Want To Avoid The Perils Of Self-Publishing? Attend My Writer's Digest Webinar

WILL YOU BE A SAVVY, OR SHORTSIGHTED SELF-PUBLISHER?

More and more authors, aspiring and mainstream-published alike, are embracing the benefits they can enjoy through self-publishing. Retaining full creative control, earning significantly higher profits, being able to bring a complete, polished manuscript to market in a matter of weeks instead of months or years, releasing one's work in as many (or as few) formats as desired, and controlling one's own intellectual property rights are just a few of the considerable advantages indie authorship and publishing have to offer. However, there's no single, one-size-fits-all success plan for self-publishers, and there are plenty of costly mistakes to be made along the way. This webinar is about the questions and issues every self-publisher must address if he hopes to avoid these pitfalls, and reach his goals in authorship and publishing as painlessly and efficiently as possible.

Date and time: 4/28/11, 1pm EST (11am PST)
Length and price: 90 minutes, US$79
(Each registration comes with access to the archived version of the program and the materials for 1 year.)

What you’ll learn:

• How to identify your goals as both an author and publisher, and why this is such a crucial first step
  


• The 8 most common causes of self-publishing failure, and how to avoid them



• The 8 traits most successful self-publishers have in common, and how to cultivate them



• The 5 crucial author platform skills every self-publisher should strive to master



• Types of books and authors for which the indie path is particularly well-suited, and conversely, types of authors and books for which mainstream publication is still the smarter path



• Where to go to get more help and information

Who should attend?

• Authors and aspiring authors who are considering self-publishing, but want to learn more about it first



• Authors and aspiring authors who have decided to self-publish and want to avoid the "gotchas"



• Authors who've already self-published without much success, but want to try again, armed with the information needed to do better the next time

Speaker

April L. Hamilton is an author, author services provider, blogger, Technorati BlogCritic, leading advocate and speaker for the indie author movement, and founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat, the premier online news hub and community for indie authors and small imprints. April is also on the Board of Directors for the Association of Independent Authors. She's been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, MSN Money and The Washington Times, and profiled by ABNA Books and The Writing Cast podcast. Her originally self-published book, The IndieAuthor Guide, has received favorable mention on CNET and recommendations from The Huffington Post and New York Times Magazine; the revised and updated edition, released by Writer's Digest Books, is currently available from booksellers everywhere in both print and ebook formats. April is also the author of novels available in both ebook and POD form.


Register here.

What Is 'Value Added' & What Does It Have To Do With Indie Authorship?

I've been taking a lot of flak lately from professionals in the graphic arts and typesetting fields because in The IndieAuthor Guide, I more or less tell indie authors that in most cases, the services of those professionals are optional. The flakkers protest, in frequently ugly tones, that I'm giving bad advice in this regard and a book brought to market without their services is a "defective" product. Here's my recent response to one such complaint:

The local independent bookseller who stocks my titles has said that to his (professional) eye, apart from the lack of a recognizable imprint logo on their spines, my books are indistinguishable from mainstream books. So long as the readers and booksellers are pleased with my books, I'm meeting the demands of my target audience. And that's what indie authorship is all about: reaching and serving your readership, not slavishly following the conventions of traditional publishing, regardless of whether or not they form a value-added proposition where your intended audience is concerned...I and my books are doing pretty well. And in the final analysis, in attempting to judge the merits of what I propose and advise in The IndieAuthor Guide, isn't *that* the only benchmark that really matters?

After I posted, another flakker chimed in to berate me further, pretty much missing my point about 'value added', and it occurred to me that it may be a term that merits some further exploration. It's something one hears bandied about in the business world quite a bit, and entire books have been written on the subject. In simple terms, a 'value-added proposition' is something in which you invest time or money because there will be a commensurate payoff, or payback of that investment, in the future.

For example, let's say you manufacture protective cell phone covers. People like your covers and they're selling pretty well, but you think you could do even better if you started printing licensed cartoon characters on them. So you go through the paperwork and expense of getting the licensing rights, you re-tool your shop to print the characters on the covers and you invest in some extra advertising to let everyone know about your new product line. Naturally, you must price the new line higher to absorb the added expenses, but you're confident it'll be a hit. Three months down the line you find your old, plain covers are selling just as well as they ever did, and sales on the new covers are decidedly slow. Clearly, printing licensed cartoon characters on your covers was NOT a value-added proposition. Customers may like the new covers, and may even prefer them to the plain ones. But if they don't prefer the new covers enough to pay extra for them, it doesn't make business sense for you to be producing them.

And what does this have to do with indie authorship, you ask? When bringing your book to market, every time you make a choice that involves investment of your time or money you should be asking yourself, "Does this constitute a value-added proposition for my target audience?" Because if it doesn't, you should be looking for ways to reduce or eliminate that investment. Based on my research and experience, I've concluded the average reader doesn't know or care about the minutiae of 'proper' typesetting according to mainstream pubishing standards. So long as the text is easily legible and looks about the same as that in a mainstream book to a typical (non-industry) reader, the reader will not find fault with the layout and typesetting in a given book. I freely acknowledge that people who follow the directions I provide in The IndieAuthor Guide will end up with a book that's instantly recognizable as self-published to most industry pros, but since those pros are not the indie author's intended audience, their opinions are irrelevant in this regard. Therefore, investing hundreds or thousands of dollars in professional typesetting and layout services does not form a value-added proposition for most indie books.

In deciding whether or not to invest in this or that service or product when bringing your book to market, let your target audience be your guide. If your target audience WILL notice and care about details of typesetting and layout for instance, paying for those professional services is a necessary expenditure for your particular book. However, if paying for those services requires you to price the eventual book so high that no one is willing to buy it, then the entire book fails the value-added proposition test.

