describing is Peer Review.
Smart non-fiction authors send each chapter
of their nearly complete manuscripts to at least four experts
on that chapter's subject for review. What you get back
is terribly valuable: your experts may cross out that part
you thought was cute but was really embarrassingly stupid,
and they sometimes even correct punctuation, grammar and
style.
When your book comes out, you don't have to
wait for your readers' reactions because you know the book
is right. After all, it has been reviewed and accepted by
the best. And, there is another valuable reason for peer
review: you have more than a dozen opinion molders telling
everyone about your book-and how they helped you with it.
MCNews: Once you've written a book, what
are the publishing choices, and how should an author evaluate
them?
Poynter: When I started publishing
in 1969, there were just 3,000 publishers. Today, there
are 55,000, and at least 8,000 new ones are established
every year. There are seven large trade publishers in New
York, 300-400 medium-sized publishers and over 54,000 small
publishers.
Large New York publishers are like department
stores-they have something for everyone. Their variety
may not be great but they have at least one book on every
subject. But, often no one on the staff knows much about
the subjects of the books. So, large publishers often have
to send manuscripts out to expert "readers" to
tell them if they are credible.
New York publishers market books the way Hollywood
sells films: they test a new product for audience reaction
and if the results are positive, they invest heavily in
promotion. If the initial reaction is negative, they withhold
the promotion money and let the product die an early death.
Some authors may think a large New York
publisher is more prestigious, but a small to medium-sized
publisher will usually sell more books. Smaller
publishers tend to specialize in one or two niche areas.
The owners and staff are often participants in their books'
subject matter, and so are closer to their subjects and
their customers.
Smaller publishers also get to press sooner,
so our information is fresher and more up-to-date. Big publishers
take 18 months to turn a manuscript into a book. Smaller
publishers can have a book printed in two to five weeks.
And, we keep our books alive longer. Larger publishers have
three selling seasons per year. They bring a book out for
a few months and then it moves to the backlist-it's history.
The smaller publishers market their books like breakfast
food or tooth paste: They bring out the new product with
a lot of promotion and establish a market share. Then they
proceed with modest promotion and continue to sell the book
to increasingly larger markets year after year.
MCNews: What's the best way for an author
to find a small publisher?
Poynter: The secret is to match the
manuscript to the publisher. Authors should check their
own bookshelf for smaller publishers who do good work. Then,
go to a public library and look them up in Books in Print,
a reference listing all of the 1.3 million books that are
currently available for sale in the U.S.
When calling a specialized publisher, authors
will often get through to the top person. These publishers
know what authors are talking about and they are always
very helpful. They will be able to tell instantly whether
the proposed book will fit into their line.
MCNews: You've written a lot about another
alternative-self-publishing. What are the pros and cons
of self-publishing?
Poynter: A publisher is the one who
puts up the money. If you invest your own money in the printing
of your book, you are a self-publisher. An author should
self-publish to save time, make more money and to keep control
of the product.
Some people should self-publish and
others should not. Would-be entrepreneurs should
remember that writing is an art, while publishing is a business.
Many people are unable to do both well. If you are repelled
by the crass commercialism of selling your own product,
you should stick to the creative side and let someone else
handle the business side.
The economics of publishing are an important
consideration. A regular publisher will give an author a
royalty of 6% to 10% of the cover price. If you self-publish,
you should get over 35%. So, the question is whether or
not the publisher, with his connections and distribution
system, will sell four times as many books as you can. More
than 95% of the time, the answer will be negative.
MCNews: Does self-publishing or using a
small publisher change the book writing process?
Poynter: New printing techniques let
anyone produce books faster and cheaper, and these techniques
are changing the way books are written. Gone are the days
of manuscript boxes holding boring sheets of paper with
double-spaced lines in Courier typeface.
Today, authors "build" their
books; writing is just part of the assembly. Building
a book is like building a speech with PowerPoint®. In
addition to the printed word, you can add digital photos
and scanned drawings to your manuscript as you write, pull
information from the web, add resource URL's to your text,
search encyclopedias for background information, art sites
for illustrations and quotation sites for quotations.
With this New Book Model, your manuscript
looks like a typeset book from the start. Then with a click
of the mouse, you can convert the word-processing file to
Adobe Acrobat PDF and you are ready to send the disk to
a POD (print on demand) or PQN (print quantity needed) printer
for one or a small quantity of softcover or hardcover books.
MCNews: What is the single, biggest mistake
new authors make?
Poynter: The most common mistake
is failure to promote. They focus and expend their
energy on writing and production, and then fail to tell
the world they have books. It does not matter if you sell
to a New York publisher or publish yourself, the author
must do the promotion. Publishers do not promote books.
MCNews: What are some of your tips on promotion?
Poynter: The traditional way to promote a new book
is to send out 500 review and opinion-molding copies of
it. But, if you are not printing a large quantity of books
on spec, you can't promote the book the traditional way.
You can use broadcast email to invite reviewers and potential
buyers to come to your web site to see/try/buy your book.
Or, we can set up a Press Room at our web site for you.
It has all the promotion materials you expect to find in
a media kit.
Whenever possible, you should use electronic means to promote
a book. Promoting electronically is much faster and it allows
you to avoid brochure printing and postage fees. This is
promoting @ the speed of email.
Book promotion is less expensive and more
successful when you use book reviews, news releases and,
if appropriate to the book, a limited amount of direct mail
advertising. Book reviews are editorial copy, and that is
far less expensive and far more credible than space advertising.
Multipurpose/re-purpose your core content
into other products: repackage the same information
for various markets, such as magazine articles resulting
from book chapters, or book chapters used as the basis for
conference workshops or a series of magazine articles packaged
into a book.
Speak on your subject, record the speech and
sell the audiotape. Some of your customers want your information
in book form, some want to come and hear you live and some
want the audiotape. Give them what they want and need.
Never spend money on advertising when you
can get publicity free. Put your advertising money into
your cover. Put your time and effort into review copies
and news releases. Use the free publicity to find which
magazines are right for your book. Then spend your advertising
money there. Always test before you spend money. Too many
publishers start with big ads and blow their promotion budget
in the wrong places.
MCNews: How do you see the future for the
smaller and self-publishers?
Poynter: Very positive. It is estimated
that over 300,000 book-length manuscripts go unpublished
every year. The New York publishers concentrate on the potentially
huge sellers. Unless you have published successfully before
or are a political or Hollywood personality, your chance
of even having your manuscript read by a New York publisher
is close to zero.
But remember, 8,000 new publishing companies
are established each year. Most of these people have not
had their manuscripts rejected by larger houses. They have
weighed the risks and rewards and have decided it is better
to publish their own work.
In the future, most books will not be
manufactured until after they are sold. Putting
a lot of ink on paper is now just an option-a good one if
there is a large prepublication demand. But, because PQN
and POD are cost-effective and produce high-quality books,
there is no longer any reason to print thousands of copies
of a book on spec, hoping to sell the inventory.
Another prediction for the future of publishing
is that bound books will soon be as dead as the trees
they are printed on. Except for coffee-table books
and other books as an art form, most books will go electronic.
They will go to floppy disk and CD-ROM first, and next they
will go on-line.
The cost of electronic information delivery
is decreasing, while the cost of storage and physical delivery
of paper books is increasing. In the near future, most reference
works will be offered in CD-ROM and downloadable form as
well as in print. Non-fiction books will be next. We are
moving from a print culture to an electronic culture at
the speed of technology.
* * * *
Visit Dan Poynter's web site at www.ParaPub.com
for information on his books, newsletter, his numerous,
useful reports on writing and publishing, the book promotion
workshops he hosts and his other services.
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