Category: Indie Publishing Tips

Advice and expert interviews for indie and self-published authors.

Reedsy pushes for better indie books through collaboration

Published by Adam on October 28, 2015

Reedsy co-founder Emmanuel Nataf talks about the future of indie publishing.

Just because I’m an indie author doesn’t mean I can’t get good help with editing and book design.

I recently signed up for Reedsy, an innovative web platform that helps indie authors find freelance publishing assistance. A few days ago, I signed ex-DC Comics editor Rachel Gluckstern to edit my upcoming novel, The Wanderer and the New West. It’s an exciting collaboration that was made possible by Reedsy.

Also read:
Line between traditional, indie publishing nearly gone: The Fussy Librarian
How indie authors can break through the noise with NoiseTrade
How to find readers and get book reviews with Story Cartel

Reedsy was founded in London during the summer of 2014 by Emmanuel Nataf, Matthew Cobb, Ricardo Fayet and Vincent Durand. For the first year, the co-founders worked on Reedsy as a side project on nights and weekends, but it became a full-time job after the startup was accepted into Seedcamp, a London-based startup accelerator. Soon after, the tech startup raised cash from angel investors including Ben Yoskovitz, the bestselling author of Lean Analytics. Today, Reedsy is a team of seven that operates out of a co-working space in the Shoreditch neighborhood of London.

I spoke with co-founder Emmanuel Nataf about what Reedsy hopes to accomplish and where it sees the publishing industry headed. You can read the full interview below.

Adam: What problem were you trying to solve when you created Reedsy?

Emmanuel: We were seeing two major publishing trends converging. On the one hand, more and more authors were self-publishing, as they could easily reach an audience through digital distribution (460,000 titles were self-published in the US in 2014 according to Bowker). On the other hand, more and more top publishing professionals have left traditional houses in the past few years and have gone freelance, available to work with both traditional and self-published authors.

At the time, we were seeing too many low-quality books being pushed to the Kindle Store. It was clear that self-publishing was not yet a viable alternative to the traditional route. Quality can only be achieved with an investment in editorial, design and marketing services, something that self-published authors did not have access to. They needed a single, trusted and quality source of people that they could collaborate with.

It’s from this frustration that we decided to create Reedsy, a curated marketplace for the
publishing industry.

More recently, we started to work with traditional publishers as well. They have been impressed
with the level of quality Reedsy professionals can provide, and love the way our collaborative
tools streamline their workflows.

Adam: Today, authors can self-publish a book all by themselves if they want to. Why is it
important that authors pay for freelance help, and how big of an investment does that
need to be?

Emmanuel: The production process of a book doesn’t stop after the writing phase – it starts there. Self-publishing authors can certainly release new titles much faster than “Big 5” authors but they can’t skip editing, design or marketing if they want to have any chance of being successful. In fact, to stand out from the crowd, they need to publish a high-quality product and have a solid plan to commercialize it. This takes time and requires experience. This is where Reedsy professionals can help.

We are planning on open-sourcing our data so authors can get a better idea of the cost of self-publishing. However, for an 80,000 word book that needs editing, design and marketing help, you will need at least $2,000. Most spend $5,000 or more if they want to work with award-winning professionals and want to design an aggressive marketing plan.

Adam: The publishing industry is in a state of flux right now. Where do you think it’s going, and
how well will self-published authors fare against industry published authors?

Emmanuel: The whole value chain is evolving so much that I’m not sure how long the selfpublishing/traditional publishing antagonism will remain.

For instance, we recently helped PFD Literary Agents set up their own digital imprint where they give a very interesting 50/50 deal to authors. The emergence of more digital imprints is something that we follow closely. What we believe, though, is that the production of high-quality books can be commoditized through a service like Reedsy, and that publishers should only do what they do best: curate content, offer physical distribution and negotiate foreign rights.

Adam: How many freelancers and how many authors do you have on Reedsy?

Emmanuel: About 6,000 authors have joined Reedsy so far and we have selected 300+ professionals out of 7,000 applications.

Adam: What is the most popular service authors are looking for when they join Reedsy?