Cover design is another area where value added comes into play. The IndieAuthor Guide includes directions for designing your own book cover, but many authors feel out of their depth when it comes to graphic arts and design and will prefer to hire out for those services; even so, they must wade through a seeming ocean of possible vendors and price ranges. Of course you want a cover that will draw the potential buyer in, even when viewed as an icon on a webpage if your book will be sold online. However, spending thousands of dollars on a piece of commissioned artwork from a name artist for your cover doesn't necessarily add value for which your eventual readers will be willing to pay extra. Since increasing the retail price of your book to absorb that cost may alienate potential buyers, you need to consider how many extra books you must sell at your regular retail price to recoup the money you spent on the cover artwork. In some cases, the investment will be worth it. In other cases, not so much. You can usually get an attractive, professional-looking cover which effectively conveys the theme of your book from a journeyman graphic artist at a much lower cost, or even from an art school grad student who's willing to do the cover for free in exchange for the portfolio sample and exposure. As with any small business expenditure, you must balance the benefit against the cost when determining how much money to spend on professional services.

Let me hasten to add: I am not suggesting that indie authors try to do everything 'on the cheap' for the sake of saving money or increasing royalties. On the contrary, I advise indie authors to do all in their power to deliver a product that, to the typical book buyer, is indistinguishable from the products of their mainstream competitors. That means quality editing, paper, printing, cover design, and more. What I AM saying is that each time you're faced with decisions about whether, and how much, to spend on some aspect of your book's production or promotion, carefully consider the matter of 'value added'.

DIY Formatting For POD, Pt. 2

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words Or Less):
The series based on content from my how-to reference book on self-publishing, The IndieAuthor Guide, marches on. I can't just copy and paste everything from the manuscript, because the thing is 300pp long and heavily illustrated besides. But I will present topics from the book to the extent of detail possible in a blog post. Note that I'm not covering editing, designing your own book cover, creating your brand or publishing to the Kindle here, since those topics are already presented on my website in the form of free pdf guides. I’ll include links to previous posts in the series here in the Bottom Line It section. So far, I've posted topics on Publishing Options, Rights, Royalties and Advances, What's the Deal With ISBNs And Bookstores, Choosing A Publisher , Getting Organized and part one of DIY Formatting for POD. Today's post is part two of DIY Formatting For POD.

Go On An' Run Yo Mouth, I Ain't Got Nuthin' But Time Version (Can't Promise It Won't Go On Forever):
This is part two of the section on DIY Formatting for POD, so if you haven't already done so, you should begin by reading part one.

I attempted to create a blog entry to cover this section from the book, but it's very dependent on screen shot illustrations and the text just doesn't make sense without them. However, since I promised you an entry on Creating Custom Styles, I've saved that portion of the manuscript (with illustrations) here for you in pdf format.

Up Next: About Industry Standards

The IndieAuthor Guide - Now Available In Kindle Edition

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 words or less):
We interrupt your regularly-scheduled installment in The IndieAuthor Guide series for this important announcement: The IndieAuthor Guide is now available in an edition specially revised and updated for the Kindle.

Don't worry your pretty heads, the installment series will continue as usual within a week.


Go On An' Run Yo Mouth, I Ain't Got Nuthin' But Time Version (can't promise it won't go on forever):

The IndieAuthor Guide: A Comprehensive Reference to Self-Publishing And Managing Your Career In Indie Authorship

At long last, The IndieAuthor Guide is available in an edition specially revised and updated for the Kindle. Where hyperlinks appeared in the trade paperback edition, those links have been embedded (made clickable) in the Kindle edition. Also, the section on dealing with graphics when publishing for the Kindle has been greatly expanded, since it's assumed anyone who buys the Kindle edition of the book is probably planning to publish his or her own work in Kindle format. Finally, all the images from the trade paperback edition remain intact in the Kindle edition.

This was not at all easy to accomplish, and now I understand completely why there are so few illustrated Kindle titles available. Even though I detail the steps necessary to preserve graphics in a Kindle edition in my book, moderate to advanced HTML skills are required. I'm a retired software engineer with many years' experience programming in HTML and it still took me five tedious, frustrating days (and nights!) of editing, tinkering and trial-and-error to get all the images to show up where and how I wanted them.

If you're intending to publish an illustrated manuscript for the Kindle but lack solid HTML skills, I recommend you consider eliminating the images altogether before you publish for the Kindle. If your book simply won't work without the images, you only have two options: either forgo a Kindle edition or hire a consultant to do the conversion for you.

DIY Formatting for POD

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words Or Less):
The series based on content from my how-to reference book on self-publishing, The IndieAuthor Guide, marches on. I can't just copy and paste everything from the manuscript, because the thing is 300pp long and heavily illustrated besides. But I will present topics from the book to the extent of detail possible in a blog post. Note that I'm not covering editing, designing your own book cover, creating your brand or publishing to the Kindle here, since those topics are already presented on my website in the form of free pdf guides. I’ll include links to previous posts in the series here in the Bottom Line It section. So far, I've posted topics on Publishing Options, Rights, Royalties and Advances, What's the Deal With ISBNs And Bookstores, Choosing A Publisher and Getting Organized. Today's post is part one of DIY Formatting For POD. The text is taken directly from The IndieAuthor Guide, but illustrations had to be left out because I can't get them properly aligned with my text on this blog.

