Some writers hone their craft for years without ever showing their work to anyone. Countless others have several manuscripts that they periodically dust off and revise, keeping them in a drawer but never quite able to finish them. It is the rare author who sets out to tell a very specific story intended only for a handful of readers, but that’s exactly what Jeffrey Blount, a television director in Washington, D.C., did a couple of years ago. He wrote a novel about two high school girls who are best friends until a tragedy threatens to destroy their friendship and the girls’ well-being. Blount’s plan was simply to give the manuscript—in a binder—to his daughter and her best friend as a gift to celebrate their high school graduation. With some encouragement, however, he ended up self-publishing, getting the book into several brick-and-mortar retailers and receiving some favorable reviews.

Here, Blount writes about his young-adult novel, which he published in October 2012. To provide commentary on his experience, I asked Anna Sproul-Latimer, an agent with the Washington, D.C.–based literary agency Ross Yoon, and Bradley Graham, co-owner of the D.C. bookstore Politics & Prose, for their observations.

The Author’s Approach
Jeffrey Blount, author of Hating Heidi Foster 

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I have always loved reading and writing. In my tenth-grade English class, I was assigned to write a descriptive paragraph. I used my imagination to write about someone who was homeless, and I expected my classmates to criticize me but they didn’t. That’s when I realized that my writing could have an effect on people. I dabbled a bit, working for my hometown weekly, the Smithfield Times, when I was a little older, and I attended Virginia Commonwealth University. My first internship was at the CBS affiliate in Richmond. I found I really liked directing, so I wasn’t focused on writing as a career. 

I wrote a novella in 1990, when my wife was working in Israel and I had a lot of time on my own. It was eventually published by a small press, but not much happened. When my wife returned and our lives got busier, my fiction writing became a hobby. I began writing documentary scripts, and although I wanted to get back to my novels, I didn’t have the time.

But I knew that I had a story to tell for my daughter, Julia, and her best friend, Emily, and I wanted to complete it by the time the girls were in their senior year of high school. It took about six months to write Hating Heidi Foster. While I was in the carpool line, I wrote scenes in my head and recorded ideas on my smartphone so I wouldn’t forget them. I was working an 11:30 AM to 7:30 PM shift, so I would drop my son at school, come home and write until it was time for me to go to work, then write again at night from 8:30 to 11:00.

When I finished the book, I took a few weeks off before I read it again, this time with fresh eyes. I did a second and third pass but I was still only planning to give it to Julia, Emily, and our families. However, a friend who had self-published his own book said that I needed to produce a “real book.” A literary agent friend agreed to read it. Some small publishers expressed interest but ultimately the agent couldn’t place it.

I decided to self-publish and began reading about the process. It’s a little like investing; to avoid being taken advantage of, I needed to learn a great deal. I kept doing research online and found that many experienced publishing people had left major publishers and started boutique companies to help authors like myself. Working with these experts made sense; I knew the book needed a professional edit, a skillfully designed cover, and some form of distribution. 

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I worked with Michele DeFilippo, owner of 1106 Design (1106design.com [2]), and several people she recommended. I provided a Photoshop mock-up of the cover idea I had, but the designer created a much stronger version. Ultimately, I had six options and did an informal survey by showing them to my daughter and her friends. After all, if they were the target audience, they should pick the cover. To learn how I could reach a wider audience, I read about and researched Darcie Chan, whose e-book The Mill River Recluse was a best-seller. She explained that she sent out review requests to bloggers around the country. I knew that I didn’t have the time, nor was I familiar with bloggers who would be interested in Hating Heidi Foster. Again, on recommendations from 1106 Design, I hired the Cadence Group (thecadencegrp.com [3]) to promote my book, primarily through social media, for four months.

After I received some very favorable reviews from bloggers and on Amazon, I looked into other people who could help me get more publicity. I was in touch with an old friend who mentioned a “hot” young ad agency in Miami. I ended up hiring Blink PR (blinkpr.com [4]) for about nine months; this agency got me more print, online, and radio coverage.

I loved doing events, especially at schools. At Northwood High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, the book was included in a lesson to some eighty kids who were tested on it! The first book-club meeting I spoke at was attended by adult women in their fifties. 

I honestly didn’t follow the sales a lot. I was happy the book was available in my hometown, in D.C., and in many libraries. I knew that most authors just break even or make just a little profit, and that’s how I approached the process. (All told, I made a modest five-figure investment in the book, including marketing and publicity.) Truthfully, I could have been smarter about the book launch. I didn’t plan; I just posted on Twitter and Facebook after the fact. I should have been talking with the marketers and publicists well before publication. I could have come out of the gate a lot stronger and gotten more advance publicity.

