One would think setting up a publishing company in today's climate could be considered foolish. Yet Sumaira Wilson and Nikki East have set up the highly successful Spellbound Books. Today I talk to Sumaira about her experience and how you can set up a publishing company.
One would think setting up a publishing company in today's climate could be considered foolish. Yet Sumaira Wilson and Nikki East have set up the highly successful Spellbound Books. Today I talk to Sumaira about her experience and how you can set up a publishing company.
Hi, and welcome to the writing and Marketing Show brought to you by author Wendy H. Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. It's jam packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast. So it's time to get on with the show. And welcome to Episode 87 of the writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur Wendy H. Jones. So what's been happening in my world? Well, as you know, I was ill last week, I'm absolutely feeling better. Now. I'm hoping the antibiotics have worked. And I'm back in full writing modern hitting those keys, like a good one. And killers curve should be out in about the next two weeks. And I'm very much looking forward to that because killers curse is set in both New Orleans and Dundee. So we're in two different countries, two different cities for the next book, and I'm very excited about that. I've also started work on the second class Claymore book, which is blood and bones. So hey, it's all going the Jones household. Today we're going to be talking about setting up your own publishing company with Samira Wilson. And we're going to I there are two authors, two sorry, two publishers, the onus company. And I'm going to give you both the BIOS in a minute, but I'm only talking to submit up for various reasons. So before we talk to Samira, and introduce her, I would like to say it's an absolute pleasure to bring you the show every week. I love doing it, but it does take time out of my writing. If you would like to support that time, you can do so by going to patreon.com forward slash Wendy h Jones. And you can do so for just $3 a month, which is the price of a tea or coffee. So and I would be very grateful that it would mean that you're enjoying what I'm doing and you want me to keep doing it. So what have Sameera and Nikki? Well, Samantha Wilson, her love of reading was sparked from a young age when she was first introduced to the magical world of Enid Blyton. She always wanted to work in publishing but life took it in a different direction and she spent her first 20 years working in the city in the finance industry. She took a short break to raise a young family of four. This is the period where her passion really piqued. She was lucky to turn that passion into a profession and landed a job as production manager for a leading digital publisher, where she gained valuable experience of the workings of the publishing industry. She has arranged regular on the book festival circuit, which is where she met Nicky four years ago, they clicked instantly becoming firm friends and bonding over a love of authors books and red wine. They're delighted to be teaming up marrying the vast experience between them to launch spellbound books, and Nikki has been working in the shadows within the periphery of the publishing industry for 10 years. She's assisted numerous authors with promotions, building websites, proofreading, branding, and much more. She was one of the co founders of whole Noir. She's one she's hosted an award at the bar in both Rome time of how as well as in London where she lives. She has chaired a panel of super talented authors at Newcastle in the war. And along with her wonderful son George, she helped coordinate logistics for butcher con 2017 in St. Petersburg, Florida. And she says that was an amazing experience. Essentially, she loves books and she loves being around people who love books. And that's how she met Samantha. So without further ado, let's get on with the show and meet some mirror and to hear what she has to say about setting up your own publishing company. And we've got some men are with us. Welcome Samira. How are you?
Sumaira Wilson:I'm very well Wendy. Hi there. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really excited to be speaking to you today.
Wendy Jones:Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. I mean, I always love interacting with you on social media and to actually be here live with you is fabulous. It really is.
Sumaira Wilson:Thank you. Thank you. I love your work as well. And I know we've we've been trying to get together for a while. So I'm just glad we finally got together and it's so nice. So nice to be chatting to you this morning.
Wendy Jones:Wow. Are you sitting comfortably so I can get you to view you.
Sumaira Wilson:I've got my coffee and I'm sitting comfortably. And I'm ready.
Wendy Jones:Coffee is always needed. You know what? I'm in awe of you. I think it's amazing that you've set up a publishing company in the middle of a global pandemic. Where did this idea and passion come from?
