Are you looking for a printer or publisher for your book? Choosing the right one is one of the most important decisions an author needs to make on the way to publication.
Here are ten questions to consider in choosing your book’s path into print.
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We are in Tucson, Arizona this weekend for the Tucson Festival of Books. It’s always a great event.
One of the topics I know we’ll be discussing with authors is e-books. It seems like everybody wants their book in digital format.
If you are making decisions about the best publishing format for your book – e-book, print book or both – here are some things to consider.
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Print books are going away in record numbers, but not in the way you think.
In fact, Bowker Research’s 2012 Report on Print Book Publishing indicated that print titles published rose 6% to 347,178 in 2011 with another 1.1 million published titles of reprinted public domain works.
That’s a lot of books.
Reporter Claire Lawton of the Phoenix New Times in an article titled Disappearing Ink investigated what happened to those books when no one wants to read them any longer. It’s a fascinating piece.
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You are finishing a book, or maybe have already finished one. You have heard a lot about the growing popularity of self-publishing and think that might be a good way to get your book out there. What should you do?
Begin by asking two important questions regarding the self-publishing process.
1. Do you want your book to be truly self-published?
2. Who will own the rights to your book and the files used to create it?
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How much does it cost to self-publish a book?
That’s a simple straightforward question. Unfortunately, the answer is not nearly as simple. Let’s take a look at the reasons.
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Should you publish your family history as a print book or an ebook?
The first place to look for an answer is your audience? How do they prefer to read books? Their preferences should guide your decision on the form your book should take.
But they are not the only consideration. What are your goals for your family history? In most cases, preservation is a high priority.
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Getting books from the desk of writers to the hands of readers has always been a three step process:
• Writing
• Creating the book: editing, laying out the interior, designing the cover, and printing
• Distributing, Promoting and Marketing
Traditionally, writers have been involved in only one of those phases. Creating the book, distribution, promotion and marketing were responsibilities turned over to the traditional publisher. Beyond finding an agent and signing a contract with the publisher, the author didn’t have to worry about the business aspects of the book trade.
Self-publishing changes that. A self-publishing author is an independent publisher who is responsible for all three stages of the process. A successful indie author must become a project manager who understands each step of the process and makes sure that the requirements of each are carried out well. Let’s look at what that means.
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You should self-publish your book!
We said so in our first post of this year, Publishing a Book in 2013? Self-Publish It! But we think you should do it knowing what your will be getting into. What are your options and why should you choose self-publishing?
In our last post we explored The Advantages and Disadvantages of Traditional Publishing. Today, we’ll do the same thing with self-publishing. Then, on Tuesday in the final post of the series, we’ll discuss the best ways to take advantage of the opportunities and avoid the pitfalls self-publishing presents for authors.
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Planning on publishing a book in 2013? In our initial post of 2013 we advised you to “Self-publish it!”
In this post and the two that will follow this we’ll look at the reasons you should do that. Today we will analyze Advantages, Disadvantages and Recent Changes in Traditional Publishing and what those things might mean for authors. Our next post will do the same thing for self-publishing. The third post in the series will look at the emergence of a new role for the self-publishing author. So, let’s get started.
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Want to publish a book in 2013? Do it yourself!
The world of book publishing has changed dramatically since 2000 when Stephen King made his internet novella, The Plant, available on his website for $1 per download.
...So, as we begin 2013, best-selling author Guy Kawasaki, in his book APE: How to Publish a Book, advises, “The advantages of self-publishing far outweigh the disadvantages for most authors.”
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The brouhaha over Amazon book reviews continues.
Today the New York Times ran a front page story Giving Mom’s Book Five Stars? Amazon May Cull Your Review. In the latest chapter of the controversy over the validity of reviews which appear on Amazon The Times reports:
After several well-publicized cases involving writers buying or manipulating their reviews, Amazon is cracking down. Writers say thousands of reviews have been deleted from the shopping site in recent months.
Amazon has not said how many reviews it has killed, nor has it offered any public explanation. So its sweeping but hazy purge has generated an uproar about what it means to review in an era when everyone is an author and everyone is a reviewer. ...What do you think about the controversy? Post a comment.
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The conventional route to a book deal is being challenged by a new path into print with a traditional publisher.
It’s easy to dismiss Amanda Hocking’s $2 million contract with St. Martin’s Press and E.L. James’ seven-figure deal with Vintage Books as outliers. A closer look will indicate that they are simply the largest and best-known examples of important changes in world of publishing...There’s a new reality. While finding an agent who can successfully place your book with a traditional house is growing increasingly difficult, publishing houses are looking to successful self-published books as a new source of titles.
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In 2011 Guy Kawasaki wrote the best-selling book Enchantment. A large technology company wanted to buy five hundred copies of the ebook version, but the book’s publisher, Penguin, was not able to fulfill the order. So Kawasaki decided to become a self-publishing author with his next book, What the Plus? about Google+.
