Why Debut Authors Need Hogwarts: The Top 5 Publishing Secrets No One Tells You

by Amy Franklin-Willis

When the unknown writer crosses into the promised land of publication, she feels victory. Validation. Joy. Astonishment. Revenge. Lucky. Grateful. Psyched.  Exhausted.  All at the same time.  And so the publishing roller coaster begins.

In March 2010 my novel The Lost Saints of Tennessee sold to Grove/Atlantic. Two months ago it was published.  Throughout I have found myself wishing there was a writing conference or a retreat or, perhaps most of all, a school to attend that could prepare me for the most challenging and thrilling stage of my writing life.  

A school where your publishing contract gains you admission and the campus is located in a castle outside of Manhatttan, maybe in Poughkeepsie or Fishkill.  The school uniform consists of skinny jeans and rumpled turtlenecks.  With compulsory crest-emblazoned berets. And everybody smokes but no one gets cancer.

This Hogwarts of Debut Authors features a faculty of esteemed, successful authors of all stripes, genres and sales records.  My dream team would be, in no particular order, J K Rowling, Zadie Smith, John Grisham, Nora Roberts (or NFR as her friends call her), Carl Hiaasen, Ann Patchett, Marilynne Robinson, John Gardner (who is deceased but we’re dreaming here), Chris Bohjalian, Lauren Myracle, Mary Oliver, Michael Chabon, Dorothy Allison, Harper Lee and Toni Morrison.  Can’t you just see them all lined up at the head table for the opening dinner? 

And we learn to play Quidditch.  Just because. 

But since the school is still in the early concept stage, I’d like to share my top five publishing secrets no one tells debut authors.  And we’ll go in reverse order because it works for David Letterman.

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    SECRET #5.  The legend of the “Publication Date.”   

      As your book makes its way through the editing stages, your publisher sets a date for its official publication. You mark it on the calendar. You shout it on Facebook.  You tweet it. You post a photo of the mark on the calendar. 

Don’t.  It’s a big old lie.  Your book is no more likely to show up in one synchronized wave of instant placement in bookstores on its publication day than a woman is likely to give birth on her “due date.”   How many babies are born on their due date?  Less than five percent. 

Here’s what you can expect.  Your reviews, if you are lucky enough to get them, will be timed to come out either right before or right after your pub. date—this helps the magazines and newspapers organize their review workload and gives you a healthy promotional rocket booster launch out of the gate. 

Three weeks before your “pub. date” your great aunt Beth in Cedar Rapids will leave you a message saying, “Amy, I just saw your book in the store down the street!  Isn’t that great?  But didn’t you tell me it wasn’t coming out until next month?” 

You panic. The giant levers of publishing are off kilter.  Your book is premature.  PREMATURE.  Premature anything is bad, right?   

Worry not.  Your book is simply making its way towards “full distribution.”  Friends in New York will rejoice because they got the book “early” and friends in New Orleans will complain about the friends in New York because it’s not in their bookstore yet so they had to go listen to music and get drunk instead on Bourbon Street.  The official moment when all of your books are supposed to find their way to their temporary bookstore homes is your pub. date. 

This subject is confusing because we hear about the Harry Potter and Hunger Games midnight book release parties where thousands of readers line up outside their favorite bookstores.  Most authors think that someday, people will be doing this for our books too and when they do, the publisher will then “embargo” our latest book when it ships to the stores with tiny little bombs implanted in the cartons of books set to go off if the bookstore breaks the seal before the official pub. date. 

Until then, dear debut author, we must make do with a sprinkling approach to our books arriving in stores. 

·     SECRET #4:  There is not a “best” time to publish a new author.    

      There are better times.  Unless one is getting a huge push from his publishing house, avoiding the fall publishing season as a debut author seems favorable. Fall is when all the big author books get pushed out in advance of the December holiday season.

So let’s say you and your publisher determine Winter or Summer is the perfect season. You pray that your publication month will be a “quiet” one where your debut book shines like the North Star to potential readers.  No.  Scratch that.  Your first book will function as a solar eclipse amongst the other books foolish enough to schedule publication during your month.

