Self Publishing Today

For every publisher with a bad rap on Preditors & Editors, you’ll find a writer who will say “but I’m very happy with my experience with (insert publisher’s name here). How can that be?

It’s very simple - remember those expectations I referred to in an earlier post?

Many writers would be disappointed to find their Publish America novel sells only 50 copies, and frustrated to find that they can’t try taking the book elsewhere for 7 whole years because they can’t break the PA contract.

Others are just thrilled to hold the book in their hand and be able to say “I’m an author” to their relatives and friends as they give out copies. For these authors, being able to donate a copy to their local library is reward enough.

Those are the people who are likely to say they’re happy with a publisher, even if P&E have warned against them. P&E always assumes their readers are serious authors who want to make sales.

That’s why I say it’s so important to understand what your expectations are, and compare them to those of the people you meet on forums or at writers’ circles.

There’s a very simple way to check if a publisher is reputable - whether they’re mainstream, “traditional”, epub or vanity publisher (or whatever other name they want to use). All you have to do is go to one site - Preditors and Editors.

On the P&E site you’ll find a list of every publisher with comments about their service - including warnings, where appropriate! It’s a very reliable, honest site where you can get accurate information.

All authors should be eternally grateful to Preditors & Editors for the service they provide. It’s invaluable and deserves our support. If you aspire to be a successful author, please consider making a donation to P&E to keep them going - one day you may be glad you did!

Publish America deserves a post all its own because it’s a strange fish. It calls itself a “traditional publisher”, but that is their own made-up term - it means nothing in the industry.   In fact that’s my main complaint about them – they use the term “traditional” deliberately in the hope you think it means the same as “mainstream” - the term used to describe the big publishing houses like Penguin or Random House. It doesn’t, and I don’t like companies that are deliberately misleading.

The main problems with PA are their onerous contract (you’re signed up exclusively for 7 years ) and their poor marketing – similar to the self-publishing houses.  The Washington Post  explains the reality of Publish America much better than I can.

It’s fair to say that some writers are perfectly happy with their publishing experience with PA, but it all comes down to those expectations I was talking about earlier.  You will be able to hold the book in your hand, you will see it in a bookstore occasionally and you will make a handful of sales – and for some people, that’s enough.  Only you can say whether it’s enough for you.

The other problem with e-publishing is one of acceptance. There are still many people who don’t like reading large documents on-screen (I even know people who print off their emails before reading them, for Pete’s sake!). And printed off on your home laser-printer, an ebook can look uncomfortably amateurish. Who wants to cuddle up in bed with a sheaf of paper held together by a bulldog clip? It would remind me too much of work! But there are some genres where e-books do seem to be making inroads.

Science fiction/fantasy is one such area. Women’s erotica - especially a site called Ellora’s Cave - also seems to do well. Perhaps sci fi fans are more technically inclined. As for women’s erotica, the reason is obvious - women who would be too shy to take such a book to the checkout in a bookstore can download Ellora’s Cave books in complete privacy.

Products like Amazon’s Kindle may make the e-book more user-friendly. At the moment, you can’t read most e-books on the Kindle without paying Amazon to convert the .pdf file - and if you’re not in the States, you can’t buy one. So the revolution may be some way off yet!

One of my friends published several novels with an e-publisher a couple of years ago. She’s a prolific writer, and had several books ready by the time she got one accepted. The publisher who accepted that novel said he would take anything else she had, and she excitedly submitted more. Now, she wishes she hadn’t!

Even though they sent her proofs, the version of her novels which appeared on the site were riddled with typos and often badly formatted. She has a unique Southern voice with lots of colloquial expressions, many of which were “corrected” - apparently with a computer grammar/spell checker - without her agreement. All in all, she found the e-pub very unprofessional. Luckily she hadn’t given him all her manuscripts, and she took care to do her research before accepting an offer for her other stories from a second e-publisher. Unfortunately, in spite of all her efforts, her experience with the second e-publisher turned out not much better!