Emmanuel: Self-publishing authors are mainly looking for editing services when they come to Reedsy. We would love to see self-publishing authors invest more into their book covers though: too many of them still underestimate the incredible impact a beautiful cover can have for their book sales.

We see mix of authors looking to self-publish and authors looking to polish their manuscript before submitting to agents or publishers, which is why we recently added a “query letter review” service to our marketplace. Eventually, we want Reedsy to become the backbone of the industry, providing high-quality services to all authors or publishers.

Adam: Do you have any minimum qualifications for freelancers? Is it required they have
experience in the publishing industry?

Emmanuel: Yes! Our team receives hundreds of applications every week and only selects a handful of professionals. The objective is to provide the highest level of quality to authors and publishers. This is why people often describe Reedsy as a “curated” marketplace. We require a strong experience working at top publishers or with bestselling authors and a portfolio of at least 10 books. We also ask them to connect their social networks to Reedsy so we can verify their online identity.

Adam: How does Reedsy make money? Is it purely commission-based?

Emmanuel: Our fees are shared between professionals and clients who both pay a 10 percent commission on every transaction. This allows us to develop our product, curate our network, and offer customer support with a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee.

Adam: Besides Reedsy, what other innovative companies are helping indie authors right now?

Emmanuel: Crowdfunding platforms are a good complement to Reedsy. For instance, Reedsy authors often use Publishizer or Kickstarter to raise funds to pay for our services. We are also pretty excited to see what Find My Audience is going to release in the coming months to help authors locate and engage with a highly qualified audience.

Adam: What’s coming next for Reedsy? What can you tell me about any plans to further expand
or enhance your services?

Emmanuel: Many things! First, we will be adding more services to our marketplace in the coming months: marketing, ghostwriting and translation will be progressively rolled out. Then, we will be adding dedicated publisher accounts to allow publishers to manage entire teams and projects through Reedsy. Last but not least, we will be releasing our collaborative book editor to allow any author to work collaboratively on their books and get properly formatted EPUB and PDF files instantly.

Thanks so much to Emmanuel Nataf for the Interview! For more on innovative indie publishing companies, check out my interviews with Story Cartel, NoiseTrade and The Fussy Librarian.

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Line between traditional, indie publishing nearly gone: The Fussy Librarian

Published by Adam on August 17, 2015

Jeffrey Bruner, founder of The Fussy Librarian

Today’s indie authors can punch above their weight and take on traditionally published authors, says The Fussy Librarian founder Jeffrey Bruner.

The Fussy Librarian, based in Des Moines, Iowa, sends daily book recommendations to readers based on their preferences.

“The line between ‘industry’ authors and ‘self-published’ authors has just about vanished,” Bruner, a former journalist for Gannett, tells me. “An author can hire a cover designer and copy editor and produce a book that looks and reads just as well as anything by the big publishers.”

Also read:
How indie authors can break through the noise with NoiseTrade
How to find readers and get book reviews with Story Cartel

The marketing budget possessed by big publishers might not be as big an advantage as authors think when deciding between indie and traditional publishing, he says.

“The marketing budget of the big publishers usually goes to only a handful of titles — the superstars like James Patterson, John Grisham, etc.,” says Bruner. “Everyone else is getting the crumbs.”

It’s a sentiment also voiced by Guy Kawasaki, the former chief evangelist of Apple, who wrote a book on indie publishing.

“The fact is that they only do [extensive marketing] if you are Hillary Clinton or you’re David Beckham,” Kawasaki said last year. “They don’t do it for the other 10,000 authors every year because frankly they can’t call the New York Times 10,000 times every year.”

Bruner says that indie authors can do a lot with a little. “Self-published authors don’t need to have a huge marketing budget — just enough to create what Kevin Kelly calls 1,000 true fans. Once you have established that base, they will provide the word of mouth to boost you to 50,000, 100,000, 500,000, etc. But the book has to come first and it’s got to be great.”

He points to many tools available to indie authors today, including Rafflecopter for giveaways, MailChimp for mailing list management and PayPal for e-commerce.

“I’m not saying it would have been impossible to self-publish a bestseller 15 years ago, but it’s a lot easier now.”

Meet The Fussy Librarian

The Fussy Librarian seeks to help readers find well-written books, regardless of how they were published.

