Episode 13: Distribution
K
Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you want to be. Thank you for joining us this week on The Writers Triangle. Today I’m going to be talking about distribution. And the reason I want to talk about distribution is I want to demystify it for everyone. Distribution is how we sell our books, it’s how we get our books from – actually starts from printing. So distribution in my mind starts from once we receive a manuscript, the distribution start – the distribution process starts in my mind, once I read it. So I read a manuscript, and then we have to think about does it need editing. All of our manuscripts are professionally edited, some are tighter than others. And we don’t grammar judge, I have dyslexia. Every book is edited, because even if you are a professional editor, when you edit your own book, there’s a familiarity with the story that our in house editor doesn’t have. So our in house editor kind of has a wall between them and all of our books. We have several in house editors that do different genres. And we find that isolating them and having them not see the book until we’ve signed it, and we’re ready to edit that that’s the best way to get the cleanest edit. Once the book is edited, then we send it back to the author to make sure they’re comfortable with the edits, because not every edit is right for the book. And so we say if you don’t like an edit, then let us know and put a comment by it. And so far, knock on wood, y’all know I’m superstitious. All of our Musick Notes know I knock on wood all of the time. And that – our Musick Notes are from The Musick’s in Japan, and we have some Musick Notes that are also cinnabar moths. And that is so awesome. Thank you guys, I really appreciate the support. But back to distribution. I digress. I don’t have Chad on this podcast to wrangle me. Even though I think Chad digresses as much as I do. Now I’m being distracted thinking about Chad, stop thinking about Chad, think about distribution. So once, as I was saying, once we get it to the author, the author tells us and we usually agree with our authors. So far, we haven’t had any disagreements. And that’s been absolutely lovely. Then once that, once that happens, and we have a final book simultaneously, while we’re editing the book and going through it, we’re also going through the cover making process. And a lot of people don’t know about book, something a lot of people don’t know about book covers, is it’s not one size fits all. And you can’t just take a great image, because we have a lot of authors who send us beautiful artwork. And then we ask does the author do book covers? And they say, yes, the author does book covers, but they don’t know anything about spine dimensions. They don’t know anything about the different templates that different places use. Specifically, Amazon is one of the distributors that has their own template. And there are several distributors that have their own templates, sellers of books. I mean, that’s what I’m when I say distributor, I mean places that sell books. And if they have their own template, then the cover has to be put into that template.
K
But before the cover artists can put the cover into the template, we have to give them a word count. So we have to typeset it. And typesetting is when you put the book into the shape, form and font that the press has requested. And we decide whether it’s going to be on creme or white paper, I think we always choose creme paper. And that’s when we get the final word count. Once we have the final – not word count – page count, once we have the the final page count, we can then send that we can then create the template. And then once we’ve created the template, then we can send that to the cover artist. Then the cover artist puts the cover into that template and the cover is three different pieces. The cover is the front cover the spine and the back cover. And all of them have to be done in very specific ways. And some margins are just like the tiniest fraction difference. And that’s for hardcover and paperback and they have to do hardcover and paperback for multiple distributors when they do a book cover for us. So that’s part of part of distribution as well as the design of the book cover. The book cover is the face of the book. And if, and everyone says you can’t judge a book by its cover, but let’s be real, every reader does.
