Once Upon a Time When I Wrote a Book: Part III

While I am not as consistent, nor as prolific, as my good friend David St. Lawrence at Ripples, I am committed to continuing the saga of how I wrote and published my first book, using an existing POD company.

In the months since launching my own Authors Services company: Authors Helping Authors, for which this blog is named, I've learned more than I expected to learn, about old-fashioned publishing, vanity press publishing, and print-on-demand. Understand that I went into the goal of beginning my company with a lot of experience, not only from the months working with the company which published my book, but from YEARS of dealing with old-fashioned publishers. And yet, my knowledge of how this industry works has grown a hundredfold...and, I believe, will continue to grow every day that I stay in business.

Let's look at some of the problems I had with the publishing company I chose to help me with Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online. It should first be noted that I researched the POD industry by exploring my online options...

What was out there? Who was offering POD and what kinds of authors were choosing to use this new technology? My decision to choose AuthorHouse (which used to be 1st  Books, and is named here for the first time) was based on their website (was it up to the standards I was going to write about in my book?) and how long had they been in the business of offering POD? I also looked at a number of their books. They seemed the best choice, overall...

What ensued, over an eight month period, was a disappointing experience, as I've noted before here and here, and a burning desire to show them how to REALLY be an author services company, using POD.

As I mentioned in previous posts, the communication level at 1st Books (it's hard to remember to call them AuthorHouse) was less than satisfactory. Except for my original contact, Brian. He was, and continues to be, a gem. Beyond Brian, I was assigned several other account managers...who knew nothing about me or my book, as evidenced by their inability to answer questions when we first met -- via email, of course. But, even on the phone, these folks were clueless about me, about my book, and about where the project was in its development.

I was often reduced to sending repeat emails, and then...phone calls, in order to get a reponse. For the most part, the account managers did want to help -- they gave the appearance of wanting to help -- they promised to help -- but, generally, it was only through consistent nagging that Ifinally got attention. That was my first clue that perhaps I'd made a mistake.

Part II of this story explains how I finally got to the galley proofs of my book. I don't want to rehash that here, although you may click back to read it if you need to. Suffice it to say, the galley was a complete disaster. 1st Books produced incomprehensible pages...with images overlaying text and all bullet-points removed from my bulleted lists. When I called my current account manager to question how this could have happened, this conversation ensued:

"Clark, have you looked at the galley?" Not hard-copy, yet. Digital.

"No, I don't look at the galleys That's part of production."

"Do you suppose anyone in production LOOKED at the galley before sending it out?"

"I don't know. Do you want me to ask?"

"Why, yes...or, give me a phone number and I'll ask."

Clark took it upon himself to ask. He called me back a day or two later to say, no, no one at production had looked at the galley before sending it to me.

<SIGH>

Tom and I spent days -- literally days -- fixing their mistakes. We asked again and again -- what page margins do you want? What sizes and types of images can we use? How can we make this print-ready and avoid making the same mistake?

We sent the reformatted and revised manuscript, via email, and waited. A new galley came back. It was okay. But, it lacked some updates in my stats -- so we signed their correction form, gave them the proper page, paragraph, and lines that needed changing, and sent it along, all the while keeping our fingers crossed. What came back, a week later...was the original, badly formatted manuscript, with the corrections added in!

Can you image the frustration? Can you imagine how sick I became? I was two-months overdue for launch. I'd done some premarketing and now...it was for naught. People were going to forget all about "Dickless Marketing," or worse yet, when it finally came out...I would have lost first-mover advantage. The women's market was taking off...it was late 2003...I needed to get this book published before Christmas, now it was going to be well into 2004 before it would see the light of day because...it once again needed to be reformatted.

Once again, Tom and I worked on the corrections. Before sending it, we turned it into a PDF. We were finally sure that this was it -- this copy was the one that would go to print. And so, the book was on its way.

After signing off on the hard-copy that arrived within 10 days (with inferior paper, but...I could NOT afford to haggle over that...time was of the essence and my readers, who had been invaluable throughout, said the poor paper quality wasn't worth waiting another untold number of weeks to fix)...I called Clark and said, "Send it to print. Now, let's get started on the press release."

You see, I had paid for some marketing, including a press release, with the expectation that an established company would have more clout to get my book noticed, than I -- a fairly new author.

Clark said he would have marketing get in touch with me.

It took more than a week for marketing to call me. With this information,"We can't help you with your book. We're afraid the title will offend a little old lady in Texas, and get us in trouble." Yes, they said, "a little old lady in Texas"...

Eight months. I worked with them on this book for eight months. For eight months they knew the title of my book. I signed for the marketing package when we were three or four months into the project. I ASKED if the title was going to be a problem and was told, "No, why should it be? We will note that it's a spin on Dick and Jane..."

As you may imagnine, I was not a happy camper. I insisted on speaking with the marketing manager. Michael Johnson called me and relayed the exact same information, but assured me I could have my money back, and that they would still send me their free "How to Market Your Book" booklet, as well as write my press release. But, I would have to distribute it.

And so...we are at the end of Part III of "Once Upon a Time When I Wrote a Book," and...we have a book, but, no help with marketing. In Part IV, you will learn what I did to remedy that situation, how I parlayed their inability to get over the title (which I have received more compliments on than I can count -- and a number of critcisms which change to laughter when I explain the Dick and Jane pun) into working to my advantage, and how I discovered...the printing of my book was being outsourced to Lightning Source (another POD company) which, in turn, was sending the job to ... Rochester, NY. My hometown!

The printer printing my book was only a few miles away from where I lived!

That was the final straw. That information, and a subsequent visit to Colorcentric, convinced me that I could compete with 1st Books...because I have the experience and the talent, because I know what it means to be an author, and because, I live in THE hub of the print-on-demand world.

Part IV to come later this summer...sooner, one hopes, than later...but...WME Books is growing nicely and I am hard at work on the second edition of Dickless Marketing, so...we will take up the final part of this story in August.

Comments

[patriciakraemer]

I appreciate the fact that you want to share your experiences..Iam writing my first book and researching any info that can help me ...
thanks

[Connie]

What a very clever idea for a blog! This is great! -- to have authors helping authors!!

Yikes, that was some experience you had! Almost as bad as what some of us go through to get traditionally published.

Listen, I have a great contact for you and your readers. Check out the nationalpublicitysummit.com put on by Steve and Bill Harrison. They work a bunch with authors -- in fact, I recently attended a fabulous Million Dollar Author Program they presented in Atlanta. (FYI, I do NOT work for them; I'm just an independent author myself.)

Anyhow, this is my first time here -- I came here, through Patsi and Denise of Build a Better Blog System. I was just looking up your e-mail address to let you know that I briefly mention you in a post in my blog today.

All the best,

Connie
www.SugarShockBlog.com