“We want to be your personal librarian, the person you can turn to when you want to read a good book,” says Bruner. “We’re like a matchmaker for readers.”

The company knows it must court authors if it wants to provide a valuable service to readers.

“Our business doesn’t exist without readers, so they have to be our primary focus … but you’re also not going to last long unless you provide great customer service for authors, too,” says Bruner.

While the Fussy Librarian is not the only game in town for book recommendations on the Web, the company tries to differentiate itself by providing more personalized recommendations to readers, he says.

“A lot of services send you a list of books. We email you a list of books that match your taste in reading.”

The Fussy Librarian breaks down book promotions into emails based on 40 genres, more than competitor BookBub, and also provides content filters for readers who don’t want to see books with profanity or sexual content, he says.

The company has tried to entice authors with competitive pricing offers. Authors pay a fee per genre, but get discounts when they promote books in more than one genre. Also, the Fussy Librarian doesn’t charge extra to promote box sets.

“Our company is privately owned, so we don’t have venture capitalists demanding a return on their investment,” says Bruner. “And we know that most authors aren’t rich, so we try to keep our prices as low as possible. The cost of living is low in Des Moines, so we don’t need to keep much for ourselves.”

How many readers see a promotion varies by the chosen genre, with anywhere from 25,000 for cookbooks to 95,000 for contemporary romance fiction, says Bruner. Readers see anywhere from three to 20 books in each email, depending on their preferences, he says.

With only one full-time and one part-time employee, the Fussy Librarian cannot read every book submitted to the site. To ensure a base-line level of quality, the website requires that books have at least 10 Amazon.com customer reviews with an average score of 4.0. If it’s a new release, the author must have a previously published book with 50 reviews on Amazon averaging 4.0.

Before starting The Fussy Librarian in 2013, Bruner worked as wire chief for Gannett’s national wire desk.

“Like a lot of people in journalism, I decided I needed a Plan B,” he explains. “I worked at the Des Moines Register and its owner, Gannett, started layoffs in 2005 whenever it decided the bottom line needed boosting. After surviving seven or eight rounds, I got tired of waking up each morning wondering if I would still have a job. I also calculated that, when adjusting for inflation, I was actually making less than when I was hired in 2000.”

At first, Bruner kept his day job at Gannett and worked on his new venture at night. Then, in October 2014, he submitted his resignation and made Fussy Librarian his full-time job.

“My only regret is I didn’t do it five years earlier,” he says.

Bruner says the service continues to evolve, with new features on the way. “We’re working on two major projects — one for readers, one for authors — over the next six months. We think they will both be innovations in the book marketing industry, so I’m reluctant to spill too many details, but they both hold tremendous potential and we’re really excited about them.”

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How indie authors can break through the noise with NoiseTrade

How indie authors can break through the noise with NoiseTrade

Published by Adam on August 7, 2015

My biggest challenge as an indie author is getting the word out about my books. In a maelstrom of self-published authors, shouting louder than everyone else is just not a viable strategy–and at worst might very well annoy the audience I’m trying to win.

Lately, I’ve been looking into innovative book marketing companies who promise to help authors reach their audience more effectively than the author can do alone. After giving Story Cartel a go, I also decided to check out NoiseTrade.

NoiseTrade launched in 2008 as a music website, but expanded into eBooks in 2014. It’s a place for authors and musicians to give away their latest work to hungry readers and music lovers. While NoiseTrade consumers pay nothing to download, they are required to give their email address and postal code, and provide their consent to be added to the author or musician’s e-mail list. Downloaders can decide later to tip the author.

It costs nothing to post a book on NoiseTrade. However, authors can pay $50 to $500 extra to receive promotion in NoiseTrade’s Wednesday newsletter, or $500 to $1000 for a feature in NoiseTrade’s Saturday newsletter, which usually includes an interview.

NoiseTrade counts eight people on its core team. Staff work remotely from Minneapolis, Nashville, Chicago and Atlanta.

Amanda Michelle Moon, head of NoiseTrade Books, told me that she is optimistic about indie publishing. She also gave a few tips about how to have a successful launch on NoiseTrade.

Amanda Moon is the head of NoiseTrade Books and creative coordinator.

