By Bev Slomka (Associated Content)

In Today’s Competitive Literary Market, More Authors Are Self-publishing Than Ever Before

After almost two-years of my agent and I trying to find a traditional publisher for my non-fiction book for teens, I decided to take the plunge into self-publishing. I came to this decision after articles I read on AC, as well as from magazines such as Writers Digest. I eventually chose iUniverse as my self-publishing firm after thoroughly researching this market. If you are considering self-publishing, you need to take the following steps before you decide on a self-publishing firm. This is how I came to my decision.

1) I familiarized myself with the names of top self-publishing firms, such as Authorhouse, Xlibris, iUniverse, etc., and checked their status and ratings by the Better Business Bureau. I learned to do this after hearing about people’s experience with PublishAmerica, a publishing house that is not a self-publishing firm, but pitches that they will publish your book like a traditional publisher. Checking with the Better Business Bureau uncovered many problems with this firm, and prompted me to check every other firm I was considering.

2) Searching through Google and Netscape, I plugged in “Ratings of self-publishing firms” and came up with various types of reviews including those who had direct experience with self-publishing firms, as well as independent reviewers of those firms. Some reviewers did not speak highly of self-publishing firms in general, but many more recognized self-publishing to be right the answer for many authors.

3) After getting general information on a few of the more popular self-publishing firms, I requested an information packet that gave me details of their packages, costs, services and distribution capabilities. You will need to know what you can spend on self-publishing a book, and what firm and specific packages meet your needs. Some firms charge more for a self-publishing package, but that package may include more services. Other firms have a lower cost and charge additional fees for things like proofreading services. Also look for the self-publishing firm’s relationship with outlets such as Amazon.com and Barnes and Nobles.com. A good self-publishing firm should be able to have your book available on-line. Look at what companies they are using for printing and distribution. The best firms will use Lightning Source and distribute through Baker & Taylor and / or Ingram.

4) When you have studied your information packet from each company, write down a list of questions. Will you be assigned a Publishing Assistant? Will you have access to editorial staff? Will you receive an evaluation of your work, or will it just be published as is? Are there special packages / recognition for quality books? How are royalities calculated? Will you have any marketing support, etc…? You will need to feel comfortable that the self-publishing firm will give your book the best chance for success.

More people are self-publishing today than ever before. The former “vanity” presses have given way to the Print on Demand (POD) technology and that has opened up a whole new world for those who may want to self-publish. If your self-published book sells, your royalties will be higher and you retain control of your book. You can still send your final bound book to traditional publishers who, seeing the finish product, may be more attracted to it than if you sent them a double-spaced manuscript. Traditional publishers also check the sales of self-published books and will take on authors whose books are doing well. You will have to spend more time getting your book reviewed and marketing it, but there is no one more interested in your book than you when it comes to getting it recognized.

Image source: asia.ru

I fear my old friend Evgeny Nightstalk is getting more than a trifle cross with me.

He is, after all, the narrator and (ostensibly) author of So Dark the Night.  And he doesn’t take kindly to picky, petty-minded editors who go over his writing with the scrutiny of an electron microscope.

“Fer Chrissakes, pal,” he has snarled at me on numerous occasions, “every bloody word doesn’t have to be right.  This ain’t fuckin’ Shakespeare.”

I’ve been assigned to tighten the manuscript and while the job hasn’t been too demanding, the central figure in So Dark the Night has turned out to be prickly, opinionated and not afraid to use physical intimidation and force to get his way.  It has made for some uncomfortable moments.

I have tried to explain that a little tightening and paring is good for any work but he isn’t having any of it.  He insists I’m trying to put my own “stamp” on So Dark the Night and will clean up his hard-boiled prose to the extent where it’s no longer recognizably his.

It’s a ticklish point.  As editor, it is part of my duty to retain Nightstalk’s unique syntax and word choice and I must even do my best to tolerate his (in my view) overuse of similes (I detest similes, they’re usually employed in such a lazy and facile manner).  But there are certain rules of grammar that must apply.  For instance, I have tried to clean up his propensity for infinitives (split or otherwise)–

“What the hell are they?” Nightstalk snarls.

–the prepositions he’s prone to leave dangling everywhere, the strange subordinate clauses, the exposition–

“Aw, bullshit,” is his only rejoinder.

Honestly, the fellow wouldn’t know a gerund from a–

“Careful,” he warns, his fists clenching.

You see what I have to deal with.

For a good idea of his temperament and the aura of violence Evgeny projects, I suggest you check out Bob Hoskins’ performance in the greatest Brit gangster movie ever, “The Long Good Friday”.  All through the movie, Hoskins behaves like a bombshell about to go off.  Evgeny gives that same impression.

