Are Authors As Much To Blame For Publishing's Current Malaise As Publishers?

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This piece originally appeared on the Caffeine Nights Publishing blog on 2/14/09.

This may be difficult to read especially if you are an aspiring author, but are authors as much to blame for falling profits, closing bookstores and the current failure of the publishing world to embrace new digital media platforms?

Reading many forums, blogs and articles on various sites it becomes clear than many, many authors (aspiring or otherwise) wish to continue living in a cloud cuckoo land where the age old business model of paying advances and expecting a living wage on the basis of absolutely no sales exists.

The global economic crisis has led to a massive downturn in profits across the board which is striking the very foundations of companies that have been established for decades and in some cases hundreds of years.

The publishing industry has the reactive qualities of a dinosaur on diazepam and sadly it has instilled a culture of acceptance in generation after generation of authors that the only business model is one that was adopted by publishers in the 1900’s. Namely, large upfront advances based on nothing more than a hunch and a publisher’s marketing machine. Well, the world has moved on buddy and it is no longer the case that publishers can afford to continue going down this rocky road.

The Internet now exposes how authors expect this model to continue no matter what the economic climate says. I have read countless threads where authors appear to be viewing the world of publishing through rose coloured glasses. For example comments such as, “Well if they are not going to pay an advance they are just crooks, or they’re POD with no established route to bookstores.”

Yes, what a great idea, let’s just fill every bookstore across the country with hundreds of copies of books regardless of the demand and then see those books return in six months to be shipped off once more to a remainder shop or back to the printers for pulping. How environmentally sound and what a great business plan…not.

Let’s examine how well the world of publishing is coping with the current situation. Bookstores are closing, profits are shrinking, publishers refuse to look at new delivery platforms, and sales are in decline. Yet still I see unpublished authors bleating on about how a publisher is not a real publisher if he is not putting his hand into his own pocket and paying the author hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pounds before a solitary sale has been made. Cuckoo!

Business cannot run this way any longer. In fact I don’t know of many other businesses which allow such a model to operate. Do you think Tesco or Wal-Mart would let you walk away with all their stock on the basis that one day you may be able to pay the bill?

Until we see a paradigm shift in thinking in both authors and publishers it may be that we have to face the fact that many established companies are going to collapse, never to rise. Authors, I appreciate you think your work is the best thing since sliced bread, that’s what I think with every novel I complete, but the truth is you are only as good as your sales and that is all the reward you deserve. It is the only sustainable business model, like it or not. Yes, there will always be exceptions and bidding wars. Good luck to the companies which want to get involved in that particular strand of madness.

BelleBooks, Inc.: Ringing Them Bells

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This profile of BelleBooks, by Joyce Dixon, originally appeared on the Southern Scribe site in 1999.  Now that BelleBooks is an established and successful independent press, this backward glance provides valuable insight into the beginnings of a winning start-up.

Sharing stories of their southern roots was the dream of six veteran authors, and last year that dream became reality with the partnership of BelleBooks, Inc.

The authors, each successful in her own right, include: Debra Dixon, Sandra Chastain, Deborah Smith, Virginia Ellis, Donna Ball and Nancy Knight.

One of the nice surprises since forming BelleBooks, says Virginia Ellis, “… has been the response of people to six women sticking their necks out and forming a small press. Everyone is so excited for us and that has translated into sales. I got the feeling that we were out doing something that many people dream about–starting our own company and writing what we love.”

The idea of publishing was born in Donna Ball’s Tennessee cabin, which has become a writers retreat for the group. Debra Dixon explains, "As we began discussing exactly what type of project our first title would be, we found ourselves trailing off into stories of growing up Southern. We had tears in our eyes from laughing and lumps in our throat from emotion. After that particular brainstorming session, there wasn’t much question as to what kind of project the launch would be."

"In the process," adds Virginia Ellis, "we discovered our ability to work together. This ability naturally found a creative outlet in planning a book in which we could all participate–separately but together."

The decision to form a small press over submitting their anthology to established publishing houses could be summed up in one word — control. "Both artistic and marketing control." Debra Dixon continues, "We each have agents and New York publishers and editors, not to mention the marketing departments of the big houses. Book publishing at that level is about sales, about very commercial work.

"Big publishers are leery to let an author ‘out’ of her niche. They often fear disappointing readers by not publishing more of the same. The prevailing philosophy is, ‘Readers want what they want and don’t give them anything else.’ Creative people find that very limiting. Forming a publishing house gives us control over work that doesn’t mesh with the New York publishers’ views of our niche. Control of the work allows us to experiment with cover design, marketing and voice. The entire concept is very appealing. Producing the launch title only whet our appetite for the opportunities and possibilities that exist."

There is also the element of independent southern women and a dash of pioneer spirit within these authors. Virginia Ellis speaks to this nature. "Forming our own small press seemed to be the answer to our quest to write from our hearts, not by ‘house rules.’ Also, we, the six of us, write for different mainstream publishers and have different agents. The chances of selling an anthology or any other collaborative work with so many hands on the project are pretty slim."
 

Each partner in BelleBooks brings their own talents and business experience to the group. Yet forming a small press can be daunting for anyone. "It’s a fulltime job!" states Deborah Smith. "Even with six of us sharing the duties, there’s a tremendous amount of work involved in doing it well. The paperwork, the cover art, the book design, editing, marketing, warehousing the printed books—all these things take a lot of time and effort."

"We’ve had to step out of our comfortable offices and rush out into the world with our ‘baby book’ in our hands," adds Virginia Ellis. "Working the production side, I have to deal with the actual building of our ‘widget,’ an entirely different process from writing."

Former business consultant Debra Dixon keeps the group grounded. "As President of this rowdy bunch of creative souls, my task has been the difficult one of dragging feet back down to earth. There is a real tendency when reality exceeds your expectations to take on too much, too soon. It’s human nature. So, we’re learning how to reach for the stars while taking the tiny baby steps that build a secure foundation for the company."
 

Their debut anthology, Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes, followed the normal editorial rules known so well by these authors. Debra Dixon describes the experience, "We had discussed the kinds of stories we wanted and the areas of growing up Southern that we felt should be included in the book. Authors who felt they had a story that fit volunteered. However, since BelleBooks–even for the company founders–has an editorial protocol to be followed, stories were submitted to the editor and each author worked the process much the same way one works with the big publishers. The editor had ultimate responsibility for guiding the collection once the concept and general story ideas where hashed out. Editorial and production worked on placement of stories, etc. to create a "read" of which we are very proud."

Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes was published in May 2000, and in that short time these authors have discovered sweet memories. Deborah Smith is touched by "the depth of appreciation for nostalgic fiction. People appreciate the stories because they recreate childhood memories."
 