Go On An' Run Yo Mouth, I Ain't Got Nuthin' But Time Version (Can't Promise It Won't Go On Forever):
If you’re using a vanity or subsidy publisher, you don’t need these formatting instructions because your publisher will either do the formatting for you or provide its own, very specific formatting requirements. This chapter explains how to format your book by yourself for print through a POD or eBook publisher. You may be familiar with standard formatting conventions for manuscripts to be submitted to an agent or editor, but formatting for POD is entirely different. The manuscript you submit for print must be formatted as print “galleys”: pages that look exactly how they should look in the published book. Therefore, it’s up to you to ensure everything from page dimensions to headers and footers are properly formatted before sending your manuscript off for print.

The keys to success with formatting a proof manuscript are minimalism and consistency. Use as few different formatting options as possible, and apply them consistently. Ideally, you should start with a pre-formatted document “shell” so that your pages will be properly formatted as you write, but you can also set up a shell, copy text from your existing manuscript and paste it into the shell as ‘unformatted text’ so that it will acquire the correct formatting from the shell.

In this post, I’ll be going through the steps needed to build and use a manuscript shell in Microsoft Word™ 2003. All the program features and options shown should be available in any word processing program from that year or later, and since MS Word™ has been the leading word processing program for decades most other word processors are designed to mimic Word’s interface and layout. If your word processor is substantially different, you’ll have to consult your program’s menus and help files to locate the features shown and learn how to use them.

Styles
Every modern word processing program has ‘Style’ functions built into it. Styles are a way of storing formatting options, such as font size, line spacing and so on, so you can easily apply all those same options to other sections of text with a single click. In Microsoft Word™, Styles are accessed under the Format menu.
When you open a new, blank document in your word processor, certain default Styles are already assigned to the document. If you just start typing into your document, the default Styles specify what font face and font size will be used, among other things. Clicking on the Styles and Formatting menu item in MS Word™ 2003 will display a list of all Styles currently available for use in the document.

Mousing over a Style in the list pops up a little box displaying all the formatting options being used in that Style. For example, the "Normal" Style is defined as Times New Roman, 12 point text, using English language conventions (i.e., no umlauts or Chinese characters will be needed), with text left-aligned, lines single-spaced, and widow/orphan control (explained in The IndieAuthor Guide to Editing) turned on. Style names are displayed with their respective formatting options applied, to give you a preview of how your text will look when each Style is used. For example, the Heading Style names are all displayed in boldface because each of those Styles applies boldface to text.

Three Heading Styles are available in the default list; Headings are formatted differently from ordinary text, and are intended for use as chapter and section headings in a document’s Table of Contents. In Word™, when you insert a Table of Contents (instructions to be provided later in this series) the program locates every piece of text with a Heading Style applied to it and includes that text in the Table of Contents. The Clear Formatting command appears above the listed Styles. Using Styles in Word™ is simple: just highlight the text you want formatted, then click the Style containing the formatting options you want. However, it’s obvious that this only works if there’s an applicable Style containing all your desired formatting options in the list.

People who don’t know how to use Styles apply formatting changes to the text in their documents “on the fly,” meaning as they go, by selecting the text they want to change and applying their desired formatting manually through use of the toolbar (i.e., 'bold' and 'italics' buttons) or formatting menu. Each time the user does this, Word™ stores the chosen formatting options as a new Style and adds that Style to the list. The newly-created Style is named in the list like this:
[name of Style before changes] + [list of changes applied, in order applied]

For example, if you select text formatted as the default, Normal Style and apply boldface and italics to it using toolbar buttons, the new Style will be named:
Normal + bold + italics

If you applied the italics first, then the boldface, the new Style would be named:
Normal + italics + bold

As you can imagine, it’s easy to quickly build up a huge number of differently-named Styles, many of which are duplicates in terms of the formatting changes they apply. The on-the-fly approach is fine for personal documents, letters, notes to yourself and the like, but not for a word processing file to be submitted to a POD publisher. This is because the publisher must convert word processing files into a format that’s readable by their printing programs and equipment.

You probably know that some computer programs place a limit on how many characters you can use for a filename; similarly, POD publishers’ conversion tools have internal limits on how many characters of a Style name they can read. If a given document has four different Styles that all begin with “Normal + bold + italics,” each of which goes on to set different options for line spacing, indenting, font face or anything else, the publisher’s file converter may not ‘read’ beyond “italics” in the Style names. It will assume that all four Styles are the same, ignore the latter three ‘duplicates’ and apply only the first instance of “Normal + bold + italics” to all the text that was originally formatted using four different Styles. It will still apply all the formatting options specified by that first Style, it won’t stop at “italics,” but any formatting changes applied by the latter three Styles will be lost and you’ll get an unpleasant surprise in the proof copy.

It’s far better to determine all the different formatting required in your manuscript ahead of time and create differently-named Styles for each. Note that if you only intend to publish in eBook formats other than pdf (i.e., prc, pdb, lrf, html, Kindle), you should keep the number of Styles you use to a minimum and keep them very simple, because when you’re done formatting you will have to convert your finished document into the desired format(s) and all but the most basic formatting options will be lost.

What About PDF Files?
Some POD publishers accept pdf file submissions in addition to, or instead of, word processing files (i.e., .doc, .txt. .rtf, etc.). In that case, no file conversion is needed at the publisher’s end. Their processing programs and equipment print the pdf file exactly as-is, so you can feel confident your published book will look exactly like the pdf file you submitted. However, turning a word processing file into a pdf is also a file conversion process. A pdf file is essentially a series of images; it’s as if the pdf maker program takes a photograph of each page in the source document and assembles all those pictures into a single file. The pdf file looks just like the word processing source file, but you can’t edit it with a word processor. The pdf file is also a lot smaller than the source file in terms of bytes, because it doesn’t contain all the behind-the-scenes formatting details and instructions that were present in the source file.

