Let’s
talk about tips for writing beading (or other craft/art) books or magazine
articles. Yes, I imagine there are some similarities to writing fiction or
history or personal memoirs, enough so that those giving thought to writing any
type of book may find useful points in this post. However, most of my
experience is writing how-to books about beading, books giving instructions and
inspiration to readers who want to do some type of beading themselves.
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| Finished manuscript! Ready to ship to publisher! |
Writing is
Teaching
I think
there’s quite a difference between books designed to instruct and those
designed to entertain. To write an instructional book, one must be a teacher.
The very most important key to the success of my books is my teaching
experience. Remember, I’d been teaching the methods and process of
improvisational bead embroidery for 10 years before writing One Bead at a Time.
During
those 10 years, I learned how to convey the techniques to students in ways they
could grasp easily. I learned, by trial and error, how to draw the steps on a
white board, and the exact words that work best to enable my students to learn
the stitches easily. It didn’t come all at once. When students were confused or
stuck, I’d try different words, different drawings, until finally something clicked.
By the
time I wrote One Bead at a Time, most of my students “got it” pretty easily. I
learned how to inspire them as well, how to enable them to delve into their
inner creativity and let it come out, again learned by trial and error through
working with hundreds of students. Ten years later, the book almost “wrote
itself,” as I tapped into the drawings and words I used when teaching.
Photography
Required
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| This is my lighting system, although I still like overcast, natural light best. |
For this
type of book, good photographs are necessary. As many of you know,
photographing beadwork is NOT easy. Shiny, little beads, reflecting light!
Depth of field issues, especially with textural and sculptural work! Here's a post I wrote previously on photographing beadwork. Even
professionals are challenged by beadwork. A prospective author must decide whether
they have the motivation to learn how to photograph their work. If not, they must either find a publisher
with a photography department and budget, or they must have the means to hire
it done.
Design
Skills Helpful
A book
must be “designed.” Everything about the first impression a book gives to a
potential buyer is important - from the title, to the cover design, to the size
of the book and type of binding, to the layout of the pages, even to the details
like the fonts and paper quality. To design a book requires both technical
skills and artistic sensibilities.
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| Prototypes (or mockups) of my books, ink-jet printer, for final proofing. |
When
self-publishing a book, taking on its design is quite a challenge. For me, it
was exciting and fun! When working with a publisher, which employs professional
designers, I miss being involved in the design process. However, I’ve also
learned the hard way that it’s easy to make mistakes when doing it myself. Both
of my major mistakes (not coating the cover of Nautical Highways and using
dolls on the cover of Heart to Hands Bead Embroidery) have cost me many
readers/buyers.
Market
research, in a limited way, might be helpful. For example, I might have put
several cover images on my blog and taken a popularity poll, or put the doll
image up and asked what is this book about? If 7 out of 10 people had responded, “How
to make a beaded doll,” I might not have used it on the cover, because doll-making
is not the subject of the book.
Printing
Your Book
There
are numerous printers around the country that operate presses capable of
printing books, fewer with the capability of printing in full color (CMYK on a
four-color press). Some have in-house binding; some send the printed parts to a
bindery. Publishers nowadays tend to contract with mega-printers located
overseas to print their books. These are not available to or interested in the
relatively small print runs of the self-publishing author.
To get
my books printed, I researched printers on the internet. After talking with
their sales reps, getting an idea of costs and determining my approximate budget,
I asked several printers to give me a bid. Generally I asked for a bid on each
of three different quantities. On thing I did not do (but should have) was to
ask to talk with a professional on their staff who would coach me through the
process, helping me to save money while still producing a high-quality book.
One of
the sweetest things about working with a professional publisher is not having
to deal with printing and binding your book.
Several
fiction writers I know have turned to POD, print on demand, paying for their
books only as needed. The cost per book is higher, but there’s no huge
front-end payment required and no need to correctly estimate sales. However,
most of PODs print electronically rather than with a press. And most of them do
not deal with color, or if they do it’s very expensive. If I were to decide to
self-publish another book, I would research PODs. However, I’m guessing I’d
stick with an old-fashioned, 4-color press.
And don’t
forget printers like Kinko’s. They’ve been a great solution for printing small
runs of small, pamphlet-type books, such as Rosie, the Uncaged Hen. I can print
100 or more copies at a fairly reasonable cost per book. This solution works well for books that have
less than 20 pages. The quality? It’s not as high as books printed on a 4-color
press, but not bad either.
Between
Printing and the Customer
In
addition to marketing, which I’ll discuss next, there’s binding, shipping and
storage. The pages are printed on large sheets, 8-up, 16-up, or some other
quantity of pages per sheet. These sheets are cut apart and collated by the
printer or bindery. The pages and cover are then bound together. There are many binding options, the most common of which are: perfect, case and spiral. The
number of pages in the book, your budget, the desired longevity of the book,
and the reader’s preference should be taken into account when making a decision
about the type of binding.
Once the
books are bound, they are boxed and sent to your desired location. For me, it
was our house. When the first printing of my first book arrived, I was shocked!
So many boxes! Where to put them? Ah yes, storage. I thought about renting a
climate-controlled storage unit, but didn’t want to have to go there every time
I needed to ship books to customers.
At first
I stored them in my studio. Every nook, every closet, under every table… boxes
of books everywhere. Finally, by the time I had six of my self-published books
in active distribution and the 7th on its way, I knew we couldn’t
live among the boxes any more. So we built a climate-controlled book shed,
a small storage unit attached to our studio building, where the boxes are now
out of our way, yet still accessible.
