I am happy with my current publisher, a small, specialized house. But the publisher and I are not happy with the American economy. To remain financially stable, my publisher created a subsidiary company. This company publishes books if they meet criteria and if the author pays for printing. In return, the company maintains inventory, fills orders, and pays royalties.

According to the executive director, the subsidiary company is not a print-on-demand company. When I spoke with her recently, 10 manuscripts were ahead of mine, and she said she would not get to my book for months. But I’m senior citizen and grandmother, and do not have months to wait. So I contacted a print-on-demand (POD) company.

Dozens of reviews about the company are posted on the Internet and most are favorable. I emailed the company and asked for more information. A representative called the next day to explain the process and fees. I agreed to use the company’s services.

Email instructions for uploading a manuscript were sent to me. The uploading took seconds. I had no sooner uploaded it, when I received a call from my production contact. Talk about speedy service! You can design your own book cover, but I hired a local graphic designer and found a royalty-free photo.

Print-on-demand publishing is a book industry version of “just in time” manufacturing and makes sense in this economy. In a CNN.com website article, “More Authors Turn to Web and Print-On-Demand Publishing,” journalist Elham Khatami tells why. “As the economy takes its toll on traditional publishing houses… more authors are looking to online self-publishing companies.”

According to Khatami, authors are abandoning the “vanity press” approach of buying books in bulk and selling them. Instead, they are turning to the Internet.

Brenda Rollins discusses the pros and cons of this publishing trend in her article, “The POD Quandary: How to Decide if Print-on-Demand Publishing is Right for You.” Her article was published in “The Writer.” While some POD companies offer marketing plans, Rollins says authors have to pay extra for them. Rollins thinks an author who opts for POD needs marketing savvy.

“Despite divided opinions and skepticism, on-demand publishing is growing,” Rollins notes. She thinks authors who are looking for a wide audience “must be all business as they make their decisions.”

Before I signed with the POD company I decided how much money I was willing to spend. I see this expense as an investment in my work. My new book is a collection of affirmations to help people cope with grief. Grief is a hard sell and I may not make enough money to cover publishing costs. Yet I will have the satisfaction of seeing it in print and helping others.

Are you an author caught in the recession quandary? Print-on-demand publishing may be the solution for you.

Copyright 2010 by Harriet Hodgson. http://www.harriethodgson.com

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Twenty-five publishers turned down my thriller novel, The Ark. If you’re not familiar with New York publishing, that’s everybody. And it wasn’t because they didn’t like it, which made for some serious cognitive dissonance on my part. My agent, Irene Goodman, thought my story–about a former combat engineer who must find Noah’s Ark in seven days to stop the end of the world–was a slam dunk. But when she sent The Ark out to publishers in 2008, we got what I call “rave rejections.” Here’s the general flavor of the replies we received:

Dear Irene,

Thanks for sending me The Ark, a thrill-a-minute novel that I will nevertheless have to turn down. Despite the fact that I stayed up until four in the morning reading Mr. Morrison’s book, I can’t see how we would market such a page-turner. Although the writing, action, and characters in The Ark were great, it is simply too exciting. As you know, Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, James Rollins, and Steve Berry are phenomenal bestsellers who write the kind of action-adventure book Mr. Morrison writes, and we just don’t think readers want more of them. Besides, what would be the big deal about finding Noah’s Ark? However, mine is just one opinion, so I wish you success with one of the other twenty-four publishers.

Sincerely,
J.P. Smythlington, Publisher

PS–And there aren’t any vampires in it.

I may have exaggerated their sentiments a tad, but the consensus of every major publisher could be summarized thusly: “No.”

Irene concluded that the timing was all wrong. This was in the post-DaVinci Code era, and everyone was jaded about artifact thrillers, so we decided to pull back and regroup.

I then did what every mature, sensible writer should do in that situation. I cried like a girl.

No, what I did was stop banging my head against my keyboard in frustration and start writing another book. After all, unless you’re Harper Lee, one book doesn’t make for much of a writing career.

I did briefly consider self-publishing The Ark as a print book–sometimes shortened to pbook or DTB (dead tree book) for the ecologically-minded –until I realized I would have to become a salesman, schlepping books around in the trunk of my car or convincing people to spend twenty dollars on my print-on-demand paperback. No thanks. I wanted to be published so that I could focus on the easy job of writing and someone else could focus on the hard job of packaging, editing, marketing, and selling.