Debra Dixon is naturally impressed by the business success. "In just a few short months we’ve climbed more than 2/3’s of the way to our 12 month sales goal. Reviews have been staggeringly positive. Being selected for review in Today’s Librarian and having the collection mentioned in Publishers Weekly "Fiction Notes" were definite high points. We’ve met our distribution goals in the number of accounts opened.

"We’re delighted to be an open stocking vendor for Baker & Taylor, and to be selling well through bookstore special orders with Borders, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and B&N.com. Independents have been very supportive. Virtually Southern books sold over 130 copies of the book at our launch booksigning and I believe their sales now top 200 copies. The most amazing thing is that even with all of this ‘good’ news, we’ve barely scratched the surface of distribution and book placement."

"The readers of Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes consistently said one thing, ‘We want more!’" beams Virginia Ellis. "So, we have come up with a town they can visit anytime when they want a vacation from work or just a smile to get them through the day."

The next BelleBooks offering will be a series of books set in Mossy Creek, Georgia. Deborah Smith describes the project, "We’re very excited about Mossy Creek. Fans of Mayberry, Lake Wobegone, and Jan Karon’s Mitford series should really love this warm-hearted series. The books are set in fictitious Mossy Creek, Georgia, a mountain town whose pioneer founders proudly proclaimed, ‘We ain’t going no where, and don’t want to.’ The first book will introduce wonderful characters such as the gun-cleaning mayor, Bob the back-luck chihuhua, the sexy town police chief and his overzealous female officer."

[Publetariat editor’s note: there are now six books available in the Mossy Creek series.]

"There is something immensely satisfying when you’re not only the creator of a product but also the publisher," explains Debra Dixon. "There is no agonizing wait to find out if an idea will be picked up for a series or if those secondary characters begging for more page space will ever be given it. As a publisher, you are in a position to evaluate the project immediately and give the writers the assurance that they can build all the richness into the stories that they would like without fear. There will be more Mossy Creek books.

"At our recent board meeting in Atlanta, the most important item on the agenda was setting the ‘drop dead dates’ for final editorial revisions, production and galleys. We are delighted to report that Mossy Creek will launch Spring 2001. The reason this date is so amazing is that we’re bringing out our second title less than a year after the launch of Sweet Tea & Jesus Shoes."

There are plans for BelleBooks to publish individual works from within the group of owners. Debra Dixon points to other contract obligations, "we have to find a way to shoehorn in the writing time for a full-novel. But we hope to see an individual title in the near future."

BelleBooks is not to be confused with self-publishing. The small press plans to accept queries from writers in 2001. The editorial guidelines can be found under "for writers" on the website,  www.BelleBooks.com. Debra Dixon advises, "While I hate to repeat that oft heard phrase from NY publishing, the best way to know the kinds of voices we are looking for is to read the short story collection. And to take a good look at Mossy Creek this spring. The editorial process on Mossy Creek was quite demanding, and is probably best representative of the kind of longer fiction we’d like to see. We are contemplating a ‘best new voices of the South’ collection, but that is in the very infant stages of concept development."

Visit BelleBooks to learn more about BelleBooks and buy BelleBooks titles.  Visit  Southern Scribe for more information about Southern Scribe and resources geared toward working writers in the southern region of the U.S.

Ebooks: Fear vs. Opportunity

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This post, by Noelle Skodzinsky, originally appeared on BookBusinessMag.com on 3/1/09.  Noelle Skodzinsky is the Editor In Chief of BookBusinessMag.

People fear the unknown. It’s a simple premise that creeps into our lives more than we realize. Change brings a great amount of uncertainty … and therefore, fear. The changes happening in the book publishing industry right now are enough to prompt even the bravest publishing souls to cover their eyes, cautiously peeking through the space between their fingers to see if it’s OK to look.

It has been a challenge for Book Business to provide you with enough information on digital content without scaring off or angering the print lovers among us. But the simple fact is that whether you love printed books or not, or whether you see them existing forever or not, there is a growing market for e-books and other digital content formats that cannot be ignored. It is going to impact the future of the entire industry. 

A panel at the recent Tools of Change for Publishing Conference confirmed that. The session, called “The Rise of E-books,” shared interesting statistics and trends, and explored why e-books previously failed to gain momentum after their initial launch. David Rothman, founder and editor-publisher at news and commentary Web site TeleRead.org, said he believes the reasons for the initial failure were: the price point was about the same as for printed books; there were not many e-books available to consumers; digital rights management issues; and lack of viewability of e-reader screens. 

Addressing advances in e-readers today, Russell Wilcox, president and CEO of E Ink (the company behind the e-ink technology used in the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle, among others), said, “Every 18 months, the speed of the ink is doubling.” Today, it takes just a quarter of a second for the ink to change (e.g., when you “turn” a page). This year, he said, will also see the launch of new sizes in e-ink screens, both larger and smaller; e-readers will launch in new countries; and we will begin to see touch and pen interfaces, enabling users to input as well as output content.  

“In 2010,” said Wilcox, “flexible displays will expand … and toward the end of the year, we will see the first full-color e-paper devices. In 8 to 10 years, color will get better and better,” he added, ultimately achieving a level suitable for viewing quality, full-color magazines. 

Digital rights management (DRM) continues to present an obstacle, agreed the panelists. “DRM has to go away,” said Joe Wikert, general manager of the O’Reilly Technology Exchange division of O’Reilly Media Inc. He added that the industry needs to stop thinking of digital content as print books in digital form. “As long as we’re focused on bringing print to a digital format,” he says, “[that will be] an artificial ceiling we’re always going to be dealing with.” Instead, publishers should focus on the “great opportunities in video, linkage, etc.” 

Read the rest of the article at BookBusinessMag.com. 

Why I'm Optimistic About The Future Of Books

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In which San Francisco-based literary agent Nathan Bransford gives us all a reason to feel a little less gloomy about the future of publishing.

For the second installment of positivity week: the future.

You don’t hear very much optimism about the future these days, what with the stock market looking like the Grand Canyon and the Bachelor breaking hearts on national television (except my heart — I loved every minute).

We’re just over the horizon from the digital age of books. It will be a major transition. It is going to cause some heartache and displacement and layoffs, as it is already. We’re seeing old models break and die. And right now in the world of books, the shrinking shelf space due to closing bookstores (not to mention closing wallets) isn’t yet being replenished by the new possibilities that are afforded by the digital marketplace. Right now there are still all sorts of bottlenecks in the system that are resulting in good books not being published (or under-published) and all sorts of stress. Plus, change is scary.

(And yes, I know that paragraph may violate the terms of positivity week. Don’t worry, I’m getting to the good stuff.)

Don’t fret over your beloved paper books: they will always be around in some form. But here’s why we, as lover of books, should embrace the coming eBook future: distribution will no longer hold writers back.

