I talk to a lot of authors. Really. A lot. Probably more than even most authors, though as a rule, a lot of authors talk to a lot of other authors. Having debuted in 2018, in the past four years I’ve specifically talked to a lot of debut authors–my peers back when I was a debut myself right up through today, when I do what I can to share information with whomever wants it.

What I’m sharing here isn’t universal, but nor is it just the opinion of a single person. What I’m going to share comes from speaking to dozens of authors, and represents an overwhelming opinion.

The title of this article states specifically that this is without paying them more money, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say two things about that. First, pay everyone in publishing more money. Second, some things I say here might actually cost money and I just don’t know that. Which, as you’ll see, is part of the problem.

This isn’t a comprehensive list. It’s just some of the things I hear the most from newer writers. And please, don’t take any of this as me being personally mad with my publisher, or with publishing in general. I’m not mad. It’s just frustrating to see things that could be so easy made difficult.

Perhaps agents could fill in some of this stuff for their clients too. I don’t know. It feels like editor stuff, but certainly an experienced agent could explain some of it. In any regard, I’m not calling out agents over this stuff either, nor am I upset with my agent (who is great) or agents in general. Just offering up some potential ideas to make things better.

1. Tell them how to get ARCs to people. Almost universally, debut authors don’t know this, so it becomes a source of stress even though publishers and authors both generally want to make it happen. If they’ve been told anything at all, it’s ‘if you want to get an ARC to someone, just ask.’

First off, that’s bad advice. Telling a debut author to ‘just ask’ is inherently stress inducing, because debut authors are afraid to ask too many things. There’s an imbalance of power, and as a debut you don’t want to be seen as difficult. So even something very much not difficult, like ARCs, becomes an agonizing decision. Do I ask? What if I’m asking too much?

Second, who do I ask? Not all ARCs come from the same person, and not all publishers do it the same way. So be specific.

If you want to get an ARC to a reviewer, ask x.
If you want to get an ARC to another author, ask y.
If you want to get an ARC to a friend, ask z.

If there’s a limit, tell them. If you can only do eARCs for certain people, or Netgalley widgets, or whatever? Tell them. Just do what you can to make it so that they know what they can and can’t do, and how to do each part of it.

2. Treat them like adults and tell it like it is. If an author does ask for something, just be straight about it. Almost every author I know has felt sometimes that their publisher is talking around things to try to spare their feelings. And just about every one of them would rather just know the deal.

Every author I know realizes there’s a difference between a mid-list and a lead author and what support they can expect. No author I know actually knows what the differences are. They have ideas, or pieces of it, but specifics? No. And it’s confusing.

And again, don’t make them ask, because asking is hard. “Here’s what we can do for you, and here’s how you access it. Here’s what we can’t do.”

An example: book signings. From my experience and talking to people, there are three levels of support for book signings.

Level 1: You’re a huge launch, and the publisher is going to pay for you to go places and make appearances. If this is you, you know it.

Level 2: The publisher will support you at appearances where you can get there on your own.

Level 3: The publisher isn’t going to support you on this.

With authors, I find that there’s a ton of confusion between level 2 and level 3, and being clear with us would really help that.

3. Explain why. A lot of times there are good reasons for why a publisher doesn’t support something. Authors rarely know these things. If they did, I think you’d find most of them would be a lot more understanding.

Here’s an example from my own life. Last year, three years after my debut, I asked for my publisher to help me with an appearance that I was doing at a chain bookstore. My editor told me no. I was pissed. Here I am, a guy who has earned out his first three novels, and I never ask for anything, and you can’t do this one simple thing for me? And then the editor explained to me about co-op money. I was three books into my career and I didn’t know about co-op money.

Half the authors reading this right now are asking ‘WTF is co-op money?’ I still don’t really know, but the basics are that when a publisher works with a bookstore to support an appearance, they have to pay money to the bookstore. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous. But knowing that, it totally makes sense why the publisher doesn’t want to support my visit that’s going to sell 5 books, right?

Be willing to do this even when it’s inefficiencies in the publisher that make it a problem. Here’s another example from my own life, again, not to be taken as an attack on my editor or my publisher, because I’ve totally come to grips with it and have no animosity at all.

