Discover the Power of Preparation in Publishing

Authors, are you tired of hearing these myths about launching your book?

Myth #1: Launching a book is a one-time event.
Myth #2: It's best to focus solely on writing and worry about marketing later. 
Myth #3: Preparing the market takes too much time and effort.

Well, get ready to debunk these misconceptions, because John & Boni Wagner-Stafford of Ingenium Books are here to share the truth about strategically launching your book.

In this episode, you will:
•Discover the significance of investing time in market preparation for desired outcomes. 
•Gain valuable insights into the essential components of the publishing timeline. 
•Uncover the crucial role of marketing within the publishing process. 
•Learn how refining your book for quality standards leads to overall success. 
•Develop strategies for generating buzz prior to publication to elevate visibility and sales.

John Wagner-Stafford is cofounder and CFO of Ingenium Books, and a creative entrepreneur who has managed complex and large-scale projects — from film and television soundtracks to award-winning video games to bestselling book projects at Ingenium Books. Together with Boni, publisher and award-winning former journalist, and the rest of the team at Ingenium Books, this expertise in market preparation and its crucial role in a successful book launch has helped them launch bestsellers and award-winners. 

Resources mentioned in the episode:
1.Check out Publishing for Profit, by Thomas Woll, for a three-year timeline of the traditional publishing process. 
2.Start preparing the manuscript right away and engage in editing and rewriting as necessary. 
3.Begin competitive analysis early on and take note of competing titles, cover designs, pricing, and other factors.
4.Create a design brief for the cover design team and give them four-to-six weeks of lead time, if possible. 
5.Work on the layout of the book while waiting for the cover concepts to come in. 
6.Create a list of potential endorsers or editorial reviewers and keep track of the status of your requests on a spreadsheet. 
7.Keep the target reader or audience in mind throughout the entire process and ensure that the content meets their expectations. 
8.Focus marketing efforts on the target reader and where they can be reached.

Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

author, manuscript, publish, book, work, reader, timeline, publisher, talk, psychedelics, self publishing, month, happening, layout, proofread, cover, reviews, editorial, marketing, year

SPEAKERS

John Wagner-Stafford, Boni Wagner-Stafford

Boni Wagner-Stafford  00:00

Welcome to another episode of The Ingenium books, podcast, our season two, we're having fun getting it all set up and hope you're having fun listening. Yeah. Today we're gonna talk about publishing timelines. We often hear questions from authors, when we're discussing their submission and determining whether they're right for us. And then even after we've signed about, you know, how long is it going to take to publish my book? And I think they're, it's different, like, depending on what kind of Publisher depending on the state of the manuscript and all those kinds of things. But why does it take so long when you're working with a publisher, pretty much, it's going to take you longer than if you were self publishing and doing it yourself, which doesn't necessarily mean that you should rush your publication. So we're going to talk about all that.

John Wagner-Stafford  00:58

Yeah, and, you know, we've learned, we've seen different publishing timelines over the years, and it really is dependent upon the readiness of the manuscript, and the quality of the writing. And, you know, as an independent publisher, you as a independent publisher, author, we, as a hybrid publisher, we've got lots of work to do from beginning to end. And maybe we can talk about all the different categories of work on this podcast to kind of bring it to bring it to the forefront.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  01:30

Yeah, one of the main reasons, and one of the main determining factors, that tells us when we are going to be ready for publish has a lot to do with goals and objectives, it has to do with who you're trying to reach. And it also has to do with sometimes external, current affairs events. So if you have a book about, let's say, psychedelics, and their use in a new mental health treatment, and we did publish a book in 2020, to the promise of psychedelics about this, and there was there was timeliness issues there that we were paying attention to, because the use of psychedelics was currently before the federal government in Canada Ministry of Health as they assessed which psychedelics they were going to allow psychiatrists and others to use in therapy. So there was there was a timeliness, that made sense. And so your book, or if you're a publisher, the books that you're publishing may, of course, have some of those external factors where you need to pay attention, and you want to have your book launch, before whatever that event is. Because after is going to be too late. So you just consider those kinds of things. Otherwise, it's market readiness and a workload, you know, the work that needs to be done. So maybe we talk about the self publishing timeline for just a minute.

