 a good day. I'm John Harrison, and this is Conversations with Great Authors. The best thing about being a publisher is helping authors' dreams come true. Those words are from Charlotte Pierce, our guest, a small publisher. And Charlotte, you are a small publisher. Welcome, first of all, to this event. You're a small publisher, an author comes to you wanting to publish their book. What is the process for you? Well, first of all, I would see whether they have a complete manuscript or whether they're just developing an idea. I think the best scenario would be if they're just developing the idea, because what they need to do is consider a timetable, and I would develop a timetable with an author that I take on, but you basically have to have a book finished about three months before the publication date. So, for distribution to reviewers and author review copies and getting just all best case scenario would be three months before the publication date. So a timetable would be the first thing. And then they should have an author platform, and I can explain what that is if you want to. Yeah, briefly tell us what that is, because there are people out there who want to know this. So, I'm a small publisher. I'm not random house with a vast promotional arm with dozens of people working in it. So, the author should consider ways to get out their expertise, even for fiction, but especially for nonfiction, that's a little easier. You need to be familiar with social media, or if you hate social media, which many authors do, you need to hire somebody. It's a free platform with billions of people potentially that you could access. Now, this doesn't mean that they'll all come and buy your book, but you need to be able to leverage that. We told people at our IP&E, independent publishers of New England Conference, somebody was asking about social media, I just hate it, and we said, you know, well, get over it, because either that or hire somebody, which you can do. You know, it's a free platform and you need to be able to leverage that. Start building a platform on the social media website. You should have a website. A blog is a helpful thing. Do speaking engagements? There are so many organizations out there that need speakers or guest bloggers and things like that. So just kind of start building that expertise out and getting known as a specialist in that field. Niche is important, too. So when an author comes to you with a manuscript, you want at least most of these things already done. I would like that. If not, I'll say this is going to take a lot longer than you thought because you need to establish that. If we take a unknown author to a publication date and nobody knows about them, then we either have to buy advertising and just dump a bunch of money into that with no guaranteed outcome, or we have to build on their existing network of fans. One of the most important things is start right now. If you want to publish a book, start right now building an email list. Those people belong to you. They are your evangelists. They are your street team. You can build all the advice I've gotten lately about book marketing is start with your email list. Make sure you're building that every week, every day you meet somebody, put them on your email list, and ask them, of course, if that's okay. But that's hugely important. I think maybe even most authors are introspective, quiet, and this is not their thing. So I don't know how you get them to do that. If you publish their book and they have that reward of it being published, do you think that would influence them to do more of these things that they haven't done them already because they now have their book in hand, which is a great thing for an author? Yeah, you always have to start where you are. A lot of authors will come to me with a completed manuscript and no social media. And if I find that the project is viable and attractive enough, I'll get them started on that. Yeah, I mean, you just have to do what you're capable of doing. I mean, if it's too stressful to do that social media then you really do need to hire somebody though. And that's possible. There are people who are helping out with that kind of stuff. Editing is a very important part of the process. And when you receive manuscripts from authors, the editing, one of the major problems, I mean, usually a lot of editing has to be done or is it just very, sometimes they're very good, sometimes they're not. It's always more editing than people think. Often people are very attached to their manuscripts and they think they're perfect. And they don't want anything to mess with it. And they'll come and say, well, my Aunt Edith, who is an English teacher, she looked this over and she made a bunch of changes in there. It's great. But Aunt Edith may be the perfect editor. We don't know. But it should come to me as a publisher in really good shape. It should be well organized. You know, you should do some research about what a good manuscript looks like. And that information is out there. One thing you can do is join an organization like the Independent Publishers of New England. And we are also affiliated with a national organization called the Independent Book Publishers Association. And there are tremendous resources