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Last week, I did a deep dive into the results from my recent KU free days promotion, and I promised to keep y’all updated. As of now, I’ve almost earned back my ad spend on this series. Only $38 to break even. Now, I’ve noticed the money trickling down day by day as I get further away from the promotion, so that big boost may be wearing off now. I’m still confident that this was a good call. Even if I never earned back that $38, it’s a small price to pay for the lessons I learned from this particular marketing push, not to mention the new reviews and ratings I got on all three books.
Now, let’s move on to our October theme of the spooky side of publishing. Today, I’ll go over some common fears writers have about the publishing space and whether these fears are well-founded or overblown.
- Someone will steal my work.
This is the most common fear among the newer authors I see. It comes in three forms, and it’s largely not something you need to spend lots of time thinking about. Let’s analyze.
Stolen ideas
Sometimes writers, particularly those who may be just now authoring and not yet moving toward the onward stage, fear even describing their ideas, sometimes even ducking out of pitch contents or promotional opportunities. I won’t say stealing ideas never happens. Sometimes it does, but you know what’s a whole lot harder than coming up with a great idea? Executing that great idea into a great book. There’s a big barrier to swiping ideas and it’s a whole lot of work. Don’t let this fear stop you from workshopping an idea with a trusted critique group or writing coach or entering a Twitter pitch contest. You don’t have to let everything out and tell the whole world your whole plot, but don’t let this fear hamper your growth or opportunities.
Plagiarism
People passing off someone else’s writing as their own also is a thing that sometimes happens, but it is rare. You know what’s even harder than writing an excellent book? Publishing and marketing it! This is not a scam for the quick-fix scammer. There’s a huge learning curve to publishing. Just make sure the people you hand over your manuscript to are folks you trust. Know your critique partners. Vet editors or formatters or agents well. Look for testimonials from past clients. Ask past clients questions if you want. As a freelance editor, I’ve signed more than one NDA, though they aren’t really necessary for me. If I ever swiped a manuscript, my editing biz would be in the toilet. And I also have no interest in leaking content or ideas from a book prior to publication, though I love to know when clients do publish so I can brag about their awesome books online. If it makes you feel better, though, you’re well within your rights to ask for an NDA.
Pirating
Now this one is very likely to happen. And it’s also impossible to prevent if you publish your book in any form. And for that reason, I don’t think you should let it take up too much of your headspace. Every time a group of authors gets a book pirating site taken down, it seems like three more spring up in its place. I’m grateful for the folks who take the time to fight these entities, but I personally don’t have time to search out and send a cease-and-desist letter to every pirate site I can find one of my books on and then follow up and then… It’s a lot of work, and I don’t think the folks who are getting pirated books would actually pay real money for my work anyway. Pirating is going to happen. What you do about it is your choice, but I would try not to stress whatever path you choose.
A note on copyright: In the US, you own the copyright to your work from the moment of its creation, but it’s pretty much impossible to bring a breach of copyright lawsuit without having the work registered with the US copyright office. Now, that’s not a blanket protection that no one will ever violate your copyright or that bringing such a lawsuit will even be worth it, but it is a step I personally feel prudent to take. I’m not a lawyer. This isn’t legal advice. If you’re traditionally published, your publisher will register copyright on your published work for you. If you are self publishing, consider making this one of your publication tasks.
- A service provider will rip me off.
This is a reasonable fear. A lot of people have been scammed by folks calling themselves editors or agents, marketers or publishing houses. But there is a simple way to protect yourself. Do your homework. Look at what people say about them online. Look at reviews, testimonials, and talk to past clients. If anyone uses the words “vanity press” about a publisher, RUN. Publishers should pay you, not the other way around. Google these people, ask around in writers’ spaces, and use sites like Writer Beware (I’ve had Richard C. White of Writer Beware as previous podcast guest) to check for known scams.
It’s not necessarily bad if service providers, people like freelance editors, formatters, or illustrators, prefer not to contract via sites like Fiverr or Upwork. They take a ton of fees, so it’s often asking freelancers to work for a much lower rate. I can see the appeal for authors. Having that third party service protects them from folks just taking money and running, but many professional payment methods, like PayPal, allow disputes of transactions to protect the consumer. Also many freelancers use deposits for larger jobs, with the balance due either upon completion or in installments as they deliver pieces of the project. That protects both of you. The freelancer has to finish the work in order to get paid, and the author has some skin in the game because they’ve paid a deposit. Also, look carefully at your freelancer’s contract. If they don’t have a contract, that’s a bad sign.
- I will get bad reviews.
Again, this a fear that is likely to come true. If you don’t have any negative reviews at all, you just don’t have enough reviews for your book. Even NYT bestsellers have bad reviews. Even Pulitzer prize winners have bad reviews. Since we can’t avoid this happening, we just have to A. write the best books we can and B. deal with the fear the best ways we can. You can encourage reviews from folks who are already your fans. (See the recent episode on getting reviews.) You can avoid checking reviews or going to sites like Goodreads and ask a friend to curate positive reviews for you, if reviews are something particularly triggering for you. It’s tough, because you need reviews and some of them will be bad, but with time this does get less scary.
- I will not do everything perfectly in writing or launching/marketing my books, and that will cause utter failure.
First, you’re right. You won’t do everything perfectly. Nobody does. But it won’t cause utter failure. You only fail if you give up. And maybe not even then. There’s no rule that if you give a thing up you can’t rally later and try again. If you’re in the onward part of authoring onward (that is if you’ve already written one book), then you’ve already dealt with overcoming perfectionism to some degree. But sometimes writers get held back at the publication or promotion steps, smacked in the face with perfectionist paralysis that they thought they’d overcome in the writing stage.
You don’t have to do everything perfectly in your first time pitching your book to traditional publishers. Do some research and then learn as you go. Write more books in the meantime.
You don’t have to do everything perfectly the first time you self publish. Goodness knows I didn’t! I did my research, but I still had things to learn, things I could only learn by doing.
And whatever you do, please don’t get so overwhelmed by the learning curve that you fall for a vanity press. There may be situations where a vanity press is appropriate, but for an author who wants a long-term career, I maintain that it is not the best financial or professional decision. There are many resources to learn about publishing: podcasts like this one, writers’ organizations, and groups like 20Booksto50k. If you need more hands-on help with self publishing than what you can learn on your own, get a trusted professional to coach you, not publish for you. It will not only cost less, you’ll keep your rights, not be locked into buying X number of hard copies, and you’ll have the skills to do this for yourself. Learn on your own or learn from pros, but don’t hand over your power.
So that’s it for this week, four common fears spooking authors. If there are more fears you’d like me to address this October, please let me know. And I promise there will be some craft discussion coming up as well on writing spooky stories and scenes.
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