Author Interview: Stacie Vander Pol
April 22, 2009 by Lillie
My guest today is Stacie Vander Pol, the author of Top Self Publishing Firms: How Writers Get Published, Sell More Books, and Rise to the Top: and Make Money Working from Home with the Best Print On Demand Self-Publishing Companies
Lillie: Welcome, Stacie. It’s a pleasure to have you here. As I mentioned in my review post, you and I define self-publishing differently. Explain what you mean by self-publishing and self-publishing companies.
Stacie: By self-publishing, I mean taking it upon yourself to get published (and pay for the expense) rather than leaving the fate of your book to someone else. You can self-publish with the assistance of an existing company or by setting up your own little publishing firm. I have pursued both routes and there are advantages and disadvantages to each, depending on the number of books you wish to publish and your inclination toward business.
Lillie: I notice that you have taken your own advice and published your book through CreateSpace at Amazon.com. Are you happy with the results?
Stacie: I have been very pleased with CreateSpace and will most likely use them again.
Lillie: I appreciate that you emphasize that a book must be well-crafted. Do you think it’s important for authors to have their work edited? If so, do the companies you evaluate in your book offer editing services?
Stacie: No matter who you are, how well educated, or how detail oriented, you must have your book edited, preferably more than once. It should be edited for content and flow, consistency in formatting, as well as grammar and punctuation errors. I am amazed at some of the things I overlook, even after multiple read-throughs.
Many of the companies in Top Self Publishing Firms offer editing services, but you can often find a student or acquaintance to do it for less money.
Lillie: Or you can hire someone like me. Your book is encouraging that self-published books can become commercial successes. Tell us a little about your research. You give examples of successful titles published by self-publishing firms and describe books as being in the top 2%, 5%, etc. The top 2% or 5% of what?
Stacie: Before I decided to write Top Self Publishing Firms, I was looking for a book like it and couldn’t find the information I needed compiled in a book, online, or anywhere else. I was curious about self-publishing companies, but I was only interested if I knew my book had a chance to succeed. I found plenty of information regarding publishing costs and distribution but nothing on sales performance. I started doing all of the cumbersome research on my own, and soon realized it would make a great resource for other writers.
To prove that self-published titles can succeed, I list hundreds of titles that are performing in the top 15% of sales on Amazon. This is based roughly on the 1.2 million titles ranked by Neilson BookScan. Using the top 1 million titles in the Amazon ranking system, one can draw a conclusion that books that consistently rank at 150,000 or better, are perfoming in the top 15% percent of books sold on Amazon. Several services are available that track and compile a title’s long-term Amazon sales rankings.
Because the industry is so tight-lipped about sales numbers, this method is the best one I know for determining a book’s performance.
Lillie: You provide a great deal of specific information about the services individual companies offer as well as the pricing options. How often do changes occur? Will you have to update your book to keep the information current?
Stacie: Likely because of the economy, the firms discussed in the book haven’t made many changes since the book was first published. I have noticed that several are offering promotions and special deals on their Web sites. In fact, when I published through CreateSpace, they were running a special that made it free to publish. I didn’t have to pay a dime to have my book published.
A book of this nature will need to be updated every year or two, depending on how quickly things change.
Lillie: You offer advice about leveraging Amazon.com that can be useful to all authors interested in promoting their books on Amazon.com, no matter how they are published. Give us a taste of some of the ways authors can increase their sales on Amazon.
Stacie: Start by ensuring your listing is accurate, and if it’s not, take steps to correct it. Next, take advantage of the ways in which Amazon allows authors to participate in the promotion process. For instance, you can submit search words relevant to your book that will help customers find your title. You can also create tags that do the same thing. Both of these can currently be accessed from your book’s detail page. The idea is to make your book easier to find and more likely to come up based on the search words most fitting to your title.
To give your book detail page a feeling of activity, set up a blog that will appear on the page and create at least one entry. A blog can make an otherwise, lonely detail page look full of life and interest. You can set up an Amazon blog through Amazon Connect.
Lillie: Amazon will even carry your existing blog on your book page. A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye appears on the page with Dream or Destiny
I also recommend getting as many reviews for your book as you can. This can be difficult and requires some time commitment, but if your book is well written, you will be rewarded. Amazon reviewers can be found on the Amazon Web site. Many of them list an e-mail address in their profiles. Most will say no or ignore your email, but you will eventually get a few yeses.
Additionally, you can list a Web address or e-mail address on the copyright page or in your back matter. When you receive praise for your book, ask for a review.
