Do you have a few hours to hear the story behind the publishing of the paperback of Redemption? No? Well, I’ll try and summarise it then, but it’s not going to be easy, for within the publishing of the paperback of Redemption lies the story of our entire struggle to be published in the first place and the rise and fall, and fall, then slow recovery of our publishing journey. Whether you read my books or not, you might find the behind the scenes of the publishing industry eye-opening.
Long, long ago, in a land far, far away, (twenty years ago back in Australia), I had a book written called Bloodline. And I sent it to agents and sent it to publishers. And there was quite an enthusiastic response, but there was always a ‘but’. “The readers here loved it, but …” “I think your writing shows enormous potential, but …”
This went on for ten years. Ten! Imagine the career you’ve always wanted, that is your passion and your dream, and then imagine applying for positions within it for ten years, knowing that less than 1% of all people who apply will ever get that job. That was the odds I was facing.
Meanwhile, I wrote Sacrifice, a whole other book in a whole other series. Then the sequel to Sacrifice came along and surprised me. That was Redemption. And then, the sequel to Bloodline began and Bloodline became Bloodline: Alliance, and it’s sequel became Bloodline: Covenant. I mention this because the order the books were written became important later. (And for the sake of this blog, I’ll just refer to Bloodline book one as Alliance, and book two as Covenant. And if you see it written as Bloodline, that means that it wasn’t yet two books. It will hopefully become clearer as we go.)
After ten years of some spectacular near misses with agents and publishers, I came to the attention of Penguin (now Penguin Random House). They had Bloodline and were really interested to know if I could do it again. They had not launched into the adult fantasy market yet and were considering doing so with my books. But was I a one-hit wonder? I couldn’t send them the sequel to Bloodline. It wasn’t even started. So I sent them Sacrifice. Yes, they loved both of them. And we were so close to shaking hands. And then fate conspired against me yet again. The person I had been speaking to was the Acting Publisher, who had stepped in for a two-year stint while the Publisher was on maternity leave. Towards the end of the year-long discussions, the Publisher came back, and she did not like fantasy novels and didn’t think Penguin should launch into the range. And that was that.
At that point, I was totally done with publishers. I knew I had gotten as high as I could get, and I knew that every time I tried with a new publisher, I would have to go through months and months of waiting. You see, I had to send a proposal letter even just to be invited to send them sample chapters. (This is back in the days when everything was done by print and post.) And you were not allowed to solicit more than one publisher at a time. I could wait weeks, even months, and if they wanted to see sample chapters, I would send them and it would be three months before I received even a request for the rest of the novel. Only twice I received the request for the full novel (at least with publishers, but I got further more often with agents). Every other time that was where I got my, “We loved it but …” I got to the full manuscript stage with Penguin and Harper Collins and that was six months of my life gone just to get to that. Then there’d be the inevitable three-to-six month wait to hear if they liked the full thing. Both publishers loved the book, but both made decisions based on poor timing for their company. Harper Collins didn’t have room in their imprint at this stage and they bowed out because Penguin was more interested (it’s a story within a story why Harper Collins were being solicited around the same time as Penguin), and Penguin … well, you know that story. I didn’t have it in me to wait another six months to a year to get to the top of the slush pile in the hope that the planets would align.
And that’s when Naomi jumped in and said, “I can do this for you. We can bring the book out together.”
That was the early days of print-on-demand (and ebooks weren’t a thing then). In particular, the pioneer in this industry was Lulu.com. It was in its infancy and it had a lot of kinks to iron out, and the book samples we bought left a lot to be desired, but it gave us autonomy, we could bring the books out when we wanted, and we could satisfy readers who had read the manuscript and wanted a proper copy for themselves or to send to friends.
At this stage, I was working on a sequel to Bloodline and so Bloodline had now officially become Bloodline: Alliance, one of two. I can’t say I was enjoying working on the sequel to this book. It was perhaps the hardest book I’ve written and it took a long, long time to bring it together. But in the meantime, Naomi was working on Alliance with me.
So we worked on Alliance as a paperback together. It took a long time to get that first book ready because everything was so new, including the technology to bring it out. We’d never worked on a cover before. I had to edit and edit and edit the book (using my skills as a professional book editor). We had to source a proofreader together, we had to learn typesetting, book layout, learn about sizing, spines, bleeds, paper types, pricing. But we got there together. We got it all the way up to launch date. We would launch in the next two weeks.
When it came to marketing, I saw a pilot marketing program being launched by a large independent press in Queensland Australia. So I contacted them about possibly putting my self-published book in the system. They wrote back and said they could put my book in the system, but even better, they didn’t have any fantasy novels yet in their publishing range and had been hunting for some. They had even run a competition every year for new fiction and fantasy novels but so far none of the books that had won the competition had been acceptable for their range. Could their editor take a look?
I answered that they could but they had to be quick. And so, without any proposals, cover letters, or a synopsis, I sent the manuscript to their editor – the full book. And she got back to me in two weeks and was blown away. It was a big yes from her.
And that’s how I found myself traditionally published.
Bloodline: Alliance came out.
