[VIDEO] A Road Map to Self-Publishing | Video Interview with FriesenPress’s Emily Perkins

Are you currently writing a book? Do you get lost in the process? Can’t establish a consistent routine? Maybe you’ve written your book but don’t know where to begin to get it published.

A recent masterclass interview with our very own Emily Perkins might be just what you’re looking for.

FriesenPress Publishing Consultant Emily Perkins is featured as a self-publishing expert in a masterclass series called Writing Your First (or next) Book hosted by Traci Skuce—writer, teacher, story midwife, and founder of The Writing Journey. They discuss the power of self-publishing, the process of producing and releasing your book, and so much more.

Publishing a book is a personal journey that's entirely unique to every writer. Emily has helped hundreds of authors begin that journey, and you could be the next one.

Watch her in-depth interview charting the road map to self-publishing (or read the transcript) below:

For publishing inquiries, call 1-800-792-5092 or book an appointment here:

---

Transcript of Traci’s Interview with Emily Perkins

Traci: Hello everyone, and welcome to Write Your First or Next Book. The masterclass series to help you keep your butt in the chair, write or revise your fiction or memoir, and send it off for publication.

I'm Traci Skuce, writer, story midwife, and founder of The Writing Journey. And I help writers write and finish their best stories and get them out into the world. 

Emily also does that good work of helping writers get their stories out into the world. Emily Perkins is the Senior Publishing Consultant at FriesenPress, the largest publishing services provider in Canada. Her publishing career spans over twenty years and the globe. She spent years in Amsterdam working in graphic design and later worked as a typesetter and proofreader in the financial printing industry. Emily's eclectic experience allows her to provide a holistic approach to her part in guiding the FriesenPress sales team, who work to ensure authors self publish the best books possible. 

Welcome, Emily. 

Emily: Thank you, Traci. It's nice to talk to you today. 

Traci: It's great to have you with us. I'd love for you to talk about how you ended up in the publishing industry and this side of publishing as well, the self-publishing world, and how you ended up at FriesenPress.

Emily : I was born in Toronto. I lived for a while, as you mentioned, in the Netherlands. I eventually ended up coming back to Canada and that's when I worked in the financial industry. In financial printing and publishing, there is absolutely no room for errors. The work we were doing involved mutuals and financial information, and it was work that was going to be published and available on the Internet for shareholders, as well as material that was then printed and sent out to them.

I was sort of within that time where it was going from printed type to typesetting on a computer. I was that generation. I apprenticed like that for quite a few years with some of the original lead-type typesetters, and then I was also a proofreader there. It was one of those things where you had to proofread a page, typeset, and many different things to gain perfection in the work that we did, because there was just no room for error. Eventually, I moved on to be an account manager for some of those big jobs. These were jobs that were affecting financial companies around the world.

Then 9/11 hit and the financial industry took a bit of a turn, so I moved on. Eventually doing a lot of graphic design work and marketing pieces for the company I worked for, but I also created a twenty-four-plus-page book they used to facilitate the sales of the products that they were selling. I did that from start to finish on my own, as well as being a consultant for them and others. I wore many hats, and I’m pretty worldly in my background, having lived in other parts of the world as a foreigner. 

I came to FriesenPress because I moved from Toronto to B.C. I was still doing my previous job at the time, and then I found this listing at FriesenPress and thought it was a perfect fit with my background in printing as well as my understanding of graphics and typesetting. It was a really good match and I've been here ever since. I moved out to B.C., started working here, and haven’t looked back.

Traci: Let's go through the stages that you work with the author. I was under the impression that, if I had a manuscript that was ready to go and wanted to self-publish, I would come to you. But you work with writers even earlier than that.

Emily: Some authors research publishing options at different stages. Some people come to me when they haven't even started writing their book. They know they have a story to tell, but they don't know how to start. They don't know how to stay on track. And so we start early by giving them some advice on how to get writing, and how to stay on track by writing regularly. 

As writers, if you're taking what you are doing seriously, the best way to go about it is really to stay in the writing stage initially and schedule it so that you're giving yourself a bit of time every single day to write, because as writers always tell me, it's best to stay on track. Your story stays front of mind. You keep working on it. You see progression. It gets easier to write. So sometimes I'm helping them even to get to a rough draft stage.

They could come to me with ideas. I can help them with identifying how to go about the best way to do various things for everything from poetry books to business books. 