Lastly, the most important thing you can do to sell more books on Amazon is to sell more books on Amazon, meaning that the more copies you sell on Amazon, the more likely they are to put your title at the top of the search results page, which almost guarnatees more sales.
Lillie: Where can readers learn more about you and your work? Where can they purchase Top Self-Publishing Firms?
Stacie: Readers can email me at topselfpublishers at gmail dot com. They can purchase the book on Amazon.
Lillie: I’ve added an Amazon link at the end of this interview to make it easy to buy the book now. Thank you for visiting A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye, Stacie. Is there anything else you would like to share with us that I haven’t asked you?
Stacie: I would just like to encourage all of the writers out there to keep trying, to take a risk, and to put yourself out there. If you really want to be published, and you don’t want to wait years for it to happen, consider self-publishing. It’s an excellent option. If you write a great book, you can see outstanding sales results and often make more in royalties than you would with a traditional publisher.
I did, and I’ve been very happy with the outcome.
Stacie will be coming back throughout the day to respond to comments and answer questions. What would you like to know about Top Self-Publishing Firms?
Hi Lillie! Thank you for introducing us to Stacie and the world of self-publishing and Amazon book sales. It’s been extremely useful and I think it will prove to be the pat on the back some writers need to seriously consider this option.
Alina,
You’re welcome! I’m glad the interview was helpful.
Thank you Stacie/Lillie for an interesting discussion.
I wonder how significant the trend toward self publishing will be and how much of an impact it will have upon the large publishing houses over the longer term.
I like your point about having your material edited prior to publishing. It’s hard enough to guarantee complete accuracy with even short pieces of writing like a blog post (my mother recently told me that I often mistakenly write ‘their’ when I need to write ‘there’), so I can’t imagine how hard this would be with a publication of several hundred pages.
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Andrew,
Stacie will be by later to respond, but I’ll go ahead and give my opinion.
I believe self-publishing will become more and more popular. One reason is that is very difficult to be published by a traditional publisher. Many writers self-publish because they have been rejected by traditional publishers or don’t want to go through the long and tedious process to submission and rejection before eventually—if they are lucky—being accepted.
Some of the books rejected by traditional publishers are rejected because they are poorly written. When the writers of those books self-publish, unfortunately, they may insist on doing everything their way, which probably means they don’t get the book edited and don’t take professional advice on other aspects of publishing. These are the books that give self-publishing a bad name in many quarters.
Other books, however, are rejected simply because they “don’t meet the needs” of the publisher. That’s a phrase writers hate to hear in rejection letters, but we hear it often because it is so often true. Each publisher has its own marketing plan, target audience, standards, current inventory, and a good book may not fit. Since it is easier than ever for writers to self-publish, many of these writers will publish their own books but do it right. They will have their work edited, and they will use a company that provides excellent professional publishing services or they will seek and follow good advice if they form their own self-publishing company.
Although traditional publishers may not get submissions from some excellent writers who choose to self-publish, I doubt there will ever be a shortage of good writers who choose traditional publishing.
The publishing industry is in trouble for a lot of reasons, but self-publishing is more apt to be a response to the problems—not a cause of them.
Traditional publishers will eventually have to deal with this the same way those of the music industry did. Not necessarily because of content sharing, but because the move toward online shopping (Amazon and B&N.com)places self-published authors on equal footing with them. They no longer have the final say over what content is published or which books are purchased.
Because of that, it’s a very exciting time to be in writing and publishing. The barriers are coming down and more opportunities are available to a wider span of authors than ever before.
Thanks Stacie. This was very informative.
Bluestocking,
I found it interesting that Stacie’s information can be helpful to all authors even if they are published by a different method.
Thank you, Lillie, for sharing this intervew, and Stacie for the helpful information!
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Connie,
You’re welcome. I like to interview authors and learn more about their work, especially when it will be helpful to readers.
Whats interesting here is too see how two authors/editor’s talk to each other (the topics of conversation)
What I agree hands down is the point that every book must be professionally edited before even thinking of publishing. The same applies to blog posts too.
Having grammatical mistakes in books from top brands makes the readers feel a bit down.
sriraj,
Naturally as an editor, you would expect me to say writing should be edited before it is published. But I believed that even before I became an editor. I’m glad to see you agree.
You certainly gave a nice overview together with your guest author what it is that a writer must need just in case he or she wants to publish his books.
Thanks for enlightening me as well.
Anna
Anna,
Glad you found the interview enlightening.
Wow! I enjoyed this post.