Sumaira Wilson:Oh, well, first of all, thank you. Thank you. It was him. I suppose my son might have thought of it as a reckless idea to start any business in a global panic. They're made, but um, you know, I'd worked for a leading digital publisher for about three and a half years. And then I'd left my job because I wasn't well. And Nikki and I'd been friends for quite a while we'd met on the book saying we'd met, you know, at crime and call and we chatted, we actually both went for the same job at the publisher. And I actually got the job. And we it was always like, we'd always giggle over that. And we became firm friends, actually. And once I started, I was starting to sort of feel a bit better, but dipping my toe back into maybe going into work. And I kind of I was looking at publishing jobs. And I don't know, it just wasn't, there was nothing grabbing me. And I kept going back to a kind of wanting to do something myself. And Nick and I got chatting over a glass of wine. And we kind of came up with the idea initially of having an author surface, so we'd sort of lend out because Nick is qualified as Savin rd, I can I can format Burke. So we kind of thought of along that lines. So that was around January, time. And then we went to, we met up in March, and it was literally about a week before the world went into lockdown. And we kind of said to each other look, you know, let's talk, give it a go. Let's give it let's give it a go publishing, we'll start small, we'll take on it, you know, a couple of authors will find our fe learn about the industry. You know, we're both, you know, fairly intelligent and clever women, you know, we pick things up easily, we sort of dip our toe into it. And that's kind of where the idea came from. And then the world went into lockdown, obviously, the end of March. And, you know, I just think everyone, everyone, everyone's perception of life and just changed in nature shifted, you know, the unknown, it was so and I've heard the word unprecedented so many times, but it was so unprecedented. And then I was diagnosed with cancer as well. So it was sort of a double whammy, we'd gone into lockdown, I've got diagnosed with cancer. And then obviously everything stopped, you know that all these treatments stopped. So I wasn't treated for good eight months. And it was a bit of, you know, well, you know, it's now or never, isn't it? Yeah, you've only got one life. Let's try it. We're both fiercely passionate about what we do. We've been on the peripherals of the industry for around 10 to 15 years between us in one way or another as readers, as bloggers, as reviewers as member of book clubs. So, you know, we knew we had it in us and it was our passion and you know, your perception changes when you've got when you're given a diagnosis as well. It's kind of, you know, this could be my last chance, and I don't I don't want to not have done it. So yeah, we just sort of go for it basically, take take the risk, and it kind of grew a lot quicker than we anticipated. So yeah, we kind of thought at the start of last year, we by this time this year, we might have you know, maybe five or six authors. But as it is we've got 38 authors signed with us now. Our authors and 10 of them are Global's, and they're from across the seas, we've got a spectrum of genres and books. And as we sit here, we've got titles scheduled all the way into publication all the way into 2024 at the moment, so yes, it's been overwhelming at times because it's grown at such a rate. And I think the fact that Nikki and I are quite well known in the industry, we got a huge amount of support behind us. We've actually got two people on board and the team now we've got day and so either on board or spellbound as well, as before. We've got one of our authors, Mark, he does a lot of work for us actually behind the scenes as well. So he does a lot of he does a lot of our digital stuff out of our trailers. So isn't it's a real nice little team going there now. And yeah, we've started we've had an international bestseller as well. We had a Canadian and Australian bestseller for Joe Haynes, his book and yeah. Yeah, we're starting to believe in ourselves a little bit now, which is nice. That's good.
Wendy Jones:I can tell you're passionate. You really are. And you've already touched on my next two questions. You've kind of answered them which is great because you get them naturally and not so naturallynaturally, that's our labour alien. That's like, Yeah, no, because, you know, you've talked about, you know, what you say, to reassure people in the middle of a pandemic, and you've talked about your prior knowledge of the industry, which is brilliant. I've dipped my toe in publishing, but I don't think I have enough knowledge of the industry to take that further. But you've reassured me that you can't take it further, you know, because of what you've done.
