Low Risk Publishing: How to Find the Most Promising Book to Invest In

Publishing has always been reliant on reading the public’s tastes and finding something that would cater to them perfectly. As simple as that sounds, the instances where a publisher could be absolutely sure that a book they are investing in is guaranteed to be a success are far and few between.

Audiences are fickle, but that’s not the worst of it, they are also easily bored. This means that even if you luck into a perfect book and attract inordinate amounts of attention, you are faced with the same problem that authors have — you can’t just keep following the same formula for success. In other words, what worked once, doesn’t necessarily have to work a second time.

This means that every book you publish, even those by acclaimed authors or those backed up by extensive and expensive market research, are not a safe investment as they rely on a number of contextual factors you simply cannot predict or know about.

While the surge in independent book publishing may have made the lives of traditional publishers more difficult in a number of ways, it has also given them an amazingly complex and rich infrastructure for finding new authors, assessing a whole range of their extra-literary talents, and deciding if their work is worth investing into. This post deals with how you can leverage that infrastructure to ensure that your next project is not a flop, and the particular qualities you should look for in the authors you are signing.

Self-publishing 3.0

Before getting into the ways to benefit from the current environment, we need to define its parameters and peculiarities. Since the first timid forays into being your own publisher in the 1990’s with advent of desktop publishing, authors have been getting increasing amount of independence and self-sufficiency.

The next step in the departure from the traditional publishing came with Amazon’s Kindle and the platform they provided to indie authors. Naturally, it didn’t take too long before this model turned from something liberating authors to something exploiting their new-found freedom. Everyone flocking to this one source meant:

1. That it was really difficult to stand out there
2. That there was nowhere else to stand out

While we have, of course, still not moved completely away from this system, people’s growing computer literacy and their dissatisfaction with Amazon’s monopoly helped them venture even further into independence, by becoming their own marketers, accountants and salesman. While they rely on different technologies when trying to achieve this, one stands out as a perfect solution for their problems, and that is blockchain.

How does this public ledger of transactions, initially used to allow for the creation and regulation of cryptocurrencies, fit into to the context of self-publishing? Like a round peg into a round hole, and here’s why:

1. It allowed authors to publish their work without worrying about someone plagiarizing it
2. It made it possible for them to get paid without involving banks or other regulatory bodies
3. It gave them an easy way to find and hire help, including but not limited to translators, editors, marketers, etc.
4. It ensured they would get royalties for their work, even after it’s been resold several times

Blockchain’s potential was soon recognized by platforms like Scriptarnica, who decided to use it to the benefit of authors as well as publishers. It gave authors a chance to have their work seen, critiqued and improved by the the community of peers, as well as to get paid for that work in increments even before it’s completed, by publishing and charging for chapters, individual poems or short stories.

While it’s obvious how this and similar platforms benefit authors, it might seem like they are not equally friendly to publishers and that they might even be making them obsolete. Here’s why that’s not true, and how publishers can use this new trend to avoid some risks which used to be inevitable.

Evaluate the author’s talent

There’s no way to know how many stellar books never saw the light of day just because the author’s submission was full of typos or the first reader had a bad day, but the figure is bound to be astronomical. At the same time, publishers often had to take the risk of investing in new authors just based on the single manuscript they submitted. You had no way of knowing if the rest of the book was to be as good and if the author really had the potential to turn into a lucrative investment.

On the other hand, the authors who have already had an impressive body of work behind them and were probably a safe bet, didn’t come cheap and you had to compete with other publishers to get them under your wing. This meant that you either had to take a risk, or pay through the nose for some peace of mind.