In the process of doing that he learned that for a newbie “…self-publishing is a mystifying, frustrating, and inefficient task.” So he partnered with app developer Shawn Welch who could fill in some technical expertise. Together the two acquired a lot of knowledge of how to navigate this new publishing universe and wrote about it in APE: How to Publish a Book, which they also self-published.
Kawasaki’s goal for the book is simple. “I want to create the Chicago Style Manual of Self-Publishing,” he says.
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On October 29, the NY Times reported that, “The book publishing industry is starting to get smaller in order to get stronger.” Two of the giants Penguin owned by Pearson PLC and Random House owned by Bertelsmann had merged in a move that “…will create the largest consumer book publisher in the world, with a global market share of more than 25 percent…”
The merger followed a July move by Penguin into the lucrative self-publishing market when it purchased the dominant provider in that market, Author Solutions. At the time, Author Solutions CEO Kevin Weiss said, “That means more opportunity for authors and more choice for readers.”
We were, and remain skeptical. The reasons are outlined in our post Writers Beware: Penguin Buys Author Solutions.
We were equally skeptical last week when the NY Times reported that Simon and Schuster another of the big-6 (now big 5) publishing houses had signed an agreement with Penguin and Author Solutions to form a self-publishing imprint Archway Publishing.
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People used to be specialists. But the digital age is making jacks-of-all-trades of more of us every day. The transition isn’t always a smooth one. Nowhere is this more evident than the world of publishing. With the explosion of self-publishing and ebooks more people every day are churning out DIY books.
That’s great because it has opened up opportunities to get their work out there. It’s also bad because a lot of the books people produce are not ready to be out there. The reason is that many of the authors who hear the term self-publishing and immediately interpret it to mean that they will complete each step in the process of creating a book themselves. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the self-publishing process.
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Don’t you just love it when you get good news?
Amazon sent us an email Saturday which opened, “We have good news.” After reading it, I wasn’t convinced.
Addressed to “Dear Kindle Customer” the email informed us that as part of the anti-trust settlement between three of the big five publishing houses and the Justice Department last April we would be eligible for a credit for some of our past ebook purchases. You probably got one too.
So, should we all say, “Hurray! Justice was done,” and rush to select some new Kindle books to buy with the negligible amount of our credit. Or should we give some serious thought to what it all means?
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Writing a book is hard work, and it is even harder to go back and correct a mistake when you are far into the project. Sometimes an ill-conceived idea at the outset of a book project means that a writer has to completely rework their manuscript.
Just in the past few weeks, we have had three clients with problems that were inherent in their book idea. Perhaps you can learn from their mistakes.
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Have you heard good stories, or bad, about self-publishing? Some say it’s the greatest opportunity for writers since Guttenberg. Others issue dire warnings about self-publishing companies that take advantage of authors. Which is true? Both. So we’re here to straighten it out and explain how to take advantage of this new technology, so you don’t get ripped off.
Right now there is a hot debate raging about an article in The Atlantic by Peter Osnos, and former publisher at Random House. He laments that Penguin, a traditional publisher, bought the self-publishing giant Author Solutions. Armed with statistics that the “overwhelming majority” of self-published books don’t make money, he calls self-publishing’s success a “cruel” paradox.
Sometimes the experts just don’t get it. Old-school publishers like Osnos only want to publish books that sell millions of copies; they write off their lesser titles as “failures”. Yet to authors, selling a limited run isn’t always a failure; that may be their dream come true. A quarter of a million authors self-published books in 2011, for reasons including, but not limited to, making money.
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A recent issue of the International Business Times “Business & Books” section bore the headline, The Latest Publishing Craze: Print Books?
The piece was triggered by a survey released by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) titled Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading . The report sponsored by Barnes & Noble, Baker & Taylor and the Bowker Market Research found that “the percentage of e-book consumers who exclusively or mostly purchase book content in e-book format has decreased from nearly 70 percent in August 2011 to 60 percent in May 2012.” Furthermore, “Over the same period, the percentage of survey respondents who have no preference for either e-book or print formats, or who buy some genres in e-book format and others in print, rose from 25 percent to 34 percent.”
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In today’s tumultuous world of publishing more and more authors are seeking new paths into print. With publishing deals with traditional houses great and small becoming ever more illusive for new authors, and stories of self publishing success dancing on the horizon, authors are embracing self publishing in rapidly growing numbers. Unfortunately many of them lack a clear understanding of what self publishing means.
As a consequence many of them are only too happy when an ad for Outskirts Press, Author House or Xlibris pops up Google. Companies willing to help them navigate the world of getting their book into print, onto Amazon and marketed look like just what the doctor ordered. They aren’t.
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