John Wagner-Stafford  03:17

Yeah, so self publishing, meaning individual, individual author,

Boni Wagner-Stafford  03:22

yeah, so as an author who is self publishing their book, and so that you have the most control, you have the most decision making power over when you publish, and how fast and the temptation is certainly going to be to get the book out there, because that's really what we want. And sometimes that might work. Now, there we don't play in this space. But there are, for example, romance authors who are very successful with a method of write and publish fast they they, you know, can write a new book in 30 days, and they are publishing a book a month or a book a quarter. And, and they have cultivated relationships with readers who are I mean, romance readers are ready to buy well, and they're the most voracious readers of any of the genres. So that's, that's not the space that we plan. We don't we don't publish romance, although every now and again, we've talked about like, Gee, you know, no, we're not going there.

John Wagner-Stafford  04:28

You know, a romance author who's putting out book book after book after book, they gain experience every book and every publication. So things definitely get better when you practice and, and that holds true with with our authors. If we've got an author who's working on Book Two, and or book three, the writing process seems to be just a little bit shorter. Yeah. And the writing, the quality of the writing is probably a little better, and the experience of the author in getting involved in the marketing aspect of the book both way before the publication and after publication is better as well. So you know, practice makes perfect, I guess.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  05:08

Yeah, yeah. And perfect, of course, being a, yes, impossible state, you're gonna aim for it, but you are not going to ever achieve it anyway. So, so self publishing gives you the most control the most decision making power, and you can probably move faster and shorten your timeline. But should you? So you want to think about your market readiness. And, you know, we had we had this experience, if you look back, six or seven years, when we published our first book, which was kind of a test, they rock your business, don't go look for it. Oh, it's, you know, whatever. Anyway, it was fun. And there is some good business advice in there for starting startups, but we just did it fast. It was like, okay, the books ready, the layouts, done, the covers done and Okay, publish. The problem is, your market isn't ready, your readers aren't ready, nobody knows it's coming, you don't have any advanced reviews, you don't have, you don't have any pre orders, you don't have there's nothing. You there's nothing that you can do when you really go to publish fast to kind of prep the market to. And when we say when I say prep the market, I really mean, you start to cultivate a community of readers who are waiting for the book. And that's probably the biggest downfall. Like we didn't have endorsement reviews, we didn't wait, we didn't take nib doesn't matter. We just went fast, and it served its purpose. And our goal was to go through the motions. So it's it depends on what your goal is. But that's really one of the reasons why you do not want to publish fast is because you need to make sure that you're readying the market to give yourself the best chance of success if sales and reaching readers and having more readers here, but your book is what you want.

John Wagner-Stafford  07:03

Do we talk about the different categories of of or the different time elements? So you know, there's preparing the manuscript being one in one of the first ones? And then what comes after that? And what comes after that? Maybe? What about the big, big picture categories? And then each one of those categories, you can drill down into some of my new details. Yeah, marketing being one of the most important.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  07:29

Yeah, exactly. Well, I do want to go there. That's a very good suggestion, what I wanted to share with folks. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see I'm holding a book up, publishing for profit, which we picked up when we were at the ibpa conference in early May. And this has a publishing timeline, inside on page 14, but I was looking at this, and it's a three year timeline. So if you're working with the hybrid publisher, and you're frustrated with the 18 month timeline, and that's kind of what ours is, depending on where the manuscript is that there's people that take longer than that. So just real quick, they the beginning of the process, and month, one, three years before publish, is when they start to work on the proposal. So what is the book going to be? What need is it going to fill and then they look for an author that might work on that book. Maybe it's the other way around? They've got a submission, but they you know, so they go through in a whole editorial committee, you know, title, p&l, title, profit and loss, which is how much is the book going to cost to produce? What's the projection of sales? And, you know, is it worth us taking on that, that work? So then the proposal is signed, the contract is signed with the author in month three, so the publisher is doing all that work. And then the author takes the rest of that year, year, one, two, right. And then the editorial work editing starts in year two, marketing starts in year two more than 18 months before published date. So that's, that's on the traditional timeline. So in our timeline, at Ingenium books is we have a kind of a standard 18 months for 18 to 24. And again, it does depend on where the manuscript is, and of course, the caveat of what we mentioned earlier, which is also it depends on what's happening externally in the in the socio economic environment. Because that makes a difference. But so what's the first thing manuscript is the first thing

John Wagner-Stafford  09:48

Yeah, and you know, in the process of manuscript getting the manuscript ready. Many authors might not be ready to write their first book. They've got lots of learning Who's so involved in that process might be some author coaching and, and seeking out help to get that manuscript in, in a good draft? State.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  10:09

