S4E1: Publisher-Author Dialogue

An ongoing "Publishing Basics" series with Emerald Lake Books publisher Tara Alemany
Hosted by Charlotte PIerce, Pierce Press, in collaboration with Independent Publishers of New England

As a publisher, what are the best practices for onboarding an author and sustaining a productive relationship? And as an author, how can you best prepare for this unique relationship with your publisher? Maybe you are both an author and a publisher - know your strengths and clallenges, where and when to reach out for help. 

Creators & Guests

Host

Independent Publishers of New England

Where indies collaborate to make better books & sell more of them' in New England & beyond!

Writer

Livvy Doe

Producer

Pierce Press 🇺🇦 🌻 📚🚣‍♀️ 👩‍🌾

Publisher, sculler, podcaster; once & future farmer. Accepting 🇺🇦 book proposals.

What is Face The Book TV?

Do you have a book in you? Face The Book TV brings you the how-to of independent publishing. Regular segments include Author Spotlight and Ask the Experts, featuring expert panelists, indie authors, and publishers from Independent Publishers of New England and the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Charlotte:
Welcome to Face the Book TV, I'm Charlotte Pierce, the producer and I'm here with a prolific publisher of Emerald Lake Book, Tara Alemany, and we're going to be talking about author-publisher communications, from the point of view of the publisher.

Tara, you had come up with some questions.
So first of all, tell us a little bit about Emerald Lake Books and how long you've been publishing and what drives your mission?

Tara:
Emerald Lake Books is a boutique hybrid publisher.
We've been around since 2014, so we're getting ready to celebrate our 10 years later this year.

We work with people who have a purpose that they want to achieve in publishing their book.
So in some instances, that's going to be that they're looking to build a brand or a business and others that's going to be that they want to set the record straight.
They may want to build a community, all these different things.
But we really focus on trying to connect our authors and their books with the ideal readers.
We go through this whole publish with purpose process that we refer to as a goal-oriented framework to publishing success and a large part of that centers around communications.

I thought when you asked me for a topic to talk about, I thought since it's such a huge part of what we do as a publisher, but also it's important for authors to kind of look at it and understand what they should anticipate from a publisher.
Not all publishers do things the same way we do, but it's okay to ask for information, but the way you ask for it is what sometimes is not the best.

So there's, there's productive ways to do it and there is unproductive ways to do it.

Well, we start actually from the very beginning because if you go back and look at our website, the very first thing we do before anybody can actually fill out an application with us is when they click the Apply Now button, they are taken to a page that first tells them who we're looking for, who a good fit is for us, and who we're a good fit for.

So we run through some characteristics so that the individual reading it can say, you know, yes, this is me.
If it's not them, then why spend the time filling out our application?
By setting these boundaries in terms of who we're a good fit for and who we're not, if you scroll down further on the page, you'll see kind of who we are.

We tell them what to anticipate from us as we go through it.
So if you continue to scroll down the page, you'll see it's not until the very bottom of the page where they actually get the button to be able to fill out our application.

We talk about how we don't offer package pricing, why we don't do that, all these different things.
And then if you like what you've read and you're ready to explore working with us, we invite you to complete our application.

And so when you have this process laid out this way, it is actually taking them through a very natural flow and answering a lot of their questions.
It also points them to a lot of additional resources to get questions answered as well.

So for instance, if they don't understand what hybrid publishing is, we link to where they can find out more information about that.
If they don't know the pros and cons of the different publishing models, we link them to an article about that.
So there's a lot of different information there.

And then at the bottom as well, in addition to the Apply Now button, we say, if you have any questions before you fill out the application, contact us.
And so we do invite them to do that, but we hope that they've at least been through this page first.

Charlotte:
Your first question on your outline was why is it important to establish good author publisher communications?

I think it kind of seems obvious, but I've seen so many things go wrong, including in my own feelings with authors, because I did not think about all this stuff before I took them on.

I thought it sounds like a great book, you know, let's just work it out as we go.
And I've learned the hard way.

Tara:
Well, you have to think about it from the standpoint of depending on how your contract's set up, most publishing contracts, we're looking for a minimum of three years together.