Writers from the beginning of time have been faced with one essential physical challenge: you had to get the books to the people. Thus, you either owned a printing press or you had to find a publisher (who owned you). Without the publishers: there was no way to reach an audience.

This physical barrier has already eroded somewhat with POD and self-publishing, but as anyone who has self-published knows: good luck getting your self-published book into a bookstore. You may be able to print your own book these days, but without a publisher’s backing or pre-existing fame it’s ridiculously hard to find an audience.

In sum: throughout the past two hundred years, someone could write a perfectly good book, but there was one big barrier standing in between the author and their readers: publishers. As much as I’d like to think the publishing industry is always right, well, it’s not.
 

But here’s what’s going to happen in the digital era: anyone will be able to publish their book, and there will be no distribution barrier. The same eBook stores that stock Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown will stock, well, you. Readers will be the ones who decide what becomes popular. There will be no intermediary. It will be just as easy to buy a book by you as it will be to buy the HARRY POTTER of the future. Your book will be just a few keystrokes away from everyone with an internet connection (and their tablet/eReader/iPhone/gizmo/whatchamacallit of the future).

 

Read the rest of the post at Nathan Bransford’s blog.

National Consumer Protection Week during March 1 – 7, 2009

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When people in the USA are observing National Consumer Protection Week during March 1 – 7, 2009 and Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce has organised ‘National Consumer Fraud Week’ from March 02 – 08, 2009 in Australia, I trust this post should prove useful. Together, let us try to save as many vulnerable netizens as possible, as quickly as possible and in as many ways as possible.

 

You do not need any introductions to online crimes and e-SCAMs. “Losses being incurred as a result of cyber crime are increasing at an alarming rate and now we have reached a point where people are more fearful of being a victim of cyber crime than they are affected from physical crime”, according to blogs.  In the USA, FBI records indicate that there was an increase of 25% in the money lost during 2005 – 2007 due to online fraud. While Australians have been losing roughly half-a-million dollars a month in 2005, it has been reported that we lost about a million a month in 2006 and about 36 million a year in 2007. Over the last 12 months, the Australian law enforcing agencies have reportedly seen an alarming 60 per cent increase in the number of complaints and inquires about scams, with a 67 per cent increase in people reporting money lost. That increase is no accident and does not appear to be slowing anytime soon according to security analysts and press reports.

 

It’s getting tough to borrow money too. With the credit crunch, small businesses and individuals have been turning to alternate lending sources for getting access to much needed funds for survival. And it is so easy to fall prey to the scammers who offer fake loans. The global financial crisis has significantly increased the chances of Australians falling victim to fraud during 2009, according to Mr Peter Kell, Chairman of the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce. The misery of anyone who loses job will often be compounded if his/her efforts to find a job make him/her fall to the scammers’ designs. The chain reaction so generated could end up costing our community a great extent. As unemployment rises, incomes shrink and the benefits of the government’s rebates and incentives under the economic rescue package(s) disappear, as responsible members of the community, we may automatically be inclined to claw back our spending, yet looking for more money from any source that one can find. That too in turn may make us more vulnerable to falling into the hands of scammers.

 

There are all sorts of e-mail SCAMs and they reach us under every conceivable pretext. Scammers lead their target(s) to believe that they have won millions from a non-existent lottery; landed a lucrative job but nothing more than collectors of money for the scammers; or secured a loan, grant, bursary, scholarship or financial assistance on unbelievably attractive terms despite without any paperwork until then.

 

The victims are generally believed to be naïve, technically illiterate or overly trusting. But this is not true. People from all walks of life fall victim to SCAMs. To make matters worse, most people still don’t think it will happen to them. People generally do not ‘care’ about either, until they or anyone they know, fall victim. It is sometimes difficult too, to convince a potential victim that what he/she was relying on was just a SCAM. So much has been built into the business of SCAMs globally and any inertia to recognise these facts and/or delay in creating sufficient awareness among our community through coordinated efforts could keep more people falling victim. So, the question is: As responsible members of our community what can we do to help our fellow netizens before criminals go to whatever lengths they can to trick the most vulnerable people amongst us?

 

We may refer them to umpteen advisories, blogs or web sites as usual. There are commercial products offering varying degrees of security too. However, the efficacy of those solutions depends on the ‘awareness’ of the user concerned, because you have to take the call ultimately on what is a real deal and what is a potentially fraudulent product or service. Our efforts to educate our community have not been very effective so far, if news reports are anything to go by. One can’t really prevent people falling victim to online SCAMs without adequately educating the community. It is also true that creating awareness alone won’t solve all incidents of people losing money from SCAMs. But adequate awareness when created among people, they will consciously seek the benefit of all other tools such as advisories and technology.

 

Please feel free to contact me for any further information and/or clarifications. Also please feel free to pass this message around.

 

Thank you.

K P Manikantan

Getting started in self-publishing: a few frequently asked questions

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While I’m new to the idea of independent self-publishing in this industry, I’ve done quite a bit of work in the indie roleplaying game industry as an editor and working with folk like the Indie Press Revolution (a bit like lulu.com for game designers).  The market’s quite a bit smaller, but unlike traditional publishing, ‘indie’ in that context actually carries a more positive cannotation — and they’ve been doing it very successfully for a decade or more.

 

In poking around and doing my research on this new (to me) industry, I’ve found that a lot of the questions that newcomers to the indie game publishing industry have about publishing and marketing their own work are similar to the sorts of questions that a newcomer to fiction/nonfiction self-publishing might have.

 

I’ve gone to some work to compile answers to some of the more frequently asked questions that a newcomer might have about how to "do this thing" — the resulting post is pretty long, but hopefully helpful to… well, someone.

 

Enjoy or ignore at your leisure, and if someone with specific experience in self-publishing as it pertains to fiction/nonfiction finds some of these compiled answers inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated, PLEASE FEEL FREE to add a post with your own expertise and input.

 

Finally, please don’t take too much offense with me for the opinions expressed in the answers below.  These answers are not ‘mine’ in any sense, other than the fact that I collected them from various people, as they provided answers.  Come to that, the questions aren’t mine, either.   I’m just providing some information that I think is valuable — and maybe starting a conversation or two.

 

Printing Books with traditional methods

 

1. I’ve heard there’s certain "price breaks" for printing books. (ie. printing 500 is cheaper, per book, than printing 5) Typically, where are the major price breaks?  When people have a print run done, how many do they normally have printed?

