Self-Publishing. Write, Publish and Sell Your Own Real Books Cheaply.
They say everybody has a novel inside them, but I think that’s probably a little hard for most of us! However, all of us have a small book inside of us, just waiting to be set free!
Your book might be local recipes, your poems, or a collection of photos you’ve taken. Maybe you’re writing a book as a fundraiser and you’re bringing together jam recipes from your WI or school. Maybe you’re the next JK Rowling and want to produce your own childrens stories and sell them at local fetes and fairs before selling them worldwide!
If you’re a business you will have expert advice you can pass on to people, whether those people are your customers or just people with an interest in your business area. Writing a book will promote you and your company as experts.
Many entrepreneurs write books to provide them with an extra income stream to their existing business, to raise awareness of their business and to build trust and the idea that they are an authority on the subject. Publishing your own book if you have a small business will bring you new contacts and opportunities for sales. Some people find they are asked to give a talk about their book at business breakfasts, business lunches or even as a guest speaker at WI events. The list is endless!
And, once you have your book, you’ve then got an opportunity to create a website around the title and appeal to an audience who might not have ever visited the company’s main site. If you’ve written a book (and a website perhaps), you’ve then got an opportunity to produce an electronic newsletter around the same subject, which might bring in new enquiries. Your book could provide material directly for articles to be placed in other online or paper publications. Your book could be the subject of press releases and reviews, adding to the authority of your business.
You probably don’t think of yourself as an expert, but compared to your audience, you probably are.
Take an example of a company selling villa holidays in a particular place. It is quite likely that the people running it are very knowledgeable about this one destination. Perhaps they already write a guide to support the company’s offer that helps their clients to enjoy their holiday more. This could easily be turned into a book and sold separately. The book then has a life of its own, while offering business leads, confirming that the business is an expert in the product they are offering and so generally performing better (bringing in more money).
Any such book would immediately set the company apart, as well as offering immediate publicity.
You will have seen much larger companies do it - and probably not even realised! For example the Shell Guides (e.g., ‘The Shell Guide to ….). The only difference is that these very large companies will outsource all the work and will use large national publishers to do it all for them. The Michelin Guides were self-published from the early 20th century, helping them to establish the tyre company’s importance.
As a writer, or entrepreneur, you are probably aware that you can’t just phone up a top publisher and expect them to be falling over themselves to publish your book. After all, they are large and it would cost them thousands of pounds to invest in risking that your book will sell well. However, the self-publishing route enables you to do it all yourself within weeks of typing up the text.
What is Self-Publishing?
Self-publishing simply means that the author is also the publisher. The author manages to find a way to get their book typed up, laid out and printed, then made available for sale - all by themselves. However, by doing this, they also get to keep a MUCH bigger slice of the profits. An author who uses a publisher can expect to receive just about 10% royalties, self-publishers will earn 30-60% of the cover price (or up to 100% with e-books).
A self-publisher might not be doing it for the money, but to raise their profile, to get noticed. To bring in more customers and contacts for their main business .
A self-publisher can move much faster than a traditional publisher - and can usually get their book up and selling within a couple of weeks. Of course, a self-publisher also has to think about how they will do the marketing of their book. As a self-published author you retain the legal rights to your book.
Self-publishers do not have to perform every task themselves. Instead, they can work as an organiser, ensuring that each task gets done in a timely manner. Some self-publishers even go as far as getting a ghost-writer to write the book for them from an outline they provide, setting out what the book is to achieve for the reader. What you can’t do for yourself, you simply outsource. By using a freelance site you can get people to write the book for you, type it from digital audio, proof read it, design the page layouts … in fact, whatever you want or need. Good freelance websites to find freelancers are:
Print (or publish) on demand (POD)
Print on Demand is a fairly new concept. An actual copy of your book is not created until an order is received. In some cases very short print runs will be produced to satisfy immediate demand. This has been made possibly by new digital printing presses that don’t need to be manually set up and cleaned after each job like the old litho printing presses needed to be. The book file is literally dropped into the machine as a computer file, it prints it, chucks it out the other end and automatically binds it - just like a photocopier but better!