Traci: Let's say you do have someone who's got their first or even their third or fourth draft and they're ready to publish. How would you advise them?

Emily: I'd like to talk to them and find out what they're particularly needing and really just sharing information and finding out what’s a good fit for them. There's so many options in publishing and it’s such a personal journey. For most writers, their book is their latest baby, essentially. What they need really depends on who they are, what they're looking to achieve, where they want to go. Some authors come to me, they finished a rough draft, they feel good about it, but they don't know. They haven't had constructive feedback. Some aren't in writers’ groups. Some have been keeping the story close to them and haven't shared it with friends, family, or anyone for feedback. Also, the details that a professional editor, for example, can give them is very, very different than what they've gotten from friends, family, and beta readers.

It depends. What I recommend for them really depends on them. We offer full publication services from start to finish, including a service called an Editor's Manuscript Evaluation (EME). Often, and especially for first time writers, they start at the EME because they need to have some sort of criticism on what they have to find out the full scope of their needs for publication. Sometimes that's in order to find out the budget as well as whatever else they need.

That’s the start of the process that FriesenPress takes with every single book we work on. That’s one of the reasons we produce quality books because we take the same approach that traditional publishing would, except our authors have ownership and creative control in what they're doing.

Traci: I noticed that, and I thought that was a really brilliant weave to bring the editorial process into self-publishing instead of relying, as you say, on friends and family.

Emily: It's there for so many reasons because some authors we work with maybe are looking to try and get a traditional offer. And because it's getting harder and harder, it's always good to have your manuscript in the most prepared state before even approaching them or approaching a literary agent. The evaluation is a great way to find out what you've got, what changes potentially need to be done and what type of editing needs to be done, because our editors are all professionals. What that means is until they have read and assessed that manuscript, they will not jump in and start editing. That's another piece that differentiates us from a lot of these other assisted self-publishing companies. Many will offer standard copy editing because that's all they can do. We have all types of editing, everything from a complex edit to a developmental edit. There's a lot that we can offer, but our editors need to define what needs to be done before stepping in and doing the editing for them.

Traci: That's really a service unto itself. If you've decided, “OK, I want to try traditional publishing”, you could still go hire someone through one of those editorial packages and really get a thorough review. That's great to know. Such a great service, and really valuable for a lot of writers.

Could you talk about the advantages of self-publishing, but also some obstacles people run into or common mistakes people make in their forays into self-publishing?

Emily: I would say the beauty of self-publishing is that you have control over your project. If people have a true vision for how they want to see their book, that's what self-publishing can give them. 

Now, there's different levels, not everybody is publishing a book for the same reasons. Some people are doing it as a legacy project and just small for friends and family, but they still want to have a beautiful book. Other people would love to publish and then become a writer full time. It really depends. I have to say that with the changes that are occurring in the publishing industry, I find there's more and more authors that are coming from traditional publishing, getting their back catalogue and moving into self-publishing. It tends to be because the budgets are getting smaller. They’re usually—a frequent amount of time now—finding they have to market their own book. This is where I talk to people about the differences because there are pros and cons to both. There's an investment to be made into self-publishing, but there’s a benefit that you can do your book the way you want. You're not told how it's going to be edited or how it needs to be done.

When a client works with us, we give a lot of recommendations and we really hope that the client is interested in following us on our recommendations because we're really trying to help them. But they have control of it, it's really in their ultimate and final control. That’s where there can be some issues. Some people don't take the time to really review their book at the layout stage and realize the value of editing, at times. There's three elements to consider: speed, quality, and price, and you can't have all. If you want quality, you need to be able to invest and take the time. If you try and speed something up, you're going to end up sacrificing quality, and if you don't feel like you have the budget, you're better off waiting and saving or trying to fundraise for publishing or finding another way to do it. If you go out and you cheat on some things like editing or on the marketing side of things, you may not hit the success you're looking for. That's where there’s a lot of speaking to authors and guiding them towards their particular needs for what they want to achieve.

Traci: What would be some of those recommendations? For instance, what do you recommend for marketing strategies or do you have a whole host of recommendations for writers? Could give us a sense of what those are?

Emily: When it comes to marketing, we have a team of book promotion specialists and their job is to work one-on-one to figure out what the promotion plan is, what they want to achieve from publishing, and what kind of work they're willing to do on the marketing side. 