As a rule of thumb there really aren’t actual price breaks in the technology itself. It’s just that setting up the print run costs X dollars, paper costs Y dollars and printing that one page costs Z dollars. In a traditional set-up (off-set or the sort) X is high, Y is the same it is for everybody else and Z is minuscule. In a digital printing set-up X is low, Y is the same and Z is high. This means that if you plot the costs of printing a project into a graph with run length on the x-axis and cost on the y-axis, you’ll find that the traditional method starts higher (that set-up cost X is the same even if you print just one copy) but goes up slower (Z is very low, mostly it’s Y that increases the cost as your paper consumption increases), while the digital printer starts lower (X is smaller, and can be brought down further by smart preparation; some printers go so far as to include the set-up costs in the page costs, such as Lulu, which results in almost no price breaks with longer runs) and goes up faster (because Z is considerable, unlike in the traditional set-up).

 

"Price breaks" in this technical context are an artificial phenomenon that comes about with individual printers who simplify their costs structure for the customer. Lulu, for example, gives you a very slight discount for printing what, 25 copies of your book? It’s not that 25 is somehow cheaper to make than 24, they just decided to set up their pricing like this. Other printers have different systems, different work flow, different practices, different profit margins, different customers and different pricing.

 

The natural follow-up question is when a traditional print run should be chosen instead of a digital printer. The answer changes with time as both basic types of printing equipment is developed, and the state of the economy changes to favour different companies. But a very, very rough rule of thumb might be that the break-point between the two technologies might reside somewhere around 500 copies of whatever you’re printing. At those numbers you should definitely start including chosen traditional printers into your quote requests, while considerably under that it’s unlikely that they could match the prices of digital printers.

 

When putting that to practice the indie designer will find that he will do well to be very critical of the purported advantages of large print runs. The question of how much to print depends on your personal goals so much that we can’t go into it here, though.

2. How much, per book, does it cost?  How much more do color books cost?  How much more do hardcover books cost?

 

If you’re printing just one copy of your book (POD) and it’s a typical book, expect it to cost something like 5-10 dollars depending on its size. Quadruple or quintuple that for full color, roughly. Add something like 5 dollars for hard covers or otherwise special binding. When printing in quantity, these prices go down considerably. When printing a couple of hundred copies of your book with a digital printer, expect to pay considerably under five dollars per copy if it’s one-color and perfect bound. When printing the same book in the thousands, expect the cost to be even lower.

 

The costs savings you get for a larger print run have diminishing returns because the "savings" we see in per-copy cost are really that set-up factor X distributed to more copies of the book, and you can’t really spread it out forever – at some point you’re just looking at the real variable costs of producing the book when you’re doing such a large print run that the X factor fades into irrelevancy in the cost structure. If setting up the printer costs $500 and printing one book costs $1, then we’re going to say that printing that one book costs $501 even when in reality you just paid for setting up the printer for the most part. If you printed a hundred copies at once from that printer, you’d get a per-copy cost of $6, out of which $5 is set-up cost. If you printed a thousand copies, your cost per copy would be $1.5, out of which $.5 would be set-up cost and the majority would in fact come as variable costs. This is why the cost of one book goes down when you print larger runs – but you can never get below those variable costs.

3. What’s the process of, finding a printer, negotiating a print run and arranging delivery, like?

The normal method for finding a printer for your work is to go comb the internet for the sort of printer you want – POD, digital, traditional – write down their contact information and then send a bunch of email with the heading "Quote Request" or similar. In this email message you then describe your project in terms of printing practice – ideally you’ll already know what information to give, but presumably the printer will help you by asking clarifying questions if they want your business. You send many of these messages, at least a dozen, and then compare the responses, perhaps by setting up a table out of them. This allows you to cross out the companies that are asking highly inflated prices compared to the competition, as well as those that gave suspiciously low quotes. Out of the rest you then pick the printer that gave a reasonably low quote and seems professional, responsive and trustworthy.

 

You can make the above process a bit easier by using a printer mailing list to send you quote. The Internet is full of mailing list services where printers list themselves and where you can go and give your project details – they’ll automatically mail the data to hundreds of printers, out of which the ones who think they can service your needs will send you their quotes

 

Another thing that might help you are the quote request forms many printers have on their web pages. These are useful if you don’t know much about printing and therefore don’t know what your request should include. I don’t use forms myself because they limit the sort of information I can give, and it’s slow to type out the same information in the slightly different forms of many different printers when I could just be mass-sending one email message to many different printers. But if you know that you won’t be asking for quotes from many places, then using the form might be a time-saver.

 

To do this printer-finding correctly you’ll need to know the sort of printers you’re interested in technology-wise and otherwise as well: you know how many copies of the book you want, so based on that you’ll choose either POD, digital print or traditional printers in your search, or perhaps two of the categories if your project might work with either. (The difference between the first two is that a POD printer is specialized in printing just one copy of the book at a time and also provides a fulfillment service, while a digital printer just does small print runs in the dozens or low hundreds using digital printing equipment – the equipment is often very similar in these companies, their business models just differ.) You might also have recommendations or warnings from other publishers with similar needs, which might help you specifically target some printers with your quote requests. Most of the time the printer websites won’t give you any solid data about whether they can or can’t print or bind the work you want, so in general you’ll have to just send them your quote request (a form letter, essentially – no need to personalize it) and see what they think themselves. The printer is the foremost authority on what they can or can’t do for you.

 

When you get responses, you’ll get to see why the general opinion of online printers is somewhat low. Many printers won’t answer you at all because they lost your mail or are not interested in the project – those are fine, you won’t be missing them. Some printers will send you quotes that are very high; this might be because their set-up is simply inefficient for the sort of project you’re proposing, or it might be because their "expertise" lies in doing over-priced print jobs for amateurs who don’t realize that they should ask around before committing to a printer.

 

Some printers will ask you bad questions, some will act like you made a binding contract with them just by asking for their prices, some will contact you a half year after you sent the request, some will be obviously incompetent, and so on – it’s a jungle out there and your job is to find a printer that actually can do the work for you. I recommend that you favour printers with intelligible, prompt customer service highly, even over a slightly cheaper alternative. It’ll be invaluable during the printing process if you have chosen a printer that actually reads emails and answers questions. A traditional warning sign is if you write a message with several questions and they only answer the first one.

 

Digital printers especially have very widely varying conceptions of quality and professionalism. You might find that after you’ve chosen a printer, you will return to the quotes in a couple of weeks after it’s become obvious that the printer you chose either can’t stick to the schedule they promised or can’t print the quality of work you require. Always demand a proof on paper from a printer you’re working with for the first time! It’s literally possible that a printer can’t print your work because they don’t know how to change the raster setting of their machine to print acceptable greyscale images, for example.

 

You will find very, very few POD operations still around that will do the work on credit. The ones that did before have all gone out of business.

 

With a traditional printer, working on a half down, half net 30, the half down largely covers a printers up front investment. If they never saw the other net 30, they would be close to break even on the project, less their profit margin and maybe taking a hit on some of the labor. And if an account goes past due, you are usually talking about an amount large enough to go after, legally, in some fashion.

