The Church Answers Podcast

So You Want to Write and Publish a Book? Part 3: Four Things No One Tells Aspiring Authors. Jess Rainer

In this three-part series, Jess Rainer and Thom discuss the details of writing a book. You will discover some insights you've never heard before. For example, this episode examines four critical issues for authors who desire to publish successfully. Sadly, most authors have never heard about these facts.

Duration:: 13m
Broadcast on:: 14 May 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney & Associates. Chaney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here's the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. We are doing a three-part series, so you want to write and publish a book. I'm here with Jess Rayner, the founder and CEO of Craft Book Publishing, a guided publishing, which means it's self-publishing, but Jess will hold your hand. That's probably not the metaphor that they would like to hear the most. He will guide you, like a guide on a mountain, and get you over all the hurdles and make sure you get exactly what you need. So, look in the show notes at craftbookpublishing.com, contact Jess, and just, man, I mentioned in the previous two that his growth, the company's growth, has come from referrals, and not referrals, has come from repeat customers, which is just a reminder that if they're coming back, they had a good experience to begin. Jess, welcome back. This third podcast, you're proud now at these three podcasts, so I'm going to be talking about four things. No one tells aspiring authors. You may want to add something to the four. We'll talk about that in just a minute. As always, thank you, Chaney & Associates. You heard the nice lady at the beginning talk about Chaney & Associates, and she mentioned that they're the counting firm for the church. They are. Give your bookkeeping, give your accounting, give your taxes, give your payroll to Chaney. They serve all size churches from small to large to mega, and they are the best in the business. Thank you, Steve, Chaney. You are my friend, much more than a business partner. Okay. So, you want to write and publish a book. Many aspiring authors, Jess, come to the process of writing a book, and they will say, "Well, no one ever told me that." It's probably because no one's ever talked to them about them being an author, and there's your certain assumptions. Throw out one of the things that you don't have to, but on occasion you do remind aspiring authors if they're about to publish their first book. Yeah. It's not the moneymaker you think it's going to be. I mentioned in our previous podcast that we were talking about commercially published books that two out of three commercially published books sell 1,000 units or less in their first year. If you look now at all published books, that includes commercially published, self published, any type of published book, the average lifetime sales of a book is 300 books sold, 300 units. It's small, and you look at royalty rates. They can range anywhere from 50 cents to maybe, depending on self publishing, you can get up to $6, $7 plus per book. You can do some quick math. It's not necessarily going to bring in a lot of money. Obviously, there's some well-known authors out there that are doing really well for themselves in writing books, but for the large part, the average author is just not going to sell a lot of books. It's not going to become a full-time job for a lot of authors. That tells me these authors probably best for them to have more than one motive. They may have a financial motive, but they just may have a message motive. If it sells great, great, but if it doesn't, I want to get my message out. All the authors I work with, I always ask that question. It's like, "Why are you wanting your book to get published?" For some people, it's a personal story, and I've worked with some authors that have powerful personal stories and gut-wrenching stories, but redeeming stories. They just want to get their story out. For others, they're maybe just simply wanting to build an audience a little bit for them. They know that it's not necessarily going to lead to thousands upon thousands of books, but they want to get their name out there. Others, they're thinking, "Maybe I'm already speaking and working in this realm." They just want to be able to sell their book in a book sale. There's a lot of different reasons why people write, but I think the one that's often like, "Hey, not necessarily going to relate to a lot of financial gain through the process." Yeah, and that's okay. They all would like to make money, but that is okay, but I tell you what, if you talked about you might be able to sell your book to speak in engagements, that's true, but you might be getting speaking engagements if you have a book because book can give you credibility. It works both ways. That would be a reason as well. What's another reason or what's another thing no one often tells aspiring authors? Yeah, one thing we touched on, again, in our previous podcast was just about the idea of being commercially published, and I think we can just hit on this one real quickly again. It's rare. Honestly, it's the number, the millions of books that are out there, it's a very small percentage of them get commercially published. What I tell authors that I want to go and try that, I say, "Do it." Just try it. The worst case that happens is they say no, and I often say a rejection is simply a redirection, and that's all that is. I think the publishing world, there's a lot of yeses, there's a lot of noes through it. Give it a shot, commercially published, but just know that's probably not going to be the case. Let me just add to that, what has changed is another layer, a number of publishers, and I'm talking about secular, but I'm also talking about Christian, is saying we're only accepting proposals from agents because we want someone to clear it before it gets to us. That would be another hurdle to get to, just to even get to the agent, to consider to give it to the publisher, so that's there as well. Another one. Yeah, I'm going to go back to self-publishing, obviously with craft book publishing, that's what we do. We help people publish, we help people self-publish their books. This is becoming the best path forward for so many authors out there. We talked about it, you get full control of your books, rights, royalties, distribution, you decide, but usually what's also attractive is the time to market. A lot of authors don't realize with a commercially published book is that that