In 2022, I set up Inkspot with my long-term friend, Jurcell Virginia. Jurcell and I have spent seven years collaborating on a non-fiction book, (The Neglected Samurai, due for release in 2026) so when I mooted the idea to him, he was immediately in.
This article is an attempt to condense two years of work into some kind of framework representing where we are now. Two years of discussion, planning, research, tedious background toil, consultation, shameless favour-grabbing, press-ganging, begging, guesswork, trial and error, head-scratching, downright failure and quite a lot of terrible cursing. We have put in a lot of cash. Some we’ve invested pretty wisely. The rest has been spaffed, but no experience is ever wasted, right? We have been sustained by coffee, wine and encouragement, plus a lot of finger-crossing and daydreaming, interspersed with the very occasional jewel-like moment of success. Intermittent reward is what keeps inveterate gamblers going.
The initial motivation came from having my publishing contract terminated. Once I had finished licking my wounds, I had a variety of not-very-attractive choices. I could start the search for representation from scratch, i.e. send out synopses, opening chapters, covering letters, each painstakingly tailored to fit the requirements of X, Y or Z … ugh. It’s time-consuming and soul-destroying, especially when the rejections start to trickle in. Trickle is the optimal word, as no matter how many submissions you send out into the indifferent universe, only a fraction of recipients bother to reply. My second option was to self-publish. This was also not remotely appealing. There is a huge amount of literary snobbery about self-published books, and sadly much of it is justified. The covers are awful. The typesetting is bad. They’re riddled with egregious typos and errors, and as for the content – well. Let’s just say it’s patchy at best, and the diamonds drown in an enormous heap of slurry. The other drawback to being a self-published author is that you are ineligible for a number of prestigious literary prizes. So that’s a road I didn’t want to travel.
Then it occurred to me that I could set up a publishing company of my own. How hard could it be? It would be like self-publishing, except on steroids. I could publish my own work and that of other authors too. I knew I had great content. I could make sure our covers were beautiful, eye-catching and original and yet also instantly reflect their genre. I could ruthlessly root out every error and ensure that the typesetting was the acme of professionalism, and top it all with a generous PR and marketing budget (please bear in mind that everthing is relative; our PR pot is dwarfed by the mainstream giants.) If books can be compared to debutantes, ours have beauty, brains, heart, soul and generous dowries. How can they possibly fail?
They need luck as well. What is it that gets a book by an indie publisher to a tipping point? If it’s read and reviewed enough times, the Amazon algorithms will give it a boost. Maybe it’s recommended by someone with influence. A bookblogger with a big following, a bookstagrammer or booktokker. Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club may pick it up. Even Oprah (imagine that?). Life-changing stuff. Maybe it hits the zeitgeist for some reason. This is invariably unpredictable, ever-changing, nebulous, and can’t possibly be planned ahead. The writing of a book can take years, and even when the manuscript has been finalised, by the time the book is produced, the world has moved on.
So with all that in mind, where are we now? If I were to give someone a blueprint for setting up a publishing company, here it is. The steps are not sequential, and if you decide to go ahead, you will find yourself engaged in all of them at the same time to a greater or lesser extent, depending on where you are in the publishing process, and you will also inevitably work on several books simultaneously, all in different stages of production.
- Start with amazing content. This is inevitably subjective, but ultimately, you can’t put lipstick on a pig. Once you have a final draft, leave it to stew for a month. When you go back to it, you’ll know exactly what’s wrong. If you didn’t already, that is.
- Authors: Only work with authors whose work you love, as you will be reading and re-reading the same material multiple times. (Yes, the joke is on me: I now know precisely why agents and publishing houses are so picky about what they take on. Also, you can absolutely love something that refuses to sell.) Once you have found such paragons, then work extensively with them to ensure that their work is as strong as possible. I am incredibly lucky. My authors are not only talented writers, but they are also willing to accept constructive criticism. Not one of them is precious about their work.
- Get the right people around you. I’m very lucky in my publishing partner. Jurcell and I have known each other for years, and have collaborated on a long term writing project, our first non-fiction book, The Neglected Samurai.
- Join the IPG, the Independent Publisher’s Guild. It’s hard to describe how much they have helped us. Their website has a very useful educational section, they’ve been great for introductions, and their mentor scheme was invaluable in getting us going. There are other organisations, such as ALLi (The Alliance of Independent Authors) and the Society of Authors, who have also repaid the cost of membership several times over. ALLi has given us access to various publisher service discounts, and SoA checked out our draft contract with authors. At our request, they did this from the author’s point of view. Their feedback was invaluable.
- You’ll need a website. Make sure your website is clean, clear and informative. We sell our digital content (e-books and audio) directly on our website, and are looking at ways of tapping into the Book Club market, by offering discounts on multiple orders, and by offering author engagement wherever possible.
- To my previous point about hiring full time staff, outsource as much as possible.
- Invest in good PR. We also incredibly lucky to be working with a great PR firm, who have taken the time to understand our raison d’etre, our culture, our authors, and our mission.
