An Intro

The year 2005 saw a huge surge of individuals putting their books on the market, and the excellent publicity surrounding this. Many of these everyday authors were also Self-Publishers, who chose to foot their own printing costs and manage their titles—a consequence of indiscriminate rejection of local authors by our own publishers.

Way back in 2003, when the self-publishing wave was not yet witnessed, I carried out such an operation for Anema, and put Chapters 1 and 2 into bookstores. In fact, it seemed that I was one of those first few who inspired the current wave.

When I talked to some newer self-published authors and mentioned my Straits Times feature in August 2003, they remarked that they remembered it, and that the feature prompted them to discover more about publishing their own books.

The immense trials and adversity I had to contend with were largely unknown to anyone else. But still, this isn’t the place to list all my gripes and grievances.

Instead I wish to write a digestible, business-oriented guide for anyone who aspires to join publishing, whether publisher-supported or self-published. This piece refers particularly to Singapore, but I’ll be making it as relevant worldwide as possible.

The Singapore Publishing Scene

Close to the turn of the millennium, the Singapore authorities launched a national initiative to develop the island into a regional publishing hub. It seemed like a sound idea. After all, we’ve got the infrastructure, the business experience, and a highly-educated population. Unfortunately the results were insignificant.

For any country to become a book-lover’s paradise, the local population needs to be won over. The island’s population of 4 million can hardly support professional authors’ careers. And unlike the British, many locals don’t have a habit of scouring bookstores for new titles and reading large varieties of books. The thirst for general knowledge is absent, and aggravated by stressful school/work schedules.

Most glaringly, the Singapore people have little confidence in their own local brands, and lack the ardent nationalistic support of Japanese or Americans towards their own products. In fact, saying that something is ‘home-grown’ or ‘locally-made’ is sure to harm sales. A lengthy range of historical and socio-psychological factors have contributed to this, but at this point all we need to know is that this anti-self sentiment is fact.

Since market size and sentiments work against local authors, they become a scorned lot. When foreign authors see that Singapore is not the author’s springboard as claimed, few will want their own titles published here. Goodbye, publishing hub dreams.

The lack of confidence in all things Singaporean has also rooted itself in publishers and bookstores, who very much prefer to take foreign titles. In their eyes, local authors are inferior and even considered a liability to manage. Limited income opportunities also hamper local authors’ chances with publishers. I was also told that high store rentals force bookstores to command high margins, squeezing publishers’ profits and in turn, authors’ royalties. This accounts for lousy contract terms offered to authors.

Apart from Dr Catherine Lim, there have been no other local authors of international standing. (In fact, Dr Lim isn’t even Singapore-born.) Over the years, some names have come and went, enjoying some short-term success. But once they tried selling their work overseas, they could not repeat their domestic successes.

As things currently stand, the only local titles that sell well are biographies of famous people (which many buy for decorating their shelves, but few actually read), and schoolwork enrichment books. (for parents obsessed with drilling their children into top schools)

In a climate like this, it becomes natural for publishers to shun local authors, and in turn, for authors to resort to self-publishing. There may have been a surge of Self-Publishers with all manner of titles recently, but generally they can only manage a measly few hundred copies in sales each.

Mental Preparation

In a publishing backwater such as Singapore, should you even try publishing your treasured life’s work? In spite of everything, the answer is a definite YES. No one can predict if the next belittled author becomes the next success story, and it’s only through an explosion of many works that natural selection takes its course, with the best cream rising to the top.

And if you think Singapore is a horrid place to start your plans, there’s enough information here to apply to any such endeavour in a more promising industry. But let me state now that although more opportunities abound in markets like the US or UK, it’s not a bed of roses anywhere.

Out of all published authors in the world, only 2% are able to make enough money to write full-time. The rest continue to lead their dreary lives like other mortals, holding down 9-to-5 jobs and writing only when time permits. Therefore, authors like JK Rowling, who is now worth US$ 1 billion, are a rare anomaly.

Should you wish to try your hand in this trade, you need to dispel any high hopes that you can live a comfortable professional writer’s life. And for your own good, quash any dreams that you can become the next JK Rowling. Far better writers have existed and earned nowhere near her payouts. The chance of such good fortune falling on another person is one-in-a-billion.