If you want to produce a book and aren’t sure how many will sell, then this is quite likely the way you’ll produce your first book.
There are three main differences between POD and true self-publishing:
- Your book ISBN is in the POD publisher’s name, not in your name.
- The POD company pays you royalties instead of you taking all the income.
- The POD publisher takes some of the risk.
E-books
An e-book is an electronic version of a book; it can be read with an ebook reader, some mobile phones, online or downloaded and read on your PC or even printed out on your printer in many cases. e-books have a choice of formats they can be produced in e.g., HTML or PDF. When you produce a real book, you can produce an e-book version alongside your printed book; some books are only EVER available as an e-book and are never published and printed as solid books.
If you produce an e-book you can publish it via your website or there are many e-book outlets that will let you sell your e-book. Most POD publishers offer an e-book service.
Buy a Book and Find Out More
Already you might be here just looking for links to help you choose a self-publishing solution, or you might be here looking for e-book software. However, you mihgt like to read a couple of full books on the subject of self-publishing before you start producing your own books.
Here are some great books you can start with:
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Self-publishing Print on Demand
If you’re looking for a company that will take your text and help you quickly turn it into a real book, available for sale as a print on demand book, here’s a handy list:
Most of them will be able to you offer packages which include design, print and (limited) distribution, and even some extras such as copy-editing, e-books, marketing & promotion:
- Outskirts Press – Suitable for the UK or the US. This isn’t a cheap solution, but if you want your book to be produced and marketed for you with little worry or stress, then it’s well worth the investment.
- Self Publishing – A great looking website and a company that provide you with all the services you need to self-publish your own books. Based in the US. They have published over 105 million books, so you can be sure they know what they’re doing! Self Publishing offer lots of helpful material and even their own radio station you can listen to online!
- Lulu ‐ a great service where you can create and sell your books easily. Lulu have been around for a number of years now, developing their business all the time and embracing new technologies.
- Authors Online – Although a little amateur looking, Authors Online have been providing services to authors since 1998. They are the original UK POD service. They will provide you with just a single copy if you wish! If you have a private book you wish to produce, perhaps a family history or even a “This is Your Life” book for a family member for a special occasion, they will even provide you everything you need to achieve this for free . For books requiring a wider distribution, their service includes free listing on Amazon.
- Writers World – An impressive looking site, but can be more expensive than others - although your book is published with an ISBN number in your name. They are based in the UK and aimed at self-publishers. You receive 100% of the royalties as you pay up front to have your book published, but they do provide you with copies of your book at cost price.
- Infinity Publishing – good value and aimed at the self-publisher.
- I Universe – this company were one of the first to participate in the Google Print Program, which enables people to read a part of your book to see if they want to buy it. You receive a discount when you buy copies of your own book.
- Trafford – subsidiaries in Ireland (for EU) & UK. They have an interesting calculator where you can calculate how much your book is worth. They also then break down the profit you’d get from each type of sale made, e.g. libraries get a smaller discount than book wholesalers.
- Instant Publisher – low-end for self-help self publishing. US-based.
- X Libris – A nice looking website, they are a subsidiary of a larger group. They provide a full range of services, from black/white printing, to full colour printing and more.
- Arbor Books – they bill themselves as the world’s premier, award-winning self-publishing company, whose clients have appeared on top shows, including Oprah, The CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, Montel, ABC World News Tonight, The View, The O’Reilly Factor, Howard Stern, MSNBC, C-SPAN and CNBC.
- Beckham House – this company describe themselves as joint-venture publishing. First, they design the cover, edit, typeset, print and bind, and deliver a quantity of books for you to resell. Secondly, they print copies at their expense, sell to retail markets and pay you a royalty on each copy sold.
Thirdly, they reprint additional copies at your request for you to resell. - Author House – they have been operating since 1997 and have helped over 40,000 authors to get published. They have a 30-day service
- Raider Publishing – started in 2005 by a writer. They pay more than 50% in royalties.
