How to Use Self-Publishing to Prove Yourself to a Royalty Publisher
By Athena Dean
Since 1991, I’ve had the privilege of watching many authors use their experience publishing with WinePress to build a platform, prove they have a market, and contract with an agent or directly with a royalty publisher.
In fact, WinePress was born out of a successful self-publishing experience. A ministry book I was involved with sold 10,000 copies in less than two years before Multnomah Books bought the rights and sold 40,000 copies over the next eight years. Before I knew it, people started asking if I could help them with their manuscript, and the rest is history.
Today more than ever, editors and agents don’t want to hear that you’re “willing to speak and do radio interviews and book signings.” They want to know how many times you speak per year and how large the groups are; how many books you’ve sold. In other words, they want to know what kind of a platform you already have.
Often, self-publishing can help you build that ever-important platform so you have something to take to the “table” when proposing a potential book project with a royalty house. Our most recent example is Dorothy Valcarcel.
Dorothy had been teaching the concepts in her book, The Man Who Loved Women, for years, and had an active Web site with bible study groups in her region studying the material. Even with that strong platform, her agent, Joyce Hart, was unable to land her a contract with a royalty publisher, though she pursued it relentlessly for a full year. When nothing resulted from the proposals, Joyce recommended she come to WinePress for a professional product and marketing campaign.
Dorothy started out with 5,000 copies and ended up reprinting in less than two years. After sales reached 7,000 copies, Joyce went back to some of the same editors she had pitched earlier and tried again.
This time Baker Book House was convinced and bought the rights to her book. Having proven through professional self-publishing that a market existed for her book, Dorothy found an even greater audience through Baker.
There’s nothing like having a professionally produced book in print to start building that platform and getting your message out to those who need to read it. If your goal is to land a contract with a royalty publisher, you might consider the strategy of professional self-publishing as a stepping stone to that end.
Athena Dean is a Solutions Advisor for the Pleasant Word division. She works with new authors who need to test the market for their book using custom print-on-demand technology.
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