At the beginning of 2009, as I was building my web site with the intent of letting people download my books for free, I noticed that Amazon was allowing authors to post their unpublished manuscripts to the Kindle store and giving them a cut of the proceeds. Irene agreed that The Ark and my two other unpublished thriller novels were doing no good sitting on my hard drive, so I thought, why not put them up on Amazon and see what happens? The only thing it would cost me was a small fee to a graphic designer to create covers that looked better than the artistically-deficient horrors I could make.

My extensive marketing plan consisted of pricing my books under two dollars and telling a few friends and family, three of whom had a Kindle. You won’t be surprised to learn that my expectations were low.

But word-of-mouth took over. Readers on discussion forums like Kindleboards, Mobileread, and Amazon started recommending my books to each other. When I found those discussions through the magic of Google, I popped in to say hi and not much more. Nobody likes the hard sell.

To my shock, my novels started climbing the bestseller list. Within a month, The Ark, which was getting excellent reviews from readers, reached number one on the Kindle store’s technothriller bestseller list, higher than established authors like Tom Clancy and Brad Thor. In three months, my three books sold 7,500 copies and were selling at a rate of 4,000 books per month.

That got the attention of editor Sulay Hernandez at Touchstone Books, which is a division of Simon & Schuster. Because of my e-book success, S&S offered me a four-book deal, and The Ark was released in May 2010 in hardcover, e-book, and audio formats. And because of my American deal, my foreign rights agent, Danny Baror, was able to sell The Ark to eighteen foreign markets and counting.

As far as we can tell, The Ark is the first self-published Kindle book to be published by one of the Big Six publishers. I’m sure it won’t be the last, but some even ask if it’s better to bypass traditional publishers altogether.

For me, the answer was no. I wanted to see my novels in bookstores, both in the US and abroad. Self-publishing electronically might not have been the conventional path, but I know without a doubt that The Ark would not be a pbook if it weren’t for ebooks.

At the time, I thought getting rejected by those twenty-five publishers was a terrible blow to my writing career. Instead, I now realize it was just the start of my journey.

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It’s a curiosity of modern culture that an indie CD or film is cool, while a self-published book still carries a whiff of stigma. Don’t believe it? Just try to get your “indie book” reviewed in most publications that habitually fawn over indie music and film.

The discrimination has even been institutionalized. The U.S. National Endowment for the Arts prohibits grant applications that include work published by the “vanity press” – any publisher that, among other sins, “requires individual writers to pay for part or all of the publication costs [or] asks writers to buy or sell copies of the publication.” The Canada Council for the Arts also prohibits “self-published books” in its grant guidelines.

If you told indie musicians or filmmakers they could neither pay their own production costs nor sell their own CDs or films, they’d laugh at you. Who else is going to do it? The indie scene is built on the do-it-yourself ethic, and even more so in the Internet age. That’s why there are so many indie CDs and films and books around.

“I wrote a story years ago and tried to get it published the ‘old-fashioned’ way, but didn’t have any luck,” says Ottawa writer Amanda Sage, who is self-publishing her three-volume series of children’s books. The project has given Sage a foothold in an industry that’s largely indifferent to “unknown” writers. When she looked for a publisher for her first book, she found only one in Canada that would even accept an “unsolicited” manuscript.

“I already knew the books were strong and I believed in them,” she says, “and I didn’t need to wait around just to get rejection letters when I thought they were good enough to put out there.”

Her first two books, Dinostory and Astrorocket, were published last year in English and French and have so far sold close to 1,000 copies. (Selling a few thousand copies of a book can get you on a bestseller list in Canada.) Her third book, Zootopia, will come later this year. The books, with illustrations by her sister Louisa Sage and Karem Laguna, are sold through her website (wonderpress.ca), at independent bookstores and some Coles and Smiths outlets.

“The series began as a whimsical idea that each of my nephews should have a book written for and about them,” says Sage, who is a freelance communications writer when not writing stories for children. “I chose universal themes that all kids seem to love: dinosaurs, space and the zoo/animals. I hope to get the books out to as many children as possible, and inspire them to read, learn and be curious about the world.”

So has the stigma of “the vanity press” survived, or has the Internet’s DIY ethic won out?