Sumaira Wilson:Definitely, definitely. I mean, I was very lucky, I was with a very good company, when I did it, I was a production manager for a digital company, an independent digital company, a great mentor, ship, and I did learn everything that I needed to start up the business from there. And it was a it was a it was a really good job, and I love my time there. And but you know, Nikki and I have, you know, spent hours and hours researching, speaking to people, and it is, you know, it's learning, but it's so exciting. It, you know, I think we're both moms, you know, Nikki, we're both in Now, what I suppose will be classes made life, you know, 40s and 50s. And I think is working women, you know, you've always been I spent 20 years as an insurance broker, because it was, you know, I kind of fell fell into that profession. And you spend so much of your life with your children growing up, but you kind of put anything that you want to do isn't necessities new is what works around what has been what works around children or works around, and you do it. And I think the pandemic, that's what it gave us, it gave us the push, we needed to be honest, because we were just like, we can do this. We are passionate, okay, we might not get it right all the time. But the one thing we are we're very, very collaborative, we're very boat boutique, we are very hands on and it's not we will take we don't take titles from authors, and then try to make them fit into a market, we take their books and make ourselves try and fit into the marketing for that book, we try and take books that might not be picked up by traditional publishers, because they're a bit too quirky, or a bit too different. But people that know Nikki and I will know that we are in no way shape or form any way conventional in any sense, at all. So whilst we do have some really straightforward, brilliant commercial boats, we have some really fantastic off the wall. And like I said, going back to the fact that because we're independently financed, we finance for ourselves, we don't have to answer to anyone, we can publish what we want, if you know, it might not take off commercially, but we will give it our all we will put 120% in to make sure that the author has a wonderful publishing experience, even if they don't get a bestseller badge, or they're not getting a million pages read on Kindle Unlimited, we want an author to make sure that they feel like their book has been, you know, it's been treated with the care it deserves because, you know, often spend years and years writing books. And it's not just things that can be knocked out in a matter of weeks. So that's let's think, for us, it is obviously what we want to we want to make our offers money. But we also want to give them a positive publishing experience, because there is a lot of authors out there that have not had positive experiences for one reason or another. They've been burned. They're not they've tried to self publish with self publishing isn't for everyone, you know, it's not. And to and it's all fuzzy, you know, we you don't need all of that hassle for self publishing. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's some amazing self published authors out there that have done phenomenally well. But there's also some authors can't they just, they want to just concentrate on writing. So that's what we hide from. We hope everyone, all of our authors have a positive experience of working with us. You know, we are very collaborative. They're involved in every step of the publishing process from you know, from the edits to the cover ideas to the promotional to the blog tours. It's a very, very, you know, a melting pot of ideas. Everyone is we all from, you know, some of our meetings is real, just real world stuff. But yeah, so that's kind of where we are at the moment with it all.
Wendy Jones:Yeah, no, that's great. Sounds amazing. So, if somebody wanted to, if someone was considering setting up a publishing company, what would be their starting point.
Sumaira Wilson:We were really lucky in a sense in terms of so Nikki was Nick is a qualified editor. And I'm, I was a production manager. So we had two of the major skill sets already there. And I had a working knowledge of the systems put into place. What I would say there's a lot of independent publishers out there. There's a lot of self self published authors out there, if you if you want to dip your toe into publishing, go into these groups speak to that speak to people, you know, people like it's always myself and Nicky, Louise Mullins at Dark Age press, Jim Adi, from question mark, there's some phenomenal self published authors out there, there's always people that will, who you can go to for advice. And that's, that's what I do. First, I'd sound people out, you know, then make kind of a checklist of the skill sets required. And then look into the costings for those kinds of skill sets, everything, you know, it does cause you know, you got that you got to have proofreaders, you've got to have editors. And but the first thing I would say is Talk, talk to people talk to self publish authors, talk to your small Indies, you know, talk to authors, ask them what they what they want from a publishing company, because it might not be there's a lot of models out there for digital publishers at the moment, but that doesn't say every type of author and ultimately ask, you need to ask yourself, what is what? What is it that you want? from the experience? are you setting out to make quick profit? are you setting out to, you know, have a long term plan for united to merge your company at some point are you setting out as we did, as we set out as a pure passion project, you know, wanting to give, you know, authors, a platform offers that not necessarily would be picked up by some of the publishers arrived at the moment, we wanted to give them a platform and, and just be willing to open and learn learned, read, read read? And yeah, that's kind of eerie, I'd say.