Still, publishing Hating Heidi Foster was invaluable in getting recognized. People said I had writing talent; I was approached by several agents who wanted to represent me. I’m not sure whether I’ll self-publish my next book or use an agent, but now I have a choice. Getting critical acclaim and being recognized as a writer with talent by people in the industry is wonderful.

Although my son thinks it’s only fair that I write a book for him, I have an idea for an adult novel. And I’ve got pieces of another novel that has been in the drawer for so long that the word-processing program I used to write it doesn’t exist anymore! I’m having that book retyped and I’m thinking about revising it as well.

An Agent’s Take 
Anna Sproul-Latimer has been an agent with the Washington, D.C.–based literary agency Ross Yoon for nearly a decade. She speaks at writers conferences around the world and also attends book fairs as she searches for new clients. In addition, she manages the agency’s foreign-rights list and also edits and ghostwrites books. 

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It’s obvious the author spent time preparing the book for publication. The cover art is lovely, and the paper stock is good. I was very impressed by how few typos I caught; usually in self-published books, I’m seeing quite a lot of errors.

It is incredibly hard for any book, especially a self-published book, to get noticed. We encourage our clients to think about their target audience in terms of concentric circles. For this book, the primary audience is fourteen-year-old girls attending private school in Washington, D.C.  The other communities that might be interested would be families whose children attend private school, the firefighting community, and colleagues of the author.  

When you’re promoting a book, you need to reach out to anyone who knows you or to members of any communities that might be interested in the issues raised in the book. How you reach out varies. You could send an e-mail blast to friends and family; in other cases a phone campaign might be effective. If you’re comfortable with social media, you should use it, provided you can be natural and comfortable.

Like Blount, who was writing the book for his daughter and her friend, some authors have a vision for their book and want to share their experience with family or friends. These authors don’t have to worry about whether their books are commercially viable, but for writers who want to find a publisher or attract a wide readership, they should think about their audience before they even put pen to paper. At writers conferences, I ask the attendees if they know the top ten best-sellers in their particular category; most people have no idea. You need to know what people are reading and what books are selling. 

Authors must do their homework. That means reading publishing blogs like janefriedman.com [6] or bookriot.com [7]. The fiction community is extremely generous and active. Authors should be on Twitter so they can get into conversations with other authors, agents, and editors. You want to start participating in these discussions before your book is published. People will rave about new books, especially novels, on Twitter—that’s how word spreads.

Writing a blog is also a good promotional tool, but you want to deliver valuable content that people can use. Write on topics that people care about. Think strategically about how you can build an audience that wants to hear your voice.

A Bookseller’s Perspective 
Bradley Graham, co-owner of Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., was a reporter with the Washington Post and is the author of two nonfiction books. He, along with his wife, purchased the thirty-year-old independent bookstore in 2011. 

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For almost three years we’ve had an Espresso Book Machine we call Opus, which people can use to print their own books at the store. They’re clearly identified as being printed on Opus. A small number have been very successful, including Making English Grammar Meaningful and Useful, a two-volume set for students and teachers by John Nelson and Tymofey Wowk. Most of our self-published books sell a few dozen copies and aren’t picked up by major publishing houses, but success for a self-published book shouldn’t be measured by the number of copies sold. Success happens when authors work closely with us, or on their own, to create a book that will be available for a long time.

We do take on books published elsewhere on consignment, such as Hating Heidi Foster. There’s not a formal review process but we would be overwhelmed if we didn’t require that the authors live in the D.C. area and be members of the store (for a modest annual fee). If a self-published book is not offensive or doesn’t violate the norms of good taste, we’ll take a few copies and display them, generally in a section labeled Self-Published. It’s important that the books not look amateurish; they should be printed on quality stock, have a designed jacket, be a standard trim size, etc.

We sold a handful of copies of Blount’s novel. It was a slim book, though, and while the writing was good, it seemed more like a novella than a full-length work.  

Given the number of books being published, we in the independent bookselling community can hand-sell and tirelessly appeal to our customers so that we can raise some titles above others and stir some buzz for a book that might otherwise not get noticed. Even so, it can be hard to get books to become popular beyond a local area.

An author needs to try every angle—social media, going to local bookstores, pulling every string, calling in every favor with everyone in the mainstream print or broadcast arena—to get a book noticed. Even with these efforts, it’s tough for novels to get attention. If you self-publish a nonfiction book on a specific topic and the media needs an expert on that subject—such as ISIS or Ebola—then you become a talking head and your book gets attention. A few novels, such as Fifty Shades of Grey, take off, which gives hope to every other self-published novelist. But it’s important for self-published authors to be realistic or they’re going to be very disappointed. 

Debra W. Englander is a New York–based freelance editor and writer. She managed a business-book program at John Wiley & Sons for nearly seventeen years and previously worked at Money magazine and Book-of-the-Month Club. She has written about business and books for numerous publications, including USA Today, Good Housekeeping, and Publishers Weekly.