Marketing,
Everybody’s Bugaboo
With
self-publishing, much more than as an author on contract with a professional
publisher, marketing is a challenge that’s easy to overlook in the excitement
of writing, photographing, designing and printing a book. There’s nothing
satisfying about storing hundreds of boxes of books for years and years;
nothing at all satisfying about not selling enough books to pay even the
expenses of printing and binding them, let alone your other expenses or earning
a little profit from your labors.
For me,
marketing is always the most difficult and least fun part of
being an author. I’ve never enjoyed selling, which is why I never really wanted
to sell my beadwork, even to become a gallery artist. Selling my books is no different.
I do what I can: take them with me when I teach, make them available through my
website, and offer them at a ridiculously low price to the nation-wide
wholesale distributor for bead shops.
Some
authors, such as Margie Deeb, are lots more active in the sales process. One of
the best is Cat Bordi, who writes knitting books. It’s just not me. Therefore,
I sell less books than would probably be possible if I were more pro-active.
Selling
on Amazon.com
Selling
self-published books on Amazon is not as easy as you might think. I’ve not
tried it with my beading books. I probably should, because it’s so convenient
and such a common way for people all over the world to buy books. We did try it
with Nautical Highways, the book my husband and I produced.
There
are several ways to sell books through Amazon. One is to list books, pay a
commission and take care of the fulfillment, shipping the books yourself. We
wanted to set it up so the books appeared like any other new book on Amazon and
the orders would be shipped from and by Amazon. This requires joining Amazon’s “Advantage Program.” Our experience with it wasn't very good; in fact, it
cost us more to make the book available through Amazon than we earned in book
sales. Not a good bottom line; so we quit. Maybe I’d do better with my beading
books; maybe I should try.
Passion, passion, passion!
Who
should write a book? Well, if you’re
passionate about something and want to share your passion, it’s very satisfying
to put it into book form. It feels good doing it whether you’re self-publishing
or not. To see and hold your passion in your hands, in the form of a freshly
printed book, is like giving birth to a beautiful baby!
Can you
do it on passion alone? That would be rare. If you don’t have sub-passions for
teaching, photography, book design, learning about printing and/or marketing,
it’s probably wise to find a traditional publisher with interest in your ideas.
Perhaps begin by writing magazine articles. Practice by writing tutorials on a
blog. A publisher will be far more interested in you and your book idea if you
can demonstrate that you have experience writing this type of material. Contact
authors in your field and ask them for assistance, perhaps for a referral to
their editor/publisher.
The
Money Part – Costs
When an
author works with a traditional publisher, there are only minor out-of-pocket
expenses. Self-publishing is a different story. Depending on how much of the
work is hired out, it could cost many thousands of dollars.
Printing
will be the biggest expense. Color printing a book such as Beaded Treasures
will cost $5-7 per book, depending on the quantity, size and number of pages.
Thus, printing 2,000 copies will cost you upwards of $12,000. If you also hire
a designer, consultant, photographer, and/or editor, their services might add
another $500- $5,000 to your budget. Each of the printings for my books used up
all my available savings. It took a year or more of sales to build my savings
back up again.
The
Money Part – Earnings
Whoooeee,
this is a big topic with many, many variables. To put it in its most simple
terms, I’ll just tell you that writing each of my books required a concentrated
chunk of time: 1-8 months, working 6-14 hours per day, 7 days a week to
produce the book, get it print-ready. After that, there’s additional marketing
time, of course.
In direct
sales (retail and wholesale) of my self-published books, I’ve probably sold
about 10,000 books, making an average profit of $2 per book after all expenses
are paid. So, in about 11 years, my profit is roughly $20,000. I’m estimating an average of 700 hours of
work for each of my 7 books, or a total of 4,900 hours, which makes my earnings
about $4.00 per hour. Ha! I never worked that out before. Interesting! Not much
of a wage, is it? But for a labor of passion, I consider myself relatively well
rewarded financially.
In
traditional publishing, the author is either paid in royalties (a percentage of
each book sold) or by flat fee. I estimate spending 2,000 – 2,200 hours writing,
making samples, photographing, photo-editing, and copy-editing my current book,
The Complete Photo Guide to Beading. Oddly enough, my “hourly wage” will be the same as for my self-published book, about $4 per hour.
I guess we can safely say that artists who write books about beading won’t
be getting rich quick.
Other
Rewards
Oh well, money
isn’t everything. The greatest, absolutely the best, reward for me is/was the
process of doing it. Exciting and fun, it’s a highly creative, stimulating,
challenging way to spend my time! I love the whole process, from the conception
of the idea to holding the book in my hands. Even the dreaded marketing can
sometimes be interesting.
Another
reward is knowing that I’ve been able to share my passions with many more
people than I possibly could by teaching. Readers often tell me that working
with one of my books is like taking a workshop from me, like I’m there in the
room with them, helping them. That’s so gratifying to hear… a fabulous reward!
And
finally, there’s the notion of legacy, of leaving something of me in the world
after I’m gone. I didn’t have that thought in the year 2000, when I
self-published my first book, One Bead at a Time. But now that I’m almost 70,
the happy thought enters my mind that some of the books I’ve written will survive
me to teach and inspire people when I'm not here anymore.
Conclusion
Maybe
this series of posts will help you to decide if you want to write a book or
not; maybe it will give you a few ideas about how to do it. There are some
great how-to books that might help too. One that I used is Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual.
Read,
ask other authors, talk it over with important people in your life… for a
little while! Then get busy and start writing! All starting points are equally
valid. Start with what you know best, no matter where it will eventually be
placed in the book. Start with your greatest area of passion. Just do it!
Wishing
you a lovely journey….
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