Wendy Jones:That's great advice because your starting point as communication, communicating with others, because I found that the publishing industry, the writing, and you know, writers, they're all extremely helpful. They're willing to answer questions. Nobody's trying to keep information to themselves
Sumaira Wilson:massively, especially, especially the crime writing industry. It is one of the friendliest, friendliest communities I've ever come across. And it is definitely put it out there. You know, there's social and visceral social media, social media is has its evils. But for things like this is phenomenal. It's great. dip your toe into social media, speak to people. You know, like I said, there are all these GMO day Louise Mylene for sale, people like that. They're always willing to help out and give you advice. And so yeah, just communication. I'd say Wendy is key.
Wendy Jones:Absolutely. So what systems did you have to have in place before taking on your first client? example? I'm thinking distribution, but obviously, if it's an E book, it's slightly different than but is there anything more that you have to have in place?
Sumaira Wilson:Well, we've obviously we've got software, we've got software's in place to actually format books, and it loads of various ones you need to shop around, see which one's the best one for you. And in terms of distribution, it's we are predominantly ebook, and we offer print on demand. So we don't have distribution when you can go by Ingram. But we go solely through Amazon and we do an expanded distribution basis. Anyway, so they, they they distribute it on two bookshops. Yeah. So you, you, obviously you need your basic word, upstate words to do all your track changes for your editors. But that's more or less rural side copes of that. But obviously, if you're doing it in, in house, and you need to have a systems in place, but there's quite a lot of there's quite a lot of forums on Facebook, where you can go in and dip your toe in and see which systems work for you. All I say, make sure you're very comfortable with what system you're using, and you know it inside out. But um, yeah, so we've got you we've got various bits and pieces in places. But obviously there's so many of them out there at the moment. It's pretty
Wendy Jones:overwhelming, isn't it like?
Sumaira Wilson:It can be overwhelming, but always again, going back to previously communication, check out what the small indies use and who've and sell pub offers what they feel comfortable with, with
Wendy Jones:the latest thing that everybody seems to be asking you What payment system are you using in terms of when you go out to a book theatre or something, and you have to have a contactless payment system because of course, everybody's suddenly needing that people never did it before all night because everybody wants to use contactless.
Sumaira Wilson:And like I said, we haven't come across that yet, because we obviously started up in the pandemic. And we are predominantly a bird. So everything is done by Amazon. And some of our books are available on the wider platforms with Google pay, Barnes an Noble. But um, yeah, I've seen I know a lot of them are getting a little contactless reader broke someone's week, we start seeing physical events, we'll have to look into that. But yeah. For this year at the moment, so yeah,
Wendy Jones:bringing the opposites an example of how people help each other, you know, yeah, cuz everybody's saying what's the best one, and then 20 people chipping between different contacts, going well, but you just choose one that works for you. Whatever,
Sumaira Wilson:whatever works, and it might not be the first thing you use. So you know, just dip around a lot of a lot of the software companies that offer you must have trials anyway. So I'd suggest having a look around on different ones and see, yeah, he was a person.
Wendy Jones:So I know you've touched on this already slightly, but tell us about your publishing company and the types of books you publish. We'd like the name that would be good because I haven't even said the name yet.
