NobleDead.org - High/Dark Fantasy Fiction by Barb Hendee and J.C. Hendee

Major Publishers Catching On?

Any writer who has tried pub­lish­ing as a "hy­brid" (mean­ing doing both tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing and self-pub­lish­ing) quickly be­gins to un­der­stand that these are two very dif­fer­ent worlds.

Al­most every­thing works dif­fer­ently—even the mind­set with a new re­lease.

In tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing, when a new book comes out, it is an "event." If there is any mar­ket­ing or pub­lic­ity done by the pub­lisher, it is all done be­fore the book is pub­lished. Pre-order num­bers are watched care­fully, and a book's suc­cess or fail­ure is de­cided in the first week of pub­li­ca­tion. Of course… most are con­sid­ered fail­ures and thus aban­doned.

With a self-pub­lished novel, the writer puts the first book of a se­ries up, does a lit­tle mar­ket­ing, and gets started im­me­di­ately on the sec­ond book… and then the third. We don't ex­pect to be mak­ing much money or to gauge how the se­ries is doing until book four—or even five—goes up. That's also when se­ri­ous mar­ket­ing be­gins. That's when a writer tries for an ad at Book­Bub. With Book­Bub, the writer has to apply and show that the se­ries has some po­ten­tial, and a Book­Bub ad is ex­pen­sive, but if you man­age to arrange for one, you can re­ally get your se­ries "seen" by thou­sands of read­ers. A self-pub­lished writer is look­ing to "grow" a se­ries read­er­ship, and this is not a sprint, it's a marathon.

Tra­di­tional pub­lish­ers have begun tak­ing ad­van­tage of Book­Bub, but again… mainly with the first book of a new se­ries that is being "launched." Again, the suc­cess or fail­ure of the book is de­cided in the first week of pub­li­ca­tion. After that, if it's not a huge suc­cess com­ing out of the gate, the book is con­sid­ered "done."

This is ap­par­ently chang­ing some­what, and I am both sur­prised and very happy.

I re­ceived a mes­sage from my pub­lisher, Ace/Roc (Pen­guin Ran­dom House) let­ting me know that they are going to drop the price of the e-book edi­tion of The Mist-Torn Witches (book one) to $1.99 from Oc­to­ber 16th - 30th and pay for a Book­Bub ad on the 21st. They are be­gin­ning to re­al­ize there might be po­ten­tial in an ex­ist­ing se­ries. I am as­ton­ished, but I'm happy.

—Barb