There are many pdf maker programs, and some of them are available online as a free download. Do an internet search on “pdf maker” + free to find them. Open Office™, a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office™, includes pdf maker functionality right inside all its programs. The granddaddy of them all is Adobe Acrobat™, the first pdf maker invented. Adobe™ distributes its Acrobat Reader™ software free of charge, but that program can only read pdf files. The full Acrobat™ program is needed to create pdf files. Every pdf maker program creates pdf files, but they don’t all use the same file conversion process. Some don’t take source file Styles into account, but those that include a feature enabling the user to convert pdf files back into word processing files might. Adobe Acrobat’s™ conversion engine generally disregards Styles, but it sometimes falters with heavily-formatted documents due to the large amount of data in the file. This isn’t necessarily a problem with the Acrobat™ program itself, but with the demands it makes on your computer’s processing power. Formatting your word processing document through the use of a small number of consistently-applied Styles keeps file size to a minimum.

Up Next: DIY Formatting For POD Pt. 2, Creating Custom Styles

Choosing A Publisher

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words Or Less):
The series based on content from my how-to reference book on self-publishing, The IndieAuthor Guide, herewith continues. I can't just copy and paste everything from the manuscript, because the thing is 300pp long and heavily illustrated besides. But I will present topics from the book to the extent of detail possible in a blog post. Note that I'm not covering editing, designing your own book cover, creating your brand or publishing to the Kindle here, since those topics are already presented on my website in the form of free pdf guides. I’ll include links to previous posts in the series here in the Bottom Line It section. So far, I've posted topics on Publishing Options, Rights, Royalties and Advances, and What's the Deal With ISBNs And Bookstores? Today's post is about choosing a publisher.


Go On An' Run Yo Mouth, I Ain't Got Nuthin' But Time Version (Can't Promise It Won't Go On Forever):

Choosing A Publisher
Your choice of publisher depends on your goals as an indie author and the resources you’re prepared to expend in the endeavor—not just money, but time and skills as well. As with so many things, the best way to find a good publisher is on the basis of a recommendation from a trusted third party. If you know any self-published authors, get their input. If you don’t know any self-published authors, or the ones you know recommend against the publishers they used, do an internet search on “self publish” or “POD” to find publishers and what people are saying about them. Narrow the field to just two or three candidates, then review each one’s Terms of Service (sometimes called a Membership Agreement), submission guidelines and FAQ sections to determine which will be the easiest for you to work with, according to your specific needs and priorities.

For example, if you intend to minimize costs by doing as much as possible by yourself, it doesn’t make sense to go with a publisher whose most basic package charges upfront fees for providing services you don’t need. On the other hand, if you know you’ll need to pay for certain professional services, such as editing or book cover design, it doesn’t make sense to go with a publisher that doesn’t offer those services. With respect to related services however, such as cover design, editing and layout, don’t think that the only way to get a quality result in the published book is to pay for professional services. The IndieAuthor Guide can take you through the entire process in easy to follow, step-by-step instructions that assume you are an ordinary person, not a professional editor, artist, publicist or anything else related to publishing. Much of the Guide’s content will be covered in this series, and some of it is available for online viewing or download at my website. If you’ve got decent computer skills and a do-it-yourselfer spirit, you can probably accomplish most or all of the tasks involved in bringing your book to print by yourself.

Crunch The Numbers To Forecast Profit Possibilities
If you’re hoping to make a profit selling your books, crunch the numbers for various publishers. Compare the setup costs, production costs and publisher fees for production of the same book, and don’t forget to include the cost for an ISBN where the publisher doesn’t provide one. Production costs for POD books are usually based on the size and format of the book, plus the page count. In order to determine your break-even point—how many copies you must sell in order to earn back your up-front investment—, you will need to do some ‘what-if’ calculations based on different possible list prices for your book.

Look at the list prices of current, mainstream books in the same genre, format, and rough page count as yours, making note of the lowest, highest, and most common prices you find. Working with the most common list price for a book like yours, use the following calculation to see what you will earn per book for sales through booksellers and through each publisher’s online store (if applicable):

[List Price] – [Per-Copy Production Cost] – [Bookseller Fee]

The standard bookseller fee is 40% of the book’s list price, but it may be significantly less for books sold through your publisher’s own online bookstore. Let’s look at some examples based on a 6x9, perfect-bound trade paperback with 320pp. Publisher A charges a base production cost of $1.50 per book plus $.02 per page, making the total production cost per book $1.50 + (.02 x 320), or $7.90. Publisher B charges a flat production cost of $10.53 per copy. Working with a list price of $14, which is currently common for a comparable mainstream book, the standard bookseller fee is $14 x .40, or $5.60. Here’s your profit per copy sold for each publisher:
A: $14 - $7.90 – $5.60 -= $.50
B: $14 - $10.53 - $5.60 = -$2.13

As you can see, you can’t break even with Publisher B unless you raise the list price of your book. In fact, you’d need to set the list price at a little over $17.50 just to cover production costs, and at $18.50 to earn the same $.50 per copy profit you’ll get with Publisher A. But suppose Publisher B offers an upgrade plan which will reduce your per-copy production costs to $6.53 in exchange for a one-time, flat $50 fee, and publisher A’s upgrade program will reduce per-copy costs to $.85 per book + $.01 per page ($4.05 per book, total) for a flat $100 fee:
A: $14 - $4.05 - $5.60 = $4.35
B: $14 - $6.53 - $5.60 = $1.87