Yeah, that's a really good point. And the we work with some authors developing their manuscript, which is, so that 18 month timeline, at at Ingenium books is when the manuscript is pretty much ready. So that's not the editing, the editing is done. But the so any, if the manuscript is, you know, we have had authors come to us, and they have a great idea. And they just are looking for support and guidance with the development and the structure. And then, you know, accountability for writing, we don't do that a lot anymore. We used to do that a lot more, you know, a few years ago, but that would be in advance of that 18 month timeline. So then when the 18 month timeline kicks off, you know, we go through an onboarding process with with every author right after we sign, where we talk about the project timelines, and we talked about how the royalties work and all that kind of stuff. And there's some, you know, administrative setup things, but right away the manuscript is the first thing. And so we figure out what editing it needs. And it's off to one of our editors, right away, while we start working on the marketing.

John Wagner-Stafford  11:26

Yep, 18 months, almost right away, we

Boni Wagner-Stafford  11:28

start working on the marketing. Yep. And when when I when we say marketing, it is, the first thing we do is competitive analysis. So we are going out, we're, you know, who's the reader for this manuscript? What is the genre for this book, what else is out there? What are the competing titles, which ones are doing well, and why and which ones are not doing well, and why. And, you know, we look at everything from what kind of covers are popular. And because there are trends in everything, of course, we look at the pricing, we look at the pricing, we look at the size of the of the books in in the in the space, you know, a thriller, we're doing one now the 49th protocol by Todd Gray, that's a thriller, RCMP mystery historical thriller. And it's going to be centrally five and a quarter by eight and a quarter, maybe even five by eight. These are books that are they tend to be fat, but they're smaller, they can fit in the back pocket of not my pants, but in some people's pants. Whereas a business book is more likely to be a six by nine. So anyway, we do all that analysis. And then we have one of our team members starting to read the draft manuscript, because we are working right away on preparation of the cover brief. So and that process, so the manuscript is in editing, we've got all the competitive analysis happening, that's a six week process. And you know, it's not because, you know, they, they, we got one team member that's doing the research puts together the spreadsheet, we take a look at it, we talk about it, it goes, you know, while the the team member is reading the manuscript, for the purposes of the design brief, we're then sharing all that information, and she's talking about what she's seeing. And we, you know, here's what the competitive analysis is seeing. So all of that is is gathered at the beginning. So from from there, then the manuscript comes back from the editor, there's an engagement period, obviously, with the author, there may be things the author needs to rework rewrite. We may have suggestions that we would like to see in the manuscript. And, you know, sometimes it requires a conversation, we think that that book should open this way, rather than this way. And let's talk about the pros and cons of that. And, of course, we involve the the author, and we have a good chat about it. So kind of getting that finalized. What comes next?

John Wagner-Stafford  14:08

Well, we the design brief? Well, yes, the design brief, and that goes to who really

Boni Wagner-Stafford  14:14

Yeah, the design brief goes to the cover design team. And we like to give them you know, four to six weeks of lead time as much as possible so that they can go away and do their work once we've prepared and sent off the design brief. So that all is happening, layout happens, and sort of concurrently with the interior design and the layout of the book is and that's happening while we're waiting for the cover concepts. But the we get the author going on their list of potential endorsers or editorial reviewers, and we have a template spreadsheet that we send them away on and that's where we ask for them to dig deep and think about their blue sky dream list of who they think they want to see whose quote whose name with a wonderful quote they want to see on the front or back cover.

John Wagner-Stafford  15:11

Yeah, at every step, there's this thread of marketing that just keeps on going through every major step of the of the process or the production of the book. So while we're doing the cover, we're working on marketing, while we're doing the layup, we're working on marketing. Yeah. I want to just mention one thing. Why do we make changes to the book? And what you know, the editor takes a look at it? And why do we make changes to the book and all the work that we're doing is geared toward the reader and the target reader or audience? And we've established that as soon as we can, based on what the subject matter is the book but also what the author wants to be doing? What are the goals of the author? It's very interesting to kind of put put the, why do we make all these changes is because we've set out these goals and there are there there are specific reasons for because of the audience, among other