Q. The publishing industry is in a state of flux right now. Where do you think it’s going, and how well will self-published authors fare against industry published authors?

Amanda: My background (and degree) are both in Music Business. I’ve published two books, and the music experience has helped with the process greatly. Publishing has, and (I believe) will, continue to follow the music industry trajectory. The huge signing bonuses have already gone away, publishers are getting stingy about where they are spending money. It’s going to continue to get harder and harder to get that elusive Big 5 contract.

However, self-published authors have huge opportunities. By getting smart about the business side of publishing, they have the potential to make much more money than most ever would with a publisher. Having to do everything “yourself” is impossible, though, so I am much more an advocate of people thinking of themselves as “Indie” rather than “self” published. “Indie” is independent of a major publisher, but not alone. Very few people can actually do it alone.

Q. How can self-published authors match the marketing budgets of the big publishers?

Amanda: They can’t, and they don’t need to. A lot of publishers work through a formula for each book: Galleys on NetGalley, giveaway on Goodreads, ad in Name Your Large Publication. They can’t look at each book individually and make the strategic decisions that are right for that particular book, they don’t have time. It’s a shotgun approach. A self-published or indie author can take the time to really get to know their readers and target their marketing dollars in more effective ways. Just because a New York Times ad worked for Stephen King doesn’t mean it will work for your horror story.

Q. Could you provide a brief history of NoiseTrade, including when it expanded from music into books?

Amanda: In 2006 one of our founders, singer/songwriter Derek Webb gave away one of his albums for free online, asking in return for a little information (name, email address, and postal code). In three month’s time he gave away over 80,000 full downloads of his album and collected valuable information for as many new fans. As a direct result, Derek saw many sold out shows, increased merchandise and album sales, including a curious spike in sales of the very album that was given for free.

It was the massive success of this experiment that inspired Webb, with the help of a few trusted friends, to start NoiseTrade. Since its launch in 2008, NoiseTrade has seen incredible growth as a marketing and distribution platform for music. Books was added in early 2014. It was an idea that had been kicking around for a while–a few of the founders had ties in the book world, and the similarities between the recording and publishing industries are undeniable.

Q. How many book downloads do you get per month compared to music album downloads? How many musicians and how many authors have posted their work on the site?

Amanda: Music has about 10 times the downloads as books. There are over 20,000 musicians that have used the site in the last seven years, and almost 2,000 authors in the last 18 months.

Q. For an author looking to add their book to NoiseTrade, what tips do you have to maximize the success of a launch?

Amanda: Promote it! So many people put books on our site and don’t do any promotion around them— that has about the same success as putting a book on Amazon and then never pointing people to it. There is a ton of noise, you have to let people know what you have out there. We offer a few tools to help, including a widget that can be embedded on web pages, and a weekly, curated newsletter of paid content.

My NoiseTrade widget for We, The Watched:

Q. What do you tell authors who are worried that putting a book up for free on NoiseTrade might hurt their sales on other channels?

Amanda: Josh Garrels, an independent artist, recently released his new album with us the same day as it dropped at all the major retailers. When factoring in the tips he received, the amount of money he lost was negligible, and he added tens of thousands of new fans to his email list. These are the people who are going to support his subsequent albums, his shows, everything else he’s doing.

Authors have the same opportunity to create dedicated fans as musicians do, but they need to weigh the short-term loss against the long-term gain. We see a lot of authors put excerpts of their books on the site and see minimal engagement and high unsubscribes. It’s because they’re not offering anything other than what someone could find on iBooks or Amazon already, without having to give up their email address. The transaction has to be beneficial for both the author and the reader for it to work.

Q. When someone downloads a book, are they opting in to receive emails from the author?

Amanda: Yes. When a fan, either music or books, submits their email address to us to download something, they are agreeing to receiving emails from us (our weekly features) and any author/artist whose work they download. We do not share or sell email addresses beyond with the content creators.

Q. Besides NoiseTrade, what other innovative companies are helping self-published authors right now?

Amanda: I’m a huge fan of the model created by InkShares. It’s crowd-funding, but one person can’t spend a bunch of money to get the book through. The crowd really does need to support the project.