Self-publishing platforms which use blockchain technology make it much easier to seek out talented authors who still have not attracted the attention of your competitors. You get to:

• Evaluate their writing over a decent stretch of time to see if they are growing or stagnating as an author
• See if they are capable of learning from their mistakes and from the input of the community around them
• Find out how original and prolific they are
• Determine how competent they are at reading the current climate and responding to the demands of the market in terms of catering to the changing tastes of the audience
• You get to see all of their work, and perhaps recognize a diamond in the rough that they have given up on long ago, and that they would never even have thought of submitting for publication

Naturally, indie authors who are doing well enough on their own to attract your attention probably won’t be as timid when negotiating the contract as those without similar backup. However, it shouldn’t be too difficult to explain to them how not having to spend 90% of their working hours on marketing and only 10 on writing could help them grow as an artist.

Find independent authors who already have a following

As you very well know, initial traction can make or break a book’s chances of becoming a success. If it stays on the shelfs too long, that very fact adds up with the factors which caused it in the first place, and after a while, you can forget about hoping to actually make some money off of it.

Indie authors on platforms like Scriptarnica already have an audience, one that would gladly follow them in their exploration of the benefits of traditional publishing. What may be even more important than already having a following at the moment of publishing is that this following is in no small part made up of other authors, editors, translators, and other people with strong associations with literature. The benefits of this are twofold:

1. The endorsement of a highly informed audience is a great recommendation, and says a lot about the quality of the author
2. Just like authors themselves, they have a circle of people with similar interests around them, and are likely to recommend your work to those people

Again, just like with the previous point, some of the authors who have already managed to get a fair amount of people interested in them might need some coaxing before switching over to your team, but it’s still quite likely that most will cherish the opportunity that you are offering.

See how the author handles success and failure

Doing something as emotionally charged as baring your innermost desires, hopes and fears to the entire world, only to risk having them ridiculed, dismissed or ignored can take its toll even on the strongest personalities. When you also take into account the fact that the reasons causing the audience to love or hate an author are for the most part subjective and elusive, it’s no wonder that writing so often goes hand in hand with depression.

While it would be difficult to say which influences authors more profoundly, failure or success, there’s no denying that either could cause changes so drastic as to make the author impossible to work with. When assessing whether you are going to approach one of them with an offer, you should take a look at:

• Whether an author has let success go to their head and became deaf to all critics
• Did their relationship with the audience start turning sour as their popularity grew
• Has the quality of their work started dropping off as soon as they got some recognition
• Do they have the fortitude to get right back on the horse after suffering failure or do they resign themselves to wallowing in misery

The mentioned platforms allow you to examine the author’s behavior at these turning points, and give you some idea of how volatile they are. When you think about all the responsibilities author will still have once the book is out, knowing if they are likely to go back on your deal just because they got depressed or self-important depending on how the book is received, will drastically reduce the risk that comes with signing them on.

Focus on authors who are effective at self-promotion

When talking about author’s responsibilities which linger on even after the publishing, we mostly refer to their participation in marketing the book. They might be required to do book signings, interviews, TV or radio appearances, etc.

As we have already mentioned, in order to hope for any kind of success, self-published authors have to spend inordinate amounts of time on marketing their work. They are chasing down people on social networks; negotiating cross-promotion deals with other indie authors; building websites to promote the book and engaging in affiliate or PPC marketing to get as much eyes on their work as possible.

While their commitment and skills in this area are secondary to what they are like as a writer, they are by no means completely irrelevant when you are trying to assess how much of a risk would publishing their book entail.

Even if you don’t expect them to do much in this regard, working with someone who knows a bit about ancillary processes involved in publishing is bound to make your cooperation smoother and likelier to be successful.

The moment of truth

Despite all the preparations and research you do, you can never be sure if a book is going to be a success or not, but you can drastically improve the odds by taking a look at:

• The quality of author’s other work
• The size of their following
• How they deal with ups and downs in their career
• How good of a marketer they are

While their social network accounts or websites can help you find the answers to some of these questions, blockchain reliant platforms like Scriptarnica can give you infinitely more information thanks to the transparency and immutability of the public ledger. While some authors you find there may not be interested in making the switch to the traditional publishing model, those who do will be an open book to you right from the start (if you’ll pardon the phrasing), and very unlikely to be a source of bad surprises.