And after a year, the publisher wanted another book. I still didn’t have Covenant ready at that point. When I say I struggled to put that book together, I wasn’t kidding. We agreed that I shouldn’t rush it. And so I gave them Sacrifice, which they loved. I now had two firsts of two series. At that point, Naomi and I were still working on the books together, as I insisted she be my cover designer. And so we worked on the first version of Sacrifice. No Covenant, no Redemption. Covenant was supposed to come out next. Redemption would have to wait its turn.
But then it all went wrong.
It would take me too long to fully explain what happened with the publisher, but the short version is, they demanded something of me that was not contractual. They demanded that I pay them to warehouse the books because they were moving to a new location and wanted me to pay, or they would terminate my contract. At that point, I had some serious red flags going off, and I asked for my books back. I told them to terminate my contract and give the rights to my books back and destroy all stock – as was legal. I honestly don’t think they were expecting that at all. I think they thought I would be so grateful to be published, I would pay. They told me that they would terminate my contract, would keep all stock, would continue to sell said stock, and they wouldn’t pay me any royalties for that stock because when the contract was terminated, the stock belonged to them. Which was about as unlawful as you get. And they would only give back Bloodline, not Sacrifice. If that was lawful, then any publisher could take on an author, publish their books, then cancel the contract soon after and make all the money from their books and pay the author nothing.
That began a long, long expensive year of fighting legally for the rights to the books back, and along the way we uncovered a trail of deception and corruption. It just got worse and worse. I much later found out that this kind of corruption and creative accounting was actually common in the industry, which I’ll talk more about later. Eventually, the trail of corruption we uncovered, and the invoices we questioned, allowed us to get Sacrifice back. I think the publisher just didn’t want to deal with us anymore. It still took years, though, for those books to disappear from the system as the publisher continued to sell them (in fact, there are still copies available on Amazon but we think Amazon are publishing those on the sly because Amazon is print-on-demand) and it was a battle that added to the exhaustion I was already feeling. This whole lengthy incident traumatised me but I kept battling on.
Around this time, my father, also an author, was having legal issues with a potential publisher of his own and decided to pull out. He had all of these non-fiction manuscripts ready to go, and I had mine back. I was limping at that point, but I was still walking. And I had fought to get these books back, so what to do with them? I started to approach publishers again, but you have even more chance of having a book published the first time than you do after a publisher has accepted you. (If you are looking into the publishing industry, take that as a warning. Your first publisher is usually your last, even if that relationship fails.)
At that point I thought: Naomi is a graphic designer with strong skills in record keeping, finances, web development and more. My father is a copywriter, public speaker and marketing consultant with his own registered company and has publishing industry experience including having worked as the marketing manager for the largest Christian publisher in Australia. I was a journalist, article and blog writer and had twenty plus years of senior editing experience, including proofreading and had cut my teeth on a senior editing role with the book publishing division of an international charity. And Naomi and I had taken a book up to the “seconds” before publication and worked together with the traditional publisher, insiders in a way, to bring out our new ones. We could start a publishing imprint and have all the right skills at our disposal. And so Littleman was born.
Because of the horrors of being traditionally published, and because my books were still being sold illegally, we had to bring out all new editions. So it was back to the drawing board. And we worked hard on all new looks, all new interiors, all new everything. Because it was labour intensive, and because we had to pay a fee to a distributor for each book, we started with Alliance and Sacrifice, the two we had to quickly release to replace the illegal copies, along with some of my dad’s books. This time we were able to publish through Lightning Source (one of the biggest distributors in the world as used by most of the major publishers) as a small press and go straight to the sellers and retailers.
We were starting to get some traction. People were buying books, reading my blog, we had a national radio interview, my dad had public speaking events, and a handful of shops stocked us.
And so we worked hard and brought out Covenant. Again, though, Redemption had to wait its turn because Alliance was a cliff-hanger ending and had been on the market now for a few years since the independent publisher brought it out. Readers were getting antsy.
So we brought out Covenant and turned to Redemption. But then things started to go wrong again!
We started to notice Lightning Source was doing some creative accounting of its own. Sales of my dad’s books were meagre. In fact, many months we would owe the distributor money because sales were too low to cover their monthly fees. And yet so many people were telling us they were buying copies of his books. My father would turn up to a public speaking event and people would all have copies of his books. Our royalty statements would say, “Sales, zero.”
And we knew it was happening again. And we learned too that this was not just us and that we weren’t just unlucky with our choices. There are stories of corruption out there and trails of dead bodies and broken dreams. You don’t have to go too far to find them.
At this point, my limp turned into a stagger and a stop. I was burnt out. We had bled and sweated for every sale, for traction, for momentum. Do you know what it takes to even get a single bookstore to stock you? And we were being cheated again. On top of that, we were finding copies of illegal books of mine even in bookstores, on Amazon, through online sellers, and it was a slow drip of problems and financial issues. And just how many copies had Lightning Source stolen from us? And to be honest with you, dragging Covenant out into a book had totally drained me.
At that point, I couldn’t do it anymore. I packed it all up. I went through “the great divorce”. I stopped writing. I didn’t even want to talk about it. I was deeply wounded, deeply traumatised. I was out for the count. And so Redemption, cover ready and internals ready, did not see the light of day.