WiseInk also has a really great business model. As an author, what I really want is the “Manager” from the music industry: the partner with the experience to help make decisions, coordinate all of the other moving parts, and really help think strategically and long-term for both the particular project, but also for the artist’s career. WiseInk is more of a partner than a traditional publisher, and I love what they’re doing.

Q. What’s coming next for NoiseTrade? What can you tell me about any plans to further expand or enhance your services for authors?

On the immediate horizon are some updates to our weekly emails. We’re adding descriptions to all our books, not just our main features. We’re also launching a book club, where readers are going to have access to ask authors questions on social media. We’re actively working to bring in more genres, and also new readers, and continuing to create a community on the site.

Thanks to Amanda Michelle Moon for the interview. Please also check out my interview with Story Cartel’s Joe Bunting on how authors can get more customer reviews.

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How to find readers and get book reviews with Story Cartel

Published by Adam on January 11, 2015

As an independent author, I’m always looking for new ways to promote my books. I recently came across a cool website called Story Cartel. The site is all about finding new readers–and importantly–encouraging them to write reviews on Amazon and other bookseller websites.

I’ve put both of my novels up on Story Cartel in the past few months. Essentially, the book goes up on the site and for three weeks visitors can download it for free in exchange for their email address. At the end of that period, the reader writes a customer review and submits a link to Story Cartel. When they submit the link, they are entered into a contest to win great prizes like an Amazon gift card.

The review itself does not have to be positive–Story Cartel stresses to readers that they should write honest reviews.

I asked Story Cartel founder Joe Bunting about the origins of the site and his thoughts on how authors can best succeed in a time of immense change in the publishing world. Check out his answers below and please leave your own comments.

What was the problem you were trying to solve when you created Story Cartel?

Joe: Out of the millions of books on sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, and all the rest, how do readers figure out which ones they actually want to read? First, they’ll ask their friends, but if their friends aren’t readers or have different taste in books, they turn to reviews.

Not professional reviews in the New York Times or Vanity Fair. Regular readers are much more interested in finding books other people like them are interested in reading.

That’s why getting reviews on their books are the first and most important thing authors can do today to market their books.

We had figured out how to get a lot of reviews on our own books, and so we built Story Cartel to help other authors get reviews on theirs. It’s working out pretty well. Since 2012, we’ve helped authors get over 15,000 reviews on their books. We’re pretty excited about that.

Why do authors need a site like Story Cartel?

Joe: Reviews, especially Amazon reviews, do three things:

Reviews provide social proof. You’re much more likely to buy a book with 100 reviews than one with 3 reviews, even if the 100 reviews are lower than the book with just 3. We all like to read books other people are reading.
Reviews build word of mouth buzz. And word of mouth buzz is what sells books the best.
Reviews work on Amazon’s algorithm. While Amazon is always changing its algorithm, we’ve found that books with more reviews rank higher on Amazon than books with fewer reviews.

How long have you been running, where are you based, and how big is the team?

Joe: We’ve been helping authors since 2012, when we started by launching just one book a week (now we launch over 20 a week, on average). We’re based in Atlanta, Georgia (but we often travel to Santa Barbara, California to escape the heat!), and have a small, busy team of four people.

The publishing industry is in a state of flux right now. Where do you think it’s going, and how well will self-published authors fare against industry published authors?

Joe: From our perspective, publishing has always been about relationship and conversations. Now the conversation is just faster and less centralized.

Publishers in the last model were heavily reliant on book reviewers in magazines and newspapers to generate buzz for their books.

So what do you do when the magazines and newspapers are closing their book review departments and yet the average reader has more of a voice than ever?

We’re doing the same thing publicists have been doing for decades–getting books into the hands of people with influence. The difference is that now everyone has influence!

How can self-published authors match the marketing budgets of the big publishers?

Joe: Honestly, they don’t need to. They just need to make relationships with one reader at a time, one life-long fan at a time. If you have 1,000 fans who are willing to tell all their friends each time you publish a new book, that’s a career. What else do you need?

Here’s how We, The Watched looked on Story Cartel. During the giveaway period, the “Buy on Amazon” button said “Download.”

