A Guide to Self Publishing Options

The author who is considering self-publishing may find his attempt to gather information about how to proceed obscured by an array of terminology. Mick Rooney clarifies some commonly used terms in an article on The Self-Publishing Review, “The Types of Self-Publishing – Peeling Away the Layers of Confusion.”

Rooney provides descriptions of Vanity Publishers, Subsidy Publishers, Partnership Publishers, POD (Print on Demand) Publishers, and Independent Publishers. Rooney brings some transparency to the jumble of terms which confront authors. That’s useful.

But there’s one thing missing – true self publishing. In the most of the paths to publication Rooney describes the author signs an agreement with the publisher to provide services. Often in exchange the company receives control of rights, including copyrights to the book. The book then becomes theirs. The author receives royalties for a percentage of the sales. In the meantime the publisher often provides in-house editing and design services.

In a true self-publication the author handles all the arrangements to produce the book and retains all rights to the book. If the author requires services like editing and book design, he contracts with free lance editors and designers. If the author wants help with marketing services she hires someone to provide them.

David Carnoy, a columnist at cnet,  wrote about is own experience in publishing a book  in an article “Self Publishing: 25 Things You Need to Know,” advised,  “I’d never work with [a publisher’s] in-house editors, copy editors and in-house design people…it’s better to hire your own people and work with them directly.”

When the book is ready the self-publishing author can seek someone who will offer the best price on printing it without any related services added on.

Is self publishing the route for your book or would you be better off with one of the publishing arrangements Rooney describes? The answer depends on your goals for your book, your budget for its production and your comfort level with managing all of the arrangements independently. But it’s certainly a possibility that any author seeking a path to publication should consider.

Click here to read Mick Rooney’s “The Types of Self-Publishing – Peeling Away the Layers of Confusion.”

Click here to read David Carnoy’s “Self-Publishing: 25 Things You Need to Know.”



Rock Memoirs - The Good and the Bad

I recently ran across a blog post on TheWrap which boasts it “Covers Hollywood” titled “Sex, Drugs & Publishing: Music Memoirs on a Rockin’ Roll.” Leading with the news that Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones has collected a $7.3 million advance for his just released memoir Life, the post notes that Rock memoirs have become a reliable cash cow for the publishers.

“They’re pretty easy to produce, and with an already built-in audience, fairly cost-effective,” a NYC-based publishing executive told TheWrap. “Pretty much all you have to do is interview the subject and just get a ghost(writer) to polish it into prose.”

Richards leads the Amazon preorder list.

That might lead to a bit of justified cynicism.

But on the same day I saw the post I heard Terri Gross on NPR interview singer Patti Smith, a punk icon, about her memoir Just Kids which has been nominated for a National Book Award in non-fiction. What a contrast.

Smith’s book recalls the late 60s and 70s in New York City and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. Together they grow up in the avant-garde world of Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsburg.

Smith described their life together in this way, “We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed.”

N.Y Times reviewer Tom Carson called Just Kids “…the most spellbinding and diverting portrait of funky-but-chic New York in the late ’60s and early ’70s that any alumnus has committed to print.”

The book deals with events before either Smith or Mapplethorpe had achieve the fame that would come later.

As Carson put it, “Just Kids captures a moment when Ms. Smith and Mapplethorpe were young, inseparable, perfectly bohemian and completely unknown, to the point in which a touristy couple in Washington Square Park spied them in the early autumn of 1967 and argued about whether they were worth a snapshot. The woman thought they looked like artists. The man disagreed, saying dismissively, “They’re just kids.”

It’s nice to see that the rock’n roll genre can produce art as well as schlock.

Click here to read the complete NY Times review of Just Kids

Click here to read TheWrap’s “Sex, Drugs & Publishing: Music Memoirs on a Rockin’ Roll”



Who is Lightning Source, and Why the Buzz?

If you Google “self publish a book”, you’ll see all the commercial leaders: CreateSpace, (Amazon’s self publishing division), Lulu, Xlibris, and more. CreateSpace and the others cater specifically to authors who want to directly access printing and publishing services. They have user-friendly websites with simple requirements. If you don’t have your book adequately prepared, they are happy to sell you supplementary author services. They will design your cover, sell or give you an ISBN, and offer you marketing services, too.