K
And every distributor does. Ugly covers, don’t sell and people don’t want to distribute them. They just don’t becaue they’re thinking about the aesthetic of their store. And especially small indie booksellers are really thinking about the aesthetic of their store. So the first impression they have of your book is the cover. And I advise everyone, if you’re going to look at your budget for your book, make sure you edit it, and make sure you invest in a good cover. We’re really fortunate we have several book cover artists that we work with – our two primary artists are Fay and Ivan and you can go check out our talent page on cinnabarmoth.com. We list all of the artists that we work with, as well as voice artists that we work with. So with us, we have several different types of distribution that we do. We have paperback, hardback, ebook and audiobook. And I’m going to talk about audiobook distribution first, because it is the bane of my existence, and everybody at the press. So for me, I don’t deal with the setup and getting the audio book distributed, distributed rather. But I do deal with promoting the audiobook. And it is so hard. And because we have a library of congress number for each book, if the audio book does not launch the exact same day as the paper book, and as the paperback and hardback, and ebook, then you cannot include it in the Library of Congress catalog. So it’s super, super important that these books launch on time. So we do not list the audible copy in the library of Congress because Audible is tricky. It – it takes a lot of finessing. It can take anywhere from three days to three months to have your book approved by Audible. And if you go through ACX to have it narrated, the minute you approved the book, it becomes available. So you can’t approve the book or it’ll be – it’ll pre launch and go out to Audible around the world. And so it takes anywhere between one and four days once you’ve approved the book for it to launch on Audible. So audible, there’s no way to get precision on, but the ACX – going through ACX has some benefits and that they do quality control for you. They do the contract for you, the rates are set, and there’s just no rigmarole and no dealing with anything whatsoever. Everything is – because Audible has a really stringent, ACX has really stringent guidelines and rules of what narrators can and can’t do. I feel like ACX is better than some of the other services out there. If you’re looking for a narrator and you’re going through the narration process for the first time, I do recommend them. And then you have your your distribution through Audible. We always check the non-exclusive because we also do Google Play and iTunes and, and several other, and we I which I can’t think of like every place that we did distribute the audio book. But I know we – it’s one of our tops, audio books are one of our top sellers, for libraries. The reason that we do audio books is because – so let me be clear audio books are expensive as heck. We’re probably not going to make money on the audio book, probably going to lose money on the audio book. But we do audio book because we want – inclusivity matters. It just does. And we don’t want somebody who can’t hold a device and who can only have it through audio. We don’t want them to have to use their computer to computer generate an audio book. Instead, what we want – and there’s also people who have vision issues that can’t read Braille. Our books are offered in Braille, and they’re offered at a set discounted rate in Braille for distribution in the United States, and then offered – there’s different Braille for different countries, even if it’s in English just like sign language. And so that’s one aspect of the distribution is the inclusivity. And the reason that we do the audio books is we want the reader to have an experience. And we view listening to audio books as reading. And I know I personally love listening to an audio book because I can also do other things. So audio books are great for the person on the go. And we know a lot of our readers will listen to an audio book at one and a half or two times speed while they’re on their commute to work or what have you. So it just increases accessibility in ways that people can enjoy the book. And it’s also really great for librarians, librarians love audio books. And we find that when we distribute the audio book, and we make it available on Net Galley that our library sales increase, and libraries are huge portion of the distribution. And we’re so fortunate to have our books and libraries around the world. We have our books in a library on every continent except Antarctica. And our beautiful cinnabar moths or whatever kind of moth you want to be y’all know I’m obsessed with Antarctica by now.
K
I talked about it a couple of weeks ago, and I just want to be on Antarctica. If you’ve been to Antarctica, and you’ve taken one of our books, please comment below, or hit us up on Twitter @CinnabarMothPub. And let us know that, yay, we’ve made it because I will completely celebrate that. So the distribution of the audio book is through set audio, but players like Google Books iBooks, which is Apple, iTunes, Audible are the big ones. And then there’s also some smaller ones that are that are online, and do distributions and their names are escaping me right now there’s about five or 10 that we use to distribute the audio book. The ebook gets distributed by everyone everywhere. And there are several ebook distributors, that that’s all they do is distribute the ebooks. And we don’t really have to do anything that’s kind of like a self loading mechanism, I find. And we’re really happy about that. And Smashwords is one of those that we use them, we’re really fortunate with Smashwords, we have our pub site up on Smashwords. And all of our books get distributed through Smashwords. As a press getting a book distributor that does largest, large, distributed distribution, to have a page dedicated to your publisher, your publishing house is huge. And I encourage all indie presses to do it. And if you’re an author, I really encourage you to set up an author’s page, if you have audio books, set up an author’s page on Audible set up your author’s page on Amazon. And also reach out to like if someone distributes your book, and they’re distributing more than one of your books, reach out to them and say, hey, can I have an author’s page? Or reach out and ask them hey, can you host a page for our publication, we have these books coming down the line that we think you might be interested in. And I have saying in our family, closed mouth don’t get fed, and I’m hungry. I’m hungry to sell books. And I’m also shameless when it comes to promotion. And for me hearing no is not the worst thing that can happen to me. And hearing yes is so much more exciting than an outweighs the small disappointment of the no. Getting books into libraries for us, was super important early on, because you have to have – before you can get a library, a US Library of Congress number, you have to as a press have several books that have been widely distributed through libraries. Sadly, those two books never get a US library Congress number because it has to happen before the book is published. So you have to have two authors that are willing to make that sacrifice for you. I was very lucky because our first author was my husband. So of course he’s making a sacrifice. He didn’t really have a choice in that but. He was happy to do it because it means his next book will have a library of congress number. And then we’re very lucky to have a friend who was bummed by the fact that their book couldn’t get a number. But their book wasn’t eligible because by the time we needed more than one book, and so we were able to talk with them and explain that to them and say, We’re really sorry. The next book you published with us, the upside is the next book you published with us, and if you ever write a sequel to this book, will be in the Library of Congress, and thank you for being our second author. And we’re sorry, you’re not getting the full benefits that our later authors are getting. And so we were able to have books in the library of congress, by our third book, which is really good for an indie press to have that kind of change happen. And that kind of distribution happen. Because the US Library of Congress is attached to the American Library Association. And the American Library Association, is the distribution for all public libraries in the United States. And we’re also on the circuit for school libraries, which I can’t remember the name of the association.
