My third novel, Efraim’s Eye, a thriller, with romance, has just been accepted for publication by Strategic Book Publishing.  So Efraim’s Eye is about a corrupt charity which provides funding to a terrorist.  The terrorist is planning to knock the London Eye over into the River Thames with 800 people locked inside the capsules.  The plot is discovered by a consultant who audits the charity with an Isreali woman who works for the British head office of the charity.  The consultant and the Israeli become lovers, but can they stop the terrorist, and do they have a future together? In my post about literary agents, I promised to discuss publishers later, so it’s time to make good  on that promise. First of all, I’m hardly an expert on publishers, but I think I’ve learned enough to offer some (hopefully) useful comments. In my view, there are three types of  book publishers:

• self publishers (like Lulu)
• co-operative publishers (like Strategic Books), and
• conventional publishers

Conventional publishers are the ones we are most familiar with: Harper & Collins, McGraw Hill, Penguin Books, etc.  They receive manuscripts from literary agents, and after editing, they print, promote and sell the book, taking full responsibility for everything that happens.  They pay the author royalties (out of which  the agent takes a commission).  They use various techniques to induce the book stores to carry the book.  But book stores generally take books only on a ‘sale or return’ basis.  If the book doesn’t sell, the publisher has to take the unsold copies back, and provide the book store with a refund for the unsold copies.  The return of unsold copies represents a major risk for conventional publishers. Interestingly, Amazon does not operate on a ‘sale or return’ basis: it buys books outright at heavily discounted prices, which it can command because there is no risk of  returns.  Amazon also has a stocking advantage: it faces a very large  market with centralised stock, instead of facing a local market with local stocks as book stores must do. In my mind, conventional publishers work on a ‘push’ basis.  They use advertising and  promotion liberally to get the books into the book stores.  They push books into the stores to drive up volume.  They work hard to get media coverage of their books: again pushing their books. Other publishers (self publishers and co-operative publishers) work on a  ‘pull’  basis.  They tend to be rather passive in a sales and marketing context, relying on their authors to create demand for the book. I’m not really familiar with self-publishers. but my understanding is that for a fixed fee, they will print and bind a completed manuscript as an agreed number of copies.  All other responsibilities fall on the author.  If the author is able to sell some copies, s/he can pocket all the revenue. Co-operative publishers (like Strategic Books) lie between self publishers and conventional publishers.   They won’t necessarily accept every submitted manuscript.  Those that are accepted are subject to cost and revenue sharing with the author.  The author pays an up-front fee to get the book into print.  This fee includes layout, typesetting, back and front cover design, ISBN number, copyright, establishing a price, listing of the book in catalogues, and with the online book sellers.  They make the book available through their distribution network.  They insist that their books be professionally edited.  (They will either do it for a fee, or the author can have it done.)  Strategic Books uses three print-on-demand printers: one in the USA, one in the  UK and one in Australia.  Print-on-demand raises  the cost of printing, because – in theory – a press run could be as short as one book.  But, on the other hand there are no unwanted books  printed. The co-operative publisher will typically offer the author a 50% royalty.  Which means that the author is entitled to half of the difference between sales of the book and the cost of printing it.  Authors can buy copies of their book at slightly more than  the cost of printing it. After the book is printed the co-operative publisher will provide the author with a website and will write and issue a press release.  They have considerable marketing and promotional advice which they make available.  All of this is included in the up-front fee.  There are a number of other services which are optional at extra cost.  These include reformatting the book as a Kindle and eBook, participation in major book fairs, special websites and press releases.  Book signings were included in the basic fee, but they are no longer offered, perhaps because of the difficulty of getting book stores to carry books which are non-returnable.  (I offered about ten independent book stores in London the opportunity to hold stock for them, but none was interested.  Not  enough book shelf space; too much trouble for one book.)  Recently, Strategic Books struck a deal with Barnes and Noble where B & N would agree to stock pre-approved books in certain selected stores, provided that the author would reimburse them for unsold copies.  The reason I haven’t pursed this is that Strategic Books wanted me to take 100% of the risk (on the down side), while they retained 50% of the benefits on the up side.  I argued that this wasn’t equitable and fair – to no avail.  The business model for co-operative publisher is based on no returns. In all other respects, I find Strategic Books professional, competent and fair.