process takes a long time. Two years is not unusual. Yeah, 18 is not unusual. And so a lot of authors don't realize that, you're like, you finished writing your book and you're going to wait 18 to 24 months before you actually get to hold it in your hand. It's like, I never even thought of that. With self-publishing, what I tell authors is it's reasonable, in fact, our average time is about 90 to 100 days to market from start to finish. We've done as fast as 45 days. Now that was tough, that took a lot of work, but we've done as fast as 45 days from manuscript to time to market. A lot of authors don't realize that. It's a quicker process with self-publishing and so it's a lot better path for a lot of authors out there. Let me do a little bit of defensive commercial publishers on why the path is so long. They have to align all of their marketing with their channels. So they're like a Christian publisher. Not only do they have to align it with Amazon, but they have to align it with Christian book. They have to align it with brick and mortar stores and the list goes on and on. These channels need heads up. I'll give a six to nine months so that we can be prepared. So their channels need lead time and that's why they have to have that big gap in order to get those deadlines for the channels as well. Yeah, and it's the printing too. They got to get all the paper in. It's a thing sometimes. What's also with self-publishing is every book is print on demand, which means the book doesn't exist until it's ordered and the companies that I work with typically have about a two day turnaround they're printing because it's smaller orders. They don't do these long book runs. So again, a lot of us just don't realize this. Just the time to market, the time to print and what it takes to get there versus self-publishing. It's a lot faster process. I like it. I like it. Okay. Let's talk about this thing about forwards and endorsements. It's picked up for me. I thought when I retired from LifeWay that it would go away. It has not. In fact, it's become greater. It's probably getting close to one a day, maybe three to five a week of requests for endorsements and forwards. They obviously think something's going to happen if I put my name on a book as an endorsement or forward. What's the reality? Yeah. It's not going to hurt to have it on there. I think the expectation is that one, there's another name associated with their book. It might help generate sales. It's typically not the case as well, and I think there's a little bit of, well, hopefully maybe this person will help sell my book. There's a lot of that. There's a lot of that. And they think, well, they put their name on it, they're going to put it out there. It's just not in case with endorsers. Like you said, people who are being asked for endorsements are typically being asked a lot, and so they don't have the ability to necessarily help market and sell other people's books. And so endorsements forwards, they're great. They help let the audience know that the message is good, but it doesn't necessarily help with sales or marketing. In the same kind of thinking, I'm going to add a bonus one. I know we're saying we're doing four. I'm going to add a bonus one real fast that both authors may not think about. Sometimes it's better to be an editor than an author. I think one of the cool things that you can do is just like you would gain, if you have a project you're working on and you want to pull in different authors to contribute to your book and you take yourself off the author role and to become the editor role, you're actually more likely to, if you want to go to the commercial publishing route, maybe to get published or self publishing route, you're going to be pulling different names. So kind of that same thinking with endorsements and forwards, maybe it's better to start off being an editor rather than an author. So I started evangelism in the 21st century and somehow I was able to get Billy Graham to write the forward. And so that helped a lot. That helped to attract the contributors and ultimately get me a small commercial publishing company. It doesn't exist anymore. Harold Shaw out of Wheaton, but was a good experience, so that was a good word. I'm going to close with this, Jess. First of all, look at Jess's company, craftbookpublishing.com. You can see it in the show notes, they're guided self publishers. They're going to take you every step of the way. I've never seen an organization get the kind of repeat business they do. So if you want to, if you want to do self publishing, all I got guided publishing, that is the place to go. And let me say this one final thing about endorsements. I had a book one time with about 25 endorsements. Again, my number may be off. Of that number, roughly 10 had moral failure in the years to follow. And so you've got names that you thought would help. And now all of a sudden you've got names that did not help. So just keep that in mind. Now with self publishing, you can change it pretty quickly because they're being published one at a time. In my case, there were a lot of books out there with those names on it. Jess, thank you for being here. This has been a good three series. It's been really, really good. So thank you for being here. I've enjoyed it. That's been great. Always, audience, if you are on YouTube, give us a thumbs up. Give us that thumbs up. You see that bubble right there? You see that bubble? Thumbs up. Let's see if we can do this one. Thumbs up over here, thumbs up over here. Okay. I've got one bubble anyway. Give us a thumbs up. Hey, subscribe at our YouTube channel. We love you to be a part of our family. And then you can be at a number of different podcasting apps. I know it takes time to do a rating and review. Everybody wants one. We're asking nicely so that we can keep this out there for a lot of folks. Thank you as always for being a part of the church answers podcast. All of Jess's interviews that we've had with him are ready. They're downloaded. You can listen to all three very quickly. And if you don't want to hear us in a 10 minute spurt, you can double speed it and hear some five minutes that will sound like chip mugs. Thank you as always for being a part of the church answers podcast. We will see you very soon. You have been listening to the church answers podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. In need to focus on ministry, Chaney will focus on finances. Also please subscribe and give a review to the church answers podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)