K
And so we’re in small school – we’re sprinkled through local school libraries throughout the US. We’re also in school libraries, internationally, which is great. And it sort of happens, libraries, talk to libraries. And if you’re in a library, shout it to the world. If you’re in one library, shout it to the world, and other libraries will take notice that. So wherever you’re at on your social media, use the hashtag libraries, use the hashtag library, use the hashtag librarians to get their attention and say, hey, we value you, we appreciate being selected by you, and we want to keep this relationship going. And I found that by having these app mentions of people that that are on social media, that that creates direct messaging – that flow between us, and increases the intimacy and trust and relationship. And we’re very fortunate to have some personal relationships with a few librarians. And those librarians trust us. They say, hey, and they ask specific questions about the book. Does this book contain x y z? Is this book going to have? Is it truly in the genre, this is how I define the genre. And being able to have those types of conversations with librarians is priceless. It refines your understanding of genre that refines your intimacy and understanding of your catalogue. And it also really does great for promotion. Because libraries, librarians go to conferences, and they talk about presses at these conferences, which presses are having positive interactions with also indie authors, which indie authors are having positive interactions with. When it comes to libraries, be on your P’s and Q’s, you know, dot your I’s, cross your T’s, be honest, be authentic, and do your best to connect. And if you don’t have a book and a library yet, put it out there because before we ever had a book in a library, I was tweeting like, just really regularly. I want to be in libraries. I love libraries. This is my history with libraries. And just being shameless and saying what I want. And even if I was really lucky, it took about two months of me doing that to get our first book in a library. For me, the key is shamelessness when it comes to distribution and saying what you want, because after we went after I went after libraries, I really targeted and focused small indie bookstores because we were getting our books into large distribution. And I’m really grateful and thankful that we’re in Barnes and Noble, that we’re in Walmart, that we’re in Target, that we’re on Amazon, and I’ll talk about how to get the larger distributors’ attention in a few minutes, but I want to talk about our relationship with with indie books, and indie bookstores.
K
One of the things that I did with to get us into indie bookstores, was tweeting, but was also looking at what the indie bookstores were tweeting and retweeting their tweets and having conversations and if they had competitions or giveaways or if they were asking author questions I would retweet those and ask our authors and signal boost them. If they did a writer’s lift, I made sure to put our books in the writers lift. And really pay attention to what the indie bookstores were doing on their social media, and support and promote them to develop that relationship where I’m not just asking them to do something for me, I’m doing something for them. And now, if you have, like, about a month ago, I talked about collaboration. And if you look back a month ago to collaboration, you’ll see that I do talk about developing relationships and developing trust and working together. And that’s the key to getting into any bookstores. And I find that like, librarians, there’s any bookstore conferences, and they talk to each other. Which press again, which presses are they having a positive experience with? Which presses are promoting the books, once they’re up there, which presses are promoting their list? If your book is ever on an indie bookstore list, make sure you promote that shout it out, give them praise. Because we’re all in the same business, right? We all want the same thing. We all want to sell books. They want the indie presess to be successful. And I think they also want that reciprocated. I want the indie bookstores to be successful. I want – I want to be able to go into a small local bookshop and buy a book. I – one of the things that we do whenever we travel is we go into local into the local bookstore. We’re not traveling much these days. But when we did, even when we travel locally or internationally, I’m always interested to see what they have, what’s their ecstatic, what’s their vibe, what’s trending at the indie level? And what are they interested in? What are they looking for? So visiting local bookstores. And for me, again, that’s shamelessness. If you’re in an indie bookstore, say, hey, I’m an author, have a business card that says you’re an author and has your book cover on it. Or just says you’re an author and says the title of your books and give them a card and say, hey, would you be interested in carrying my books? And for indie authors, we don’t do this, but some indie bookstores will do, we’re not going to buy your book, but we’ll work out a deal for splitting the sale for you and telling, saying what percentage of the sale that they would want. And being willing to have that conversation, I think, is a really great way to get into indie bookstores. And I think that if you’re with a publishing house, the publishing house has those types of conversations for you. But if you’re self publishing, you may need to have those conversations for yourself if you want to get into any bookstores. So that’s libraries and any bookstores and now talking about big chains.