 

With print on demand, the amounts we talking about are typically in the hundreds and for many smaller orders, under $100. When an account as such goes unpaid, its such a small amount it doesn’t make any sense to chase after it legally, as the cost to get that recovery outstrips the amount to be recovered. And if the POD took nothing up front, they are out not just the labor, but the cost of the paper, printing and shipping too. This is the quick road to business failure for a POD.

 

One thing a POD (or any digital printer) should be able to offer is a proof or a small enough order that it can serve as a proof. If you are unsure about the quality of a POD, leave yourself time to do a small test order first, so you can see what you are getting before committing to a somewhat larger order.

 

As for delivery, the normal procedure is for you to include the rough target area of the delivery in your initial quote request. Then the printers (or at least the marginally competent fraction therein) know to include the costs of their chosen courier into their quote.

How much space does 1,000 books take up?

Space requirements will very much depend on the size of the book. For 2000 copies of a 100 page digest book, the whole print run would come in about 16 boxes, each about the size of a 5,000 sheet case of copy paper. Space wise, that could all be stored packing boxes under and on top of a decent sized office desk, though stacked 3-4 boxes high.

 

Now, by comparison, a similarl sized "case" of a few of larger hard covers have about 20-25 books in them. These would be 200-300 page 8.5" x 11" soft or hard cover books. So a print run of 1000 of those, at 25 per case, would take up about 40-50 cases. This is still very much able to be fit into 1 stall of a two car garage.

 

Honestly, if you were to invest in some heavy duty, multi shelf wooden shelving that would let you partition your 1 car stall into multiple storage slots (recommended that the lowest shelf be at least 6" off the cement floor to avoid small floods or even just moisture from the cement transfering to the boxes and books), my bet is that you would have storage room for up to 6 to 8 such print runs, especially assuming a sell down in on hand inventory on the previous ones printed over time.

Now, that said, a 1,000 print run in todays environment is some long, hard work to sell. Doable, but not easy. You might be better served starting a bit smaller. Its always tempting to print larger to get a better per book price, however, an important accounting principle that MANY new indie writer/publishers fail to grasp is that you ony get the write off the cost of a product once it is sold and you only get to write off its "cost of goods sold". The important part there is cost of goods "SOLD". Example.

 

You print 500 books at $4.00 per book. Cost $2,000 to print. You sell all 500 books, so your cost per book "sold" works out to be the same $4.00 per book you paid to have printed.

 

Or you print 1,000 books at $3.00 a book. Cost you $3,000 to print. You sell 650 of them. In this case, your cost of goods sold is NOT $3.00, its that $3,000 you spent on printing divided by the 650 units you sold. Basically $4.62 per book sold.

 

So, printing "more" to chase after the better price per book is not necessarily actually cheaper. Depends on how many you can ultimately sell. The difference between those two scenarios also has tax implications and the second scenario will end up costing you more still.

5. Should you have a distributor handle receiving and storing the books, or self distribute?

 

A distributor wouldn’t be what you’d want for the purpose of initially storing your books, most likely. Rather, you’d want a storage and fulfillment service.

 

The reasonable limits of a "garage operation" start to overflow when you’re talking of a thousand-copy print run. A couple hundred copies of a book you’ll still store comfortably at your home, but more than that might require some sort of semi-professional arrangement.

6. Is there a lot of specialized experience I’d need to not be totally in over my head?

 

The part you’ll need knowledge about is the layout and printing process, because you’ll need to be able to make the correct choices for your project when it comes to printer services. You can get somewhere by getting a responsive printer that cares enough to explain things to you, but probably your best bet is to work closely with somebody who’s done it before and ask them to help you with drafting your quote request and other such technical details.

PDF Distribution

 

How expensive is it to run a server where people can download and redownload a PDF they’ve purchased, yourself?  How much does a site like SmashWords charge to sell your PDFs?

The cost of having a basic web site is pretty small – tens of dollars annually. Having a specific domain increases the costs somewhat. Setting up PDF delivery is technically intensive, but not expensive. So you could pay somebody to set it up for you, or you could learn the technology yourself, or you could use an existing service to manage your pdf downloads for you – using an external service can be very cheap, a minor expense. So overall I’d say that expense is not something you should worry about when it comes to selling pdf files. Heck, if your sales are low-intensity, you could just email the pdf files yourself to your customers.

 

I haven’t used any of the sites like SmashWords, so I’ll leave someone with more experience to answer that; I can’t tell you offhand what their cut is.

What About The Readers?

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This article, by Hugh McGuire, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 2/25/09.

To get the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.

Book publishing has many conundrums to solve in the coming decade, and not a week goes by without a long, thoughtful article in some major magazine about the impending collapse of the industry and its myriad causes: ebooks, Youtube, greed, television, gaming, big advances, returns, amazon, pirates, the Decline and Fall of Civilization.

The articles all revolve around this central and troubling question: "How can publishing maintain its financial viability when fewer people are reading books? Especially when everyone wants everything for free?"

This is going to be a tough question for publishers to answer, but it misses a more fundamental question, which is: "What do readers want, and how can we best provide it?"

I don’t mean: "What books do they want to read," but rather, "What can we do to help people read more books?"

Tools of Change … for Readers?

I recently attended O’Reilly’s Tools for Change in Publishing conference, a yearly gathering of publishers, technology providers, developers, thinkers, visionaries. The TOC conference is built around technology, with an objective to help "decipher the tools of change in this industry and help cut through the hype for a more profitable future in publishing." In 2009 the focus was decidedly philosophical, not technological: what is the future of the book, and how might publishers build successful business models around the coming changes?

No firm answers came from the conference, but there were many glimmers of possible futures, with highlights from Peter Brantley, who examined books in the network, Jeff Jarvis who postulated about the Googly book, Cory Doctorow who skewered DRM as bad for readers, bad for business, and Sara Lloyd, who brings a reasoned and forward-looking publisher’s perspective on digital.

Still, one thing that worried and puzzled me was how rarely the reader was mentioned at TOC. There was talk of the future of the book, the network, Google, and self-publishing models. And of course DRM. But the reader was largely absent.

Tools of Change … for Readers?

One of the problems for publishers is that they have never had much to do with their readers. Their clients, traditionally, have been book stores, who in turn managed the relationships with readers. In a time of limited media choices and abundant readers that probably works. But now that book reading is competing against so many other information-based leisure activities (the web and the Wii, to name two), the makers of books need to have a more intimate understanding of what readers want. Outsourcing your relationships with the people who are your reason for existence is probably a bad idea when your business is in turmoil.

What kind of business runs without constantly questioning how it can best serve it’s clientele? The answer, especially when consumer choice has never been so great, is probably: a business that’s going to have trouble surviving.