When I was a debut, I wanted to do a cover reveal. Why? I don’t know. Because I see other authors do them? Because I’m a debut, and I think it’s important? Because I’m excited about my book and want attention? Because I think it will help sell books? Some combination of those. So I ask my editor if we can do a cover reveal, and he says something to the effect of ‘we don’t do that.’

Literally the next day, I see a cover reveal for THE POPPY WAR, which was another debut from right around the same time as mine from the same publisher. After I was told ‘we don’t do that.’ In the moment, I was pissed. Of course I had a good idea what the difference was. My book was PLANETSIDE, which was a paperback release that came with a $7500 advance and THE POPPY WAR was a lead title for the imprint. (See #2, above: Tell them like it is.) But I was still mad. Not that it happened, but that I’d been told we don’t do this, when clearly we did. Just not for me.

So what’s the truth there? There are a few of them. One, cover releases are harder than you think, because different departments control different things, and covers tend to go out automatically to sellers. I learned that with my fourth book, when I set up my own cover reveal (with enthusiastic approval from my editor) and then found the cover on Amazon the day prior to my “reveal.” So…say that. Second, cover reveals don’t really sell books. Or maybe they do, but I don’t think so, and I don’t think my publisher thinks so. If that’s the case, tell the author. “This is a lot of work and the return isn’t worth it” isn’t something an author wants to hear, but it’s a thing they can understand.

Back to book signings and levels of support: Explain why. “We’ve found that debut authors don’t move books when they do signings outside of their own local area.” This is 100% true. Publishers know it. Authors who have tried it have found out the hard way and also know it. Debut authors? Don’t always know it.

What would be great is some sort of primer on ‘this is what we think works, and how we support it. This is what we think doesn’t, and why we don’t support it.’

4. When you are doing something, tell the author. Something I’ve heard from just about every author: my publisher isn’t doing enough to support me (or, in many cases, my publisher isn’t doing anything to support me.)

This is mostly not true. Major publishers are almost always doing things to sell books. It’s that whole ‘that’s how we actually get paid’ thing. The thing is, authors don’t see all of it. Did your book get front of the store placement? The publisher paid for that. The sales team is doing stuff to sell books to retailers. The author doesn’t see that.

What does the author see? A bullshit form document from marketing that list nebulous “support” without any specifics. I’ve looked at these documents for lead titles and I’ve looked at them for mid-list titles and they’re pretty much identical. That should tell you something about the value of them.

I’ve known many authors who found out they were getting a goodreads giveaway (which costs money, BTW) when their friends told them about it. In that moment, something that should be a good thing (a publisher spending money to promote the author) becomes awkward, because how do you respond to that as an author? You either pretend you knew about it or you admit that nobody told you, and neither of those feel very good. Bonus points if you can tell the author the date it’s actually going to happen, so they’re primed and ready for it (or, if that’s not possible because it’s out of your control, you know…tell them that. You’ll find that ‘we have no fucking idea how goodreads works’ will be totally believable to authors.)

I personally found out that I was getting an audio book for my debut when my wife saw audio listed on Amazon. And hey, there’s no harm in this…it was a good thing that I was getting audio. As a huge audio fan, that was one of the most important things to me, and it was happening. So I was happy, not mad. But the publisher missed out on some free good will. A one sentence note from someone saying ‘we’re moving forward on an audio version of your book’ would have made my week, and it would have been free. Does it change anything material? No. Could it change an author’s attitude? Maybe. It couldn’t hurt.

Other examples: spending money to put a book in <fill in the blank>. And maybe there’s a reason publishers don’t share this stuff. I don’t know. It almost feels like they don’t want authors to know, because then authors could ask for it. But if you were spending money to put my book in the Ingram catalog, that’s something that would make me feel really good about you.

5. Regardless of if something is good or bad, YOU be the one to tell the author. Here’s another personal example. With my fourth book, I got a note from my editor that began with a very somber tone. The kind of tone somebody would take if they were going to tell you that your pet died. It was bad news. Supply chain issues meant that my book, THE MISFIT SOLDIER, which was scheduled to be released on February 22, wasn’t going to be in stores on that day.

My response? Eh. What can you do? These things happen. Sure, it’s not great. But it is what it is, and there’s nothing any of us can do to change it, so why worry? We’ll deal with it the best we can.

