In this interview Jeremy Thompson from Matador, one of the country’s leading self publishers, offer his insight and advice. He explains why it is so difficult to get self published titles into bookshops, provides a solution to this problem and explains why it is vital for your book to have a professional cover and edit.
Hi Jeremy, tell us a little about yourself and your company.
I worked in commercial publishing in the 1980s before setting up Troubador Publishing Ltd in 1990. In the 1990s we worked in an editorial and production both for other publishers like CUP, Elsevier and Wiley, and on our own books lists. Towards the end of the 1990s we were being asked by authors if we could publish their book even if it didn’t fall into any of our established subject lists, and they wanted to pay for publication. We were wary at first because of the old ‘vanity publishing’ label of paid-for publishing, but it became clear that there was a growing demand for something that was part way between conventional commercial publishing and the rip-off vanity presses. We quietly launched the Matador imprint to cater for authors who wanted a good quality book publishing at a reasonable cost, and perhaps most importantly, they wanted to get it into retailers, rather than just sell it themselves. Since then it has become known as self-publishing, though at the time we launched Matador we’d never heard of that! Matador now publishes about 200 new titles a year, and we are selective in what we take on because we are selling into mainstream retail trade.
This interview originated from a conversation we had at the London Book Fair where you told me of plans to have self published books ‘repped’ directly into book shops. Tell us how this came about and why it is such an important step for self published writers.
The stumbling block for self-published authors in the past has always been that retailers have been reluctant to stock self-published titles. Historically the quality of many self-published books has been poor, they have often been over-priced and the lack of any editorial control often means that self-published books are frankly awful. Today one of the main stumbling blocks to self-published books actually getting onto the bookshop’s shelves is the fact that most self-published books are printed ‘on demand’. This is great from the author’s point of view as the financial investment is relatively small…but just think how most people actually buy books. How do you buy books? Do you search the internet for self-publishing companies’ sites to find a new book, do you browse on Amazon? Or do you go into the local bookshop? By far the greatest proportion of books that are sold in the UK are sold because people have either gone into a bookshop and found it, or because they know what they want and they go online to order it. So the challenge for a self-publisher is to get volume sales, and that isn’t going to happen by printing on demand. If an author is serious about selling more than, say, 100 copies of their book, then printing to order will not work. Volume sales still come largely through bookshops, even in these days of online retailing. And that means printing copies speculatively, and getting them placed where people look at books.
The problem of course is that retailers don’t like taking risks, and as a self-publisher you are a risk. A book from a commercial publisher has the whole kudos of having been picked for publication, nurtured through the editorial improving process and then marketed with a bit of cash behind it. It’s more likely to sell than a self-published book that has a dodgy cover and questionable content. Why should a retailer take the risk? Quite simply, they shouldn’t (and usually don’t).
Retail has always had sales reps, whatever sort of product is being sold, and for good reason. A sales rep knows the product, can sell one-to-one to a retailer, they have the logistical back-up to ensure orders arrive promptly. The influence that a sales rep has on what a retailer buys for stock shouldn’t be underestimated. Having a sales force behind your book, out there 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year is how most publishers get their books onto retailers’ shelves, as opposed to just on an online retailers’ lists.
From July 1st, Matador titles will be repped into bookshops by a countrywide sales force. It won’t apply to all of our self-published titles — some are for friends and family only, or are too specialised for general trade retail, but we expect over 150 new titles a year to benefit. We’ve also managed to structure the costings so that it won’t cost our authors a penny more to have their book repped in this way. In theory it will mean that far more of our titles will actually be found on shelves in bookshops across the country, and as a result the volume of sales will increase.
The self publishing industry has changed greatly over the past few years. What do you think has been the biggest shift and can you make any predictions for the future?
I don’t think that the self-publishing industry per se has changed that much actually. There are obvious changes like print on demand and costs reducing in real terms. The real change has come in the attitude of readers, retailers and indeed other publishers to self-published books. It isn’t that long ago that we were on the end of derogatory comments about the fact that we offered self-publishing to authors; now we have agents and commercial publishers sending us authors whose work they feel is good but who they can’t publish because of the problems in the publishing industry. Troubador was listed as one of the top 500 UK publishing companies in the 2009 Plimsoll survey; that hasn’t happened because we publish bad books poorly and then fail to sell any.
My fear is the fact that “self-published” in many paces is seen as a synonym of “print on demand”. There are many who hold up POD as a way of publishing a book at virtually no cost with the promise of becoming a bestseller. If the message is put in a certain way, then it is a new form of vanity publishing, as it promises a lot while failing to mention that most books are bought still in bookshops, and by the very nature of a POD book, that’s where they aren’t found! Self-publishers have to accept that if they want to sell books in volume, they have to compete with a very savvy trade publishing industry that knows its onions, how to market a book, and which has an infrastructure that can do that well. Most self-publishers or self-publishing companies simply don’t have that infrastructure, and as a result they don’t sell many copies. Most self-published books sell between 5 and 100 copies, which tells me that they are largely sold by the author, not through retail trade. To really get volume sales and into retailers you have to play their game, and that means having the infrastructure of a trade publisher. With the repping of books, Matador now operates exactly the same as any trade publisher.
The future of self-publishing is looking confident at the moment. The general retail trade is far less sniffy about self-published titles nowadays, though quality is still an issue. If a book is commercial and has the potential to sell, a retailer is usually happy to stock it, self-published or otherwise. And with the general malaise on trade publishing that was evident even before this recession, I can only see self-published titles increasing in number and quality. (One of our titles was shortlisted for a prestigious sports book prize recently, one of only 4 books from 250 entries; and another has just won a specialist prize). As far as those self-publishing industry itself s concerned, I think there’s inevitably going to be a fragmenting of what’s on offer, from the high quality, high volume end (Matador) to the low cost, publish anything end (Lulu), and all points in between. Authors need to be clear about what they want to achieve by publishing their book, as that will determine to a great degree just exactly what route they should take. There’s no point printing on demand and hoping for volume sales, it doesn’t happen (or rarely). Similarly, there’s no point printing 2000 copies of a book and doing no marketing, it too won’t sell.
Finally, what advice would you give to a writer considering to set out on the self publishing route?
Be clear about your aims. Research what is on offer from the companies out there. Don’t think that self-publishing is an easy option! Do expect some hard work along the way… and if you want your book to be more widely read, do accept that there are commercial factors involved in publishing, even self-publishing, and often these can conflict with artistic factors. When you are JK Rowkling you can defy the conventions all you like; until then, go with the booksellers’ advice… after all, they are the ones who will be selling your book!
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