At first glance it appears you’ll need to sell about 23 copies of your Publisher A book and 40 copies of your Publisher B book to earn back each publisher’s respective upgrade fee, but take author copies into account as well. Most publishers sell copies of POD books to the books’ authors at production cost. If you were intending to buy 25 author copies for family, friends, and to send to reviewers, before the upgrade you would’ve paid Publisher A $7.90 per copy, or $197.50 total, and Publisher B $10.53 per copy, or $263.25 total. After the upgrade, you’d pay Publisher A $4.05 per copy, or $101.25 total, and Publisher B $6.53 per copy, or $163.25 total. With Publisher A’s upgrade, you’d save $96.25 on author copies and with Publisher B’s upgrade you’d save $100 on author copies. In both cases the savings on author copies alone are enough to justify the upgrade expense, but with Publisher A, your ongoing royalties will be more than twice as much as you’d get with Publisher B. But wait, there are still more factors to consider.

Let’s say Publisher B will charge you an extra $85 for ISBN assignment, but Publisher A will throw in an ISBN for free. Now think about how you intend to make your book available to buyers online: primarily through big retailers like Amazon™ and Barnes & Noble™, or via direct links from your website or blog to your publisher’s online store? Assume Publisher A only takes a 15% bookseller fee for copies sold through its online store, but charges a flat fee of $65 per listing plus $.50 per copy sold for Amazon™ and Barnes & Noble™ online listings. Assume Publisher B takes a 25% bookseller fee in its online store, but will automatically get your book listed on Amazon™ and/or Barnes & Noble™ online at no additional cost. Personally, I feel that an Amazon™ store listing is critical if you hope to turn a profit on your self-published books, not only due to Amazon™’s huge market share but also due to the greater promotional opportunities available for products listed on Amazon™ (to be covered later in this series). If an Amazon™ listing is important to you, verify that the publishers you’re considering can get one and the cost isn’t prohibitive. As you can see, it’s very important to take every possible fee and factor into account when doing your calculations.

Publisher Tradeoffs
Look at the tradeoffs for each publisher, but always keep production costs and eventual list price in mind. One publisher may offer excellent tech support and customer service through the setup and publication process, but with steep production costs. In contrast, a different publisher may offer tech support and customer service via email only, but charge much lower fees. Remember that the eventual buyers of your book won’t care how easy or hard your publisher was to work with, they only care about the physical quality of the book, the quality of the writing, and the price. In the final analysis it won’t matter how great the publisher’s customer service or tech support are: if your book is priced significantly higher than a typical mainstream book of the same type and dimensions, it will be hard to sell.

However, while it’s often worthwhile to accept a certain amount of inconvenience in exchange for much lower production costs, it is never worthwhile to accept poor production quality, no matter how low the production costs. Your eventual buyers not only expect to pay about the same price for your book as they would for a comparable mainstream book, they expect to receive a book of comparable quality. Cheap paper, spotty quality control and pages that spill from a poorly-glued binding won’t cut it. You can’t be absolutely sure of the publisher’s quality of workmanship until you can inspect a proof copy of your book, but some industrious Googling on [publisher’s name] + “quality” should turn up some helpful insights from other self-published authors.

Finally, note that for some books, it’s not truly feasible to self-publish via POD for a profit. Recall that in publishing, as the number of books in a print run goes up, the production cost per copy goes down. If your intended book must have an unusual binding, full-color pages, specialty paper or any other attributes that will drive its per-copy production cost up to the point that you’d have to price it 2 – 3 times as high as a comparable mainstream book, self-publishing via POD is not likely to work for you. In that case you may want to consider a subsidy or vanity publisher, which is a publishing path outside the scope of The IndieAuthor Guide and this series.

If You’re Publishing To Attract Attention, Not For Profit
Rights will be a primary concern if your goal is to attract a mainstream publisher. You won’t be able to negotiate with any other publishers if you’ve already locked up publishing rights with a subsidy or vanity publisher. But since subsidy and vanity publishing don’t offer any advantages over POD publishing where typical books are concerned, there’s no reason for an indie author to sign away his publication rights in the first place. See the prior entry in this series on Publishing Options for more details about the different types of publishers.

Coming Up Next Time: Getting Organized

What's the Deal With ISBNs And Bookstores?

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words Or Less):
I've been fielding a lot of email questions about the nuts-and-bolts aspects of self-publishing lately. Rather than answering the same questions over and over again in private messages which don't benefit the self-publishing community at large, I've decided to blog a series based on content from my how-to reference book on self-publishing, The IndieAuthor Guide. I can't just copy and paste everything from the manuscript, because the thing is 300pp long and heavily illustrated besides. But I will present topics from the book to the extent of detail possible in a blog post. Note that I'm not covering editing, designing your own book cover, creating your brand or publishing to the Kindle here, since those topics are already presented on my website in the form of free pdf guides.

I’ll include links to previous posts in the series here in the Bottom Line It section. So far, I've posted topics on Publishing Options and Rights, Royalties and Advances. Today's post is about ISBNs and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Go On An Run Yo Mouth, I Ain’t Got Nuthin’ But Time Version (Can’t Promise It Won’t Go On Forever):

What’s the Deal With ISBNs?
Any commercially-sold, physical book must have a unique International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, assigned, and each different edition of a given book (i.e., hardcover, paperback, audiobook) must have its own ISBN. EBooks, which are essentially digital files, don’t require ISBNs. The ISBN is a unique identifier assigned to all commercially-sold books being sold in any physical format, consisting of a 10- to 13-digit number and associated barcode. Bowker is the only agency allowed to distribute ISBNs in the U.S. Bowker sells ISBNs to publishers and authors in blocks of ten at the minimum. It’s not unusual for self-published authors to purchase their own ISBN blocks, though unless you’re very prolific or issue your books in multiple editions, you may not ever use up a whole block of ten.

