'The Ed' from Byker Books talks about being an indie publisher
I spoke with ‘The Ed’ Head Honcho of Byker Books, the people that published my first short story to find out what inspired him to set up an indie publishing co., what makes BB tick, what the future holds for Byker Books and loads more…Here’s what he had to say…
Byker Books was conceived and set up in 2008 with a view to promoting working class and unknown authors. Basically you could only get an agent if you were connected to the industry or had been on the telly (it's not much different now either) and you could only get a publisher if you had an agent...we thought that was a pile of shite and rather than sitting about drinking heavily and bitching about it we decided to have a go ourselves and 'acquired' some software before teaching ourselves how to use it. Now we just sit about drinking heavily and bitching about football instead! Radgepacket Vol. 1 was the first book we ever published and it's still our baby (the first book out of the first box is in a frame on the wall of the office - be worth millions that in a few years...probably...). We placed the Radgepacket series on hold last year just to allow us to concentrate on quality rather than quantity but it will be coming back don't worry about that.
To date we have published ten physical books with three in the pipeline for next year (save some pennies kids) and, at time of writing, twenty-one Ebooks (all under two quid each - go and fill ya new kindle up with some quality man.go on do it...) resulting in somewhere in the region of a hundred or so new or unknown authors seeing their name in print. I also know for a fact there at least three writers out there who got their first book deal because of our promoting/helping them.
Our resources are smaller than a small man that's been crushed in a scrapyard car-crusher thing before taking that pill that makes you small in
Alice-in-Wonderland. They're pretty small! Because of that we've always used a Print-on-demand printer so have never really had a print run in the traditional
sense - mind you my house is full of unsold books so maybe that wasn't such a great idea either! we tend to promote our stuff via the social media sites,
word-of-mouth, bloggers, reviewers (got one in 'The Sun' once...forgot none of their readers actually read books) and sneaking up on drunken people in bars
and putting our business cards in their pockets - works a treat man!
When we started BB we promised ourselves we'd only publish stuff we would want to read. We have stuck to that religiously ever since. If something good quality comes in we'll certainly consider it and have, in the past, told authors that as a teeny-weeny indie publisher we wouldn't be able to do justice to their
book and given them some addresses of the bigger boys. We're pretty nice lads really (don't tell anyone though - got the hard Geordie thing to live up to!)
ebooks (and in particular The Amazon Kindle) have changed everything. For us it's a Godsend. we can get books out there quicker, at much lower costs and to a wider audience. our recent 'Best of British' series is a fine example of that. Some very good but lesser known authors getting out there in a quality book (excellent covers as well) to a different audience and upping their profile whilst helping ours, throw in the fact that they're associated with the credible brand that we've built up over the last few years and everyone's a winner. Having said that our E-book operation is also there to fund our physical book side of things - we do want to keep pushing out new stuff as and when we can as that was our aim at the start and we're bloody stubborn us Northerners you know!
We've got three new novels out next year but have to finalise two of them so can't say owt yet. I can tell you that after some fierce bidding and a number of chinese burns being applied we got the physical rights to 'Infidelity For Beginners' by the mighty Danny King so keep your eyes open for that 'cos it's class.
A crucial bit of advice for all wannabe writers/authors/novelists who think that they are so talented they will automatically be the next JK Rowling et al -
follow the fucking submission rules! That is all.
Byker Books was conceived and set up in 2008 with a view to promoting working class and unknown authors. Basically you could only get an agent if you were connected to the industry or had been on the telly (it's not much different now either) and you could only get a publisher if you had an agent...we thought that was a pile of shite and rather than sitting about drinking heavily and bitching about it we decided to have a go ourselves and 'acquired' some software before teaching ourselves how to use it. Now we just sit about drinking heavily and bitching about football instead! Radgepacket Vol. 1 was the first book we ever published and it's still our baby (the first book out of the first box is in a frame on the wall of the office - be worth millions that in a few years...probably...). We placed the Radgepacket series on hold last year just to allow us to concentrate on quality rather than quantity but it will be coming back don't worry about that.
To date we have published ten physical books with three in the pipeline for next year (save some pennies kids) and, at time of writing, twenty-one Ebooks (all under two quid each - go and fill ya new kindle up with some quality man.go on do it...) resulting in somewhere in the region of a hundred or so new or unknown authors seeing their name in print. I also know for a fact there at least three writers out there who got their first book deal because of our promoting/helping them.
Our resources are smaller than a small man that's been crushed in a scrapyard car-crusher thing before taking that pill that makes you small in
Alice-in-Wonderland. They're pretty small! Because of that we've always used a Print-on-demand printer so have never really had a print run in the traditional
sense - mind you my house is full of unsold books so maybe that wasn't such a great idea either! we tend to promote our stuff via the social media sites,
word-of-mouth, bloggers, reviewers (got one in 'The Sun' once...forgot none of their readers actually read books) and sneaking up on drunken people in bars
and putting our business cards in their pockets - works a treat man!
When we started BB we promised ourselves we'd only publish stuff we would want to read. We have stuck to that religiously ever since. If something good quality comes in we'll certainly consider it and have, in the past, told authors that as a teeny-weeny indie publisher we wouldn't be able to do justice to their
book and given them some addresses of the bigger boys. We're pretty nice lads really (don't tell anyone though - got the hard Geordie thing to live up to!)
ebooks (and in particular The Amazon Kindle) have changed everything. For us it's a Godsend. we can get books out there quicker, at much lower costs and to a wider audience. our recent 'Best of British' series is a fine example of that. Some very good but lesser known authors getting out there in a quality book (excellent covers as well) to a different audience and upping their profile whilst helping ours, throw in the fact that they're associated with the credible brand that we've built up over the last few years and everyone's a winner. Having said that our E-book operation is also there to fund our physical book side of things - we do want to keep pushing out new stuff as and when we can as that was our aim at the start and we're bloody stubborn us Northerners you know!
We've got three new novels out next year but have to finalise two of them so can't say owt yet. I can tell you that after some fierce bidding and a number of chinese burns being applied we got the physical rights to 'Infidelity For Beginners' by the mighty Danny King so keep your eyes open for that 'cos it's class.
A crucial bit of advice for all wannabe writers/authors/novelists who think that they are so talented they will automatically be the next JK Rowling et al -
follow the fucking submission rules! That is all.