Boni Wagner-Stafford  16:03

things. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. Because we I forgot. That is the first thing we do is we have a discussion with the author about who the reader is, what the reader expects, and what the goals of the author are for themselves and for the book. And then we talk about, before we really even dig into the manuscript too much we talk about what that means for the content that we're creating, because the what we do not want ever. And it happens a lot, not with, you know, published books, I mean, books published by publishers, necessarily, but it happens a lot more with self published books, where they don't necessarily understand the, I guess, the importance and the relevance of that kind of reader connection. But what we do not want is for the sales copy, and the cover to suggest one thing, and somebody buys the book and opens it up. And it's like, this isn't at all what I've been led to believe. Yeah, so that's one of the main reasons that we, and it informs everything I mean, who the reader is, tells you where you focus your marketing, because if you know who the reader is, you know where they are. And you pretty much know how to reach them, or gives you the information that

John Wagner-Stafford  17:17

size you need to go through. Right,

Boni Wagner-Stafford  17:19

exactly. So So layout is happening, the author is going away working on their on their endorsement wish list, we call it and and then when the layout is done, it's not the final proofread yet. But once we have the layout, and we have the cover concept, that's when and this can be eight to 12 months before published date. That's when we start to reach out to potential reviewers, that's when we start to let people get advanced copies of the book route for reader reviews, that's when we start to plan more of the activities around launch. That's when we also we give our authors a quite a bit of direction and support around getting professional author photos. It is not something that many publishers require we don't technically require it, but we strongly, strongly strongly recommend it. And you know, the the phone selfie, or the yearbook photo, or you know, your your business headshot from 10 years ago, usually won't cut it ain't gonna cut it. Yeah, it's, you know, we're in such a visual time now. And the photo of the author is used so many places, and in so many ways, it makes a big difference to and it's part of the branding exercise, part of the author branding exercise. So we give them lots of training and support about what how to prepare their photographer, how many shots, what kinds of shots, how they, how the photos might be used. So the author's going away and doing that. Well, you know, we're working on all of all of the other elements. And then while the layout is done, and we've got those advanced readers, now the final proofread, can start actually, it can't start until we have the endorsements back. So it's a bit of a crossover exercise there. But

John Wagner-Stafford  19:27

yes, and you know, one thing that might happen at this point would be you might start recording an audio book, if that's in the, in the plan, not not every book, or not every author or publisher wants to have an audio book for every book. But this is where you would start the audio book. And one interesting thing about the audio book is that you read the you get a narrator to narrate the audiobook and professional narrator and they they see it for the first time it's new content for them. And because they're professional, they bring In a certain quality of creativity to the product of the book, and sometimes they might have some great suggestions about how the flow works, not only for the audio book, but it might just affect the last layout changes with the last proofread changes that we do on the book. That's happened a couple of times with us, and they've been good changes.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  20:22

Yeah, it doesn't mean that all the changes, like I think there's another really important consideration. And we've had this happen both ways, which is sometimes they highlight things that are of they make, they make the book better. And so we change it before we publish. But also, the audiobook, it's a different product it is than the book. So it doesn't have to be exactly the same. We write and we read language differently, then we speak and absorb the hearing of it. And so, you know, I've narrated my own audiobooks, which we don't advise, but I spent a lot of time in television, I'm comfortable with the the narration bit. But for the best memoir, I know what is printed in front of me. But I also know what sounds more natural coming out of my mouth, it doesn't mean that because I'm speaking it that way in the audio book, I have to go back and make the change. But we digress. That's that's just

John Wagner-Stafford  21:20

to mention that that is where an audio book would fall in the production most often.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  21:25

Yeah. And you can come and do an audio book after at any time to its, but if you are, if it's part of the plan, that would be a good time to start doing it. Yeah, absolutely. So then we've got the proofread the cover, the endorsements are happening, reader reviews are happening, then we like to coach our authors. So this is about 90 days before published now we're coaching our authors on how to handle their launch. You know, whether they're going to do a launch team, what does the launch team going to look like? We have a whole video training series that we that we ask our authors to go through to help support them with that. And and only then when all of that is done. And the you know, is there going to be a PR initiative, you got to answer those questions, PR. And if you're doing any kind of PR that needs to start at least six months ahead of published date. If you're hoping for editorial reviews from any magazines that have a print schedule, any of the larger media outlets, even many of the smaller ones, you have to get to them six and seven months in advance. Also places like Publishers Weekly, some of the review sites Kirkus Reviews, for example, needs a minimum of four months, usually you can pay for a bit of a rush, but so all of those things have to happen. And when you rush it when you're like, okay, the manuscripts ready and I've got my layout now I'm going to publish you don't have you can't get any of that you