Read the rest of the article on The Huffington Post.

Personal [And Author] Branding In The Age of Google

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In his blog entry of 2/28/09 , Seth Godin offers the following anecdote:

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper. Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person’s name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, "binge drinking."

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, "I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I’m annoyed by it. I’ll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings."

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don’t have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.

This cautionary tale is just as relevant to authors as it is to job-seekers.  Whenever someone reads or hears about your work and would like to learn more, Google is likely to be the first stop on the fact-finding mission.  All authors want to present a polished, professional web presence to the world, but it’s even more critical for indie authors to do so because indies are still working to gain mainstream acceptance and a wider readership.

So take a long, hard look at your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blog and personal website pages, and ask yourself if the content there will leave viewers with a positive impression of you as an author.  If not, edit and clean up accordingly, but don’t expect those skeletons in your web closet to vanish the moment you hit the Delete key; Google and other search engines can keep archive copies of web pages for years. 

As Mr. Godin suggests, the best you can do following an online image scrubbing is to load any search engine results with pages and references that do you proud. Post fresh content on your site(s) and blog(s), and post comments to popular online discussion boards, sites and blogs—under the same name as that under which you publish, since that’s the name interested parties are most likely to type into a search engine when seeking more information about you.  In a day or two, the new content and comments will turn up in web searches of your name, pushing the old, archived stuff you no longer want so prominently displayed further down the list of search results.  Continue with your front-loading mission, daily if necessary, until the undesirable, archived content is buried at least a couple of pages down in web search results for your name.

My First Podcast!

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Kael, creator of the always-entertaining, and somewhat unconventional Unpublishednotdead.com, has graciously allowed me to invade his space and do an Unpublishednotdead Podcast!

I had a great time recording it, and got in some practice with the recording equipment and audio software. (One thing I realized, I still have a lot to learn!)

In the podcast, I talk some about the Squaw Valley Fiction Writers Workshop, which Kael and I both attended last summer, as well as my plans for going independent in order to get my stories out in the world.

Oh, and I also describe my extremely high-tech recording studio.

You can find it by searching for Unpublishednotdead on itunes (my episode is Podcast 11, but while you’re there you should check out the others as well) or by clicking here.

Happy listening!

Advertise On Publetariat

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Publetariat is the premier online news hub and community for indie authors and small imprints.  Publetariat went viral within its first week of launch and has consistently ranked in the top 5% of traffic for all websites worldwide ever since according to websitegrader, which gets its traffic figures from Alexa.  You can verify Publetariat’s current traffic rank by running the URL www.publetariat.com through websitegrader.

Publetariat is open to targeted advertising only: advertising for products and services directly or indirectly related to books, authorship, author services, publishing and self-publishing.  Ads for self-published books and indie imprints are also welcome. 

Animations are acceptable within the body of the ad graphic, but drop-downs, zoom-outs, gatefolds and any other form of animation that will enlarge the size of the ad or otherwise obstruct adjacent site content are not acceptable.  Sound is not acceptable.

Two 150×200 ad slots are available in the left-hand column of the front page and each department page.  The first is immediately beneath the left-hand navigation menu and the second is between the two sitewide RSS news feeds (see front page of the site to see exactly where the two ads are located).   

Front Page – home page of the site

1 week – US$350, 2 weeks US$650, 3 weeks US$900, 4 weeks US$1200

All Departmental Pages (excluding Terms of Use page and Contact Us page, which carry no paid advertising):

1 week – US$300, 2 weeks US$550, 3 weeks US$750, 4 weeks US$1000 

Note that while the right-hand column of the site contains a random-rotator ad box, ads in the left-hand column are static and exclusive—once a given ad slot is purchased, only the purchaser’s ad will display in the purchased spot for the paid period.   

Publetariat reserves the right to take the site offline for scheduled maintenance for up to two hours in any week (though in practice, site maintenance is generally only necessary once every few months), and advertising will not display during that time.  Such maintenance is always scheduled for times when site traffic is lowest.

Advertisers must provide artwork sized to 150×200 with a filesize no larger than 1200kb, as well as the desired alternative text to display when site visitors mouse over the ad and the full text of the hyperlink to be embedded in the ad. 

Please contact ads@publetariat.com for more information or to book an ad.

Signing in from Colorado

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Hey all,

My name is Doyce Testerman and I live near Denver, Colorado.

 

At this point I have not been part of any self-published fiction, though I have work as an editor on a number of gaming-related books that have been released through Lulu and a few other PoD sites.  I currently have an agent representing one of my novels (a mystical realism story called Hidden Things) to traditional publishers, though I’ve grown weary of feedback that says "we love it, it’s so tight and focused and fun; we’d like to talk about a sequel or series… but can you add first 25 pages — we don’t know… somewhere?"  Grr.

 

I’ve also had several short stories published in anthologies with traditional publishers and online fiction mags.

 

I’ve been involved with the indie press revolution in the roleplaying game industry (where, like rock and roll and art, ‘indie’ is actually a positive thing) and I’m starting to see that kind of movement in fiction publishing, which excites me.
 

I just need to jump in the water and figure out this ‘swimming’ thing.

Mainstream Publishers: Some Perspective

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April Hamilton posted about mainstream authors defining legitimacy for other writers.

 

Ignoring for a moment the fact that writing is a very personal endeavor with very personal wants and needs attached to it, that are unique to every writer, I want to talk about what mainstream publishing is to a writer.

 

Maybe it’s because of the early cost barriers for self publishing, and maybe it’s because of all the vanity press scams that got perpetrated on desperate authors, but somewhere along the way mainstream publishers began to be seen, not only as the holy grail of writing, but as some sort of salvation and validation of the struggling writer.

 

We somewhere along the way, gave the power of gods and magical elves to these otherwise normal human beings, and became dependent upon them for our worth and validation as writers.  And since our identity as a writer is so often such a big part of who we are as people, for some of us, our worth and identity as people.

That’s a big boatload of validation responsibility for a mainstream publisher.  As a business entity, they just can’t meet that need.

 

So let’s add some perspective back into the mix.  What is a mainstream publisher really?

 

Two things mainly:

1. Financial backing

2. Distribution

 

That’s it.

 

I’m sorry if you were misled into believing this is still the world of Maxwell Perkins, and that you would be nurtured and coddled.  While it still seems to be true for some writers published by mainstream presses, it’s no longer the general rule.

 

1. Financial Backing.

 

Every necessary skill needed to bring a quality book to market is available on the free market.  You can buy it with cash/credit/selling your child into slavery (just kidding on that last one.  Maybe.), or you can barter for it if you possess skills/products that the individual you want to hire needs.