K
I find that the press that prints your book will impact big chains. More than anything else, you have to go with the reputable printing press. Because not all printing presses are equal. And our press is really fantastic. And they do a professional job. And all of the books come out right. That’s something that a big book chain is going to want to know. They’re going to want to know what’s the quality of the press that you’re using, they’re going to want to know paperweight, they’re going to want to know quality of cover, they’re going to want to know what a hard book coming out of that press is going to look like. And what a paperback coming out of that press is going to look like. And we made the bold choice of doing hard back with no dust covers. And for a little while it – it took a minute for people to get into that, the larger book distributors to get into that. But we’re really fortunate that in Europe that we have really beautiful distribution in Australia, Europe, North America and South America. Big book distributors in those countries are carrying our books. And some of them have a dedicated site to a dedicated spot on their website for Cinnabar Moth Publishing. And how we get that is with the big presses on you with the big distributors rather… luck of the draw. I want to – I wish I could say that I had something to do with that. I guess maybe we do by picking a quality press and having every book be the same quality. So after they buy a few of your books, and they’re like, okay, same quality of cover art, same quality of like the paperweight doesn’t change, the shape of the book doesn’t change. It’s all very industry standards. We’re meeting all of the industry standards are like, okay, so this press is doing things, the way that the Big Five do things in terms of publication. And that’s how an independent press can get one of these big chains to start dedicating pages to their books, and to start carrying all of their books. So that’s what we’ve done to have distribution and increase our distribution. It’s really exciting every day. And I google like, every single day, not “like” every – I literally Google every single one of our books every single day, to see if there are new distributors that are picking up our books. And it’s really exciting to see that yes, there are. And something else that’s really exciting to see is that when one book gets in with the distributor, the rest of the books get in with the distributor as well. So that’s really exciting to see that that sister effect or that family effect, or that connection with distribution because our books couldn’t be more different. But the four books that we’ve put out so far, and the six that we’re putting out this year, we’re doing 11 next year, could not be more different. All of – I don’t know why folks are so different. I think, because we have a really diverse team. And we were very lucky to get really diverse submissions, which I’m super grateful for. And I’m a sucker for a series. I love series. If you’re writing a series, and you want somebody who’s gonna buy your series and have it not be contingent upon anything, just say, yeah, I want all three books hit us up in July of 2022. If it’s past July of 2022, when you’re listening to this, go to cinnabarmoth.com. And click submissions. And up at the top, it’ll say whether our submissions are open or closed. And if our submissions are closed, it’ll let you know when our submissions open again. Because like I said, distribution really starts when we get a manuscript.
K
The reason that we’re being so transparent on The Writers Triangle about distribution and querying and all of the things that we’re doing, and promotion is because we believe that when more indie presses succeed, we succeed. Because they’re still a barrier when it comes to indie presses that the treatment is not equal. And we would like to see all indie presses be able to compete, or at least put out the same level of quality, or in some cases, higher quality than what the Big Five publishers are putting out there and have us be taken seriously, and have indie authors be taken seriously as well. That’s really important to us. We hope that you found this interesting and informative. And if I’ve missed something about distribution that you want to know more about, let us know down in the comments or hit us up on Twitter @CinnabarMothPUb on Twitter. And let’s keep the conversation going. If you have insights on distribution that I’ve missed that can improve our distribution, let us know feel free to DM us, our DMS are always open. And we always are excited to talk with other indie presses. I’m also really excited to talk with indie authors, I’m willing to share what industry knowledge I have. And I’m also really excited to learn from the indie knowledge that for the indie knowledge for the distribution and publication, knowledge that you may have. And I find collaboration and sharing knowledge – I don’t think it takes anything from me to share this knowledge with you. And I don’t think it’ll take anything from you to share your knowledge with me because we’re not in competition with each other. I promise you. There are enough new readers being born every day to read all of our books. And you know, like I said a couple of months ago, collaboration as well as that I want to thank all of our beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you want to be or you can even be a butterfly if you want, but I’m not. Mariah Carey, so I’m not trying to bite her rhyme. I want to thank all of you for putting your resources towards The Writers Triangle and that’s giving us a listen and giving us your time and attention. Thank you and I’ll talk to you in two weeks. Bye