- Your covers. Get a professional. They know what they’re doing. They also know exactly what requirements the printers have. They are au fait with sizing, placing, colours, bleeds, UV spotting and other special effects and have access to vast galleries of pictures and fonts which you as an amateur have no way of tapping into.
- Work with a wonderful typesetting team, who are prepared to get to know you and your requirements. Step forward the folks at www.easypress.com.
- Their turnaround times are amazing, they are highly professional and are always prepared to go the extra mile.
- Make sure you update your website frequently. If you know how to do this, well and good. I outsource this, and work with someone local who can easily pop round if I have a problem.
- Check out sites such as fiverr.com. The freelancers on fiverr have: designed the website and our logo, resized a cover with the correct bleeds for the printers, made youtube videos, taken charge of our Amazon ads, remastered audio files. I have used fiverr.com multiple times and have only had one bad experience.
- Get your metadata right. Ideally, start sending out metadata on books 4-6 months ahead of publication. This involves sending ONIX files to Nielsens, BDS and other organisations who disseminate information about books to bookshops and libraries. The metadata includes incredibly detailed information on each book: the cover, subject matter, content, THEMA and BIC classifications, Amazon interface, blurbs, marketing data, sales information, reviews, press releases, pricing, rights, forms (hardback, softback, audio, e-book versions with all their varying ISBNs), size, (height, width, spine width) extent, weight. Yes, even the weight. My kitchen scales aren’t just used for baking.
- Spend time on your distribution model. Distribution is expensive. We work with Clays and Gardners, who offer distribution to small and micro indie publishers. We order print runs of various sizes with Clays, who then supply books for distribution to Gardners. This works in the UK, but for ex-UK markets, we use POD (Print on Demand via Amazon or Ingram Spark.) We have not had the time or resources to investigate print options outside of the UK.
- AMAZON!!!!! Whether you like it or not, Amazon dominates book sales in practically every country in the world. Make sure you understand how Amazon works. Their algorithms are a mystery, and they like to keep it that way, but you should be doing your utmost to drive reviews on Amazon and GoodReads (owned by Amazon) and have a budget for Amazon ads, as this will drive book sales and reviews. You also have to be very savvy about how you classify your book. This is how people achieve ‘Bestseller’ status: by being a top seller for just one day in an obscure category.
- Start collecting email addresses and subscribe to a service such as mailchimp or mailerlite. Having an effective mailing list translates far more directly into book sales than social media. You need to give people a reason to part with their email address, such as free content and/or giveaways.
- Start sending out newsletters to said mailing list. Again, make sure your content is to the point and interesting. Get your authors to contribute. Give people a reason to engage with you.
- Social media: if there’s any part of the puzzle we have not yet cracked, it is this. But we’re working on it, and we’re getting better all the time. As stated above, an email list is more effective than social media, BUT this doesn’t mean it should be ignored. A strong following on social media can open a lot of doors, and the platform that is really taking off is TikTok, with the enormously influential BookTok, and it’s also offering book sales direct to customers. They’re starting to eat Amazon’s lunch. Maybe Jeff Bezos is too rich to worry.
- EVENTS!!! If there was one aspect of publishing that I absolutely didn’t foresee, it is the organisation of events: launch parties, author interviews, festivals. These require the organisation skills of a Prussian general. You need to organise the venue, the drinks, the canapes and manage the guest list, and make sure enough people attend so your poor author isn’t speaking to an empty room.
- Build relationships with book reviewers, book bloggers, youtubers and podcasters.
- Produce your own podcasts (we haven’t done this yet)
- Produce audiobooks. Audible, Spotify and similar platforms are taking off. Either initiate production yourself, or sell the rights to a third party.
- Sell the film rights to your books to Stephen Spielberg, Ridley Scott or Katherine Bigelow. Err… we haven’t done this yet either.
In listing some of my mistakes, I hope to save you from them:
- Never launch two books simultaneously. Your stress levels will hit the roof.
- It is tempting to go for huge print runs, as the incremental costs of additional books becomes incredibly cheap. Restrain yourself: you have to sell the things, and until you do, you will pay for storage costs. We have ten months to sell our stocks of All Grown Up and Fireweed. After that, the storage costs eat into any savings we made on the print runs.
- Don’t spend a huge amount of money on a launch party. It was fun and we had a blast, but we had a lot of thirsty guests and served top notch wine and very fancy canapes. The book sales did not remotely cover the cost of the party. Next time, we will spend cash when we have something to celebrate. It’s cheap plonk in future, with crisps and peanuts.
Do I regret what I have done? I can’t lie, sometimes I do. I am a slave to the books. But the love of them is what keeps me going. We just need one of them to take off. Most indie publishing firms are The other thing to bear in mind is that these books have long tails. I have no doubt they will be read with as much enjoyment in ten years’ time as they are now. You betcha.
One final thought: If you go down this road, get used to the fact that you will always be busy, your work will never be done, and that there is ALWAYS something else that needs to be completed. Being a publisher is a bit like having homework day after day after day until you DIE.