in both of those organizations. We take our members' books to major New England bookshows. And IBPA does the same on a global basis. So they'll take it to, you know, Frankfurt or Beijing or whatever. So you can send your book out. It gives you kind of magnifies your reach. And also, just like I said, you can learn what makes a good manuscript. So you attend these events. Do your authors, some of the ones you've published, they attend with you to some degree? It's not required. But it's always a good thing for an author to do that. I mean, we go to New England Independent Booksellers, which is 300-plus bookstores in the New England region. And they want interesting new regional books. You know, they really want them. And the big publishers go to those events, too. But if you can, you know, if you can, I've nabbed a few independent booksellers at those shows just by virtue of being there. We'll take your book and represent it to the best of our ability, but you're the only one who can actually represent your book the best, you know, so. How many, if you could give a percentage, how many authors that come to you with a book proposal are ready for you to take them on? Out of any 10, what would your guess be? Because I would have no idea what comes your way. That's a really good question. Well, ideas come my way. I'm working with a guy right now who, I'd say maybe half, you know, probably. Oh, so you would take half? Well, yeah, I'd start working with him in some way, so either as a consultant, a book shepherd or a publisher, if I thought the idea was good enough. I'm working with a guy who's been to five Olympic games, two as a coach and three as a rower. And he's, like, he wants to do a memoir. He's really famous. And he's, so I've been kind of encouraging him. It's not quite to the point where I'm actually signed him as an author yet, but he was asking me, you know, do you think people really want to hear about this? And I just, I love the idea. I love rowing, for one thing. I do a podcast about rowing. I just, I love it. And I know that people want to hear his stories. So I, you know, I believe in that. And that's what I... Are most proposals fiction or is it very or is it half and half or nonfiction fiction? I don't do fiction. I do children's, which is, I guess, these books are mine. Technically fiction, but they have a message. They come to have a social message. Ah, that's interesting. So you don't do fiction at all. Someone comes to you with a novel. I send it to Eddie Vincent, who's the head of the independent publishers of New England. He does a lot of fiction. But no, I just don't feel qualified. I just don't know that world. You know, I read more nonfiction than fiction. I listen to books, and that's another thing. If independent publishers can get the message about diversifying the formats, audiobooks are huge. You know, that's a big growth area. You know, e-books. Different, you know, different ways of repurposing your content into blogs. And I don't really worry about copyright. You know, if you have a good enough author platform, you know, you basically, I mean, what are you going to do if somebody steals your book and publishes it? Are you going to spend $50,000 fighting them in court? I don't know. I can't. But usually you would have the digital path that would prove that it's your book, that you had it first. And not only the digital rights manager, but the platform. You've got your blog already. You've got your book cover out there. You know, people will know it's yours. If they find some random copy somewhere, they're going to kind of know. And there's some of that you just have to kind of put up with, I think. I have a good friend in New York who's a nonfiction literary agent. And I tell you this because I didn't realize you didn't take fiction. And her major requirement, if she likes the book, of course she has to like the book and be willing to take it on as an agent. But the second requirement is they have to look good for television. So there it is. But she's told me that several times. And sometimes if she likes an idea enough, she'll have a ghostwriter do it that does look good on television. And the actual author will be part of the plan. Yeah, I do. So the children's, it's mostly like sustainable and social justice and diversity and that kind of stuff. And then I do Alternative Education, which is the major book in that is the Purigaji Handbook, which is a public domain book. So we don't even care if people copy it. You know, we hope people will copy it. But we do sell. You know, we cover our costs by selling on Amazon. Now as a small publisher, do you work with one printer when you have the final book printed or do you have several depending on the type of book and that part of the publishing world? Right. I usually do a 200 to 500 copy what they call short run for book shows and personal sales. I give the illustrators 10 copies. You know, you just need a few copies. Sure. And but I upload to Lightning Source, which is a Ingram company, which is like Ingram Spark is the kind of the self publishers, small publishers one and Lightning Source is the, but they're the same company. Anyway, it goes to print on demand, which is fulfilled to Amazon and bookstores can order from