Your Google search won’t reveal Lightning Source. Why not? Lightning Source emphatically doesn’t market to authors. Their niche is for publishers, people in the business of publishing books for commercial distribution. The website is nearly impenetrable to the casual browser, requiring an account login before you can learn about pricing or print specifications. One must apply for an account by passing a quiz on your publishing experience (!) and then following up with an account rep.

So why bother with Lightning Source? Because they are the biggest print on demand (POD) supplier in the United States, supplying books to brick and mortar bookstores and fulfilling the orders of online booksellers such as amazon.com and barnes&noble.com. As a division of Baker & Taylor, your book is listed in the B&T catalog, and that puts you on amazon.com, barnes&noble.com, etc. (The only retailer that does not sell Lightning Source books is borders.com.)

No matter where your book order is placed, Lightning Source will print and ship your book in one day. Even better, you don’t have to pay for shipping This fast, reliable, free order fulfillment is wonderful for authors. If you’ve ever tried to sell your own offset printed books, or if you have been responsible for shipping costs from POD online stores, you know this is fantastic.

A wide distribution, easy order fulfillment… what more could an author want? Higher profits, of course. With Lightning Source, you can sell your book on amazon.com at a “short discount” of 20%. That means amazon.com will take a smaller cut; just 20%, off the cover price of a Lightning Source book, while they take 35% or more from a CreateSpace book!

For all these reasons, self publishing through Lightning Source can be the best game in town – in certain cases. Look for my upcoming blog, “Is Lightning Source Right for Your Book?”



Commercial Book Publishing Choices

“The publishing world is expanding with opportunity now, especially for authors who are willing to build themselves a platform and find readers for their books regardless of how they publish them,” says author Joanna Penn in an article on Publishing Options for Your Book offered in the September ezine on her website the Creative Penn.

Penn looks at digital publishing, self-publishing, print on-demand and traditional publishing. She provides links to additional information on each publishing category. If you’re are planning a book for commercial distribution Penn’s article provides plenty of useful information. Check it out.

Click here to read Penn’s article.



Tweeting to Promote Holocaust Memoir

Ninety-one year old Willie Sterner is tweeting.

Sterner, a Holocaust survivor has written a memoir of his experiences, The Shadows Behind Me, which will be released today. As part of the book’s launch Sterner’s book will be tweeted in three daily updates each day for thirty days.

Sterner’s Twitter posts are part of a plan by Montreal’s Azrieli Foundation , which is publishing his book as a part of its Holocaust Survivors Memoir Program, to reach readers who would otherwise not be exposed to the stories of Holocaust survivors.

"Most Holocaust survivors can't find publishers for their memoirs," said Naomi Azrieli, chairperson and executive director of the foundation. "They write their memoirs because they don't want to lose their stories. We realized this is a great role for philanthropy, because there's no other way to get these stories out there."

Sterner’s memoir and others in the series will be sold in books stores and available for free download on the Azrieli Foundation website.

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The Azrieli Foundation’s effort to reach out to a new audience is one author’s seeking to promote their own books should consider. Social media can be a powerful in creating a buzz about a book. Plug Your Book! Online Marketing for Author’s  by Steve Weber provides a comprehensive look at using other online tools to promote your book.

Click here to read the Montreal Gazette’s report on Sterner’s book launch.

Click here to visit the Azrieli Foundation website.



Good Advice on Book Marketing

If your goal is commercial publication, Kendra Bonnett’s List for Writers: 10 Tips for Marketing Your Book or eBook on her Women’s Memoirs Blog is well worth your time.

She provides a quick guide to some excellent resources for authors who want to promote books whether they have been published by traditional publishers or are self-published.

As I indicated in my comment on Women’s Memoirs, we’d also recommend a look at two books on marketing books: Aaron Shepard’s Aiming at Amazon and Steve Weber’s Plug Your Book: Online Book Marketing for Authors.

If your goal is to sell your book you need a marketing plan. If you don’t have one yet the resources above will help you create one. If you already have one, you might still want to take a look to see if there is something you might add to improve what you are already doing.

Click Here to read Kendra Bonnett’s List.



A Self-Publishing Case Study

The process of self-publishing a memoir or family history book presents first time authors with many potential journeys into unknown territory. Considerations about who will edit a manuscript and how to design the cover and and interior of the book face the author who is often most concerned with the question, “What will it all cost?” For a person who has never been through the process of self-publishing a book the prospect can seem quite daunting.