Years later, after a long, long rest and a bit of healing, I listened to friends who wanted copies of my books and decided to bring out the books as an online download, pay what you want. By then, ebooks were a much bigger thing, as were online downloads. People were used to getting books in less traditional ways, and so this was a very viable option.
Once again, it was new covers, new internals. It was a name change and it was a re-branding to distinguish the books from all the past copies so nobody could cheat us and so I didn’t associate it with the traumas of the past. It was a slow kind of getting back on the horse. I was NOT going to bring out paperbacks again. Ever. Paperbacks had caused us so much pain: from the fight to rid the world of the old illegal copies, to the fudged numbers through Lightning Source and Amazon.
So I started this website, a kind of experiment. I was never going back into publishing as it was. I never wanted to play that game again. So I sat them here. Those who wanted free books could take them. Those who insisted on paying could donate some coffee money. And the interest in the books was … zero. Even from all the friends who said they wanted copies of my books. Not even a single free download.
It was not a wasted or pointless time. It was a journey of the soul. There was a lot that needed to be dealt with, not least of which was just learning to sit comfortably with having my books “out there” again.
It sat like that for two years. God tested me and where my self-esteem and loyalty and courage lay for those two years. And then when the time was right, God said that I was to stop giving them away and ‘get back on the horse’. I wasn’t exactly ready, but I obeyed. And so Naomi and I turned to Amazon. We knew we needed to get the book to Kindle where the majority of readers were. It was time to take the free versions off and do it properly. Get back in the game.
And so it was a whole new version of the books AGAIN. New covers. New interiors. Just how many times did we have to bring these books out? It felt like we had “moved house” too many times, and packing up and moving was getting exhausting.
We brought out the ebooks only. We brought out all four books. And I was sticking to my guns about not doing paperbacks. But gradually it became clear we were meant to bring out paperbacks. It began with my new book Shadowland which we just felt was meant to be a paperback. And inevitably, once you open the door to one, you find yourself turning to the others and thinking, “Should we?”
We already had the start of Sacrifice and the two Bloodlines, so we began with those. We began to work on Redemption as a paperback but that had to be done from scratch and so it got pushed to ‘we’ll do it last’. Once again, though, Redemption missed out because two things happened.
Firstly, we began Willow Lane and that took all of our attention. And two … we started to suspect we were being shadow-banned on Amazon. Why? Because we had the books listed under Christian fantasy and because we had the word “Christian” in the classification information. And if you don’t know that Amazon is shadow-banning books, or just outright banning them or refusing to let them advertise, then you need only do a smidgen of research to see that it’s true.
We went from several hundred page reads of novels (in Kindle Unlimited) every day for several months to zero. It just suddenly plummeted. Statistically, it should peter out, or sputter over several days, or go to zero for a while, or low numbers, then a few rises, then zero again. This was just zero. And there it stayed for a year.
There was no point doing Redemption paperback. No one was even buying Sacrifice. And even if someone did buy Sacrifice, of the amount we have to charge for the paperback, we get less than US$1.50. Guess who gets the rest?
Meanwhile, we were back at Lulu. We had come full circle. We had brought out our notebooks through Amazon, and we hit a wall with them when they started demanding things of our title and covers we weren’t prepared to give. And all the while sales were zero anyway. We wanted a place that wouldn’t dictate what we could and couldn’t publish. So we looked at Lulu again and found a place we thought we could fit. We could sell our products on our website direct to our customers, like we did our cards etc, and it would be print-on-demand. If we wanted to publish it, no one would stop us. And Lulu had just been declared a B-Corp, which meant people first, profits second.
So … we slowly started to move to Lulu. And the idea was, we would then bring out all of our paperbacks through Lulu. We would stay with Amazon for now (it allows people to read the book for free with the Kindle Unlimited program, and we still get paid) but eventually we might drop out of Amazon altogether. And so we started thinking about what we needed to do to redo the books … AGAIN. Another move. This time, though, we believe God said Lulu is our home. Our final place.
And so we thought that we would finish working on Redemption ready for Lulu. Which we did, and we just finished it last week. We haven’t started uploading books to Lulu, but there was Redemption, ready to go. And as we had it ready anyway, we thought we may as well throw it into Amazon with the other books while we wait to move house. And so, this week, it finally, after all this time, became a paperback. Will the journey have been worth it? That remains to be seen.
And so now, one more move and then we are officially home. We will be putting all the books in the Lulu system for you to order through this website, and for now they are on Amazon if you prefer their faster shipping. Redemption is a pricey book, more expensive than Sacrifice, but it’s half the size again and we had to work with Amazon’s minimum pricing model.
If you get a copy in the next few weeks, you just might be the very first person in the world to do so. I don’t even have a copy yet! In fact, if you go and buy it, email us and let us know the date of your purchase and your country. We’ll try and track your sale and if we can tell you are the very first person to buy it, we’ll let you know.
BUY NOW
READ A GENEROUS EXCERPT FOR SACRIFICE HERE or REDEMPTION HERE.
About the Author: Lisa Saul