And, inevitably, no fewer than three best-selling authors will have their new books out the same month as yours. Those selfish one percenter author bastards will suck all the air out of the publicity you know was destined for your masterpiece.  You know this as surely as the Flat Earth Society knows the idea of the Earth being round is political propaganda.

·     SECRET #3:  Social Media Will Consume Your Life.    

      At a minimum, your publisher will expect you to:  develop a Facebook presence, either on your own personal page or, more frequently, on an author fan page; tweet snappy, interesting things via Twitter that talk about other things besides your book but occasionally mention your book; have an engaging, easy to navigate website. 

This obligation surprised me the most. I work a full-time job, am raising three kids, and attempting to be a novelist. I now spend more time on Facebook than my teenager.  You will too. 

The social media piece is a HUGE time commitment. Your family will make snarky comments like, "Oh, look, Mom's going to tweet about how sorry she is for running over that poor squirrel because she thinks people will 'favorite' it." They will try to wrest your i-Phone from your hands just as you are uploading to Facebook the cutest picture of your book at the local bookstore.

But the modern reader loves to connect with her authors. She wants to tell you via Facebook or Twitter that she is on page 176 and loving it. And you better be there to thank her for buying your book.

On the web page front, I initially budgeted $1500. My web designer fell through and I ran out of money so I ended up doing it myself through a company called Squarespace. They charge $22/month to host a site and though I pulled several all-nighters to set it up initially, it ended up being the most effective and economical approach. I love my site and can easily add new event dates, reviews, videos and pictures.

·    Secret #2:  The Great Mystery of Sales Data.   

      For five years I worked for UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business as a fundraiser.  I met lots of Silicon Valley CEOs and learned something about business via osmosis during my tenure.  One of the basic expectations of business is tracking sales.  That information is then shared down the food chain from the executives to the sales force to the product developers. 

Not so in my limited publishing experience. Fuzzy ideas about your sales numbers exist at places like "Author Central" on Amazon's web site where you can tap in to Bookscan data (Bookscan is the industry's primary sales tracking method for print books but it contains only 40%-80% of actual sales--yes, you read that right, there's a 40% spread on the accuracy) and get your Kindle e-book rank but not the actual number of e-books sold.

Sales information seems to be guarded by publishers as if the release of the bare figures to you, the author, might be tantamount to giving Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blueprints to our nuclear facilities.  

The one place I've found thus far where I can get hard numbers easily is from my independent booksellers. They happily tell me how sales are going in their stores.

·      And the #1 SECRET is:  Having Your First Book Published Will Be More And Less Than You Ever Dreamed.  

      Here is the bad news. You will not be able to retire on the first royalty check you receive, providing you are in the fortunate group who earns back their advance and makes it into royalty territory.  Odds are against your book making it to the New York Times Bestseller list, though there are always a few debut books each year that do.   

      Most people you meet will never have heard of you or your book. And at least one person, probably more, will write a review either in print or on the web that says your book is “predictable” and that she likes the dog in your book better than the main character. 
  

      But there will be moments, I promise, when the miracle of publication causes your breath to catch. Someone throws you a book party, invites your closest friends and family, you buy a new outfit and feel, for a few hours, as if you are a literary princess or prince and the only person on the planet to have accomplished publication. 

      The first time you see your book in an actual bookstore. Facing out. On the front table. 

      A reader sends you a message that tells you your book--those words you wrote in the dark night while your children slept nearby--caused him to think differently about his relationship with his own family. 

      At a bookstore event, a stranger approaches you shyly with your book in her hands and says that it was wonderful. This same person will ask  your daughters--to whom the book is dedicated--to sign their names on the dedication page. 

      A reviewer will quote one of your favorite lines from the book as evidence of your writing talent and you will feel as if someone is listening. 

      As if your words have gone from that secret place where we conjure them, to the page, to the world.