“The door has sort of been blown off its hinges in this day and age, with social media being so prominent, and countless reality shows, websites, you name it. It’s certainly gotten easier to make a name for oneself.”

And yet “There is still a stigma, in that most people are more impressed when a book is attached to a publishing house; it serves as a stamp of approval. But I really admire the people who go out and shoot a film guerrilla-style, or just go out and make something happen, rather than waiting and playing by the rules. How many times have we heard stories of authors who wound up having phenomenal success who first spent decades being rejected by agents and publishers? I think there’s something to be said for playing by your own rules.”

Her books, for kids aged “five and up,” haven’t won any mainstream reviews, but at least two Ottawa “mommy blogs” like them. The blog A Peek Inside the Fishbowl says the illustrations in Dinostory have “a wonderful dreamy quality,” and the blog Tales From the Crib says the story was “a quick but engrossing read and one that kids will really enjoy.”

Sage enjoys the kind words, but knows she can’t rest on them if she wants the world to accept that her self-published books are no vanity project. “As in any field, some of the DIY works are sub-par,” she says, “but then you get gems from artists who might never have been noticed, and suddenly a career is launched.”

Like, maybe, her own. There’s even “strong interest” in turning her little books into an animated TV series.

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Here is how to get started with publishing a book

In the past, books were allowed to subsidize one another, which allowed for a broader swath of ideas and afforded new writers or challenging voices a greater window through which to discover an audience. The “new policy was that each book should make money on its own and that one title should no longer be allowed to subsidize another.” Random House initially grew and built their reputation by subsidizing voices such as William Faulkner’s with a book of jokes or puzzles. Today, that logic wouldn’t fly.

Most small presses are inspired to continue in the tradition from the mid-twentieth century, to publish quality books with a discerning taste. When you publish two or ten books annually, you can’t afford to deviate from your program without risk of soiling either your reputation or your credibility. So, generally speaking, maybe with the exception of non-profits, most small presses are functioning similar to their corporate counterparts but on a much more dramatic precipice, where the success or failure of each book can make or bankrupt a publisher.

At Two Dollar Radio, in order to keep our book line pure and generate some alternative revenue to help subsidize the adventurous voices we elect to publish, we sell tee shirts. We get the shirts from a local wholesale distributor where we drive to pick them up, and actually do print them ourselves. Usually this happens late at night on our kitchen table, our daughter Rio crowding at our elbows eager to watch. There are always slight imperfections, but that’s what makes them unique. It’s funky and it’s cool, and they mesh well with the ethos we employ in our publishing program. We have over a handful of designs, mostly involving random animals. We have one with a pig that says “Read like a pig.” Our top-seller sports a unicorn, with the tagline “Unicorn-level books,” inspired by independent book publicist Lauren Cerand.

The idea is nowhere near original. When my wife Eliza and I conceived Two Dollar Radio, we were living in San Diego, where we met three young guys — Josh Abramson, Jakob Lodwick, and Ricky Van Veen — who made a living managing a website called CollegeHumor.com. At the time, they were drafting designs for a line of faux-vintage tee shirts. Later dubbed Busted Tees, the idea exploded and by 2005 accounted for half of their very significant monthly revenue.

While we aren’t anywhere close to as successful with our shirts, at the recent Brooklyn Book Festival tees accounted for twenty percent of our total sales. Of sales made directly through our website since August, thirty-eight percent have been tee shirt orders.

We aren’t the only press who sells clothing or accessories. For example, I have tee shirts from Small Beer Press and Featherproof Books. (The Featherproof logo — an owl with a toy arrow on its head — was a huge hit when I wore it on my parent-helper day at my daughter’s pre-school.) Perhaps the publisher with the most diverse merchandise is McSweeney’s. For sale through their website they have nearly two-dozen different tee shirts, a Believer Faces Poster, a tote bag, and Nick Hornby’s Songbook CD.

As a small press, it is much easier to craft an identity. If you buy a book published by an independent press, then chances are good you really did intend to buy that book. Either it was recommended to you by a friend, you read a review, or you discovered it on the shelf of an independent bookstore: small presses deploy no marketing sleight of hand, no clever gimmicks or paid product placement in order to finagle someone into buying one of our books. As a result, I would wager that consumers of small press books are more aware of who published the work than those of corporate presses, which makes it easier for an independent publisher to sell brand merchandise. I doubt anyone would buy a shirt that says “Random House” on it; it just isn’t cool. Nor would it stand for anything: one person might stop you in the street imagining you share an affinity for raising the perfect dog, while another might be a John Irving or Kurt Vonnegut fan. But I’ve seen students at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, rocking McSweeney’s shirts and I know their taste.