Things to Check
If you’re looking for a self-publishing company, then you might want to watch out for the following things when choosing. But don’t get too hung up on these unless you’re expecting to be writing an authoritative volume that will get high sales:
- Check if they offer ISBN numbering (though it will probably be in their name, not yours)
- Do they lodge copies with copyright libraries (e.g., the British Library or the Library of Congress)
DIY Self-Publishing
Finally, you can, of course, take an entirely DIY route and self-publish your own books. It depends on your situation. If you’ve got a business to run, you might find it’s not the best use of your time. If, however, you’re at home with endless days ahead of you, you might enjoy the process (but be warned this will take you longer than you expect as you will start to become a real perfectionist over your own work!)
The basic steps are:
Type up your book.
Work out how it will look, the layout, any images, the font, any colour scheme, what about the cover?
Get some costings to have it printed and bound.
Start to advertise it, produce a website, work out how you’ll receive the money and ship the book out.
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http://www.devce.demon.co.uk/h2pub.htm. If you like discussion groups, you could try http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Self-Publishing/—there’s a couple of thousand members and you could pick up good tips here.
If you go the e-book route, there is e-book creation software, but the easiest method I know is to use the latest version of Open Office (Writer), you can save your text to a PDF document. The problem here is that download times can be slow.
An alternative is to go to a specialist digital book printer. The advantage over a POD publisher is that the author keeps complete control, even though there’s more work to be done. By this route the author can create an imprint or work with an umbrella organisation such as a trade or professional body.
The difference between POD and digital printing is not always clear. For instance, a UK company, Writers World, describes itself as a book production company who also do POD; they also claim they can get you some bookshop sales via book distribution companies in the UK and US.
Digital printers exist all over the world, most printers you see when you walk around your town are probably offering a digital printing solution. But note, they aren’t all set up for self-publishing and so will charge quite high setup fees or not understand your needs exactly - which can lead to some expensive misunderstandings.
One Print on Demand company that has a presence in both the UK and the US is Lightning Source.
There are more in a list on Dan Poyner’s website at Para Publishing - just look under ‘Suppliers’, then ‘Printing, Book’ for a list of US digital printers (they are more geared up to serve the self-publisher than printers in other countries).
Whichever route you choose, remember each company will have a different contract, different terms, different prices. It’s up to you to check through the contract to ensure it meets your needs. Equally important is that you get to actually see the quality of their work - order a sample product before you commit to them!
If it is important to you to get your book into bookshops, then a traditional publisher may be the best, but slower, route. However, some self-published books have been bought at a later date by traditional publishers. If your book sells well, publishers will be keen to buy into your success and back you financially to achieve good worldwide distribution.
Is All the Effort Worth It?
Yes, is the short answer. Your book does not have to be long, but it DOES has to be useful. The more useful it is, the more sales you will make. The more sales you make, the more money you make. Simple. But don’t forget you will need to put some effort into promoting your book, but again, the self-publishing company you choose will have ways to help you with that.
The book in itself may not make you money - it might be that you are writing to book to promote your company. So you will benefit from more sales of your main product. Many people self-produce their first book and give it away, just to become well-known for what they do! Remember this and look to see if your sales or enquiries have increased in proportion to the number of books you’ve distributed.
Self-publishing - ebooks
If you have typed up your book and will be distributing it solely as an ebook, you will need to think about the security of that ebook. Can people just copy it and give it away free? Will you find you’ve made only 1,000 sales but it seems available as a free download in 10,000 places on the Internet? Some ebook creation software stops this from happening, it literally locks down the copy and if you find somebody HAS copied it and is either reselling it or giving it away from their site you can lock out that copy and any copies made from it!
Check out these great e-book software solutions:
eBook Generator Software. Simple to use, but has all the advanced features you will ever need. This is a truly professional ebook software. Stop people stealing your ebooks, ability to lock out stolen copies.
eBook Pro. Easy to use. Secure ebooks so people can’t steal them.