So would you bind yourself to anybody else without ironing out some of these questions first for three years?

You know whether or not they prefer texts or emails, being able to share the fact that while I'll take phone calls periodically, it's not my preferred method of communication simply because it may interrupt something else that I'm doing.

And it's much better to, you know, let me know they want to talk and then I'll get to them, so being able to set these boundaries really sets the expectations and avoids disappointments later on.

Charlotte:
Is that part of your foundation or what are some of the other elements of that?

Tara:
So part of what we're doing is we do let them know how frequently to expect to hear from us.

Once we sign a contract with them,
one of the first things they get is this document we have that outlines the entire process of what we're going to be doing over the next months of working together.

And so it gives them an idea of how long editing might take, how long design will take, and when they might hear from us.

That for the first period of time when we're busy editing, they're not gonna hear from us as frequently as they will as we get closer to the release.
Because we're spending that time editing and getting the book ready.

But because we also are committed to coaching our authors so that they understand how to launch their book and release their book, we spend a lot of time front-loading the coaching program into that time where we're editing so that they are hearing from us consistently, at least once a week, if not a couple of times a week.

And sometimes it's with educational information, things that they need to know.
Sometimes it's homework assignments we give them.
So for instance, we have our authors take the first crack at identifying the BSAC codes to use because it's like, you know, why they know the material really well.

Charlotte:
And let's just tell people what BSAC is.
It's a really good, good thing to know about if you're an author.

Talia:
So these are the categories and codes that BSAC has established for books that says where your book is going to appear on a shelf, so typically when we're identifying what categories a book is going to go in we start the very first step to go to the BSAC website to look at the current headings and categories and identify the top we do a bunch of we do all of the potentials but then we narrow it down to two to five that we're going to use in various places.

And so rather than us doing all of that legwork, we let the author, they know the material well enough, they can go through each of the headings and figure out whether or not this applies, so they provide us with that information.

We then go through it and maybe we only have 20 things to look at instead of the entire list of BSAC categories.

Charlotte:
Yeah, those can be a little intimidating.

That's brilliant.
It gets them thinking about the publishing process too, what the marketing will involve.

And I remember one book I had, we did the codes wrong or, you know, the categories we said education, because we thought, well, it's something you could use in a school because it was for professors and teachers

Talia:
The thing too is that by making them part of the process, they're not sitting there feeling anxious about why they're not hearing from you.

So when you're giving them reasons to interact with you and guiding what those interactions should be, it still allows them to pop in other questions, but they don't feel that high anxiety of, you know, I gave my manuscript six weeks ago and I haven't heard from you yet.

This year, we are migrating into an entire coaching system that is called UpCoach.

All of our homework assignments and our training and our materials for our authors have been moved in there.
So with a click of a button, I can assign the next homework assignment.
They have the educational resource right there that goes along with what I'm asking them to do.
It's going to make our coaching process easier from a maintenance standpoint while still giving the same value, if not even more,because now they'll be able to see which homework assignments they got done and which they didn't.

Because right now when we give them a homework assignment, we're sending it to them in the email and it gets lost there, you know.

I'm actually, I use it so much that they have designated me as an Asana ambassador, so I get a pre-release.
I get pre-release functionality and things like that as well.
I have a little badge next to my name in my workspace that says I'm an ambassador.

Charlotte:
Anyway, any other ways to keep the author engaged?
Is it a huge issue? And how many authors do you have?

Talia:
We have, I don't know the number off the top of my head, but about 32 now.
We've got 43 books out so far.
So still small, but a lot of our authors come back to us with multiple books.
We have a couple of our authors that we're working on their fourth book right now.

So far as other things, you know, one of the things that we find is if anything, we're going to communicate regularly.

So oftentimes when you talk to an author about what book they should write, especially if they're using one to build a business or something along those lines, you ask them, what questions do you get asked all the time?
And that's what you should write about so that you don't have to repeat it all the time.

We take the same approach with our coaching and with our communications with our authors.
We have what we refer to as what I refer to as our big book of email templates.
It has over 90 different templates in it of answering different types of questions.

So think of it in terms of an FAQ.