If the task of a small press is to foster new talent, to serve as a platform for innovative ideas or challenging voices, in hopes of achieving a reasonable readership in the thousands, then it seems practical to look to additional sources of revenue in order to keep the ship afloat. At Two Dollar Radio, that means allowing us to publish the type of bold work we’ve built our reputation on without resorting to publishing the modern equivalent of the joke book.

While not every book publisher in New Zealand has a wholesale shirt distributor close by, or the energy and willingness to screen-print shirts themselves, there are other means to accessorize affordably. And, following McSweeney’s example, it doesn’t necessarily have to just be tee shirts.

Richard Nash pointed out in his ‘Don’t Call it a Comeback’ piece in Publishers Weekly that respondents to a poll in the U.K. on what book will most likely get you laid, stated “anything published by Soft Skull.” Since it’s not always comfortable to cart a book to the bar with you, imagine how much more convenient it would be to simply don a Soft Skull tee shirt.

Source: Huffington Post
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Here is how to get started with publishing a book in New Zealand.

I truly have nothing against traditional publishers. In fact, up until just recently, all my books and articles were published by traditional publishers. I appreciate all the acquisitions editors that I encountered twelve years ago, who helped to shape the writing that I do today. However, you would have to be in serious denial not to realize that a fundamental shift has occurred in the publishing world. The traditional media outlets and publishers are falling like dominoes and there is a very good reason why. The game has changed and unless publishers change too, they are going to become extinct like the dinosaurs.

So what caused such a big shift? Mostly the Internet and the fact that most anyone can produce a quality book or publication, all from the comfort of their own home. But I think it is more than that. I think there has been a fundamental shift in the way people are thinking about the world. People are realizing that all the boxes that once defined our lives are just imaginary and that with a lot of self-confidence; we can create our own boxes.

That is what happened to me. I got tired of the traditional publishers slowing down the process and then taking too much of the money. I got tired of having to play by their rules because that is the way it has always been done. Instead of just continuing to accept such a raw deal, I decided in 2009 to self-publish my own book. It is actually my seventh book. The other six were published by traditional publishers, along with dozens of printed and online articles.

And here I am, struggling to get people to read my book, which by the way has received outstanding reviews. True, I have to do all the marketing and promotion, but these days, any author that wants to see their book be successful has to do the same; regardless of who the publisher is. There are just too many books out there for any of them to stand out without a lot of effort on the authors part.

So, should you self-publish too? Well, I don’t know. That is a tricky question. There are lots of options out there, ranging from vanity and print-on-demand publishers to creating your own small publishing company. I personally chose the latter, but it means a lot more work and money on my part. The best choice for you depends on your particular circumstances.

What I suggest you do is sit down and think about what you want to accomplish. If you just want to publish a book in a an effort to get your name out there and you could care less about how much money you make and how much control you have over the process, then I would suggest going with a traditional publisher, if you can. However, if you know you are sitting on a great idea and the traditional publishers are not giving you the shot you deserve or interfering too much, then I say go for it. Throw yourself into it and hang on for a wild ride. Just whatever you do, always believe in yourself and your dreams. As long as you do that, anything is possible; even selling a million books, which is what I plan to do one day.

Sara Morgan is the author of No Limits: How I escaped the clutches or Corporate America to live the self-employed life of my dreams”. Sara made her escape 4 years ago and has never looked back. She is now living the happy and fulfilled life she always dreamed of. For more information about Sara and her book, which sells for $12.95 check out http://www.nolimitsthebook.com

This past Friday, February 15, 2008, I self-published my novel, The Doomsday Genie. There was no celebratory bottle of champagne on my doorstep – but that’s only happened once in my career, though my books have been published by eight or more of the leading publishers in the UK, US and Australia. Those same books have taken the front cover of the New York Times or Washington Post book reviews not just once but three times. One of my books was the subject of World in Action and Horizon television programs on the same day. I’ve now had another book, written after Doomsday Genie, already accepted by the publishing establishment. So I’m not carrying any chips on my shoulder. But it’s puzzling all the same that I have been put through the hassle of publishing this book myself.