Ingram. It's the largest book distribution company in the world. So I'm pretty well positioned, you know, if a bookstore in Italy wants to order my book, they can or here in New York or Boston. Not a problem. With print on demand, I mean, small press runs, you can get your per copy cost down, but you're going to have to store, you know, 2,000 copies in your basement and hope that you sell them. Yeah, I know that. Yes. I know that deal. I know that feeling. Yeah, so, you know, if you've got the cash flow to do that, you will, and you've got the certainty that you're going to sell the books, then why not do that? You'll have less per copy. You mean sometimes there's a certainty? Is that, where do you get that certainty? I don't know. I'm still chasing it. Is your print a local, like so you can visit them? Yeah. Yeah, well, independent publishers of New England has, a lot of the sponsors of our conferences and so forth have been printers. So King, McNaughton & Gun, HF Group, they're a lot of good printers and they're hungry for, you know, they'll do a pretty good deal on a short run. Oh, that's good to know. Yeah. You know, especially if you're affiliated with an organization, like I'm on the board of IP&E and, you know, we can send them a lot of business. There's some business, you know, every little bit helps. And I can presume that everything comes into you digitally if an author has a book. Does an author ever walk in with a printed manuscript and that's all they have? I mean, like 50 years ago? I would send them away to Staples to have it digitized or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, I can't be typing stuff in. I mean, there are a lot of ways you can just feed in into a scanner and there's a lot of ways to digitize it. One of my illustrators, this book, actually, no, that one is a digital illustrator. But this book, who's hiding in this book is, he does pastels, you know, he does watercolor. And then he scans it himself. So he will give me the high-resolution scanned file that we can then put into. We use InDesign, you know, so we plop it in there. And Lightning Sources and Ingram Spark, too, I think, are both require an InDesign file. Are children's books a great deal of your output mostly? It just happened to be the last couple of books. They're both doing sequels. So, you know, yeah. But children's books, you know, especially, I'll just show you the, you know, it's color inside. So that increases the cost. They're really well done. I love this illustrator, Daniel Fiore. He is so sensitive to the content, you know, he was great. But what was I going to say? Yeah, the color raises the cost, of course. Oh, yeah, sure. But I think today, especially kids, they want color. Yeah. You have to do that. And I don't do too much e-book conversion on these because, you know, it's pretty hard. But, you know, I guess you could have a kid on an iPad flipping through your book. Oh, yeah, sure. So I'll probably go into that eventually. I haven't yet. Do you ever have a really young person that has written a kid's book come in? I would love to. That's one of my favorite things to do is to nurture young people. You know, and I would love to have a young person come to me with a book. Yeah. I would love to do events for our kids' books. And the kids are always very interested and excited about it. And this one has an activity in the back. It's like, you know, become an author activity. So at our launch in Belmont Books, we had, you know, the kids filling out this little form and drawing their characters they would have in their book. And yeah, it was really great. Yeah, well, I mean, kids' books now are including DVDs. I have a friend in Vermont who wrote a kid's book and she's a singer and actress. And she has included a DVD of songs about, related to her book and separate from her book, but with her book. So that's becoming more and more of a thing just like us. And you can even do, like, you can print a QR code in your book. And now a smartphone, if you point your camera at the QR code in a book, it will take them directly to a website immediately. Oh, wow. I know, isn't that great? I didn't know that. Is that a new thing? I used to have to have an app that you would use then, you know, but now it's just like, my Pixel 4 Google phone, I just pointed out a QR code and it takes me right to the website. I know. Wow. So we have, actually all of our children's books have some aspect of like activity guide or, you know, to take it further so forth. Wow, that's great. Yeah, it's fun. It's really good. It's too much fun. And beyond the kids' books, publishing part of it to get back to the adult work and in the nonfiction world, you say you were talking about a memoir and I know that, but what other nonfiction propositions do you get about? Well, I got to know a guy who's the director of the Jane Goodall Institute of Nepal. And he's been asked, he was after me to come to visit him, so I went over to Nepal last year and we now have four books in development. One is for a project that they're doing to alleviate the street dog problem. So there's been a like community involvement initiative. It goes word by word in Kathmandu that is solving, you know, vaccinating and spaying and neutering dogs. Wow. It's