Instead, releasing your own book should be seen as a self-fulfilment endeavour, or satisfying a dire need to express your ideas. There’s nothing wrong in trying to make money, but in a place like Singapore, bringing expectations down to earth is the best way to avoid grievous disappointment. Only the motivation of fulfilment and expression can push you to go the distance here.

The Business Process

This is the most oft-asked question by people I’ve talked to, and sadly, I had to learn all this own my own when I first started out. I’ll also make comparisons between local and international standards, and add any vital experiences if I have.

A typical book goes through the following process:

AUTHOR-> AGENT-> PUBLISHER-> PRINTER-> DISTRIBUTOR-> RETAILER-> READER

The price paid by the reader is at least twice the price of printing the book, and those alien to the industry have complained of consumer exploitation. But if we consider the many levels that books must go through, each level demanding a margin, the much higher retail price is unavoidable. Currently, there are only limited ways to bypass levels and offer a lower price, so it’ll remain like this for a long time.

1. The Author

That’s you—the most important entity in the industry, although many publishers have long forgotten this and treat authors with impunity. And yet, countless people keep knocking on their doors, hoping to get their dreams fulfilled. No wonder publishers can afford to treat authors shabbily—if one author is discontented, there are ten others fighting to take his place! Only when you make a bestseller you can expect getting on the driver’s seat.

Typically, authors receive 10% of the final, retail price as royalty. If your book costs $20 in stores, you’ll get $2. It is measly, owing to flaws of the current business process, but I’ll explain where the rest of the money goes later. In Singapore, I’ve heard authors getting 8% or even less here; but if you’re a bestselling author in a larger industry, I bet publishers can offer up to 15%.

It doesn’t matter how many people worked on the book-- the publisher offers 10%, and you’ll have to split this among yourselves. This decision is independent of the publishing contract—it’s your own separate agreement.

In established markets, authors can receive an amount of money called an ‘Advance’. This is meant to sustain the author’s living while waiting for the books to reach stores and real income to arrive. Different publishers use different ways to calculate your Advance. Some base it on percentage of estimated book sales; others just pay a fixed sum.

The Advance is deducted from your royalties, and not an additional payment. Eg: you’re paid an Advance of $5,000, and your book earns you royalties of $20,000 later on. You’ll only be paid $15,000 instead.

Do not expect to be paid advances when working with Singapore publishers. They take a ‘worst case scenario’ view, assuming that your book may not sell. Therefore, it’s a loss to pay you an Advance, when in the end there are no sales.

2. The Literary Agent

Agents are unheard of in Singapore, but in established markets they are part and parcel of publishing industries. They exist because publishers find it inconvenient to receive proposals from every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to be published, and leaves the screening job to third parties—the agents.

Agents screen through all book proposals submitted by aspiring authors, and agree to represent those they deem are sellable. They then take the proposal to publishers whom they believe will be interested. If a contract is secured, the agent becomes your manager—liaising between the publisher and yourself, organising your business affairs. Some agents do less than others, though.

Literary agents are usually acquainted with publishers, and publishers will trust them if they claim a book can sell. However, this is no guarantee—agents still get as many rejections as hits. There was this one British agent (bless him!) who agreed to take in my title, and both of us worked hard to sell Anema’s idea to UK publishers. We came out empty-handed and the agreement had to be nullified.

In a sense, the industry has built another wall around itself, to make it harder for authors to get published. First authors had to impress publishers, and now they must impress agents first, then publishers.

If an agent is needed, authors will usually pay 10% of the book’s income to them. If you received $2 as royalty for your $20 book, the agent takes 20 cents. If anyone pays you to use your work for any purpose, the agent takes 10% of that fee as well. 10% of 10% of book sales is a measly sum, so agents usually have a whole stable of clients to make money from.

Some agent contracts even cover management of movie and merchandising rights, so if a studio wants to make a movie on your title, the agent gets 10% of your fees. This is assuming that the agent is confident that he can sell your story to a studio. If you disagree, or have better contacts for that, you may wish to exclude such terms.

