If the age-old adage, “everyone has a book in them” is true then there has never been a better time to harness the power of digital print and online distribution and to go forth and publish on your own. Whilst you might not publish and be damned, you might well be published and severely out of pocket.
Publishing is easy, but publishing for profit is not. This article is not written to dampen the enthusiasm of authors eager to go it on their own, rather to look at alternative publishing routes and all of the economic, logistical and personal commitments that this might entail. If you understand the process and the marketplace and have a clear idea of what your expectations are then you are far more likely to embark on a project that ends in success.
Publishing is quite simply the act of making information available to a public audience and there are many individuals and organizations that do this without any need to generate sales or income. Indeed, the main driver for many authors who publish their own work is not the bottom line, but the opportunity for them to express their views and experiences and to share this with the outside world.
It’s worth making the distinction at this stage between self-publishing and vanity publishing. Self-publishing in the purest sense is when you take on the role of author and publisher. You own the copyright, have your own publishing imprint, take the full financial risk and reap the full financial rewards. You also have to take on the full responsibility of production, warehousing, marketing, sales and distribution. Not everyone’s cup of tea.
Vanity publishing is when you pay someone else to publish on your work, under their imprint and they supply you with a specified quantity of books. In most instances, they receive a royalty for every book sold. All of the production, sales and distribution are managed by them. Once again…it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
With the likes of Lulu and iUniverse gaining popularity and offering variations on the self-publishing option, potential authors going it on their own have some very powerful marketing and distribution tools at their disposal. When you combine this with the availability of home publishing packages and developments in digital print then the end result is a much more viable self-publishing option than has ever been available before. It’s goodbye to traditional typesetting and lithographic print and hello to short run, on-demand printing. Digital presses can produce 50 copies of a paperback book at a much more affordable cost than the traditional litho presses where the minimum print run would be closer to 500. If you sell these copies then you can order another batch and supply them to our customers on demand.
It’s not the end of the line if you can’t get your book into a high street bookshop as you can create or join an online store and if you have the ability and determination to steer traffic in your direction, then that virtual foot fall may be enough to generate the volume of sales that you require to make your project a success. Viral marketing through sites such as Pressbox, PR Newswire digg and MySpace combined with facilities like Google Book Search and some determined blogging will undoubtedly raise your profile, bring customers to your door and set the tills ringing. The tactile experience of flicking through a book is never going to be replicated online, but it is possible to preview text online and, to some extent, try before you buy. The power of customer feedback and reader reviews (which can all be captured and published online) are also invaluable and you just have to look at the success of sites like TripAdvisor which are building brand awareness through word of mouth and recommendation.
There are many reasons why people seek out alternative publishing options. They may have had their work turned down by traditional publishers for a variety of reasons. It could be about the quality of writing, issues of marketability or simply because the title isn’t a good “fit” with the publishers’ current list. It’s really important to get feedback as to why your work has been turned down and to ask yourself the all important question “if a publisher is not prepared to take a financial risk on my work, am I prepared to do so?”
If a publisher has rejected your work because they can’t get the numbers to crunch and the project just isn’t economically viable then the self-publishing route might just be the better option. As a self-publisher you will have significantly lower overheads. All of the hours spent visiting bookshops, generating press releases, sourcing reviews and generally plugging your title will be on your time.
Perhaps you have arrived at the self-publishing option because you want more control over the production and ultimately more control over the sales. Whatever the reason, if you decide to go forth and publish on your own, then take the time to research your market, find out what competing titles are available and get an objective view of your writing from a trusted source (not a friend or family member who is likely to have an emotional stake in the exercise!). Work out your promotional plan, production route and allocate costs to each of these steps giving you a total for “cost of sales”. Estimate your potential net sales by deducting discounts to the book trade. (Remember that whilst your title might retail for £7.95, the actual sale price to the bookshops will be somewhere between 40 – 60% of this price.) If the magic number is positive and you’ve estimated your sales accurately then the future is bright.
Self-publishing for profit requires commitment and energy and there are some sobering statistics being bandied around about just how many titles actually make money and do well. A recent industry conference suggested that out of 18,000 self-published titles, just 83 were economically viable. Having said that, you could be one of the success stories and it may be that your project’s success is not just measured by the bottom line. The skeptics would argue that it is a rare thing indeed to find an author who is also a skilled publisher. Personally, whilst I think the self-publishing route is hugely compelling and empowering, I cannot see a day when traditional publishers will ever be replaced. The really exciting prospect for authors is perhaps not the world of self-publishing but the world of self-promotion. If you combine the expertise of the traditional publishing world with the opportunities available to individual authors in the global digital village that we now all inhabit, then you will certainly create a force to be reckoned with.