Like other non-mainstream publishers, the e-pubs did no marketing. As part of her contract, she was obliged to set up her own website and do a certain amount of  promotion. She has sold books, but so far the marketing has cost her more money than she earns. And she’s concerned that it’s hard to build up a following of repeat readers, when the books present so badly. She can’t wait for her contracts to expire!

E-books exist only on the internet, and can be downloaded and read on your computer (or printed off). E-publishers typically charge nothing to publish your book, so they may seem more attractive than POD or vanity publishers. However, they should be approached with even more caution!

POD and vanity publishers still have to make a reasonable investment in setting up their printing business. So even if they do over-promise and under-deliver, they are less likely to be fly-by-nighters. All an e-book publisher needs is a server, some software and an internet connection - no wonder they don’t charge anything to put your book on their site!

Some e-book publishers do take the trouble to edit your work before accepting it for publication – but that can have its pitfalls too.  In my next post, I’ll share the story of one of my writer friends.

The great upside of POD publishing is that it’s no longer necessary to order a run of several hundred books which may not sell. Instead, you need only order a handful of sample copies to use in marketing and promotions. You can then print further copies when you receive orders, and in many cases you can even ask the POD press to send the book straight to your customer.

However, the downside is that using a POD press is still self-publishing. You will still get little or no help with marketing your book. True, POD publishers have websites where they list their range of books - but if you look at their advertising, they spend their promotional dollars on promoting their services to writers, not readers. Selling your work will still be up to you! A typical POD publisher will regard a book as a bestseller if it sells in the hundreds, not the millions!

And, of course, you still have the matter of editing to consider. Even the owner of Lulu.com - which, by the way, is one of the most reputable POD and ebook publisher - says that he makes a large proportion of his profit from “publishing bad books” (read this article from Publishers Weekly). Be sure yours isn’t among them!

POD publishing means Print on Demand. It means what it says - like the old vanity press, POD publishers produce hard-copy books. The difference is that a POD press prints a book when someone demands (orders) one, and not before.

Before the advent of digital publishing, this approach was impossible - at least if you wanted something that looked like a book rather than a cheap photocopy! Nowadays, there is no reason why a POD book shouldn’t look as good as a mainstream book. So POD seems to offer an author the best of both worlds - but tomorrow we’ll consider whether it’s the win-win it seems.

So how do you sell your self-published novel?  The answer is, you sell it by loading the books into your car, or pounding the pavements, hawking your books around local bookstores, markets, friends and family.  Of course you can also market your book on the internet, including Amazon, but then you’re going to have to mail the book to the person who buys it.

Now, there’s no denying that a hard-copy book still sells better than an electronic one.
But unfortunately for you, having real solid books to sell puts you at a disadvantage. If you have to send your books anywhere, it’s going to cost postage or courier fees, which you’ll have to cover in your selling price. And you have to ask, if someone has to choose between buying your book, sight unseen, at a higher cost than a similar book at a local store – which one are they going to buy?

Even your local bookstores can be reluctant to stock your book – shelf space is at a premium so they’d rather stock tried and tested best sellers.   If they do agree to take some, it will be on consignment:  you won’t get paid until they sell, and eventually you’ll have to take back the ones that don’t. 

It should come as no surprise that there are a lot of writers out there with a garage full of books (which cost hundreds to produce) and no buyers.

That’s one reason why POD (print-on-demand) and e-publishers have been a Godsend for self-publishing authors

The traditional way to self-publish is with a vanity press. Vanity presses never call themselves that, of course, because of their bad reputation. Instead they may use a variety of names, the latest being “subsidy publisher”.

These presses, whatever they promise (and they often promise a lot) are nothing more than printers. You pay them to print a few hundred (or a few thousand) copies of your book. Some vanity presses try to disguise this fact by dressing up their charges as “editing” or “marketing” fees - but in reality, any editing or marketing they do is sketchy at best, and the fee simply pays the printing costs.

And then the question is, how do you sell all those books you’ve got sitting in your garage?