Readers' questions: Publishing 101

On the basic steps towards printing, soulful production values on a shoestring, and why you may need five hundred "green jiffys" in your life.

Welcome to the first instalment of what I hope will become a regular feature, in which I invite readers of the blog to ask me questions about publishing (or anything else!) and endeavour to answer them honestly, in public, as thoroughly as time allows. Transparency is one of the key principles for this new era of Valley Press, and a regular “ask me anything” feature feels like a good way of serving that end.

If you have a question for the next “advice column”, the best route to get in touch is probably via the Valley Press contact page. There will either be lots of these posts or just a few, depending on interest, but the fact I’ve had three questions before even announcing the feature is probably a good sign!

One more thing: as you’ll recall from my first post, this blog is provided free of charge for those interested in news, books and anecdotes from Valley Press, but will also feature educational “how-to” articles for paid subscribers. This post is one of the latter, and was going to be the first sent out behind the “paywall”, until it occurred to me that if all of the useful content was paywalled, how would anyone know whether it was worth their £3.50? So, enjoy this one for free, and if you’d like to sign up for future publishing-related posts (or just show your support for this sort of thing) here is the official button:

So, onto the first question, which appropriately enough is from someone taking their first steps towards becoming a small press publisher:

Starting from zero experience as a one-person band, after picking a name, what are the steps to taking a written work and turning it into a hard copy book in hand?

To some extent, when I stepped away from Valley Press in spring 2022, it was to write the definitive, fifty-thousand-word version of this answer – and though I didn’t get beyond notes and planning before my return, I hope to use some of that material in future posts. (I had some video courses planned too, which may still turn up.)

For now, we’d better do the short version (“Publishing 101”, as they say in the US), which is as follows:

• Contract: The “rights” to books can occasionally be extremely valuable, so you’ll want to make sure you don’t go into any publishing project without some basic terms agreed on paper. These would include how long the contract lasts, who gets paid what and when, what will happen re: the other stages below, and some protection for the publisher in case the author has plagiarised anything. Obviously, there’s a lot more to it than that, and I could (and will) write about contracts at great length in future – but as a hobbyist starting their first project, you probably don’t need anything beyond a simple agreement starting with this clause: “Any rights and responsibilities not specifically assigned to the Publisher in this Agreement remain with the Author.”

• Editing: It’s my firm belief that every author needs an editor, even if they work as an editor professionally. Even the most talented, humble and perspicacious author remains too close to their own writing to see its flaws, so you’ll need to run the text through at least one extra brain, ideally two, before moving on. As for the technical side, so long as each person in the process makes careful use of the “track changes” function in your word-processing app, you should be okay.

• Page design: Once you’ve decided on the size of your book, you’ll need to make some effort to arrange the text attractively. (I usually refer to this as “typesetting”, but that phrase meets with a few blank expressions; I also like “interior design”, but am worried people will start asking me about their choice of curtains.) I will happily talk to anyone for six hours about this area, but for now, let’s just say you can get away with doing it in any text-based program that exports to PDF, and you need to be concerned with margins, font size, page numbers and line spacing.

• Cover design: If you really have zero experience, you’re best served keeping this simple and classy. Look at Fitzcarraldo Editions, one of the most esteemed UK small presses, whose iconic covers (pictured below) people are constantly raving about. Don’t steal their layout, of course, but you can definitely pull off a decent design with a similar number of variables. The biggest mistake would be to get too ambitious – to run before you can toddle – and end up with an ugly mess, as endlessly documented by the blog Lousy Book Covers.

(Image: Liberia)

• Printing: To be slightly controversial here, I would suggest not starting with print-on-demand if you possibly can. At this level, most of your sales will be by hand (literally), and you’ll want a book that feels somewhat premium to give the best in-person impression. Also, except possibly via Amazon, good print-on-demand setup requires specialist skill and knowledge from the designer, if the books are to be produced endlessly without the further involvement of human beings. Instead, try a small-scale, local printer – they should have the patience to hold your hand through your first print run and make sure the outcome is exactly what you need. (If they don’t, move on to the next one.)