Some publishers require authors to obtain their own ISBNs at their own expense, some will provide ISBNs to authors for a separate fee, and still others include ISBN assignment as part of their standard publishing package. If you buy your own block of ISBNs, each ISBN in the block can only be used once, and only for a specific edition of your book. For example, let’s say you use the first ISBN in your block for a paperback edition of Novel A, the second for a hardcover edition of Novel A, and the third for an audiobook edition of Novel A. A couple of years later, when you’re ready to publish Novel B, you must assign ISBNs to all its editions beginning with the fourth ISBN in your block. Once assigned, an ISBN can never be re-used, not even if the book to which it was assigned goes out of print. In Europe, books are tracked with a European Article Number, or EAN. Some publishers can assign an EAN to your book, but check with your publisher to be sure that service is available if you intend to sell your book in Europe, or through online vendors that accept international orders.

This is all I have to say about ISBNs in The IndieAuthor Guide, but a much more thorough treatment of the topic can be found in a series written by Walt Shiel in his View From the Publishing Trenches blog. The first entry in the series can be found here, and from there you can follow links to the second and third installments. Note that Mr. Shiel and many others in the publishing industry warn authors against accepting the free ISBNs offered by publishers like CreateSpace and BookSurge, for reasons best summed up by this quote from Mr. Shiel:

Suppose you publish your book through Amazon’s CreateSpace or BookSurge service and allow them to assign it an ISBN. Two years later, you decide you prefer to print your book with another printer or even a different subsidy publisher. Your book MUST be assigned a new ISBN, since the original one was owned by the original publisher (CreateSpace or BookSurge). And that original ISBN can never be reassigned to a different book, even if the publisher declares their edition of your book as out-of-print. From that point forward, your book will have two ISBNs associate with it. If a bookseller or library tries to order it, they will have to guess which one is the current one. You will have to rely on some (possibly clueless) clerk to make that guess. They may just pick the first one they stumble on. If that one turns up as OP (out-of-print) or otherwise unavailable, that’s what they’ll tell the customer.

As you'll see in the upcoming discussion about book stores, I believe this is a non-issue for the vast majority of self-published authors because very few, if any, libraries or brick-and-mortar bookstores are likely to be looking for your book in the first place. Mr. Shiel goes on to say:

And those two version of your book will continue to show up on Amazon with different publishers, possibly different prices, etc. An Amazon search on your title may not turn up the current version near the top of the results (or, possibly, at all).

Also a non-issue in my opinion, because the older version of your book will list as either out of print or only available from resellers, and most of your buyers won't find your book while casually browsing the Amazon site anyway. Most will find it via a direct link from your website or online posting, from the 'customers who ordered this book also ordered' section of an Amazon or B&N product page, or other promotion that leads them directly to your product page. Moreover, there's not really any reason I can think of why you would elect to switch publishers on a POD book that's already published and on sale, with you just kicking back and collecting royalties. You already did all your comparison shopping before you chose your POD publisher, already went through the publishing process, and in the case of a revised edition, a new ISBN must be assigned anyway. Even if a new POD outfit opens up tomorrow and offers better terms, they'd have to be a whole lot better to make it worth your while to re-publish the same book in the same edition all over again.

What About Book Stores?
You may be wondering how you can sell significant quantities of your books when it’s very difficult to get brick-and-mortar stores to stock them. The answer is, you don’t necessarily need brick and mortar bookstores to stock them. I covered many of the reasons why in this previous post, Big Chain Bookstore Death Watch. While some very outgoing and industrious authors can significantly increase their sales and visibility by cultivating relationships with brick-and-mortar stores and doing in-store events and readings, getting a brick-and-mortar store to stock your book does not automatically guarantee any increase in sales. Getting your book stocked can seem a daunting task in and of itself, but accomplishing that task will do you little good if you aren’t also prepared to focus considerable time and effort on raising public awareness of your book in the communities where it’s being carried by one or more brick-and-mortar stores.

At the minimum you should be prepared to lobby hard for in-store reading and signing events, but don’t stop there. You will also want to publicize the events in any way you can, contact local newspapers to try and get a timely interview or book review in advance of the events, and get in touch with local book clubs and writers groups to drum up interest as well. I go into much more detail on promotional activities in The IndieAuthor Guide, and will be providing much of that information later on in this series, but in my opinion a brick-and-mortar store campaign isn’t the best strategy for a POD book that’s already being sold through a major online outlet (i.e., Amazon, B&N online store) anyway. There’s the time and effort to consider, but an even bigger issue is up-front expense.

You must provide copies of your books to brick-and-mortar stores willing to stock them, and must also have substantial quantities on hand to sell at in-store events. Assuming your cost for author copies of a book retailing at $14 is just $6, if you have a very successful event and sell a copy of your book to all 50 attendees, your gross earnings are $700. Sounds good for a couple of hours’ work, but you haven’t accounted for expenses yet. Begin by subtracting the $300 plus maybe another $25 in shipping costs you paid up front to buy the 50 books and have them shipped to you. Next comes the bookseller’s ‘cut’, for which 40% of the book’s list price is standard, so subtract an additional $280 for this. Now take into account the cost of travel to and from the store (gas, at the minimum), expenses for any printed materials you provide (business cards, post cards, bookmarks, etc.), and expenses for any drinks or snacks along the way. Let’s say you manage to keep all those costs down to just $50. Your net profit for the evening is only $45, or 90 cents per book sold. And that’s the result of a completely successful event; imagine how much more disappointing the figures are if you sell fewer books.