Sumaira Wilson:Oh, we haven't. So um, my publisher, our publishing company, Spellb und Books, we kind of mean Nik i are very kind of moon girl moo child, you know, we like kin of thing and Nikki suns a m gician as well. And yeah, he s fantastic. And so we kind of ent we wanted to, we wanted t go for something a bit magical. And that's kind of what our book are. You know, like I said, we ve got some great psycholo ical thrillers. But we've go some really, really phenomen l really quirky boats. We've go some brilliant fantasy books co ing out next year. December says the start of a 10 book ser es for us, which is a spin off for Pride and Prejudice is set 2 years after Pride and Prejudic. And each book features one of the cousins. So you know we've got a whole plethora of genres and because that's w at we are as people we we raise such a wide variety of genres. nd but one one of our main one which were kind of his little n che one is horror, we've go a lot of horror. were big, big horror fans. I mean, horos my absolute life. I love horror, hat how 80s vj nasties and 90s lashes as Zoe our zombie f re or is our blog tour manager. She just published her own horr r a bit recently. We g so she's a huge horror fan. In celebrat on of that we've actually got a horror fest coming u starting the first of October. It's well Ben shocktob r fest. Wow,
Wendy Jones:I like it. Yeah,
Sumaira Wilson:Well look out e've got a trailer coming soon. e've got 12 Horror books for ublication during the course of ctober. And there we have got ome absolutely phenomenal orror books in there. Some real ifferent books. Yeah, I mean, I hink like I said, horror has lways been a love of ours. And e've Netflix it just seems like t hasn't transferred for hatever reason to books when it hould do I mean, it's such a ell, well done market within TV nd film so and the horror ommunity of fabulous is really abulous people so that's what e kind of like spell band to orm a bit of a market shares ith the horror market. And e've got some we've got we've ot a really fantastic erotica eries paranormal erotica series oming up. So yeah, we kind of ere what we're what we're Why'd e do everything we touch and verything for us. It's not bout genre when it was never bout pigeonholing our birds. It as each book is taken on its erits. Yeah, we don't read it nd think what we're going to ut that into crime. We're going o put that we will read the ook. If we like it, we'll ublish it and we'll work to ake sure it fits into somewhere nd it gets the recognition it eserves. It gets the money. kay, platform it deserves. And e will work to make that book. ou know, get it out to readers. o is it always about the riting for us or the story. And e've got a beautiful story oming from Martin Garrity, hich is set in this Scottish, mall Scottish seaside town. t's beautiful. It's really oignant. It's very much like ur rove. And it's really uirky. And it's just so really,'m really excited for this Burg ust it's just beautiful riting. So yeah, for us, it's, e never look at the genre, we ook at the story. And then if e like it, we'll publish it, nd we will make sure we publish t, and it gets the right eadership they need. So yeah,
Wendy Jones:so can people pitch direct to you? Or do they have to go through an agent? If we can do it direct? How would they do it?
Sumaira Wilson:We have a submission. So we're direct, you don't have to be agented. So you just you need send it we have a submissions team. So you send through the first 5000 words, or the first five chapters of the book, a one page synopsis and a brief offer bio, and a brief description of your book and submit it directly to our submissions team. We're a bit slow at the moment, because we are pretty overwhelmed. So we're looking at around, and sort of a six week turn around. And, and then if I said missions team, they like the first pitch that you sent us through, they'll contact you asked you for the full manuscript, they will then come into our second submissions team are in charge of going through the full manuscripts, then it will come to either Nikki or I and then we'll Yeah. And then if we all agree that it's a great burden, we everyone likes it, the spellbind team likes it. Because obviously, it's not just us doing the book, you've got to have the promotional people involved and people involved that day, sort of like the blog tours, because they need to know if it's going to work. So if everyone agrees it's a great bird deal from the contract guys. And then hopefully, they sign and they were saying it and they signed with us. So brilliant. Yeah.