After printing, you now have your “hard copy book in hand” and can begin finding outlets for it – congratulations!

The second question I received seems to follow on nicely:

What are the nuts and bolts of producing a high-quality publication on a shoestring budget and ensuring it is artisan quality? I love books that have soul both inside and out, with a timeless feeling. I want to be sure that the creation and printing process results in a beautiful piece of work. I'm also mindful of my carbon footprint and want to ensure that I can be as Earth-friendly as possible.

You’ll notice that, despite being a provider of publishing services for my fellow publishers, I didn’t answer that last question with “hire a professional”. I would almost go so far as to say, even if you can afford it, be wary of hiring professionals to help with your very first project. If you really have zero prior experience, the professionals will likely impose their own values on each stage of the process, and the result may be their book rather than yours. Therefore, a shoe-string budget is not necessarily a hindrance until you get to printing, at which point – based on the number of adjectives in your question – you are going to need every penny you have.

The good news is, as you’re selling by hand at this point, you have a generous margin to work with. You could price your “artisan” book at £20, offer the author a very fair £2 for each sale, then sell to local bookshops at a 50% discount and still have £8 to spend on printing. (Better still, offer the bookshops 45%, which is usually sufficient, and keep the extra 5% for yourself.) The friendly, local printer I recommended you seek out can probably work marvels with £8 a book, and if that’s still not enough for your hand-sewn, gold-leafed product printed on recycled paper, just keep pushing up the RRP: it should remain good value, people love a luxury eco-friendly product.

Of course, you then have the problem of cashflow to contend with. I got around this initially by using a printer who allowed payment via credit card (with 0% on purchases for six months), but I do not recommend any readers pursue this course of action – unless you’re very financially astute and not prone to bad decisions around debt. A better plan, if you think your project already has an audience, would be to crowd-fund the cost of printing. You may even wish to deliberately choose a first project with a built-in audience, like an anthology of local writers, or an established author who has produced something too eccentric for their existing publisher. (This happens more often than you’d think!)

As for being Earth-friendly, if you’re using a local printer (most mid-sized towns in the UK have one who can produce books) and asking for their most environmentally-conscious materials, you’ve made a great start. Happily, the third and final question for today will also help me address this point. (I promise these are real enquiries, I’m not making them up!)

What are your insights on packaging, and also what is your favourite platform for a simple online shop?

At the moment, Valley Press uses Jiffy Green Padded Bags for our online orders. They are tough, made from recycled materials, involve no plastic and the dimensions are flexible enough that we can almost always use a Size 1 – which is helpful for buying in bulk, saving both money and office space. (My last order was in June; 500 Size 1 Bags at £121.68, just 25p each.) Legend has it they are compostable, though I haven’t got around to investigating that properly.

Jiffys in the wild.

The bags are made by UK company Abriso-Jiffy, who have offices/distribution hubs all over Europe. I believe they are also widely available in the US, but that’s another area I can’t comment on first-hand. Beyond VP HQ, bigger orders have been handled by our distributor Booksource since May 2023. I haven’t grilled them on their eco-policies yet; since we are locked into their services due to how our sales agency operates, there’s not much I can do other than hope for the best. (The prayer “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change” should be attached to all documentation relating to the distribution of books.)

Finally, online shops are not really one of my areas of expertise. For most of our history we used a bespoke “storefront” built by a local firm with Arts Council money; I finally retired it in February, and we have now have a Squarespace shop that I would say is perfectly fine (though it takes me ages to add each new – or more pressingly, old – product). The new, artisan publisher I was advising above should look for a shop that lets them add a lot of photos and details, but otherwise will have to decide on key concerns (like sales cut versus hosting fees) themselves. Readers: what online shops do you like? Am I missing out on something great?

That’s the lot for now! Thanks for getting this far; I hope some of this was useful for all of you enterprising new publishers. I’ll see you later in the week for more intriguing content, and remember to send in your own questions via the Valley Press contact page, as and when you have them.