John Wagner-Stafford  23:00

don't get that stuff. And that is so important to supporting the, the getting the word out to the book. Yeah,

Boni Wagner-Stafford  23:07

yeah, exactly. So um, yeah. And then your it can be kind of anticlimactic. We also talk about your published day, is more of a technical thing than it is, you know, so we talk about a book launch, we talk about a book launch being a period of time, it's a, you know, several weeks before the actual tech Book button has been pushed in the book is actually published, and a couple of weeks after, because you want to make sure that you have a an appropriate level of activity that is designed to bring visibility to the book all over I mean, that that timeframe leading up to the technical publish day. And the first couple of weeks after is, is really important, that visibility that you can generate them is going to, in many cases, determine how visible your your book is. And an example is, Amazon has. And most of the digital retailers have some sort of algorithm that they say, Oh, look at all this activity. So we're going to show the book to more people, you know, somebody searches, or use the psychedelics book against somebody searches for mental health therapies with psychedelics, and a list of books comes up. And if if, during the pre order period and the pre published period, we've managed to get a lot of eyeballs on that Books page of the promise of psychedelics page, which which we did. It's going to show that book on that screen top rankings in the top right, you know, you know, viewers, searchers will see a list of potential books and you want your book to be in there if there's no activity, if you've not had the opportunity to We'll try to drive eyeballs to your page in advance. Amazon's not going to bother, it's not going to show up showing the book to potential people who could be looking for a book exactly like yours. So all really important stuff. But you can see why. All of a sudden, like, we actually there's no time wasted in our 18 month timeline. And you can see all of a sudden why, for a traditional publishing timeline, it's three years, and they've got the full year of the manuscript, of course, now I just wanted because because we're talking about this book, and I held up the cover for those watching on YouTube. But what I didn't do very well before this, the book is called publishing for profit, successful bottom line management for book publishers, it's the fifth edition. And it's written by Thomas Wal, W O, L, L. Now, the most recent, the fifth edition was from 2014. But I really wanted to read, we're running out of time here, but I really wanted to read this quote, it doesn't really have anything to do with go publishing timelines. But we were talking about self publishing versus traditional versus hybrid versus, you know, whatever else. But here is a quote from 2014, from inside the book, and I did not get explicit permission from Mr. Wall to read this quote, but it is very clearly from this book. And I will go and ask him, I will. It says throughout most of the 20th century, authors who self published were viewed as somewhat inferior to authors accepted for publication by legitimate publishers, publishers who offered their services to publish authors for a fee, or considered vanity presses. This stigma has largely disappeared, as the ability of authors to Self Publish has become easy. And the success of some of those authors has given them credibility and financial independence on better terms than those they might get by going through a regular meaning traditional publisher 2014. So I would say from the comments that I still see in social media groups, everywhere, that this stigma has not yet totally disappeared, but 2014 it was saying, you know, this stigma has largely disappeared. So if you're a self publishing author, or or you want to self up, there is nothing wrong with that. If you want to pay someone to help you publish, obviously, you make sure that they're reputable. You do your research, but there's nothing wrong with that if you want to pursue a traditional publishing deal. There's nothing wrong with that if you want to work with a hybrid publisher that shares in the investment and shares in the royalties on the other end. There's nothing wrong with that.

John Wagner-Stafford  27:52

Can I just add one thing before we go about this book, so publishing for publishing for profit success, which

Boni Wagner-Stafford  27:57

is kind of funny, who publishes for profit, there's no profit and publishing

John Wagner-Stafford  28:01

successful bottom line management for book publishers, you are an author, you are you in you may be a book publisher, you may be a book publisher. In fact, if you're self publishing, if you're self publishing, and you're doing all the work or hiring people to get the work done, but you're managing the project, you're funding it yourself. You are essentially a publisher. So this book is for you is very

Boni Wagner-Stafford  28:21

interesting. Yeah, yeah. Really good. So um, that is it. And look at that we were breezed blew through there, our self imposed 30 minute timeline, but we hope you found this interesting. Do let us know if there's something else you would like to hear more about related to publish timelines. Anything that you would like us to talk about or you have questions, we would love to hear from you and we will talk to you next time.

John Wagner-Stafford  28:52

Take care bye