If I'm getting ready to ask them to do a certain piece of homework, I need to provide them with certain information to be able to do that.
Rather than writing that out every time, I have this big book of email templates that's just a Word document.
I go to that homework assignment or that email and grab that.
If there are things that need to be personalized for that author, those are highlighted in the template so that I just know I need to look at those spots. I look for the yellow highlights, and I drop in the ASIN that I need to put in or whatever it is that I've highlighted needs to be modified and send it off to the author.

So instead of taking 20 minutes or a half hour to write out that email, it takes me all of two or three minutes to get it set up and sent out.

It's like my dad used to say, you know, painting a room or something, prep is 90% of the job.
But I tell you, when you've got the prep done, everything goes so much smoother.

People always talk about, you know, I don't know how you get so much done.
Well, I get so much done because I don't reinvent the wheel.

Charlotte:
That's great.

Talia:
It's interesting when an author asks me a question that I haven't answered before.
I will go to the big book of email templates.
I will write up a new entry in that big book of email templates answering that question and then copy it and send that to the author so that the next time I get asked that question, I've already got it written up.
It's ready to go.

Charlotte:
If you're listening along, we really appreciate you being here live.
And if you're on Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn, you can actually type a question in the comments in that live stream, and we will answer it for you.
Or you can do it afterwards, and hopefully Tara will be gracious enough to answer some specific questions.
We'd like to know how many authors and how many publishers are listening, too.
So thank you for tuning in.

So book launch is something that you're going through right now, I guess.
You have a book going out?

Talia:
Yes, I had a book go out yesterday.
We have three more that are going out in the next six weeks.
So a lot of launch activities going on, which again is one of those reasons that I'm very grateful for our templates because I basically know from the two weeks prior to a launch through the two weeks after a launch, actually four weeks after a launch, exactly what communications I need to have when.
And so I can go ahead and sit down on a day and schedule out all of the communications for the next two months related to this launch so that the author is getting them at the time they need them and not relying on me to be available at that time to send it out at that time.

I pre-schedule all of these.
But when I'm guiding them on how to prepare for the launch, preparing for the launch begins months earlier.
It's all of the homework assignments we give them along the way.

Early on, we talk about what the difference is between an endorser, a reviewer, and a launch team member.
They have them start down, sit down, and start thinking about who are they going to ask to fulfill each of these roles.
In some instances, you may be able to have one person willing to do all three.
But if you want to avoid overburdening a person, you're not going to ask them to do all three.
You're going to figure out who's the ideal person to do each one.

We also have an exercise where we talk about understanding who their ideal reader is and what the ideal reader is looking for.

So that as they start crafting blog posts and guest articles that they can use during the launch phase, they're thinking about those questions that their ideal reader has.

We have a tool that we use called Author Keywords that's intended for SEO purposes.
But basically what it does is it goes and it checks to see what are the most common questions being asked around a given keyword.

And so we produce that list and we give it to our authors and say, start thinking about writing guest articles that answer these questions or blog posts for your website that answer these questions.
Because all of this becomes material for your newsletter and all these different aspects where you can put content out.
And so it helps them.
Not just come up with ideas, but come up with ideas that are SEO-rich, so it's going to create more visibility.

Charlotte:
Are you to fiction and nonfiction?

Talia:
We do fiction and nonfiction, but we probably do 80% nonfiction and 20% fiction.

Charlotte:
if you had a dystopian fiction, gay dystopian, you would want those things in your keyword, right?

Talia:
Yep.

So you would basically, you want to think about in this tool, you want to figure out or, or whatever tool you're using for creating these questions.

You want to think about the keywords that people are going to be looking for related to your topic.

And that's important for advertising as well as just people searching on Google for these types of books.

Charlotte:
Anything else about the launch?

Talia:
I mean, I kind of think that's a whole topic.

From the author's point of view, because I think some authors just, you know, they just think that they're going to get the book out there, it's done.

We try and instill very early on that marketing is a journey, not a destination.
Once you've finished writing the book, congratulations, you've finished the easy part because this is one of those things that make it very clear that your book will be successful as long as you are supporting it.

And when you stop supporting it, it's no longer going to be successful, which is just something you need to be aware of because unfortunately, these days, books don't sell themselves.