Maybe this particular book just doesn’t work? A lot of authors produce a bummer every now and then. However, I don’t think so. On the contrary, I believe it is one of the most powerful books I have written. What’s more, I’m not the only one who thinks so. When London publishers sent Doomsday Genie to their readers for an opinion, the readers extolled it. Even the editors themselves freely confessed that colleagues within their publishing houses wrote eulogies about it. So what’s the problem? The Doomsday Genie is a thriller based on a major scientific theme – what would happen if there were a bioterrorist attack on America – and I make no apology for the fact it contains flesh-and-blood scientists, as opposed to Dr Strangeloves, and real as opposed to futuristic science in the fiction.

My novel is set in America, written in American English and aimed, primarily, at an American market. Unfortunately, the London reaction precluded its being sent for consideration to US publishers for whom it was intended, and who might have taken a different perspective. All this because the London editors presume that the public is not interested in reading about flesh-and-blood scientists in a novel based on a real scientific theme.

Many of you will know about this already since, last year, I wrote a running blog for LabLit.com entitled The Dragon in the Stone – the dragon being a metaphor for science trapped within the prejudice of the arts-educated literary establishment. I shall conclude, in this final installment, by outlining what the few weeks leading up to publication have been like.

I advertised the book online well in advance, preparing an e-book, which was offered for sale on fprbooks.com. This surprised everybody, including myself, by selling almost 300 copies prior to print publication. I had planned a small print-on-demand (POD) run, aimed at a marketing exercise, but this also began to sell in unusual numbers through direct website orders, so the POD took on a life of its own, to end up as the equivalent of a traditional print run. All of this before ever I began the normal approach to the booksellers here in the UK.

Hey, baby – smokin’!

Since my small press outfit, Swift, had long abandoned our excellent sales force and distributor (you don’t need these for the sale of back numbers), I had to engage the help of two of the original directors, and between us we mailed some 500+ flyers to booksellers, personally addressing the managers, and focusing on every outfit that listed novels, thrillers and science fiction.

How did we know which booksellers to address? There’s a handy publication: The 2007/8 Directory of Booksellers Association Members, which anybody can buy from the Booksellers Association. A must for UK-based self-publishers, as for all UK publishers, unfortunately it’s not available as a convenient electronic format from where you could take the names and addresses. You just have to work like hell and type them all in.

We mailed a different flyer, with a courtesy book, to central buyers, such as Waterstones, Blackwells, Amazon, Bertrams and Gardners.

At the same time we sent books, all personally addressed (aided by phone calls to switchboards since they constantly change addresses and personnel), to the review editors of the national newspapers, together with key magazines, including New Scientist and Nature; and, since The Doomsday Genie is already being interpreted as hard-edged science fiction, to Interzone, SFX, and Locus. We eschewed regional newspapers, other than locals, since past experience has shown it to be a waste of effort.

We worked on a few additional marketing strategies, though I am not going to tell you about these – it’s our secret. However, I would strongly recommend How to Market Books, by Alison Baverstock, the book used to train professionals in the publishing trade. At the stage of going to print, we hired a press cutting agency (IPCB) to look out for reviews over the coming two months.

I have to admit that even with my experience in running a small press outfit over sixteen years, I learnt a few new tricks from going through the ropes again. I was critical of the commerciality of PODs (the bright shining hope of all prospective self-publishers) in my blog, since it is impossible for a self-publishing author to sell PODs to central buyers at a profit. It’s all down to the basic mathematics: the cover price of The Doomsday Genie is £7.99 and central buyers ask for between 50% and 55% discounts. POD production costs amount to roughly £5 – and add to this your packaging and mailing costs. No way is that profitable with central buyers!

But I discovered two ways in which one can make a POD book more profitable. If you take on a larger print run you will obtain substantial discounts, which makes it profitable to sell books to individual booksellers or direct to readers. Even so, you still cannot break the central buyers’ barrier of 50% to 55% discounts. But there is also a way around this. If you engage a major organization such as Lightning Source to print your POD, not only will they force a much better discount out of central buyers – enough to make it profitable for you – but, globally, they will carry the book into outlets that you, and most small press publishers, cannot reach.