 

Mainstream publishers have clearly demonstrated a lack of ability to be infallible when it comes to quality. (Which to be fair, they never claimed to be infallible.) There are many books that are very well-written but are rejected either based on the arbitrary taste of a given publisher, or marketing trends.  Very often the latter.

 

Which is fine.  It’s a business, not a charity.  No one expects any other company to put out a product just to fulfill the hopes and dreams of that product’s creator.

 

Mainstream publishers do not have magical editors, interior design people, or cover artists.  All those same skill sets and quality exist on the free market.  And in this shrinking downsized corporate world, chances are good your average mainstream publisher is using a lot of freelance editors, artists, and interior layout people themselves.  

 

If you’ve got the finances or ingenuity to create the book, then that’s one of the two above things a mainstream publisher brings to the table, that you don’t really need. 

 

I was a wedding coordinator in a previous life, and using the knowledge I gleaned, I coordinated and planned my own wedding.  A few good friends were very surprised by how inexpensively I got everything.  It’s because when you start thinking in a budget-conscious way, you figure out what you really have the skill-set to do yourself and what you don’t.

 

Common wisdom says you get someone else to do your flowers.  I had wanted artificial flowers and I knew I could arrange what I needed myself with a few simple books and could save myself a ton of money on the labor.  So I did, and no one knew the difference.  But I didn’t bake my own cake, because I recognized that a wedding cake was way outside my scope of expertise/abilities.  But I still compared prices until I found something reasonable.

 

As I started to consider indie authorship, I realized I was in very familiar waters.  While I may be able to do one facet of the process myself, another would have to be hired or bartered out for.  But in the end, guaranteed I’ll have laid out much less money for the whole thing, than the casual observer might be led to believe.

 

2. Distribution

 

Mainstream publishers can get your book into bookstores, Walmarts, and Costcos across America.  But will they?  Walmart kind of has limited shelving space for books, since that’s not their primary function.  So in all likelihood we’re looking at the big chain bookstores.  The big chain bookstores that in this economy aren’t doing so well.

 

Or, there’s the internet.  Internet bookstores don’t have limited shelving space and Amazon especially is very indie-friendly.  Every year more and more consumers are becoming more comfortable with buying at least some, if not most of their books online.

 

I used to shop in bookstores, but no matter how large a bookstore, the chance that they’ll actually have any given book I’m looking for, unless it’s a new release or a bestseller, is constantly shrinking.  Eventually I just gave up and started shopping on Amazon.

 

And I’m not the only one.

 

And then there is the whole ebook thing that is now starting to really rise.  When was the last time you saw ebooks for sell in a brick and mortar bookstore?  Or maybe the question should be: Have you ever seen them there? 

I won’t dispute the fact that mainstream publishing distribution still is a nice deal when you can get it.  Though it’s nicest if you’re their debut darling of the season and your name gets splashed in front of the faces of everyone in the known reading public.  But the argument that a mainstream publisher is necessary because of distibution is wearing thinner as time goes on, the economy continues to not be great, the internet becomes a bigger factor, and the barriers just keep lowering for indies to play this game in their own way.

 

In the end, I wonder if mainstream publishers, with the exception of those rare times when a writer gets a really plum contract, aren’t just there now to validate our egos.  Even if that isn’t their stated purpose, I wonder if that’s the purpose writers have invested in them now.  And maybe all the other reasons you really "need" a mainstream publisher, are all just so much fluff touted by those who got their big break already.

 

If so, the only thing you have to let go of is your ego. 

 

Viva la Resistance!

 

Bestselling Author JA Konrath Thinks You're Delusional

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In a blog post dated 2/25/09, bestselling detective/crime author JA Konrath says, among other things:

"Are you confident or delusional?

Chances are high the delusional people will believe they’re confident, since self-awareness is in short supply in the writing community.  Here are some questions to ask yourself.

Have you been published by an impartial third party?

Confident writers eventually get traditionally published. Period."

Okay, so Mr. Konrath is saying pretty much anyone currently reading this on Publetariat is delusional. He goes on to say:

"Would you rather be paid or be praised?

Confident writers know the best form of praise is a royalty check."

A book from an author you might not want to supportSo it seems Mr. Konrath has much less interest in his readers’ praise than he does in the checks coming from the accounting department of his publisher.  If you take Mr. Konrath’s comment to its logical end, he’s basically saying that he doesn’t care how much readers ultimately like or hate his work, so long as a publisher is willing to pay for it, he’s satisfied and fulfilled.  Here’s my response to Mr. Konrath, as posted on his blog:

 

Getting signed with a large, mainstream publisher nowadays has much more to do with marketing concerns than it does with the quality of the work. Being published by a mainstream publisher only proves one thing: that the publisher’s marketing department thinks your book will appeal to a broad enough sector of the public to sell very, very well—45k copies or above, as a guideline.

This isn’t to say that all mainstream-published work is of poor quality, but the inverse: that not every manuscript which *isn’t* picked up by a mainstream publisher is necessarily of poor quality. Now, it’s simply a numbers game. Big publishers have dropped their midlists and many multiply-published authors on the grounds that while those books may be successful, they’re not quite successful *enough* by today’s publishing business paradigm.

At the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference, at which I was a speaker on The Rise of Ebooks panel, I spoke to countless publishing pros who confirmed what I’m saying here. Furthermore, I got confirmation of the fact that for a new author, there’s an unwritten rule among most big publishers that the author be able to demonstrate a significant online presence with a minimum audience of 25K. You might say this is merely a case of publishers asking the author to prove his "confidence", but what does it have to do with writing?

An author with enough entrepreneurial spirit to build his own audience to that degree AND the ability to write well has all the tools at his disposal to become an indie author, much the same as an indie musician or filmmaker. If such an author can find an appreciative audience of something less than 25K, an audience deemed too small to be worth big publishers’ time, why shouldn’t he reach out to that audience directly by going indie? And who are you to judge him as "delusional" for choosing to do so? Many formerly midlist, mainstream-published authors are choosing to bring their books back into print by going it alone—are they "delusional" as well?

Furthermore, you seem to be saying that all confident writers are published by the mainstream, period, but what about all those who approached the mainstream, were rejected by all, self-published to great success, and were *then* signed by a big publisher? True, they did *eventually* meet your criterion, but there was no way of knowing that would happen when they originally self-published. You’re saying that anyone who self-publishes—and I suspect you’d think *especially* after being rejected by a big publisher—is "delusional", but neither you nor the author have any way of knowing whether that author will achieve solo success and go on to be picked up by a mainstream publisher. Moreover, what would you have said about a self-published author such as Brunonia Barry (The Lace Reader, originally self-published, picked up by Harper and went on to become a NYT bestseller) on the day BEFORE she signed with a big publisher? And what would you have said if she had elected to remain independent, rather than sign with a big publisher? What I’m getting at is this: the involvement of a mainstream publisher, or lack thereof, proves nothing about the quality or desirability (or lack thereof) of Ms. Barry’s work.

