Well, I think (hope!) I’m all packed and ready for the Big Bead Show tomorrow. I’m not sure whether I’m more excited about the results of the British Bead Awards (I’ve reached the finals in the seed bead non-jewellery category again), or teaching my first mini masterclass at Sandown, or doing a book signing session in the afternoon! I’m going to have all my books with me, but will be signing copies of Sweet Treats and also offering a special show discount.
Life has been even busier than usual, so my blog has been suffering (as you’ve probably noticed!). However, the last time I wrote a blog I think I made a rash promise to write more about my publishing experiences. Since much of the reason for my increased workload has been the publication of my series of Beaded Christmas books, it seemed like a good time to reflect on that experience.
I published my first book back in 2010. It kind of happened by accident: I had ended up making a few miniature beaded cakes for friends. When I realised how much they were appreciated and how many different occasions they could celebrate, I felt I wanted an excuse to explore all the ideas I was having. I also stumbled upon a company called ‘Blurb’ – this must have been around the time that the self-publishing market was taking off. Basically, Blurb allowed anyone to download software that featured a range of different book designs and possible page layouts, along with the option to create your own customised layouts. It was then easy to add images to the image areas on a page and type text into the text boxes. As I recall, the software guided me through creating the contents page, although I don’t think it was fully automated, so I still had to be careful to add the correct page numbers! It also allowed for things like a title page, index and help with designing a front and back cover. Once everything had been put in place, I simply had to hit a button to upload the file and Blurb then stored it and will print copies on demand. It was incredibly easy to use and perfect for my experimental stage. I had no idea whether anyone would be interested in miniature beaded cakes and I hadn’t had the confidence to approach one of the mainstream craft publishers with the idea. I suspect it may not have been accepted anyway!
So, for the first few months I was very happy with my little project. People were buying the book and sending me very kind emails and photos of the cakes that they had been making (I’ve really loved hearing the stories of different cakes and the occasions that they were made to celebrate!). Unfortunately, I soon recognised two problems: firstly, in my total naivety, I hadn’t really thought about the importance of an ISBN. There are some self-publishing companies (Lulu is one), that include an ISBN for their customers, but I had been focused on the cost of the book and, not having a huge budget to spend on the project, I had opted for the cheapest company. For anyone else who, (as I was), isn’t sure what an ISBN is, the acronym stands for International Standard Book Number and it is basically an identity code for a book. It is registered centrally in each country and enables book sellers, wholesalers and everyone else in the industry to access all the details about the book (publisher, price, title etc) and also to order stock. Basically, if a book doesn’t have an ISBN, it doesn’t ‘officially’ exist and it can be very hard to sell it commercially. On the other hand, if it does have an ISBN, it automatically appears on Amazon (even if it’s not officially available for sale) and it can show up in wholesaler databases, so it’s a whole lot easier to sell!
I soon discovered that actually anyone can buy an ISBN – in the UK, they are purchased from Nielsen and it costs a little over £100 for ten ISBNs (just to clarify, as this confused me initially, that is an identity for each of ten different books). You can buy larger quantities if you are a publishing house with a lot of books to produce. So it was possible for me to sort out that little problem.
Problem number two was one over which I had no control. The real advantage of Blurb had been that it allowed me to print as few books as I needed – I think the first print run I did was for just 30 books. That made it affordable and reduced the risk of me ending up with hundreds of books that I couldn’t sell. I was basically able to test the market and respond to the way in which it reacted – brilliant! That is, until Blurb started putting up prices! Suddenly I found it was costing me more to print the book than the price that I had been selling it for. This was a huge dilemma. I felt there were still people out there who would buy the book, so it hadn’t really reached the end of its life-span, but at the same time, could I justify increasing prices? Of course print costs decrease substantially when you print in larger quantities. For every print run, the machinery has to be set up to the specific book, so it’s much more efficient to set it up once and print 10,000 copies than set it up once for 10 copies, then reset it for another 10 copies and so on. However, doing a large print run involves a very large up-front cost. Although the cost per book may be lower, it still costs a lot more to print 10,000 books at £2 each than 10 books at £20 each. So, this begged the question of how much risk I could afford to take?
About a year after ‘Let’s Celebrate’ had come out, it looked as though its life might be coming to an abrupt end! Happily, though, that didn’t happen: in a bid to solve the problems I had come across, I ended up taking two more journeys through the publishing industry: another self-publishing project that resulted in Sweet Treats and my first venture with an established publisher, Vivebooks, that resulted in Bead Flowers and Wedding Bouquets. As many of you will know, Let’s Celebrate received a new lease of life in the form of ‘Miniature Beaded Cakes’ (which by the way is on offer with a free Halloween Cake pattern until the end of October), but it was quite a journey. So, I’m going to leave the rest of that journey on a cliff-hanger and ask you all to tune back in to my next blog if you want to find out what happened next!