A recent post by Joel Friedlander on his blog The Book Designer helps to illuminate the process of creating a book. Friedlander offers a case study of a single self-published book, The Andrew Street Mob, by Andrew Marais which he describes as a “…firsthand account of growing up amid a group of 40 or more kids in Johannesburg, South Africa in the 1950s.”

The book was a non-commercial project. Friedlander describes how he worked with Marais to, “Create a book that can be handled and read, that’s economical to produce, and that minimizes the cost to print as much as possible.”

If you’re considering self-publishing, following Friedlander’s account of the choices that took the project from manuscript to printed book will be illuminating. It will also give you an idea of the sort of collaborative relationship you will want to seek with your editor and/or book designer.

Click here to read Joel Friedlander’s post.

Should you author an ebook for commercial publishing?

It has been fascinating to watch the rapid evolution of ebooks, both as a technological platform and as a publishing platform. As a consumer, you may have already purchased an ebook reader, such as Amazon’s Kindle or the Nook from Barnes and Noble. Apple’s entry into the field with the iPad is expected to result in an explosion of new titles available to readers in the ebook format. Yet the workings of this industry behind the scenes, where books are actually created for delivery to these devices, is still evolving.

The publishing of ebooks has upended and overturned the traditional model of commercial publishing. The traditional author worked through an agent, one who negotiated each book individually with publishing houses to determine the market value of a book. The author’s rights to print, web, and film could be negotiated separately. If the deal didn’t go through, the agent could shop the book around to other publishers.

The ebook market is far less flexible for the author. Because the producers of these devices control the publishing platform, they get to set the terms. At Amazon and Apple, the terms are set: a 70/30 split. The difference comes in book pricing. Apple will sell every book on its iPad for $9.99, an arbitrary price point the author cannot control. Amazon is willing to offer ebooks at a significantly lower price. Although the 70/30 split is a higher percentage than the author could get from a traditional publisher, these low ebook prices will net far less for the author than the proceeds from a self-published trade paperback.

Recently, Barnes and Noble announced the creation of PubIt!, their new ebook publishing division. Whether they can offer more attractive terms for authors remains to be seen.

The stakes are higher than ever before. This isn’t just an issue of the author’s contract, whether he makes a few cents more or less per book. Because there are just a few giants in the ebook business, Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble don’t just sell the reading devices, they also control the distribution of ebooks. You can’t choose to shop at an independent bookstore down the street if you don’t like what they’re offering.

Is it a good idea to publish your book in ebook form? You are not likely to make a profit from a wide readership, but an ebook can be useful to your existing readers. The multimedia form can offer a more complex experience. You can incorporate video and audio into the book experience. One of the best features of ebooks is the embedded internet links, opening up more avenues of exploration for the reader.

Unfortunately, an ebook costs as much or more to produce than a print book: it requires writing, editing, and design, with more complexity. This is why so many ebooks you see for sale are actually promoting some other profitable venture, whether the print book, or a product or service. The ebook isn't a profit center, but it can be an effective loss leader.


Are Ebooks Right for You?

Online bookseller Amazon.com recently released a statement from CEO Jeff Bezos which said, “… customers now purchase more Kindle[ebook reader]books than hardcover books.”

In a subsequent interview with USA Today Bezos added, “I predict we will surpass paperback sales sometime in the next nine to 12 months.”

It’s enough to make anyone with an interest in books give some serious thought to what ebooks may mean for them.

Our next two blogs will look at ebooks from two perspectives. Today we’ll look at the implications for authors creating a memoir or family history who intend limited distribution for family and friends. In our next post we’ll look at ebooks from the perspective of  authors seeking commercial distribution.

If Your Goal is Preserving Your Personal or Family History - Print Books Are Best

What about ebooks? How about that digital camcorder footage from the last family reunion? Perhaps this is enough to tell your stories, and you can be spared the trouble of writing a book.

Whatever happened to those cassettes or VHS movies? Unfortunately, none of these technologies are reliable over time. Whatever happened to those cassettes or VHS movies? The Library of Congress, as well as other digital media experts, still advises us to document history on paper. Books can last for hundreds of years. Ironically, the lasting value of books is because they are “low tech” and don’t require a machine to operate.