We’ve been working on final revisions for just over a month now and I must say our relationship shows little signs of improving.  I’m very much into precision:  the exact right word in the exact right place at the exact right time.  Evegeny is looking more for an overall effect:  he recreates a scene to the best of his recollection, with all of the literary ability he possesses…and for him that’s good enough.  He has read a great many (too many!) pulp writers and is aware of how fast and prolific those individuals were, churning out material at a remarkable rate.  I recoil when he draws such parallels, since I have high hopes that So Dark the Night has more literary merit than the vast majority of tales hacked out by mercenary-minded wordsmiths and Grub Street types.

Still, we shall have to find a happy medium, for the sake of Nightstalk’s peace of mind and my physical safety.  Likely about another ten days work left so it’s simply a case of trying to get along and come up with a completed effort that is exciting, literate, funny, engrossing; a book that is a pleasure and joy to read.  I’m confident we’re close to reaching that point and that if we keep cool heads and open minds, we can finish this book with the minimum of bad feelings (and bloodshed).

That said, I’ve recently upgraded my Blue Cross medical coverage.

Just in case.

Voices from the North

On December 9, 2009 my special returning guest on Voices from the North was Bob Cooper. For those of you who don’t already know, Bob is a pioneer of home satellite technology. Here’s a link to a Mother Earth News article about Bob written in 1980. He has self-published more than 40 books in the course of his productive life and he’s recently turned novelist of the Portobello trilogy set in the Caribbean (Turks & Caicos Islands), where Bob used to live.

Gutenberg and Printing

During this interview Bob gives an overview of publishing from the time of Johannes Gutenberg (the 42 line Gutenberg Bible) in about 1439 until the present. He ties in our discussion with the findings of Gavin Menzies, author of 1421 and 1434, who claims the Chinese sailed flotillas of 300 ships around the world long before Columbus theoretically discovered the Americas. In fact, Menzies claims Columbus was using Chinese maps to assist his navigation. The Chinese were also printing books with movable type at least as early as AD 900, again long before the supposed invention of Gutenberg’s.

Bob Cooper was simultaneously publishing five magazines circa 1960 when he was in his early twenties. At that time, technology hadn’t advanced much beyond the early printing of Gutenberg. Flats were made for each magazine page from molten lead. Post production, the entire lot was melted down again, ready for the next printing project.

Print on Demand

Espresso Book Machine

Now, fast forward to today. Print on Demand companies like BookSurge (or as they’re now called, CreateSpace) are using fully automated and computerized machines like the Espresso Book Machine. As Bob explains, from the moment Joe Bloggs (from anywhere) places his online order for a POD book, one minute might transpire before the physical book is produced from scratch complete with an address label ready to be posted or couriered to Joe. Presumably, no human hands have been involved to this point. The BookSurge representative is likely calmly sipping a liquid Espresso at the time. There is no need to make an initial print run of, say, 3000 copies. The books are printed as required.

Enter Kindle

Six months ago the publishing industry was again turned on its head with the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle Wirless Reading Device. Again, as Bob says, a vacationer lounging on the beach in Samoa could have a new book uploaded to her Kindle within a minute of placing their order. All they need is access to 3G mobile, something that’s pretty omnipresent today.

So, what are the implications of the rapid technological changes we’re seeing in the publishing world? Only time will tell. But, as Bob Cooper points out in our interview, Barnes and Noble will be closing 200 stores after Christmas and, at the same time, Borders will be virtually (pun intended) no more. Keep your eyes and ears open in 2010. Will you be reading from a machine or from a real book. I’m sticking to the ‘real thing’, and that’s not Coca Cola folks!

For the complete informative and entertaining interview listen here:

http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25546815-Bob-Cooper-and-the-Changing-World-of-Book-Publishing

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John Haines is the author of In Search of Simplicity: A True Story that Changes Lives, a startlingly poignant and inspiring real-life endorsement of the power of thought, belief and synchronicity in one’s life.

The title is a nugget buried in a blog post in Publishing Perspectives, a newsletter about the global publishing community. The post is speaking about the demise of Kirkus Reviews, a death many in the industry are mourning with shouts of glee and raised glasses of champagne. Kirkus was well-known for being the crabby old guy down the street when it came to book reviews. Like my mom always said, if you can’t say anything nice, write for Kirkus.

The blog post wonders at the relevance of reviews for pre-published books, noting that booksellers can just return books they over-order and don’t sell. In short, there’s no risk to booksellers if the pre-publication reviews go away. The publisher eats the stock, which shows up a few months later on the remainder table or acts as kindling in a senior acquisitions editor’s fireplace.

But does that make good business sense? It’s a bind (ha ha ha) for publishers. Books are not typically non-perishables. Most books have a short shelf life before they’re yanked from the shelves for something else. If the publisher guesses low and prints too small a run, the book’s fifteen minutes of fame could pass and shoppers could move onto the next thing. But if the publisher guesses too high, the unsold inventory sitting in their warehouse will stink like last week’s hallibut.