Big, mainstream publishers are chasing after big, mainstream blockbuster hits, much the same way mainstream movie studios do. Yet in the film industry, there’s a vibrant indie movement that gets nothing but respect from the mainstream. This is because the mainstream knows the indie movement is a terrific proving ground for both films and the individuals making them. An indie film even swept the Academy Awards this year, so that alone should tell you how much respect is afforded the indie filmmaker by his mainstream peers. Why should writers treat one another so differently–so badly—by comparison?

Forward-thinking luminaries such as Jeff Jarvis, Tim O’Reilly, Peter Brantley and Bob Stein see self-publishing as the new frontier in publishing, a movement that stands to benefit authors and publishers alike, as evidenced by their keynote speeches at the O’Reilly conference. In my opinion, forward-thinking writers would do well to heed what those at the leading edge of change are saying.

I launched Publetariat.com, an online news hub and community for indie authors and small imprints, on 2/11, and it’s already achieved an Alexa traffic rank in the top 4.5% of all websites worldwide. You probably think this is because there are so many "delusional" writers out there, grasping at any straw of legitimacy offered, but it might interest you to know that a large (and growing) sector of the site’s audience is made up of mainstream publishing professionals. They’re savvy enough to know a sea change is afoot, and wise enough to know that finding ways to leverage and cooperate with the new, indie author movement will serve their businesses much better than simply dismissing it out of hand, as you are doing here.

[UPDATE 2/10/10 Since the time this was written, JA Konrath has become a self-publisher. He still has his print editions and some e editions released by his mainstream publishers, but he’s self-publishing works to which he owns the rights in electronic format, and reaping major financial benefits. So I guess even someone who used to be as staunchly anti-self-pub as Konrath has come to see there are valid reasons for authors to self-publish: well-considered reasons which have nothing to do with confidence or delusion.]

IT'S FINALLY PUBLISHED!

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BLUE LINE PUBLISHING HOUSE, INC. has done it!

THE EXECUTION OF JUSTICE by MICHAEL PHELPS is now available in Hardcover – First Edition for just $27.95!

It can be bought at:

www.MichaelPhelpsNovels.com

www.amazon.com

www.barnesandnoble.com

www.Target.com

And soon at other fine outlets.

 

 

Self-Publishing And Quality: Mutually Exclusive Terms?

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Self-publishing your book, like everything else, has its pros and cons. In my view, the biggest of the pros is that you have complete control over your work; the worst of the cons is that no mainstream reviewer – someone who might really be able to help get your book in front of a lot of people – will touch your work with a ten-foot pole.

Some self-published authors may claim that there’s an evil cabal led by the major publishers that’s dedicated to keeping out the little guys. There may be some truth to that, even if it’s in the form of momentum in the relationships between the publishers, bookstores, and so forth. The big houses have been doing this for a long time, and they’ve certainly got the inside track, not to mention big bucks to spend on marketing and promotion (not that they’ll necessarily spend it on any given author).

But let’s set that argument aside for a moment. You see, before we – as self-published authors or even small press publishers – can throw stones at the big publishers’ glass houses, we need to take a close look at our own.

To do that, let’s start with looking at self-published books from a reviewer’s perspective, because they’re generally seen as a critical factor in spreading the word about your book. If your book is self-published, virtually every major reviewer (and by “major,” I mean someone who has a following of thousands of people, if not more) won’t even consider looking at it. Even many blog reviewers – and there are lots of them across the different genres – with much smaller (but collectively significant) followings won’t look at self-published books. Why?

The answer, my friend, is that the quality of much of what we self-published authors put out is – to use that highly technical publishing term – crap. Many reviewers have gotten tons of self-published books, only to be repeatedly disappointed and disgusted by them. Many reviewers have a stated policy up front that they won’t review self-published (or small press) books. Others will accept them, but send them to the bottom of the review pile. Still others happily accept them, and then expose all their flaws (to the author’s dismay – but what did the author expect?).

The fact is that we can’t expect to have our work viewed in the same light as the major houses unless we can polish the inches-thick tarnish from the term “self-published” and stop producing reams of crap.

Before your head explodes with righteous indignation, let’s go over a quick check list to see if we can further define “crap” in this context, starting from the outside of your book and working our way in:

  • Would the cover (front, back, and spine) of your book stand out – in a bad way – on the shelves of a bookstore?
  • Is it outrageously priced compared to similar books (genre, length, etc.)?
  • Do the first pages leading into the main body of the text – the title page(s), copyright page, etc. – follow the general norms for “real” books? Do you even have any of those pages?
  • Are the margins, font face and size, leading, and headers/footers consistent with the norms for “real” books?
  • If someone were to flip to a random place in the text, would they find a typo or grammatical error in the first five minutes of reading? The first thirty seconds?
  • Assuming we’re talking about a work of fiction, is the story good? That’s something that only folks who don’t have a vested interest in your ego can properly answer.
  • And if the story is good overall, are there any major breaks in logic, sequence, etc. – anything that jars the reader’s experience and kills suspension of disbelief?

Now, I will stand here and tell you face to face (in a very virtual sort of way) that I’m not going to claim that my first novel or any of my other writing is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or that I’ve “passed” all of the tests above with the proverbial flying colors. This is not about me saying, “Hey, I know what I’m doing, bub, how about you?”

No. This is about stepping back and critiquing ourselves to improve the standards of our work, with the end objective being to make our books indistinguishable from those by major publishers.

Let me repeat/rephrase that: we want our self-published books to look just like “real” books. We want them to read just like “real” books (is my use of “real” annoying you?), or maybe even better (hey, I don’t know about you, but I’ve read my share of books from the big houses that were stinkers with bad stories, typos and bloopers, etc.).

As self-published authors and small press publishers – independents (indies!) – we have a lot of things standing against us (anybody remember David and Goliath?), but we also have some significant advantages over the big boys. We have complete control of our work, and we have the freedom to explore fresh ideas that offer readers something more than the same-old, same-old (which essentially is another form of “crap”) churned out by the big houses. Technology – primarily print-on-demand (POD) and ebook platforms such as the Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket Reader – is our friend, and allows us to get into the game with at least the major on-line retailers wth almost no out of pocket cost and, for the most part, reasonable pricing for our books.

Quality. It’s all about quality, and remaking the term “self-published” into something that’s sought after – or at least respected – and not shunned.

How do we do that? I don’t claim to have any magic bullets, but we’ll take a look at some ideas in the next post on this topic, so stay tuned!

Michael R. Hicks is the author of In Her Name. You can learn more about Michael and his work at his blog.