That doesn’t mean that a multimedia presentation isn’t engaging and valuable. Consider supplementing your book with a CD enclosure that holds all the photos you’ve published, and more that didn’t make it into the book. You might include audio or video recordings of family members. It is easy to create a companion ebook to accompany your book. Ask your editor or book designer how you can coordinate the two projects as you prepare your book.

But if preservation is your primary goal take the advice of Dag Spicer, curator of the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, “…consider paper as an archival medium.”

Publishers Weekly and Self-Publishing

If there were any doubt about the impact of self-publishing on the industry, a quick look at the August 23^rd post on the Publishers Weekly blog by PW President George W. Slowick Jr. would dispel it. The publication which carries the tagline "The International News Magazine of Book Publishing and Bookselling" announced a policy change.

“We are returning to our earliest roots. PW dates to 1872, when it was first known as Trade Circular Weekly and listed all titles published that week in what was then a nascent industry. We have decided to embrace the self-publishing phenomenon in a similar spirit. Call it what you will—self-publishing, DIY, POD, author-financed, relationship publishing, or vanity fare. They are books and that is what PW cares about. And we aim to inform the trade.”

The quarterly supplement which will be titled PW Select promises a “complete announcement issue of all self-published books submitted during that period.” Each book will receive a listing will include author, title, subtitle, price, pagination, format, ISBN, a brief description, and ordering information. PW Select will choose 25 self-published titles for review.

What Publishers Weekly’s announcement did not do was place self published books on the same footing as those published by commercial publishing houses. For authors who submit a self-published book for inclusion in PW Select, “a processing fee of $149 will be charged.”

The reaction in the self-publishing community has been predictable.

“$149 for a brief listing that no one will read, plus the miniscule chance of an actual review in a segregated section? I'm sorry to see PW joining the ranks of the many businesses out to fleece self publishers,” said Aaron Shepard in a comment on the Publishers Weekly website.  

Another commenter, who did not identify himself by name, said, “PW has decided to launch a service that relatively few will be able to afford. So, in the end, rather than embracing any change, PW is simply laying down another type of self-appointed, financial “gatekeeper” to turn us away from the prize. Really disappointing.”

An article in the Self-Publishing Review gave a somewhat more balanced view of PW’s new policy: “Great news!  Unfortunately, the way they’re “embracing” self-publishing is by charging a fee.  The way that self-publishing could truly be embraced is by recognizing that self-published titles can be as good as any other and reviewing them alongside other books.  But it still places self-published titles in a separate ghetto. An argument could be made that pay to play is built into the self-publishing model, so this isn’t a terrible development, but this has the feeling of milking self-published authors like so many other promotional schemes.”

Whether you agree with the way they went about it or not, the important thing is that Publishers Weekly’s action recognizes that it and the industry it serves needs to find a way to address self-published books which are accounting for an increasing share of the book market each year.

Click here to read the full post on Publishers Weekly.

Click here to read the response on The Self-Publishing Review.

Printing Choices in Self-Publishing

One of the most important choices a self-publishing author has to make is who should print her book. To decide, she needs to know a little bit about the types of print processes she may choose from.

Joel Friedlander in his blog, The Book Designer, presents a good, brief overview of the options in his Self-Publisher’s 5-Minute Guide to Book Printing Processes.

He begins with a summary of the three most common processes available today.

Letterpress-used “from Gutenberg’s day until the middle of the twentieth century.” In this process metal plates are “inked and then paper is rolled over them, transferring the image to the paper, one sheet at a time.”

Offset Printing – a technology developed at beginning of the 20^th Century which creates an image transferred to paper by a rubber covered cylinder.

Digital – which is the fastest growing print technology today , marries a computer-driven high-speed copying machine to computer-driven bindery equipment.

”The major difference between letterpress and offset printing, on one hand, and digital, on the other,” says Friedlander, “is that digital printing is designed to create one copy of a book at a time. The other, earlier methods of printing produce books in stages, and only work efficiently when producing many copies at once.”

In choosing the printing method which is best for you, you need to consider the intended audience, the purpose of the book and the number of copies to be printed. Friedlander offers the following rules of thumb to consider for each print process:

 “Letterpress printing is used almost exclusively for fine, limited edition books …These books are usually made with lavish materials and can cost hundreds of dollars each.”