About a week later I started getting notes from people who had pre-ordered that their order was delayed, and I was able to explain to them what was going on.

Contrast this with my reaction if my publisher hadn’t told me. I’d have been confused, embarrassed, and mad, in some order. It would have been the same situation, but made much worse.

Another place where this happens is release dates. Raise your hand if you’re an author who learned of their release date (or worse, a change in their release date) via Amazon. That’s a lot of hands. This just in: release dates are really important to authors. They shouldn’t find out about them via Amazon. Yes, I know there are things internal to the publisher that cause this to happen. Fix it. Because there’s no excuse for this.

6. Blurbs. Yes they suck. So let’s embrace that suck together. On this one, I’m going to share a best practice, because my editor did this exceptionally well and I’ve heard from a lot of authors who have had a much less positive experience.

For my debut, David (Pomerico, my editor) emailed me and said it’s time to start working on blurbs. He asked me to put together my dream list, and then he, my agent, and I got together (via email) and discussed the list and who would approach each potential blurbing author. David took most of them, Lisa (Rodgers, my agent) approached other agency clients, and I took a few authors with whom I had a personal relationship. Did we get all of them? No, but we got some really nice ones. But did I understand the process and feel good about it? Yes I did. I knew who we approached, and I understood (because David explained) that not everybody we approached would say yes. I came away from it believing that we had done everything possible to make my book successful. Even if we hadn’t gotten a single one, I’d have known that we took our shot.

Note: this applies to publicists and reviews, too. A lot of times we don’t get reviews from places we’d like. But knowing that the publicist tried? It makes a difference.

On the other side of this, as an author who has done a lot of blurbs, I personally prefer to be approached by the editor or the agent, because there’s a lot less emotion/pressure in that than with dealing directly with the author. Either way, my blurb policy is here.

7. Share sales information and what it means. 100% of debut authors I’ve known have been obsessed with their early sales. The joke is that they’re sitting there refreshing their Amazon rank all day. It’s funny (or, not funny) because it’s true. Authors are desperate for any feedback as to how they are doing, and Amazon is often the only source for that.

If only there was someone who had access to that information and could share it.

I’d suggest that you, at some interval, give your authors their sales numbers. I don’t think that information is a secret. I mean…we’re going to eventually find out anyway when we get a royalty statement. Information reduces stress. Taking a couple minutes once a month (or however often) to shoot them a note with basic sales data would do a lot for authors.

Again…don’t make authors ask, because asking is stressful. If you’re worried that an author might not want the information, you ask. “Hey. We can share sales information or not. Which do you prefer?” Even authors who don’t want the information will appreciate that they could have it.

What would do more is telling them what their sales mean in relation to their specific situation. What do I mean by that? I mean that “You sold 2000 books” is nice, but not particularly instructive. Because if you’re a lead title, that might be disappointing. If you’re a mid-list debut, that might be off-the-charts good. Putting it into a basic category would be really helpful.

Level 1: We’re really happy. Sales are exceeding expectations. We have erected a statue in your honor inside our office. Whatever–pick your words. This is good news, and you should want to share it.

Level 2: Your sales are in line with expectations. You’re doing fine. We are not burning you in effigy.

Level 3: Sales aren’t where we hoped.

On the surface, it probably seems like this is going to cause more problems than it solves, because sharing number 3 there isn’t going to be fun for anybody. But here’s the thing: every author who is in level 2 thinks they’re in level 3.

The catch, of course, is that you have to be honest about it, and you have to make the author understand/believe it. Because the nature of authors means that if you tell them they are in level 2, they are often still going to believe they’re in level three. And if you tell someone they are in level 2 but they later find out they’re in level 3, that word is going to spread.

It’s almost like you could sum up this whole post with ‘good communication and honesty is really helpful.’

There’s more, but I’m going to cut it off here because I think I’ve hit the biggest things and I have a novel to write. Authors, feel free to put other ideas in the comments, or, if you’d rather be anonymous, feel free to DM me with your ideas and I’ll put them in another post.

As always, if I’m way off base, tell me.

Editors or other publishing people, if I’m wrong, don’t feel the need to explain it to me. Instead, explain it to your authors. That’s the point.