There are too many competitors out there competing for titles.
And as much as readers will read lots of books related to the same topic if they don't know your book exists, they're not going to read yours.

So you have to figure out how you're going to do that.

Charlotte:
So for reviews, you need to get that book to them in an advanced review copy, what, two, three months before it's official?

Talia:
For us, oftentimes, because we're dealing with nonfiction for most of our books, it's not nearly that long a lead time.
We typically are doing arcs.
For the endorsers, it's about a month before, four to six weeks.
And for the reviewers, it's about two to three weeks.

Charlotte:
But fiction might be a little longer, right?

Talia:
Fiction might be a little longer because oftentimes fiction takes longer to read just because it usually has a larger word count.

But what we found is that if you give reviewers too much lead time, it ends up on a to-be-read pile as opposed to this is urgent.

And so that's one of the things is like for NetGalley, we might put it on much earlier than we would, for instance, going to the reviewers that our author knows and wants to ask to review.
Because those reviewers that the author knows they're going to, they're going to feel that urgency.

But only if the author asks them and only if we give them a short window of time if we gave them two months and the author asked them, it's just going to, yeah, I'll get to it and they never will.

So you'll get a much higher percentage of those who follow through if you give them less time.

Charlotte:
Well, for this magical realism novel, I'm publishing in translation, but from a Ukrainian author, I thought Neil Gaiman would be the perfect reviewer.

So I track him down, you know, I follow him on threads and, or, you know, blue sky, he's on blue sky.
I tried to be, you know, direct and authentic.

And he said, yeah, sounds wonderful, but you know, you have to give me the time to read it as well.

So I don't know if I'm going to get Neil Gaiman, but that would be nice.

Talia:
And when you are approaching people like that, you need to be aware that they're different.
I mean, they're an endorser.
Endorsers, you're going to give more time.
The reason why it's relevant for them to make an announcement is because then it's not just about the book and the author.

It's about what's in it for them in the sense that will it bring them more business.
Will it bring them more readership?
You know, these kind of things.

I recently sent out a letter to the manager for a musician that we would have loved to have blurb our book.
And I spent a couple of hours working on putting together that package, doing research, understanding what that musician's current focus was.
What was important to them, what they were working on in the year to come, and trying to make the book relevant to the musician.

Unfortunately, I got a response within an hour of the email being sent out from the manager saying that, you know, as much as it sounded like a wonderful opportunity there, the person did not have the time to do it.

So it's worth trying

Charlotte:
I believe in being persistent.

So I'm not giving up hope on Neil, but Neil, if you're listening, we have a couple of questions.

Talia:
Yeah, well, the one you have on the screen in terms of how you can continue the connection once the book is released, you know, I think that's an important one because most publishers often, once the book is out there, they kind of think I don't need to communicate further beyond royalty statements.

We find ways to continue that communication going on.
For instance, we have a Facebook group that is just for our authors and we will post podcast opportunities that we find in there.

We'll post things like trending topics that we know are relevant to specific authors.
We have just joined a group recently that's on podcast guests.
It's a podcast guest community collaboration to be able to kind of, it has both hosts and guests in it.
And so we're going there and when on our release date, we will post something about the author and their book in there to try and find potential podcasts for them to be on.
So we're doing that.

We also do things like we just started, our first one went out this morning, an author interview series where we talk about our published with purpose framework, but then we interview an author whose book has been out for a time now.

So they've been able to kind of look back on that experience and see how it affected the success of their book, it's brilliant and only a self-rewarding thing because we do it from the point of allowing the author to go through their origin story.

And readers love to hear about the origin stories of books.
And so we talk about what first prompted you to write this book.
Who's your ideal reader for it?
What were you hoping to accomplish when the book went out?
And so by doing this, it's allowing us to kind of create case studies for ourselves.
But at the same time, it's allowing them to really tell the backstory of the book.

Charlotte:
You know, before we go too much, Connie Taylor, who is tuning in from Alaska.
An endorser is often referred to sometimes as a blurber.
It's a person who is going to provide some text that is going to go either on the cover or the interior of the book.
It'll also go on marketing materials and the website.
But basically, it's somebody with some kind of notoriety, whether it's their name recognition or their position recognition.
So that's what you're looking for in an endorser.
So if it's a manager of a musical group, you would put that manager of the Rolling Stones or whatever unit.