 “Offset printing is used for the majority of books produced today. Web offset is used to make mass market paperbacks, like the ones sold in racks at supermarkets and at airports, and for very large printings of other books. Sheet-fed offset book printing offers the best quality reproduction of artwork and photography, and is the most flexible when it comes to the number of sizes offered for books and the different kinds of paper available for printing…Use web offset for mass market and very high volume books that don’t need to be high quality. Use sheet-fed offset for print runs over 500 copies or where high quality reproductions are needed.”

“Digital printing is increasingly being used in the print-on-demand distribution model that’s becoming so popular…The self-publishing phenomenon has created a huge demand for digital printing through print-on-demand distribution, since it has eliminated almost all of the cost of putting a book into print…Use digital printing where print runs are very short or where you have no need of an inventory of books.”

Click here to read the full Self-Publisher’s 5 Minute Guide to Book Printing Processes

First-Hand Advice on Self-Publishing

The website cnet is not a site one normally visits for information on self-publishing books. Executive Editor David Carnoy’s column Fully Equipped: The Electronics You Lust For seems a most unlikely source.

But Carnoy wrote a novel, a medical/legal thriller titled Knife Music, which he self-published. In a recent column, Carnoy compiled the lessons he learned from the experience into Self-Publishing a Book: 25 Things You Need to Know.

Carnoy was interested in commercial distribution. As a consequence, many of his 25 things focus on promotion, marketing and sales. If you are thinking about selling your own book you will find his insights useful.

If, however, your goal is to create a self-published book for limited distribution to family and friends you can skip over those items and focus on the advice he offers on writing a book and preparing it for the printer. Here are some examples of Carnoy’s tips:

• “Have a clear goal for your book.” Clarity on the intended audience will both help you decide on the books content and make a good choice on who you should select to print it.
• “Buy as little as possible from your publishing company.” He explains that many subsidy publishers like Author House and Create Space make money not on the sale of author’s books but by selling authors packages of “publishing services.”  He says, "Personally I’d never work with Book Surge’s [his publisher’s, now part of Amazon's Create Space] in-house  editors, copy editors and in-house design people…it’s better to hire your own people and work directly with them.”
• “If you’re serious about your book, hire a book doctor [content editor] and get it copy edited.”

Whatever your plan for your self-published book David Carnoy’s column will help you make it a reality while avoiding some potentially expensive and frustrating pitfalls.

 Click here to read David Carnoy’s full column.

A Resource Rating Publishers and Publishing Services

Looking for a Publisher? Preditors and Editors which bills itself as “A guide to publishers and publishing services for the serious writers,” is a website that can provide some useful assistance.

 The site offers hundreds of listings of publishers, publishing services, editors and literary agents. Not all services providers are listed in any category. (Stories To Tell doesn’t appear at present.) A link to the provider’s website is provided for each listing. Most entries are accompanied by recommendations or warnings concerning the provider. (There is a thorough explanation of the criteria used in determining ratings.) Entries indicate services provided by each listed publisher, editor or agent. Warnings consist first of general advice on how to spot “scam publishers” or “scam literary agencies.” Both in the general listings and in a special section there are warnings about specific providers. Many of the warnings are reports from writers who have had problems working with a provider. A lot of the content is submitted by readers to the site.

The site’s emphasis is on commercial publication, but it does provide information on some small publishers who may be of interest to self-publishing authors.

Whatever your publishing goals, the site is worth checking out.

Click here to visit Editors and Preditors.



A Great Self-Publishing Resource

If you are thinking about self-publishing The Self-Publishing Review is a resource you should check out. The site is an online magazine, and indeed a community, for people interested in self-publishing. Many of its articles are written with people who have commercial self-publishing in mind. These features focus on publicity and distribution channels.

However, there is plenty for the potential self-publishing author who isn’t in it for the money. The Publisher Reviews are of particular interest. Current posts include Get It Together Lulu which looks at the digital publisher’s problems with ebooks and a look at subsidy publisher iUniverse in an iUniverse Review.

Reader forums provide interesting comments on topics including: “Knowledge of Copyright Anyone”, “Evaluating eBook Schemes”, and “DIY or Hire It Out?”

The resources section offers a variety of tools for self-publishing authors. I found the Book Design resources of particular interest.

Click here to visit the Self-Publishing Review Site.