Now look at the numbers for copies of your books stocked on a brick-and-mortar store shelf. No brick-and-mortar bookseller is likely to stock more than two or three copies of your book at a time. Let’s assume three copies are stocked and all three sell. Even if we disregard shipping, gas and other minor expenses related to getting the books into the store and getting your royalty payment from the store, your profit is only $7.20. It’s an awful lot of hassle and up-front expense for less than ten dollars at the back end.

While it’s true that in most cases, Amazon or any other online bookseller will take the same 40% as a brick-and-mortar store, the advantage of working with an online seller is that you don’t usually have to order, pay for, or deliver any books up front. Most online sellers can list your book on their sites, and when a customer orders your book, send an electronic order to the publisher. The book is printed and sent directly to the customer with no involvement from you whatsoever. The online seller gets its 40%, thereby reducing the amount of royalty paid to you, but you haven’t incurred any expense or hassle in the process. Once your POD book goes on sale, all you're doing is promoting it and collecting royalty payments. Bear in mind, I’m only talking about individual authors selling their own books here. The situation is very different for people who own and operate their own online bookstores, whether completely independently or as a ‘partner’ or ‘affiliate’ of a major online retailer. The fee structures for that type of arrangement are variable, and outside the scope of this discussion.

Coming up next time: ---REVISED--- How To Choose A Publisher

Enough With The Editorializing, Tell Me How To Publish & Sell My Book Already!

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words Or Less):

I've been fielding a lot of email questions about the nuts-and-bolts aspects of self-publishing lately. I have written a whole book on the subject, The IndieAuthor Guide, but it would be pretty obnoxious of me to answer each query by saying, "Buy my book and flip to page such-and-such," so I do my best to provide answers when I have them. Still, rather than answering the same questions over and over again in private messages which don't benefit the self-publishing community at large, I've decided to blog a series based on content from my book. I can't just copy and paste everything from the manuscript, because the thing is 300pp long and heavily illustrated besides. But I will present topics from the book to the extent of detail possible in a blog post. Note that I'm not covering editing, designing your own book cover, creating your brand or publishing to the Kindle here, since those topics are already presented on my website in the form of free pdf guides. First up in the series: Publishing Options.



Go On An Run Yo Mouth, I Ain't Got Nuthin' But Time Version (Can't Promise It Won't Go On Forever):

Vanity, Subsidy, POD, Oh My!
The terms “self-publishing”, “subsidy publishing”, “vanity publishing” and “print-on-demand” are often used interchangeably when people speak of self-publishing, but these terms aren’t synonymous. Rather, they describe different self-publishing options or processes.

Self-Publishing
In common usage, “self-publishing” has become a catch-all term. People using it may be talking about subsidy publishing, vanity publishing or print-on-demand (POD), but ironically, they’re rarely talking about true self-publishing. In the strictest sense, self-publishing is exactly what it sounds like: doing your own publishing. This is also known as “desktop publishing,” since it’s generally done with an ordinary computer, or ‘desktop’ computer. Typical self-publishing projects include club or family newsletters, brochures, booklets and research papers, any of which can be created using a standard word processor. There are also dedicated desktop publishing computer programs that enable the user to create more sophisticated and lengthier publications.

Either way, desktop publishing isn’t a workable solution for book manuscripts because binding options are severely limited. Office supply stores and print shops offer several types of binding, and can generally bind up to 300 pages. However, all their binding options are more fitting for reports or business documents than books. The pages may be hole-punched and placed between two report covers, or drilled for comb- or spiral-binding. The finished product will have a binding, but even if you customize the report covers with artwork and a book title, it won’t look like a book. You won’t be able to duplicate the look of a “real” book, which has pages glued or sewn into a wrap-around cover at the spine. Furthermore, having manuscripts bound individually is very expensive.

Vanity Publishing
Vanity publishing is the process whereby an author pays a publishing service to format and publish a minimum number of copies of his book. The publisher usually offers related services on a fee basis, from editing to cover art design and even promotion. The author is essentially paying to have his book printed, and so long as he’s willing to pay the required fee, the publisher will not turn him away. It is because of this fact that as a group, books from vanity publishers are presumed to be of poor quality.

This bias is the primary downside to vanity publishing, but expense comes in at a close second. An author who chooses to go with a vanity publisher must pay all production costs for a minimum ‘print run’ of his book, generally at least 200 copies. Cost per book goes down as quantity goes up, but in most cases the author can expect to pay anywhere from US$5 - $10 per copy for a trade paperback edition and between US$8 - $16 for a hardcover. Multiply those figures by 200, then add hundreds more dollars in flat fees for project setup, optional ISBN assignment, proof corrections, project management and delivery. Add another thousand or two if the author pays for related services.

The third downside to vanity publishing is distribution, or lack thereof. When the print run is finished, all the books are delivered to the author and it’s up to him to store them, sell them, give them away, or otherwise dispose of them. With few exceptions, brick-and-mortar bookstores won’t stock any type of self-published book. They’re particularly leery of books from vanity publishers, all of whose names are widely known in the publishing and bookselling industries.

More recently, vanity publishers have begun addressing the distribution problem by setting up online bookstores to stock their clients’ work, but the sites don’t get much traffic because they only stock the vanity publisher’s books, and again, most people assume those books aren’t very good. Enterprising authors can turn a profit selling their books themselves, on their own website, at community fairs, through direct mail and so on. Occasionally one will even do well enough to attract the attention of a mainstream publisher, but this is very rare.