Print-on-demand is typically worthy of scowls from those within the literary establishment. Along with self-published books, the POD books are the ones that don’t get picked up by regular publishers. Technology could change that, along with everything else about the industry. In 2006–back in the olden days–CNN ran a few articles about Espresso, the ATM for books. According to the article, 25 libraries and book stores in the New York City area were scheduled to take delivery in 2007. I’ve been to a number of book stores up and libraries in the past couple years and haven’t seen anything like that.

To be fair, the Espresso machine costs between $50,000 and $140,000, depending on who you listen to. And it’s roughly the size of a large SUV, and about as pretty to look at. But four years is an eternity in technology. Technology keeps getting smaller and other costs keep increasing. Borders is in financial trouble, and even Barnes and Noble is reducing the floor space used for books. Suddenly, if a company looking to corner the market (say, Google, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon) were able to assemble books on demand, while you have a latte a lot of problems would fade.

Book stores wouldn’t require huge overheads on space to carry a large inventory on books. Publishers wouldn’t be weighed down with first-run hardcovers and paperbacks that didn’t sell. The logistical costs of assembling, storing, and delivering books would plummet. And someone would make an enormous amount of money.

“But wait,” you say, “you can’t possibly bind a book that well in a store, onesy, twosy. People won’t go for the relative reduction in quality.” Why not. I don’t buy the book for the binding. I buy the book for the story inside. I’m probably not going to shell out $27.95 for the newest <insert author’s name here> if it’s coil bound. But I might shell out $20 for it. And if the market changes so that’s what I get unless I want to read electronically–which is coming–I might spend that much.

The economics of publishing aren’t sustainable in an on-demand world. No one knows what the next world will look like; it just won’t look like the current world.

Nathan Spoor SUDDENLY T-Shirt by nathanspoor
Make a custom shirt on zazzle

Some days ago, a new site was presented, LABz, another colaboration between Zazzle and Artsprojekt. In this site, each week, a new t-shirt featuring art from a member of the Artsprojekt Global Creative Network, will be released. Instead of the standard digital printing offered by Zazzle, these tees will have multiple printing methods and inks, including high-density, foils, flex, flocking, and more. For this first release the artist chosen was the Los Angeles based painter, Nathan Spoor, with a version of one of his original paintings “Suddenly”. If you wanna see this product in more detail, or visit the author´s store, just click on the image or use the links below it. To know a bit more about this artist and his work, you can check out his personal website at http://www.nathanspoor.com.

Revision update: Two chapters done yesterday. None today. Work too hectic.

A lot of print-on-demand options have popped up over the last few years, making self-publishing more of an option for writers. I recently tried one, Blurb.com, not for self-publishing, but for my mother’s 60th birthday gift.

Mum wrote a bunch of poems a few years ago, so for her birthday, I gathered the ones I like the best, matched them with various photos my husband and I have taken over the years as well as old family shots, put them into a cool page design and uploaded them to the Blurb website.

Blurb offers to print books in a variety of shapes of sizes and provides templates for InDesign, but it will also take PDF files made in other design programs, as long as they match up with Blurb’s page size specifications. I had a little problem with this — and I was using Blurb’s InDesign templates — but it turned out, after a conversation with customer service, that I also needed Blurb’s PDF-making template. That wasn’t entirely clear in the instructions, and I found a few bugs in the site’s customer service — there’s no phone number, just email by forms, and if they’re not working, you’re stuck — but I finally got everything uploaded and my mum’s book on the way.

The final product arrived in the mail about a week later, and I must admit, I was impressed. I ordered an image-wrap hardcover book, and the picture on the cover was a bit muddy, but that’s my fault. It looked muddy on my print out but I went ahead with it anyway. The inside pages, though, looked wonderful. Even my old family pictures, which I had scanned into the computer, kept their quality. And the newer pictures, taken with our good camera, printed wonderfully.

Like other print-on-demand services, Blurb will list your book for sale to the public and you share the sale price, but you can order just one or a few copies for your personal use and keep the book off the site for public sales, which is what I did for my mother’s gift.

My mother opened her book last week and, once she got over the fact that her name was on the cover, she lifted it up proudly and said, “I’m published!”

Dreams can come true.

Write On!

One of the books that shaped my perception of the book publishing industry at large, and served as the inspiration and impetus for us to start our own press, was Andre Schiffrin’s “The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read”. In it, Schiffrin, the former publisher of Pantheon, chronicles the seismic shift in ideology from the post-World War II years — when book publishers considered themselves to be purveyors of culture — to the corporate-driven, profits-minded present.