So, yeah, I kind of, I was hoping Neil Gaiman would either endorse or review the book, but I realized, you know, like.
If he was going to do one or the other endorsers, what you want, because that's the endorser is somebody who is effectively their name recognition is going to help market the book.
And so if you had somebody like Neil Gaiman, boy, if they had anything to say about the book, that would be front and center on everything.
Well, he did say it sounded wonderful when I described it.

We had a question about where have you found the most success in networking for authors in the industry.

Charlotte:
Networking is important in any industry.

I will tell you that the author whose book we released yesterday, her name is Ellen Saltenstall, and we did a book called Empowered Aging.
It's an everyday yoga practice for bone health, strength, and balance.
And so she went to a dinner party the other night and took her postcards with her that we had made up for the book.
So she had the postcards to hand out to people as she was meeting them at the dinner party.
It's wonderful.
Put them in my car, you know, the rack cards, you know, and it's, I can't tell you the number of times I've just, and I'm the publisher, you know, I'm just, you know, trying to work those contacts.

Charlotte:
Yeah, so before we wrap up, what advice do you have for authors in managing their communication with their publishers?
So this is from the author's point of view, and we might go into this more in-depth in a future episode.

Talia:
Yeah, I think when you're an author and you're considering working with a publisher or you already have a publisher, simply have the conversation about what's your preferred communication method.

How frequently is it okay to write?
What should I anticipate in terms of how soon it's going to be before I hear from you?

If you know that your publisher needs three days to get back to you, then writing them every couple of hours isn't going to help.
So, you know, having that, establishing that so that you know what to expect and, you know, that you can negotiate that.
So if three, three days is too long, you can say, you know, especially if you haven't signed with them yet, that may decide that that's not the right publisher for you.
But if you're already signed with them, it's like, well, you know, have that conversation of, I need to hear from you more frequently because of X. Can we get that three days down to one business day or something like that?
So that you have those anticipations.

One of the things that we've done as publishers and authors when I first started doing this, I thought it was a cop-out, but I was doing it because it saved me time.

And I found out that my authors love that I do it.
And that is when they send me an email, I will often just record a video response.
It takes me much less time to record the video response than it does for me to write out the email.
And it establishes a different kind of connection with them.
And they love it because they, you know, they, they hear my voice.
They don't have to interpret the tone of the email.
So it allows for much less miscommunication, you know,, and I can record an email, a video that takes me a minute to record probably takes me, you know, 10 minutes to write.
And so it's quick and easy.
But the other thing too, is because I can share my screen, I can show them what I'm referring to.

You know, so if they're asking me, you know, one of them asked me this morning, where do I find the product details on Amazon?
And, and so, you know, I went to their listing, I show them where it was rather than writing down.

You know, in, in, in 20 seconds, I had a video, they had the answer and they could follow along right away.

Charlotte:
Well, listen, this has been great.

I'm really grateful for our live listeners.
And Connie says, great presentation.

Thank you, Connie.
Nice to hear it from you.
She's also a small publisher.
She's got not as many as you do, but I think several dozen books or a couple dozen.

Anyway, anything else that you'd like to throw out there?
Any final thoughts?

Talia:
I think both the author and the publisher, always assume good intent.

This is something my brother-in-law says all the time, especially when you're relying on email communications or text communications, which are easy to misinterpret.

Always assume good intent, because when you do that, your response will come across as not taking umbrage with something that's been said.

If you don't understand something that's been asked or something that's been said, ask, but ask politely.

Recognize that we're all on the same team and that what we're playing toward is the success of your book.
And so no matter, you know, what's going on, you want to maintain that, that team relationship.

Charlotte:
Yeah.
Well, we are going to pull the audio from this and put it on our podcast distribution.
The replays will stay on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube on our various destinations.

I'm Charlotte Pierce, the producer.
And Tara, it's been really wonderful to have you here.

All of our episodes are available at PiercePress.com under Face the Book TV.
Just go to Pierce Press and click on podcasts.
And we'll see you next time.