It tends to be dependent on the type of book, the target market, if that client is looking to try and achieve physical bookstores stocking their book, or if they're more focused on believing they're going to make big sales online. Are they interested in doing work to promote themselves through social media or are they trying to get into bookstores to do readings or signings?

It really depends on the book and the client, but the foundations of the work that our book promotion specialists do is a book promotion plan. The way we see it is we know that the marketing of a book needs to be ongoing. Knowledge is power, and we want to educate our authors so that they learn how they can control doing this themselves. David Chilton, The Wealthy Barber, is a very good example of that. He sold seven million copies of that book, but that did not happen overnight. That book came out and it didn't really take off until about five years after that when he really started to see sales. It needs to be ongoing, so regularly finding new ways to reach people about your book, what you've done, and what you're doing.

Traci: It sounds like you really not only support your writers, but you really take the time to educate them.

Emily: Absolutely! That's why I encourage any writer to reach out even if they feel like they’re not ready to talk yet. It's very good to take time to do the research while you are still writing. It's part of the planning. If you're planning for your book and the writing of your book, then you also should consider what you do after that. It's good to get in a little bit early, get some support, and find out some details.

Normally what I do with authors is give them a little bit of information at the time, set them on their route, support them with writing support through email, and then as they progress, they start to send me details: “I need to chat. I'm starting to craft my book. It was really helpful to talk to you. And now I figured out a few things.” Otherwise, let's face it, a lot of writers, even pre-COVID, were very solo artists. They tend to keep to themselves. I would be scared of some of the companies that work in publishing because they're not very helpful. We are very, very different and give a lot of support to people throughout and then we really can truly step in once they have at least a rough draft. But there's a lot of support for them.

Traci: I love that. You know, I think there can be, like you're talking about earlier, a rush to publish. I know that feeling as a writer. The feeling like you think it's ready, you're excited, you want to get it out, but you haven't slowed down. You haven't let it sit. You haven't taken the time to do the final edits. So, I could see how that could be problematic for a writer who's just eager and then sacrificing the value of slowing down by having professional editors look at it and taking the time to produce a really quality book. You spend so much time writing, it's worth the wait for something you're proud of.

Emily: Absolutely, and when writers get on that path, and I find that it tends to definitely happen with certain types of books more than others. Often in the business category or the art book category, people will start to get into the design before they've had their book edited. I would say that's the number one mistake. It's also like setting up a launch party when you didn't realize how long it was going to take to publish your book, never put the cart before the horse. You want to always have your book edited before it goes into the design. Once you've finished your writing or feel that your story's been told and you're comfortable with what you have done, your initial vision could change. But after you've done the writing, you want to get into—if you haven't already—the visual aspect of how you see your book. How you see the cover, if there's a particular font that you like or the way you like a book laid out. It's always good to research. Look around at your own library, look at the kind of covers and types of books that you're drawn to that fit in the same category as yours. Just learning and researching helps everything.

Traci: That's one thing I was really struck by with FriesenPress is the covers for the books are quite beautiful, quite professional. They look like traditionally published books. Sometimes a writer will choose to self-publish with another type of company and the design is inferior and it just kind of has a different look. Can you talk about how you get to that design stage and working with writers to create these beautiful covers?

Emily: I think part of it, again, starts with the Editor's Manuscript Evaluation, because within that evaluation, the editor gives feedback to the writer on the strengths and weaknesses in their writing. If there're areas that they feel are weaknesses, then show how they can be developed through a type of editing and usually what comes back is some changes that the editor suggests the writer does on their part. They also dictate or let the writer know, what are the BISAC codes, which are the categories the book should be filed in, as well as the keywords that hold up the book when it's in distribution.

You've got to figure that a lot of these companies that you're looking at have not actually read the books that they are assisting with publishing, which is truly scary. They don't know about the book that they're putting their name on. They don't know about the book in order to guide that client on how the cover should look for a category like that. Different types of details like that. There are definitely basic recommendations for different types of books, but it also has to be something that the author wants. We do everything from having photographs provided for covers to just bringing us ideas on covers and doing custom illustration covers. It depends on the feel that the client wants.

I hear horror stories all the time of people that went to other companies and said: “You know, my book is a drama and my cover looks like it's for a children's book.” It's usually because they didn't even read the book or they didn't know. Maybe they told them it was a children's or a young adult category, and then they went with a more young adult kind of category cover in that sense. There are a lot of levels of support for covers.

Traci: What happens when I've gone through this process printing up my book with a beautiful cover, I get my box, and then is it in my hands to do the rest of the promotion? At the end of the line with these books, what happens?

