Starting your own publishing company:

An interview with Robyn Jackson

by Tim Bete

Robyn Jackson has 20 year's experience as a reporter and editor for daily and weekly newspapers. She is the author of Lakota Moon, the story of a girl who is captured by warriors while traveling on the Oregon Trail with her family. Rather than use a print-on-demand service to publish her book, Robyn decided to start her own publishing company.

TB: Why did you decide to self-publish?

RJ: I'm going through a midlife crisis! No, honestly, I needed to make some positive changes in my life, and starting my own small press seemed like the right thing to do. I have always wanted to have my own business, and I had been thinking about starting a small press for years because I love books. I've been in newspapers for 21 years, and writing and publishing books just seemed like the next logical step in my career. I had just put it off because of some things that were going on in my life that consumed my time and energy.

In a 15-month period between June 2002, and September 2003, I lost my mother, father and grandfather. Starting Timothy Lane Press and having the book to look forward to is all that got me through this terrible time. My mother's death is what made me decide to self-publish. I realized that life is too short to keep putting off your dreams. Lakota Moon, my first book, is dedicated to my mother, stepfather and grandparents. I just wish they could see the finished product.

TB: How do you start a small press?

RJ: I researched self-publishing and starting a small press for three or four years before I decided to actually do it. I read books like Dan Poynter's The Self-Publishing Manual, which takes you step-by-step through the process, and Suzanne Thomas' Make Money Self Publishing, which profiles dozens of successful independent publishers.

I talked to people who had self-published, and I started learning all I could about book marketing. I prayed a lot, and then I took a calculated risk and started Timothy Lane Press. I truly think I have more to gain than lose.

TB: What are the pros and cons of self-publishing?

RJ: The pros are that you have complete control over your book, from the cover to the distribution, and you finally get it in print. And, if you're an entrepreneur, you have your own business. If you're successful, you could make a lot of money.

The cons are that it costs a lot of money to self-publish, usually a minimum of $5,000, and that comes out of your own pocket. There are no guarantees that you'll sell enough books to break even. You either hire professionals to do things like design your cover and typeset your pages, or you learn to do it yourself. You have to get business licenses and possibly hire an accountant to keep your taxes straight. You have to take care of all the publicity and distribution, which can be very difficult if you don't know what you're doing. Even if you do know, it's a lot of work, and there are a lot of hurdles you have to jump. It can be tough to get a distributor or wholesaler who can place your books in bookstores across the country, and the big chain bookstores don't want to deal with independent publishers unless they have a distributor. It's hard to even get the chains to let a local author do a book signing. Thank God for independent bookstores. They support local authors because they know local authors bring in buyers.

TB: Why not just use a print-on-demand service?

RJ: I considered using print-on-demand, but I really wanted to start my own company. I want to publish books full-time eventually, my books as well as books by other authors. If you are considering using POD or starting your own small press, I think you have to compare your options and decide which one makes sense for you. I wanted my own business, so starting Timothy Lane Press was better for me. If I only had one book I wanted to publish,  I probably would have used a POD service.

TB: How are self-publishing and print-on-demand different?

RJ: I think it's the difference between a business and a hobby. Self-publishing requires you to get all the necessary permits and licenses, buy a block of  ISBN numbers from Bowker, hire graphic artists to design the cover and interior pages, list your books in Books in Print, apply for copyrights and Library of Congress numbers, join Amazon Advantage and make your books available through other online booksellers, create your own press kits and publicity materials, set up your book signings and form your own distribution network. You're really starting a business, and the start-up fee is usually around $5,000.

Print-on-demand companies do most of the set-up for you, for a fee, usually around $1,000, and then you pay extra for the books. Technically, you are self-publishing if you use POD, because you're paying for it, but you don't have as much invested in POD as you do as a self-publisher. It doesn't cost as much to set up the book for publication, for example, and you don't have to print hundreds or thousands of books at one time that you might not be able to sell, so your financial risk is not as great. You also don't make as much money per book.

TB: Did you try to get published the traditional way?

RJ: Of course. I had an agent for a while, but he just didn't have the contacts for my books. He gets six-figure deals for some very well-known Christian authors, but Lakota Moon is hard to categorize. It's a love story, but it's not a romance novel, it doesn't fit neatly into that genre. There's a lot of spirituality in it, the main character is a Christian, but it's not Christian fiction because it's not an evangelical novel. I just call it historical fiction. It's about a girl who is captured by Indians on the Oregon Trail and spends the next 20 years with them. It was inspired by a true story.

I got a nice rejection letter from Bantam, and the editor really didn't have anything negative to say about it, just that it was a bit old-fashioned, and she didn't know how she would position it on her list, which, to me, said she didn't know how to convince the marketing people that it would make money.

That's when I decided that I could spend years trying to find a publisher, or I could publish it myself and take my chances. Maybe I had read too many stories about authors who had finally decided to self-publish and had then been picked up by major publishers and made the best-seller lists.    

TB: Who were some of the self-published authors whose success stories influenced you?

RJ: James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy, comes to mind. And E. Lynn Harris. I interviewed him in 2001, the week his latest novel had hit No. 1 on the best-seller lists. He couldn't get his first novel published, so he published it himself. He sold it at Afro-centric bookstores and beauty parlors in Atlanta, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution did a story about him. A sales rep for a New York publisher got a copy of his book and sent it to an editor, and they soon signed him to a book deal. That story gave me a lot of hope.

I was also inspired by artists who sell their work without waiting for someone else to tell them they can. I noticed that a lot of the bar bands in my town were selling their own CDs. They weren't waiting to be discovered by a New York or L.A. record label. And I thought about the artists who sell prints of their paintings. They aren't waiting for some gallery owner to tell them that their work has value. They let the public decide with their wallets.

I think writers need to take control of their careers like musicians and artists do. Who says we have to wait for some agent or editor to validate our talent? Just because it's been that way in the past doesn't mean it has to stay that way. Technology has made it possible to self-publish affordably. The book publishing industry is undergoing major changes. The big publishers aren't much interested in unknown authors, and I really question whether some of them know what people outside of Manhattan want to read. There are a lot of niches waiting to be filled. That's why every year, some 7,000 new small presses start up. Most of them will fail, but at least their books will be in print. I would guess that for most of us, that's the main thing.  

TB: What is your goal as a self-publisher?

RJ: Sometimes you have to create your own luck. By publishing Lakota Moon, maybe it will find some success. I didn't spend 10 years of my life writing three novels for them to end up in the trash can after I'm dead. My goal is to publish my three novels, and to eventually publish books by other authors. My ultimate goal is to make a living as a book publisher.

TB: Any advice for those considering starting their own small press?

RJ: Publish non-fiction. It's easier to find a market for non-fiction books than for fiction. There seems to be an insatiable market for cookbooks, and for books about writing.

As Dan Poynter has said, people will pay for information they want, but it's hard to convince someone to buy a novel by a writer they've never heard of. 

Have your book professionally edited, and spend the money to produce a great cover  Your book will be in print for a long time, so make it look and read as professional as possible.

 

I also think it's important to join an organization like the Publishers Marketing Association. It can be a valuable resource, it makes you look serious about being a successful company, and the PMA can help you promote your books at trade shows and through their mass mailings to librarians and book reviewers.