just, it's a fantastic program. All, you know, grassroots driven. And they've gotten to buy in from the government too. But then there's three other books, the conservation books. One is Manoj Gotam, who is the director of the Jane Goodall Institute of Nepal. Did a thesis, so we're converting his Oxford thesis to a readable book. I mean, nothing against Oxford, but you know, you can't mass market an Oxford thesis. And then a couple other titles about conservation work that they do there. Can you, as a general practice, would put your books, the books that you publish on Amazon and Bonsa Noble or is that, Yeah. Okay, and any other platforms that are generally part of what you do or... Right. Well, these books, these nonfiction books will probably go on to Kobo as well. And I'm going to try and get them into audio because I think that will be, I think audio is a huge opportunity for people, for publishers now. But Kobo is, it's like a kindle, but it's more adapted in Europe and other parts of the world. So it's something to think about. Which is, what is it exactly? It's an e-book platform. So it's like kindle. So you may upload to kindle and then Kobo, I mean, if you're a European, you know what Kobo is because it's more common than kindle. At least it used to be. But it's, you know, it's just an opportunity to consider. But is it pretty much the same thing? Yes. So it's not, there are no big differences? No, no big differences. It might be a slightly different format that you'll output from. But InDesign, if you use InDesign to format your books, it will output to a lot of those, you know, different types of formats. After publication from what you've told me already, I kind of know the answer to this, but there is an ongoing relationship with the authors that you have in these group, things that you do in going to the various events, etc. So they become a growing family as time goes on, which is nice and I'm sure gives them more confidence. And how many second books from these authors, the authors that you've dealt with, have you published? Well, we're working on sequels to both of these, or you know, a series. Yeah. So both of these, this one, the next one for Daniel McFly will be about the Saving the Oceans. So that, and then we're going to be doing more. This is like 10 diverse authors. Five of them, or household names, and five are just like African American, Native American, Chinese American, you know, the different, just kind of all on the same equal footing. So she's going to do another set of authors, I think. But a sequel in a series is always a good thing to consider because then, you know, when your new book comes out, people will go back and get, they'll look at your other books if they like the new one. Now what about longer, full, full books, full memoirs, or full, I guess, in the nonfiction world would be more difficult. But how many along the way, or have any of the people have come to you for their first book, written a second book after that, that they've presented to you? Yeah, I haven't had too much of that, although the Piragachi Handbook is now, we're working on the fourth edition of that. You know, it's a collaborative, very much collaborative effort, so I don't think there isn't a particular author. It's like more of a collection of authors. So for people out there who want to be a writer, perhaps have a manuscript, they're looking for a publisher, what advice do you have for them? I mean, you've mentioned a lot of it, but before coming to you, but some absolutely do this, do this, do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, so they come to you kind of ready for what you have to offer. Yeah, well, as I said, you know, with me it's like the authors I carry have made an effort to establish a relationship with me, you know, in an authentic way. You know, so I care about them, and we then support each other going forward, and we're in it together. But if you're just thinking about developing an idea for a book, I would say, you know, maybe just start your email list first. It's an easy thing to do, you know, just Google contacts, you know, get an email list going, get a blog going, and start blogging about it. Make sure you're passionate about your topic. You've got to care a lot about diversity or sustainability to make a book successful. Even to make it happen, a little successful. Exactly. If you're not passionate, there's no use to you. If you're an evangelist for your book, your publisher, myself included, will not be as passionate about your book as you are. You know, so that's a critical thing. I just had some statistics of self-published books, 1.68 million in 2018 and up from 1.19 million in 2017. So it's growing every year. Yeah, so you have a lot of competition. I think niche is important. You have a lot of relationships, leveraging your own contacts and platform. And there are a lot more places looking for content now. So that should make a difference going forward. Yeah, think about repurposing your content. Yeah. Publish stuff before it's in a book. Yeah. Well, this has been very informative, very helpful. Shout out, thank you for coming here and telling us what the small publishing world is all about. I love it. It's been fun. It's all good. Thank you.