“I would just like to encourage all of the writers out there to keep trying”
This means a lot to those who wants to be writers.
Uprinting (if you wrote YourName@Keywords, I could address you as a real person, and you would still get your keyword link),
Stacie’s words are very encouraging to aspiring writers.
Stacie, I have a question here. How many years did you take to write and compile this book? And, what’s the most valuable lesson did you learn during the period?
Good question, wilson. I look forward to Stacie’s answer.
Yeah, hopefully, Stacie would spend a couple of minutes and answer my question here, Lillie!
Hi Wilson,
I spent about 7 months putting the book together. Once I had it in final form, I had to go back and re-research all of the firms, to update any policy or price changes.
I think the most valuable lesson I learned was that if I did something to make progress everyday, I would eventually reach my goal. Starting a book can be daunting, but getting to the middle and realizing how much work you still have ahead of you can be paralyzing. I found that by doing at least one thing to move myself forward everyday, I could maintain my focus and motivation to eventually finish it.
Hi Stacie,
WoW, thanks for the reply. Yeah, I have to admit that writing isn’t an easy task, especially if you’re one of the well-known writers, as you have to maintain your writing quality from time to time.
Keep up the good work, Stacie! By the way, Lilllie. Thanks for giving the opportunity to ask Stacie some questions here.
wilson,
Glad to offer the opportunity and glad Stacie was able to give helpful responses.
I like the look of Stacie’s book. Even though it’s self-published, it has a professional cover. That can make a big difference in whether I, or someone else, pick it up – or click to buy.
Helen,
A good cover is so important. When I work with authors who are self-publishing, I always encourage them to have the cover professionally designed. In spite of the saying that you can’t judge a book by its cover, people do it all the time.
This is a good read and a great resource for anyone looking to self publish their own books. With the resources available online these days, I would not be surprised to see more people take advantage of this in the future.
Tony,
More and more people are taking advantage of the opportunity to self-publish. Some will do it right, following the advice of Stacie and other self-publishing experts. Others will do it their way and will probably be less successful.
Great points. Especially on the point about the need for editing of one’s book. The book would have a different view from another person aside from the writer.
In every great writer has one great editor.
River,
I appreciate your support of editors.
Lillie/Stacey,
Thank you both for the depth of your responses to my question.
I suppose that as long as the big name authors are prepared to use them, large publishing houses will be around for awhile yet.
That said, I am glad the ability to self publish has provided authors with an alternative option to the traditional paths within the publishing process.
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You’re welcome, Andrew. I’m very glad authors have the publishing options we have today.
Stacie gave me a review copy of her book “Top Self Publishing Firm” last summer. I wish I had read a book like hers before I started searching for a self publishing company. It would’ve saved me six months of research.
Brandon,
Stacie has done a huge amount of research to make it easy for authors to find the right company for them.
I am just starting to try my luck as an author so this interview have valuable information I can definitely use.
Good luck with your writing, Ebony. Glad you found the interview helpful. If you are still considering how you will publish, be sure to download my free Self-Publishing Primer.
Thank you for the interview. I was glad to read about CreateSpace and her positive experience with it.
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Dan,
It’s always good to hear firsthand experience rather than reading ads.
Thanks Stacie and Lille for your useful information
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acai (if you wrote YourName@Keywords, I could address you as a real person, and you would still get your keyword link),
You’re welcome. I enjoyed interviewing Stacie.
Stacie, as soon as your book is in ebook format, I will be ordering it. One questions: How much space in your book do you give to rating the Print-on-Demand companies?
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Aggie,
You’re like me—I just don’t read print. Unless it’s large print, it’s too hard to decipher.
I had forgotten that Stacie’s book isn’t available as an e-book. I reviewed a PDF, but perhaps Stacie sent me a copy of the file created for printing. I only read and review electronic formats, but if the book is available only in print, I will read and review a manuscript copy in Word or PDF.
Stacie has general information at the first of the book, then she has a section with a couple of pages on each of the major POD publishers with specific information (available services, pricing, strengths, weaknesses, …) and a general rating of each. So authors can decide which combination of services and pricing works best for them.
Hope you and Stacie connect and hope Stacie does make the book available in e-formats.
Thankx, Lillie. We connected! I’m also interviewing her as I run my self-publishing series. Thank YOU for making me aware of Stacie’s work!
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I’m glad you connected, Aggie. I’m looking forward to reading your self-publishing series.
Great interview by Stacie Vander Pol, very inspirational for us self published authors trying to make it big in the book and blog publishing world. Thanks.
Jim,
Glad the post was motivational for you.