Emily: In self-publishing, we work with print on demand. That means the book is out there and available and listed with Canadian libraries and over fifty thousand bookstores and retailers around the world. 

When the book is purchased, that's when it's printed. We take care of that for our authors. We're tracking all of the sales via the ISBN numbers that are provided for each book. The books are printed within twenty-four hours of that person purchasing it and then sent out to them. 

There's two royalty structures that we offer. One gives an author a very high royalty profit margin on the profits, on their book sales. The other one is setting the book in an accessibility point for a bookstore to physically stock the book. You get the same distribution, the availability is there, but if you're taking a higher profit margin, a bookstore is not going to be interested in buying it because they can't make any money if they physically stock that book. Some authors take the higher royalty structure and go the consignment route to go directly to the bookstore manager to sell those books. Others try to get them to order from the wholesaler that we distribute our books through. When they do that, they need to take that lower royalty structure and they need to buy into something called book return insurance. Book return insurance allows us to release the book in a returnable status, which for a bookstore means if they look at the title and they're interested in bringing it in, they'll look to see if there's the profit margin that they can make on it and if the book is returnable. When they have both of those, there's really no risk to a bookstore manager because if the books don't sell, they can return them.

Book return insurance is something that's really quite exclusive to FriesenPress. Most other companies have books returned and the client gets hit for that profit margin. With us it's not the case because you're covered with book return insurance.

It goes back to the first conversation about what that author is really looking to achieve from publishing their book. I talk to them about these kinds of details at the very beginning stage and then it's also just discussed with them throughout the process because they're working one-on-one with a publishing specialist throughout. They always have a point of contact that helps guide them from start to finish.

Traci: That's amazing. That guidance is really important because, as you say, writers are so solitary and you really don't necessarily know anything about the publishing industry. You know you want to write a book, you have this dream. And so to be supported throughout from the drafting to the final product, and even the distribution, it’s just amazing. It must feel very rewarding to work with writers who go through this process with you.

Emily: I love that we get to help people see a dream through to completion. There's a lot of recommendations, a lot of things to learn. Many writers feel like it's very daunting trying to get this information. They understand what they've written about, but not necessarily the details of publishing. They get information from myself and my colleagues initially in the consultations we do, but they also learn through the process because they have to make decisions on the layout of the book, the editing, how they're going to price their book on the market, what their profit margin is going to be, all of these different details. We're there to help them continually throughout the process, to guide them, to help them make their decisions. 

But we will say: “Okay, maybe that's a bad decision. We'd really like you to rethink that choice for this reason.” We won't just let you make a really bad decision without knowing, we’ll say you should rethink this for X reason. There's a lot of support. Most companies don't work like that. We have plans that always provide our authors with a publishing specialist throughout the process. They're working with a fully dedicated team of professionals, where they speak directly to the editor, directly to their designer, directly to their marketing person that starts working with them earlier in the publishing process. 

Ultimately, when an author is researching cost and services, they need to understand that editing is the number one. Number two is the designing and formatting of the book and then the marketing. Those are the main three pieces. Learning and understanding distribution is a big learning curve for many, but it generally doesn't affect the cost too much because it's there.

Traci: How do our viewers find you if they’re ready at any stage of the writing process, and they know they want to self-publish? Tell us how they can connect with you.

Emily: They can come to our website, where they can download various guides to learn about publishing. Our Author’s Guide to Successful Publishing explains the differences with traditional, what we do, and everything else to consider. There's also a guide to editing, to understanding more about the editing process and what the costs can be. Or there's a guide in there for some that need to try and figure out how to crowdfund for publishing. There's a lot of resources and details, but the Author’s Guide is generally how people reach out to us.

It’s always good to still speak with a consultant before then, because if you’re going to crowdfund, you need to figure out what you need to aim for money-wise. A consultation is good to have beforehand. They can call us, they can email us, download a guide, and one of us will reach out to have a chat with them, answer any questions, and give them a bit of support. Then that's when we figure out how far off they are, and how we can support them in achieving their goal.

Traci: Thank you so much for all this information, Emily. It's so rich and helpful for a lot of writers out there who are unsure about the publishing aspect and feeling like they want to go this route. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing the work that you do with these writers.

Emily: It's a pleasure. Give us a call. Reach out to us. We are always happy to help. Knowledge is power, so empower yourself.