When, in April last year, I first donned armor and hefted my Fir Bolg double-edged battleaxe, I suggested that other prospective self-publishers trust a seasoned gladiator to show you the way. I have kept my promise. Of course I don’t anticipate overnight success. It’s going to be a long, hard slog. But, you know, in the end, no matter what the route to publication, public reaction allied to the quality of your book will decide whether your dragon soars or ends up adding its bleached remains to the beach of bones. But one thing’s for sure – your dragon will never have the chance to soar if it remains forever locked within its stony prison.

Maybe one or two of you – and a certain supercilious book dedicated to bullshit – will raise a glass with me and share the blessed toast. To science in fiction!

Sléinte!

While there has traditionally been a stigma attached to self-publishing, for some writers the option to self-publish has many advantages.

Advantage 1: Self-publishing allows you to make a much larger profit on each book sold. If you already have a channel to sell your books, self-publishing can make the writing/publishing process more profitable than having your book traditionally published. Writers who frequently speak at conferences, for example, might benefit more from self-publishing than from using a publisher.

Advantage 2: Self-publishing gives you complete control over your editorial and design. If you want to use your book to brand either yourself or your company, you can use your cover in ways a traditional publisher would probably not consider. You can be much more free with plugs to your own products and services in a self-published and not be concerned that they’ll be edited out.

Advantage 3: Self-publishing allows you to set the timeline. If your book is related to a current or upcoming event, you can push your schedule to ensure that you have printed copies of your book on-hand when that event happens. A publishing house has its own schedule that doesn’t necessarily coincide with yours. It will likely take much longer to see your book in print than if you self-publish.

Advantage 4: When you self-publish, you retain all copyrights. If your printed book doesn’t sell the way you expected, or if you really want to re-purpose it as a video or ebook, with a traditional publisher you are stuck. Your contract likely prohibits you from using your content in any way without them. As a self-publisher, you can create ebooks, articles for your website, videos, or booklets from your book’s content without contractual repercussions.

Of course, being a self-publisher also has its hardships. You need at least some initial financial outlay to self-publish a professional looking book, and if the book fails to sell, there is no one to blame but yourself.

However, for the adventurous, sales-minded writer, self-publishing may be the best of all possible worlds.

Wendy Woudstra has been writing about publishing and book marketing for more than a decade. Learn more about book promotion at her website, http://PublishingCentral.com.

Self publishing might be the best way in publishing your book. There are several advantages to self publishing that you might not have considered.

First, and most important, self publishing places you firmly in control of your book. When someone else is paying you to publish your book then they make many decisions regarding the editing of the manuscript, the cover, the title and the marketing that can impact not only how well your book will sell but also how it will be received by the reading public. For example, my second book ended up with the title “Kentucky Kisses” simply because my publisher’s marketing department reported that books with the word “kisses” in the title sold well. I felt the title was rather frivolous for the content but my wishes were ignored.

Self publishing is also faster than traditional publishing. With my novel, Kentucky Kisses, it took me over a year to find a publisher interested in buying and several months before we went to contract. Then after the contract was signed it was another 18 months before my book was released to the public. That is a long time to wait.

Self publishing also allows you to retain all the profits from your endeavor. While you may have to put some money up front (depending on the method you use to self publish your book) you will not have to wait for months or years to see income as a result. Most publishers only pay royalties once or twice a year and then those royalties are only a small percentage of the book price. When you self publish your book then once you have covered any publications costs everything you earn is pure profit.

Finally, it cannot be overlooked that self publishing offers you an opportunity to break into print that might not be otherwise available. The simple fact is that traditional publishing is highly competitive and many worthwhile manuscripts (and authors) cannot find a publisher although there may well be an eager and receptive audience for that book.

It should be noted that self publishing may not be for everyone. If you are still struggling with your writing and voice, or your manuscript still needs polishing, then you should continue to work on your book and perhaps bring in the assistance of a critique group or professional editor. Self publishing a book that is not yet ready for publication could be a costly mistake. If your manuscript has been polished and well received by several critical readers then you should at least consider self publishing your book.

Not only does self publishing offer you the advantages of complete control, faster publication, and higher profits, it is easier and less expensive than it has ever been before thanks to modern technology. Self publishing could be your big break as a writer.