Wendy Jones:It sounds like a fairly straightforward procedure. And I think six weeks is a great turnaround time. Most people say three months. So six weeks is good. Yeah,
Sumaira Wilson:it is six weeks is at apush. I must admit, we are varying on around eight o 12 weeks at the moment, but we that's because we are so inunda ed and we're still Yeah, we sti l only in our first year when h published our first book in Jan ary. We're still a small compan and we're very hands on so but um, you know, most people they d n't understand. And yeah, but it is it can be submissions can ge coming thick and fast do you fi d you get periods of times here you've got nothing coming in, and then suddenly, somebo y might see a cover or see so ething that you've publis ed and they can't fit, right? I like that. So then you sudden y get a flurry of submis ions around publication days a well. But um, yeah, it's good a ain, it's great. It's great. You know, there's, there' some phenomenal talent out th re, you know, really, really phenomenal stuff. And we've ot some really, really amazin ly quirky boats coming in now, w ich we're really happy with. e're really happy with our of ers. We've got an amazing bunch f authors as well. They'r just so lovely to work with. eah, no, it's it's been overwh lming base extremely positi e experience.
Wendy Jones:Excellent. That's what we like to hear. So what would be your top three tips for anyone considering setting up a publishing company?
Sumaira Wilson:Ah, time make sure you have time publishing is we are pretty much available 24 seven, and you have to understand that authors tend to know they, their authors are creative people. So you know, you can't you're kind of on call all the time. So you can you know, if you've got the time you need to have adequate time. It's not something that can be done in an evening. Yeah, you know, we work some days I can be working 1617 hour days but that's the I love it. I absolutely love it and I love BNF my authors they know they can get me anytime they want. If I'm not answering my emails, I'll be on my messenger via Facebook or text messages or WhatsApp. So I like to be there for them. But so but but if you if you want to be if you want to be in in if you want to be in publishing industry, you want to set up you need to you need to know what kind of hours you want to put into it. If you're it can be very, very tiring at times. It is You know, it's a full time job. But if you're willing to put the hours in, then yeah, I would say if you've got the time to do it at times do it. Communication, like we said at the start communicate with people who are in industry who work in publishing, speak to them. Is it really what you what you want? Is it really what you expect? I mean, it is a lot of hard work. And thirdly, just be really open minded. Just go in it with your eyes open and follow your instincts as well. And believe in yourself, believe in yourself.
Wendy Jones:Absolutely. That's true. Even yourself, that's my mantra. You can in your Well,
Sumaira Wilson:that is it. You know, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work here. But you know, what, these last 18 months, that surely is taught us as people and as the world is, you know, you gotta get out, or you've got to take every day for what it is and enjoy it. So if it's what you want to do, go for it. And just make sure you got good support. Tap into the book community online is a very, very small supportive community. And, and yeah, that said, Go for
Wendy Jones:leaving yourself. Finally, where can people find out more and submit books? what's the what's the web address?
Sumaira Wilson:Oh, the web address is WWE dot spell BAM books.co.uk, where it's currently under construction. we're updating the website at the moment. It's going through a big revamp interview revamp, to keep up with the fact that we've grown in quite slick, really big quite quickly. And all you can submit submit directly to inquiries at smell bamburgh.co.uk.
Wendy Jones:Brilliant. Well, thank you very much, Samantha for joining me. There's just been so much fun. I've learned
Sumaira Wilson:I've had an abso ute blast. Thank you for having e.
Wendy Jones:You are welcome. And enjoy the rest of your day.
Sumaira Wilson:Take care Wendy. Thank you. Bye.
Wendy Jones:That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today. I'm Wendy h Jones. And you can find me at Wendy H jones.com. You can also find me on Patreon where you can support me for as little as $3 a month which is less than the price of a tea or coffee. You go to patreon.com forward slash when the H Jones. I'm also went h Jones on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you've found it both useful and interesting. Join me next week when I will have another cracking guest for you. Until then, have a good week and keep writing. Keep reading and keep learning