Besides Story Cartel, are there any other innovative companies in this space you like that are helping self-published authors?

Joe: Story Cartel fits really well with Bookbub, the eBook promotion service that’s helping so many authors sell books online. They require at least 25 reviews before they’ll host your book, so Story Cartel is a good first step before using them.

I like what NoiseTrade books is doing to help authors build relationships with readers by giving away free copies of their books.

There are lots of other great services, but I think it matters less which tools you use and more that you’re developing relationships with your readers online using whatever tools are at your disposal (e.g. email, Twitter, Facebook, your blog, etc).

What are the next steps for Story Cartel? Do you have any plans to expand or improve your services, for example?

Joe: We’re writers ourselves, so I think we’ll always be creating new things to help them. Our sister site, The Write Practice, is all about helping people practice the craft of writing, and we’re in the process of building a publicity agency to help handcraft custom online publicity campaigns, especially for publishers. We just want to help writers, in whatever way we can, and it’s a huge honor to get to do that every day.

Missed the giveaway of my dystopian novel We, The Watched? For a limited time get the book for just $1 at Smashwords with the coupon code JQ73E. Or get it free on NoiseTrade! And please, leave a review!

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It’s a myth that New York publishers will market your book better, says Guy Kawasaki

Published by Adam on July 14, 2014

Guy Kawasaki talks to media in Sydney. Credit: Canva

I’ve always been envious of traditionally published authors.

I am the self-published author of two dystopian novels and I know there are advantages to my way, including greater control over the final product and more revenue per sale… but marketing is not easy and it’s certainly not cheap.

So, while self-publishing is going OK for me, there’s always been a voice in the back of my head saying, “This would be so much easier with a New York publisher!”

I have to admit I was a bit surprised when Guy Kawasaki said that’s all a myth.

Guy, the former chief evangelist of Apple, is the author of 12 books and recently self-published one all about this topic called APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur. At a recent media breakfast in Sydney, he said self-publishers can find just as much success as authors with New York publishers–if not more.

“The publishing industry is a very interesting place because it used to be an oligopoly where a few dozen firms in New York controlled the whole world. That is no longer true because of self-publishing and Amazon.”

It can take a year to release a book under the traditional publishing model, he said. “As a self-publisher, from the time manuscript is done–which I can determine–8 hours later it’s for sale on Kindle.”

That all sounded good, but I couldn’t help but feel that Guy might be forgetting that getting initial sales depends on marketing. Maybe Guy is famous enough to sell his own book to thousands of people, but what about the rest of us? I had to ask, wouldn’t a relatively unknown author still get better marketing from a big New York firm?

Guy said no.

“The fact is that they only do those kind of things if you are Hillary Clinton or you’re David Beckham. They don’t do it for the other 10,000 authors every year because frankly they can’t call the New York Times 10,000 times every year.”

In many cases, even traditionally published authors end up doing their own marketing, he said.

“The irony is, if you are lucky enough to garner interest from a New York publisher, one of the first questions they are going to ask you is, ‘What’s your marketing platform?’ Which is kind of ass-backwards because the reason why you’re going to them is for their marketing platform.”

If the publisher actually took care of marketing, Guy said the 90-10 revenue split between publisher and author might make sense. But if that’s not going to happen, it makes little sense for the author to give up 90% of the sales, he said.

With self-publishing through Amazon, the author keeps 70% of each sale. “That’s five times better than what you would get from a publisher,” he said.

The good news, he said, is that self-published authors today have a free marketing platform to get the word out to their audience: social media.

“I’m not saying everyone is guaranteed a bestseller, but at least everybody has a shot and you’re not at the whim of someone in New York.”

Adam Bender is the self-published author of two dystopian novels about surveillance: We, The Watched and Divided We Fall.

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Category: Indie Publishing Tips

Reedsy pushes for better indie books through collaboration

Reedsy co-founder Emmanuel Nataf talks about the future of indie publishing.

Line between traditional, indie publishing nearly gone: The Fussy Librarian

Meet The Fussy Librarian

How indie authors can break through the noise with NoiseTrade

How to find readers and get book reviews with Story Cartel

It’s a myth that New York publishers will market your book better, says Guy Kawasaki

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