Lastly, even though vanity publishers are only providing services for a fee, they act like conventional publishers when it comes to contracts and rights. As part of the publishing arrangement, the author will be required to sign a contract granting certain, exclusive rights to the publisher. The contract may stipulate that the author cannot publish the same work in the same format, or any other format, for a set period of years. In this way, the publisher ensures the author must go back to the same publisher to order additional print runs if the book is successful enough to sell out its first print run. The contract will also specify whether or not the author can buy his way out of the contract before the term is up, and if so, what it will cost. This stipulation lines the vanity publisher’s pockets in the event a mainstream publisher wants to publish the book.

Subsidy Publishing
Subsidy publishing is virtually identical to vanity publishing, except that subsidy publishers will not publish every manuscript submitted to them. Instead, they accept submissions (sometimes for a fee) and choose the manuscripts they wish to publish. Subsidy publishers sprang up as a legitimate self-publication alternative to vanity publishing. Subsidy publishers aren’t all created equal, however. Some are hardly more discerning than vanity publishers, while others are so selective as to rival mainstream publishers.

The worst subsidy publishers are ripoff artists par excellence, assuring every prospective client her manuscript is a diamond in the rough that is practically guaranteed to become a bestseller if she will only pay for professional editing, artwork, promotion, and other services—all of which just happen to be offered by the publisher or a company referred from the publisher. The best subsidy publishers truly strive to distinguish themselves by putting out quality books and dealing fairly with authors, but even in that case the author must contend with all the same downsides as she would face with a vanity publisher. She must pay for a minimum print run and related services, she must sign over at least some of her publication rights in a contract, and she faces all the same distribution challenges as a vanity-published author.

Print On Demand
While vanity or subsidy publishing is fine for a book with a built-in customer base, such as a textbook published by a college professor for use in his class, Print On Demand (POD) is the best way to go for an author who intends to sell her book to the general public. As with vanity publishing, an author who chooses POD is essentially paying for printing services. There is no selection process on the part of the publisher. Also as with vanity and subsidy publishers, POD companies may offer related services for a fee, and the published books aren’t likely to be carried by brick-and-mortar stores. That’s where the similarities end, however.

There is no minimum print run to order and pay for with POD because the publisher stores POD books in digital format. Individual copies of the book are printed and bound by automated systems “on demand”, meaning each time an order for the book is received. The author doesn’t pay to have on-demand copies produced. Instead, the printer keeps a share of the book’s price to cover its production costs and pays the remainder to the author as a royalty.

POD publishers may offer services related to publishing for a fee, but they are also prepared to accept print-ready files from authors. This is where the author can save thousands of dollars, by doing as many of those related tasks as he can for himself instead of paying for services. Some POD publishers don’t even charge set-up fees. In that case, the only expense that must be shouldered by the author is the cost of proof copies, which must be printed in order for the author to review the book before approving it for publication.

With a POD publisher, the author retains all rights to his work. If there’s any contract at all, its terms are limited to the details of fees, royalty payment, services provided and the responsibilities of each party. If your publisher requires you to order a minimum print run or sign over any of your publication rights, it’s a subsidy or vanity publisher. Most POD publishers have distribution relationships with major, online booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble, through which the bookseller agrees to sell the POD publisher’s books on its website. Some POD publishers only offer this as an optional service, and only for a fee. Another service some POD publishers offer, always for a fee, is ‘guaranteed returns’, whereby brick-and-mortar stores are allowed to return any unsold copies of POD books to the publisher. This is supposed to encourage brick-and-mortar stores to carry POD books, since many cite ‘un-returnability’ as a reason not to carry them, but in reality the centralized purchasing departments and computerized inventory systems of chain bookstores present obstacles at least equal to concerns about money lost on unsold copies. My previous blog post, Big Chain Bookstore Death Watch, provides rationale enough not to invest too heavily in courting big chain bookstores.

All POD publishers can print paperback books in various, standard sizes, both in black and white and full color, but only some of them can print books in hardcover editions. When the hardcover option is available, the production cost for it is much higher than that charged for paperbacks. Since an author who goes the POD route can still opt to pay for certain related services as desired, vanity and subsidy publishers have no advantages to offer the typical indie author. Why pay stiff fees upfront, warehouse your books, and sign away your publication rights if you don’t have to? POD book production is also 'greener', in that no books are printed until they're bought and paid for by actual customers. There are no crates of returns going back to the publisher, no overstock being marked down or remaindered, no unsold copies headed for the dumpster.

Next Time: Rights, Royalties and Advances

Turning A Release Date Frown Upside Down

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 words or less):

I've been working very hard to get my new book, The IndieAuthor Guide, into print in time to reap the benefit of BookExpo America publicity over the last weekend in May. Due to publisher delays (apparently they’re busier than last time I worked with them, because the time it takes to get a proof copy has doubled), my genius plan to have the book on my site and ready to buy ahead of BookExpo was dashed. I knew some kind of 'come back in a week or two, three at the latest, because by then I swear my new book will be available' message wouldn’t cut the mustard. Getting ‘em to your site is hard enough; if they don’t find what they want on that first visit, good luck getting ‘em to come back.

Behold, my new genius plan: I put a ‘coming soon’ message on my website, along with the offer of a 20% discount code for anyone who emails me asking to be notified when the book is released. This strategy may net me more sales than if I had gotten the book out on time, and I'll have some idea of demand for it early on.

(once again, no Run Yo' Mouth version...too exhausted to write!)