FAQ: Industry support
I’M THINKING ABOUT STUDYING PUBLISHING. IS IT ESSENTIAL TO HAVE A PUBLISHING DEGREE TO GET A JOB IN PUBLISHING?
We get asked this a lot. The answer is always simple: a publishing degree is not essential to get a job in publishing but it helps. Both Heather and Laura are certain that if they didn’t do the MLitt Publishing Studies course at the University of Stirling, they would not be working in publishing. This is because publishing courses (if they’re good) give you a great overview of the whole industry and give you the tools to figure out where you might best fit in it. Heather realised she liked marketing and publicity, Laura realised she liked production and finance. The course also gave us both contacts with local publishers which gave us the first steps towards getting (unpaid) experience in small independent publishing, which then led to jobs in publishing, which then led to us freelancing, which then led to us starting 404 Ink in 2016 when we had a chip on our shoulders and thought ‘we can do this better than the standard’.
Be warned: studying publishing does not guarantee you any job in publishing - you must have the drive to make yourself stand out amongst the hundreds of other people looking for the same job. How you can do this is down to you. Maybe you start a blog, an anonymous Twitter account that spills the tea on the industry’s scandals, a vlog, maybe you write pieces about the industry at large and write a piece for the Society of Young Publishers or The Bookseller. Heather was a music journalist prior to working in publishing and reviewed books; Laura ran a blog that criticised certain elements of the publishing industry and also reviewed the occasional book which brought them both Twitter followers and a modest audience at which to spout thoughts at which then made launching 404 Ink a bit easier as we weren’t launching into a vacuum. Every baby step in our career, paid and unpaid, led towards where we are today, which still is far from the perfect work/life balance, but it still allowed us to build a company we’re proud of. We will always recommend studying publishing if you’re in a position to do so, and if you feel it’s a good move for you, but we are biased so absolutely also seek out advice from those who got into publishing without a degree - they will definitely have interesting insight!
How do I start a publishing company?
Eep, here’s the big question which needs an equally big answer. So here goes:
Have a good idea and a good reason for starting your own publishing company.
You need to have a solid, unquestionable purpose for your publishing company. Ask yourself some key questions: why do I want to run my own publishing company? What can I do with my own publishing company that I couldn’t do working for another company? What will my company do that’s different from other companies? What will make me stand out? What is my company’s USP (unique selling point)? Can I run this company on my own or do I want a partner or a team? Do I need other people with skills I don’t have or can I learn them? Starting a publishing company because you want to publish books likely isn’t a strong enough reason to make you stand out amongst the thousands of small publishing companies that exist in the UK (and worldwide.) Identify what you can offer that’s unique and marketable and follow that path. Ask the advice of industry bodies that are there to foster publishing companies, such as Publishing Scotland. We had a meeting with them when our idea was just a twinkle in our eyes, and they really helped to give us solid, realistic advice. We also had meetings with Creative Scotland’s literature team to get an idea of what kind of books and companies they like to support. Both gave us hugely valuable advice and guided our direction.Make a business plan ASAP.
It’s going to feel silly to make a business plan for a company that doesn’t exist yet (or possibly even have a name!) but this will force you to really confront what your business will be as you’ll have to write a 3-5 year plan, with mission statements and values and strategies. It may all feel overwhelming and pointless at first (it did when we tried to make one for our unnamed company!) but stick with it, you’ll find at least something useful through the process. You can find business plan templates here.
Get ready to take your first practical steps.
Register your company. You need around £12 to register your company’s name with Companies House and you’ll need to know what type of company to set up. (Limited by shares? Limited by guarantee? CIC?) Make sure you know what these mean as you’re tying your own finances to some of these set ups.
Set up a business bank account. You can in theory run your company from your personal bank account but if your company takes off, this will get messy very quickly. We created a business bank account as soon as we were registered, it only took a few weeks to set up.
Know where you’re getting your money from. You’re likely going to start your company with your own money. Or maybe a personal loan. Or maybe you’ve managed to wrangle some funding from the likes of Creative Scotland or Arts Council England! We used around £500 of our own money to set up the company, buy ISBNs, get a logo designed, and we went straight to Creative Scotland to ask for funding to cover the costs of our first magazine, which they thankfully did. It was a modest £2,885 (sounds like a lot, it gets spent very quickly!) which covered paying the writers, paying for cover design and printing - and that’s about it! Through the sales of the magazine, we were able to make enough money back to repay that £500 and the rest is history. We had a very fortunate beginning, and were fortunate in being able to use personal savings to begin the company.
Buy your ISBNs. An exciting step! You’ll need to get registered with Nielsen and buy your first ISBNs for your first books! We bought 10 at first, to test the waters, and once we realised we were going to use those up pretty quickly (remember you need an ISBN for the print version and one of the ebook version so if you buy 10 ISBNs, that’ll probably last you for 5 books) we went for 100 more. Know the costs: 1 ISBN - £89, 10 ISBNs - £164, 100 ISBNs - £369, 1000 ISBNs - £949 (at the time of writing this).
Get an accountant. Okay, you might think having an accountant is an uneccessary expense at this point - we disagree! You will thank us later. You will have to file your first financial accounts 18 months after you’ve incorporated your company and then every 12 months after that, regardless of how many books you’ve published or how much money you’ve made - this information needs to be reported to HMRC and filed with Companies House. Unless you’re financially attuned and know how to write end of year accounts, you’re going to need help. Take a look at what these accounts look like via our page on Companies House. Our accountants are Wylie + Bisset and there’s loads you can consider. As you can imagine, they’re not cheap, but they are worth the peace of mind knowing you have an expert looking over your numbers. However, accountants are only as good as the numbers you provide them - you need to look over every file they send you to double check they’ve allocated every cost to the right place. If you send them messy information, they might struggle. Keep good records and you’ll have fewer headaches later.
Design your company logo. You’ll need a logo - if you’re skilled in design, go for it. If you’re not (like us), hire an expert. We took a brief to someone who did branding and after a few weeks of back and forth, we had the logo you see now. 5 years later, we still like it! (phew)
Now it’s down to you. Build your website (we recommend Squarespace!) and social media presence and brand, open your submissions, sign your authors (learn how contracts work!), pay your authors fairly, be a good publisher!