Two years ago I had an unexpected and impromptu meeting with a gentleman whose company publishes something in the range of 400 print-on-demand Christian titles per year. We talked about a variety of issues impacting our industry, but then, a day later, a thought occurred to me which simply hadn’t up to that point: Taking the notes from a seminar I was preparing, The Pornography Effect and putting it into print form.
He suggested I go ahead and convert part of the notes into manuscript form so he would have an idea what was under consideration, and within a few more days, he had a draft version of the first three chapters in his hands.
I should explain at this point that I immediately envisioned any print version of this as a kind of “crisis” book. You may have noticed that many of the grief or consolation or “issues” books you sell are on the short side, with many of them being mere booklets. This one, I guessed, would clock in around 23-25,000 words.
His reply totally took me off guard. He believed strongly in the necessity and the value of my proposal. Too much so, perhaps. He said he saw this as something that far exceeded what he, as a niche-market print-on-demand publisher could do.
Instead, he said, “I see this being sold in packages of four or five, with every pastor having several copies on their desk that they can give out when someone comes into their office in this situation.”
At this point, I should explain that The Pornography Effect’s subtitle is actually, Understanding for the Wives, Daughters, Mothers, Sisters and Girlfriends. It’s a project that doesn’t so much target men who are online addicts — though I expect about a third of readers would end up being that anyway — as it targets women who are the ‘collateral damage’ of some male’s misuse of the internet.
So my new publisher friend basically tossed the ball back into my court, with the added stress of looking for publishers who have a history of doing multi-copy sets, or — an extension of the idea that I added — doing bargain priced or promotional priced titles.
Through a series of connections, I was able to get the full book — 15 short chapters — read at InterVarsity Press. As expected, it didn’t have the intellectual or academic qualifications to bear the IVP brand. (With the goal of accessibility, there are no footnotes, though there is a large bibliography and references to works contained in the text itself.) Furthermore, publishers are looking for authors who have an established platform. Breaking in new talent is tough in a slower economy. Contacts with three other publishers who met the multi-pack or promotional price criteria led nowhere. There are a lot of people out there hawking books right now.
But I felt — and still do — that the topic itself was important enough to carry it through to meaningful sales numbers. So I bit the bullet and decided to look into other print-on-demand publishers who were committed to the larger Christian market, as opposed to my original contact, whose 400+ titles are more academic.
That’s where it became rather frustrating. As a bookseller I only wanted to clarify two things:
- The book would be available to Ingram and STL such that they could pass it through to retailers at full trade discount (or really close), and
- The book would get listed with CBD, more for credibility since Ingram carries such a wide variety of product.
I wasn’t concerned about anything else, and at that point I was quite prepared to take or leave whatever they offered in terms of Amazon.
As to the actual production, I had a recognized artist willing to do a very particular duo-chromatic cover illustration, but would want the publisher to do everything else. I wanted to keep the retail price low because of the above considerations, and the book’s aforementioned size, and I was willing to sacrifice some of the normal royalty percentages to make this happen.
What do you think happened next?
The answer is, nothing. I mean that to this very day these companies that print just about anything writers feed them have never answered a single e-mail. They’ve kept me on e-mail lists for upcoming special offers, but replying to e-mails or phone calls seems quite outside the scope of their efforts.
These companies — which I won’t name — are looking to feed manuscripts in one end of a machine and have books come out the other, and if you want anything over and above that in terms of service, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
This surprises me, because I think with a topic like Pornography, you’re looking at moving a lot of product.
On April 30th, 2008; frustrated and disillusioned, I created a WordPress blog page and uploaded the entire book — actually version 1.0, not the one I would publish today — onto a blog. I did the last chapters first so that, on a blog, everything would appear in order.
And there it sits. Every day a handful of people read it. I think it presents a unique perspective on some aspects of this topic that you simply won’t read elsewhere. But the print version continues to elude us.
Until the self-publish, print-on-demand industry is willing to take author proposals seriously, and learn to answer e-mails and phone calls, then I truly don’t see it ever attaining parity with its counterparts in the larger publishing world. What you’ll see instead is books available which were rushed to market at the cost of reasonable product development. I think there are some great partnerships that can develop between print on demand publishers and local bookstores, but the stores have to know who they can refer their customers to with confidence; after all these future authors are still existing customers and stores have to live with the responsibility for recommendations they make. Print-on-demand publishers, on the other hand, need to learn the moral decency of dealing with the mountains of correspondence their type of business is bound to attract.
This article is the continuation of some thoughts initiated two days ago on this blog.
If you or someone you know might benefit from reading version 1.0 of The Pornography Effect click here.
Related: Author Sarah Bolme Appears on Christian Authors Show to Discuss Marketing Books To Christians