I should add that more recently, Strategic Books offers authors the option to make a book available to bookstores on a sale or return basis.  There is a fee for this (about $350) which includes issuing a press release that the book is available on sale or return and which covers the publisher’s administrative costs.  The fee is also used as a deposit against the costs associated with returns.  (So, the author still has 100% of the risk and only 50% of the profits.)  But, I think I’m going to try this with my sixth novel when it is published at the end of 2014.

Every author would probably like to have an agent.  After all, an agent can probably find the author a publisher.

I don’t have an agent.  I work directly with a co-operative publisher.  (More about this in a later blog.)  My experience with agents hasn’t been good.  When my first book was ready to publish, a friend referred me to the Writer’s Handbook, which lists the UK and US literary agents.  I wrote to all of the relevant US agents, and in that process, I was referred to my current publisher.  When my second book was ready for publication, I wrote to all of the relevant US and UK agencies.  I say ‘relevant’ because a particular agent may not be interested in specific genres (romance, science fiction, etc.).  When I say I ‘wrote’ to the agents, this can be quite a time-consuming task, because I double-checked the agent’s ‘submission requirements’ against what was posted on the agent’s website.  In my experience, most agents want:

• a cover letter introducing the writer and the book; it should also say why the agent should be interested in the writer and his/her book.
• a one page synopsis of the book
• a brief biography of the author
• the first three chapters of the book, double spaced, Times New Roman #12, on one side only

The vast majority of agents want the submission via post as a hard copy.  (This saves them the time and expense of having to print the material.)  A few will accept email submissions; several agents protest that they are concerned about becoming infected with viruses.  A tiny minority accept submissions via their website, so that the author is requested to paste the desired material into the windows on the website.  For many of the agents to whom I submitted, the bundle was over eighty pages, and, if one wanted the material returned (I didn’t), it was necessary to include a self-addressed envelope with return postage.

Most agents say that it will take about eight weeks before they are able to respond; some say that they receive over one thousand submissions per week.  At the time I submitted my first novel, quite a number of agents were saying that authors should advise them if the work was being submitted to more than one agent.  For me, this was a coded way of saying, “We are not going to compete for your work.”  Recently, an agent’s website made the point that “we don’t engage in beauty contests”.  I didn’t particularly like this attitude.  Do agents really expect authors to make one-at-a-time, serial submissions?  If so, based on the agent’s typical eight week response time, it would take a year to approach six agents.

With my first two novels, all the agents I contacted did send form letter responses, making the point that because of the number of submissions received, they could not elaborate on their reasons, other than to say “it’s not for us.  Good luck.”

With my third novel, I made submissions to thirty-one UK agents.  After about ten weeks, I sent follow-up letters (or emails) to those twelve from whom I had heard nothing.  Months later, there are still seven who have not responded at all (not counting those who say “if you don’t hear from us, assume we aren’t interested.)

This must be a difficult time for literary agents.  Independent book stores are going out of business; big book store chains are cutting back.  Amazon, with its purchasing and discounting policies, is putting great pressure on publishers’ margins.  Kindle and other eBook forms have very low margins.  And to top it off, Amazon has started to cut deals directly with big name authors.

But I continue to believe that literary agents have a place in the world.  They can be excellent coaches/critics for their authors (a role that publishers have largely abandoned and I doubt that Amazon will ever take up).  If one believes, as I do, that there will always be bookstores – in some form – the route into them will be via the ‘push publishers’ and literary agents.

It seems to me that there are some things that literary agents could do to make their life easier (and longer-lasting):

• better define what it is that they are looking for (or what they’re not interested in).  This implies that some agents should consider specialising in limited genres.
• shorten their decision-making process.  I believe that the first three chapters with every initial submission is a waste of time and money for everyone involved.  Reading the first ten pages of a book, one can tell whether the author can write.  If the submission passes the genre test (via the short cover letter and brief synopsis) and the author can write, the next step could be the first three chapters and – maybe – a face-to-face meeting.