Different agents have different preference for the kind of books the represent. i.e: sci-fi, non-fiction, instructional... They will explicitly state what genres they wish to represent on their websites, for instance, and if your title isn’t in a genre they like, you’ll be rejected outright.

The so-called book proposal you’ll be sending to agents is called a ’Query’. It’s a letter of max 2 pages that summarises your book and persuades the agent why it can sell. Usually the Query is accompanied by samples of the book’s writing, like first few chapters. Some published authors will advise that you should not query until your whole book is complete—then agents can judge a book’s worth in its entirely.

Bigger agents may require you to write your Query in a certain format, and keep to certain page limits, or insist that you submit through snail mail, not by the convenience of email. Or else, outright rejection. Yes, this is not an author’s world!

Caution:

The names of agents and agent firms are usually unheard-of outside the industry circle, since they do not appear in published books or any materials. So, aspiring authors need to do some homework to determine if the agent they’re querying is reputable.

Good agents usually list which authors they represent, and which books they got published. As a cardinal rule, the author will NEVER pay money upfront to an agent for representation. Some agents do require authors to foot the bill for miscellaneous expenses like postage, but the amount is deducted from royalties when the book is sold.

In another case, I thought I had managed to obtain an agency from the US. The contract was signed and we were negotiating how to work proposals. And then, the agent asked that I pay $200 for ‘setup and management fees’. I was nearly ready to pay, because after months of searching I was just glad to have found an agent. But there was a nagging suspicion, and I search online for this firm’s background. To my dismay, this agent turned out to be a fraud. From accounts of other victims, the firm would continuously ask money for ‘further business expenses’, misleading authors into believing they’re very close to a contract. In fact, nothing is done and the authors can conned out of hundreds of dollars.

There was another time, way back in 1999, when a local publisher offered to be my ‘agent’, in exchange for a whopping 40% of my royalties. First of all, I don’t think he was aware that the standard rate was 10%, and further, he was a publisher and chose not to publish my work himself. Perhaps he was hoping a friend would take the risk, and he could reap any rewards if my title succeeded.

3. The Publisher

In some markets like Singapore, agents are non-existent and authors will query directly to editors of publishing companies. The process will be shortened like this:

AUTHOR-> PUBLISHER-> and so on…

Therefore, the editor will assume the role of agents as explained earlier, screening queries and managing business affairs of the title. The publisher will coordinate the entire process of getting the book into stores, like engaging printers, negotiating with distributors, and marketing.

Some larger publishers also double as distributors, or even print in-house. This helps them save money, if their operations are large enough to warrant managing everything themselves.

The business chain may look like this, if the publisher also prints and distributes:

AUTHOR-> PUBLISHER-> RETAILER-> READER

Don’t think that they will give you more than the standard 10% royalty, though!

An interesting point to note about agents and publishers—many of us believe that the type of books we see on the market are influenced directly by the creativity of new writers on Earth, but this is heavily factored by agents and publishers, who control the type of books going into stores.

As we analyse the process further, we’ll also realize that the job of screening new book ideas boils down to a few individuals, the editors and agents. Considering the sheer volume of proposals they must screen everyday (up to100 per day for top companies), they can only spare a few minutes on each query. Your book can be a classic, but if the query doesn’t please the editor within this short time window, out you go. Under immense pressure to identify marketable books, editors tend to go with the tried-and-tested ideas. i.e: Harry Potter is hot, so let’s pick more children’s magic fantasy projects. Otherwise, editors are also flawed humans with individual tastes, so if your fantastic book doesn’t sit well with their tastes, you’ll get the boot too.

In essence, there may be far better books than what we see in the stores. The quality and creativity of the industry is tightly controlled by these individual editors and agents, based on their own tastes and inductive reasoning. That’s why it is difficult for a new, unheard-of kind of book to make publication.

4. The Printer

A third party who takes your manuscript and makes books out of it. They are paid a fixed fee based on printing costs, and do not manage your book or own its rights. The cost of printing a book can be 25% to 50% of its retail price, depending on printing requirements and the retail price decided by the publisher.

Naturally, it is more expensive to print colour or use higher quality paper. Printing more copies means you pay more, but the cost of each individual book becomes lower. This is known as economies of scale. Printers need to make ‘casts’ of every page, and imprint those casts on paper. The casts are a fixed, compulsory cost whether you print 100 or 10,000 books.

If you print more, cast costs are spread out over more books, making each copy cost less. But still, publishers don’t go around printing huge quantities to spread cost. If the books can’t sell, the money is all wasted!

Publishers will want to save costs from printers, so that they can keep a higher margin from sales income.

5. The Distributor

Another third party, this time in charge of transporting books into stores. Some publishers are based in nice offices, where there’s no warehouse to keep all their printed books. Logistics of transport and ensuring bookstore payment is also demanding, so that’s the job of distributors.

Some publishers do have their own distribution operations, and even printing houses.

Distributors take 5% to 10% of the retail price. When you subtract their transport costs and such, their actual profits are very thin indeed. So distributors are keen on carrying a huge range of titles from many publishers.

When negotiating, they’ll quote a rate like 55% to 70%, but that’s because they factor in the margin taken by bookstores, which are the largest.

Some distributors also do the selling to bookstores, while others just coordinate stocks and leave the selling to publishers. Others can have comprehensive channels beyond bookstores, like supermarkets, convenience stores, or even schools. Such details are worth finding out before working with one of them.

6. The Retailer

Refers to our bookstores, from the little-known one in the street corner, to Borders and Barnes&Noble. This is still the best place for prospective buyers to spot your book and buy it, despite the influence of the internet etc.

Bookstores can take from 40% to 60% of the retail price. The reason for such a high margin-- the costs of filling shelves, rental and other retail operations require it. Any lower, and they cannot carry on business. (In addition, their clout in the business process is powerful—if a large book chain refuses to stock your title, your success is severely hampered!)

The issue of shelf space will loom over you at this point. If you’re backed by a top publisher, he’ll be given good shelves to display his titles, including your book. Good space means shelves at eye-level, and displaying your title prominently; not some corner in the very bottom shelf, with the book sandwiched between others. A good publisher will even pay for window display space, or additional posters to showcase your title. ‘Good publishers’ can be very rare, though.

I know of some publishers who’ll send office helpers to top bookstores, and discreetly move a few of their books to premium shelves, to let more customers notice them. There’s no way bookstore employees can keep up constantly with such guerrilla tactics. Well, Singapore is tough— and tough times call for desperate measures.

7. Your Reader

What can I say? Every good author should have the Reader in mind when writing. Yes, authors should be original and follow their hearts etc, but the work should be understandable to Readers, and persuade them to your ideas.

Even though your agent and publisher is supposed to market the title, authors should do their own marketing if they can. They may introduce their title to interest groups who may like such a book, offer to give talks on useful topics related to the book, or just tell everyone they know about their new title. Many ideas abound for new authors to promote their work at low costs.

In Singapore, the need for self-marketing is more important, even if you have an official publisher. Local publishers seldom consider aggressive marketing part of their operations, and may just dump your title into bookstores and cross their fingers. When the book doesn’t sell because readers don’t even know it exists, YOU get blamed for writing a lousy, un-sellable book!

Sales Estimation

When I first started out, I made the same erroneous estimation as everyone not familiar with the industry—I estimated sales based on total country population. If Singapore has 4 million people, surely it’s not farfetched to expect 100,000 in sales? It’s just 1 in 40 people! I know now that such an estimate is ridiculous.

A more accurate way to gauge sales is to observe the average human traffic into bookstores, then to your book’s shelf, taking your book, and buying it. Apart from hippy downtown bookstores, most others are usually lacking in traffic. As for those who are frequented, how many will see your book among thousands of others, let alone buy it? Sales of most titles average only a few hundred a year, unless aggressively marketed.

Most publishers estimate sales based on past sales figures of similar titles, and the type of distribution channels they can access.

Continued…

In Part II, I will cover self-publishing, important contract terms, and social changes around newbie authors’ lives.