In the past, books were allowed to subsidize one another, which allowed for a broader swath of ideas and afforded new writers or challenging voices a greater window through which to discover an audience. The “new policy was that each book should make money on its own and that one title should no longer be allowed to subsidize another.” Random House initially grew and built their reputation by subsidizing voices such as William Faulkner’s with a book of jokes or puzzles. Today, that logic wouldn’t fly.

Most small presses are inspired to continue in the tradition from the mid-twentieth century, to publish quality books with a discerning taste. When you publish two or ten books annually, you can’t afford to deviate from your program without risk of soiling either your reputation or your credibility. So, generally speaking, maybe with the exception of non-profits, most small presses are functioning similar to their corporate counterparts but on a much more dramatic precipice, where the success or failure of each book can make or bankrupt a publisher.

At Two Dollar Radio, in order to keep our book line pure and generate some alternative revenue to help subsidize the adventurous voices we elect to publish, we sell tee shirts. We get the shirts from a local wholesale distributor where we drive to pick them up, and actually do print them ourselves. Usually this happens late at night on our kitchen table, our daughter Rio crowding at our elbows eager to watch. There are always slight imperfections, but that’s what makes them unique. It’s funky and it’s cool, and they mesh well with the ethos we employ in our publishing program. We have over a handful of designs, mostly involving random animals. We have one with a pig that says “Read like a pig.” Our top-seller sports a unicorn, with the tagline “Unicorn-level books,” inspired by independent book publicist Lauren Cerand.

The idea is nowhere near original. When my wife Eliza and I conceived Two Dollar Radio, we were living in San Diego, where we met three young guys — Josh Abramson, Jakob Lodwick, and Ricky Van Veen — who made a living managing a website called CollegeHumor.com. At the time, they were drafting designs for a line of faux-vintage tee shirts. Later dubbed Busted Tees, the idea exploded and by 2005 accounted for half of their very significant monthly revenue.

While we aren’t anywhere close to as successful with our shirts, at the recent Brooklyn Book Festival tees accounted for twenty percent of our total sales. Of sales made directly through our website since August, thirty-eight percent have been tee shirt orders.

We aren’t the only press who sells clothing or accessories. For example, I have tee shirts from Small Beer Press and Featherproof Books. (The Featherproof logo — an owl with a toy arrow on its head — was a huge hit when I wore it on my parent-helper day at my daughter’s pre-school.) Perhaps the publisher with the most diverse merchandise is McSweeney’s. For sale through their website they have nearly two-dozen different tee shirts, a Believer Faces Poster, a tote bag, and Nick Hornby’s Songbook CD.

As a small press, it is much easier to craft an identity. If you buy a book published by an independent press, then chances are good you really did intend to buy that book. Either it was recommended to you by a friend, you read a review, or you discovered it on the shelf of an independent bookstore: small presses deploy no marketing sleight of hand, no clever gimmicks or paid product placement in order to finagle someone into buying one of our books. As a result, I would wager that consumers of small press books are more aware of who published the work than those of corporate presses, which makes it easier for an independent publisher to sell brand merchandise. I doubt anyone would buy a shirt that says “Random House” on it; it just isn’t cool. Nor would it stand for anything: one person might stop you in the street imagining you share an affinity for raising the perfect dog, while another might be a John Irving or Kurt Vonnegut fan. But I’ve seen students at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, rocking McSweeney’s shirts and I know their taste.

If the task of a small press is to foster new talent, to serve as a platform for innovative ideas or challenging voices, in hopes of achieving a reasonable readership in the thousands, then it seems practical to look to additional sources of revenue in order to keep the ship afloat. At Two Dollar Radio, that means allowing us to publish the type of bold work we’ve built our reputation on without resorting to publishing the modern equivalent of the joke book.

While not every book publisher in New Zealand has a wholesale shirt distributor close by, or the energy and willingness to screen-print shirts themselves, there are other means to accessorize affordably. And, following McSweeney’s example, it doesn’t necessarily have to just be tee shirts.

Richard Nash pointed out in his ‘Don’t Call it a Comeback’ piece in Publishers Weekly that respondents to a poll in the U.K. on what book will most likely get you laid, stated “anything published by Soft Skull.” Since it’s not always comfortable to cart a book to the bar with you, imagine how much more convenient it would be to simply don a Soft Skull tee shirt.

Source: Huffington Post
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Here is how to get started with publishing a book in New Zealand.

Pack of 5 Autumn style rag doll high resolution (300 dpi) clip art images. Perfect for your Zazzle or Cafepress shop, scrap booking and card making.

Personal/Commercial use OK.

Please be sure to read our terms of use included in your download package.

$5.00 On sale for only .50!

Jane Austen

This past Wednesday, December 2^nd, both literally and figuratively, I suffered through my crappiest visit ever to New York City. I’d been looking forward to a day in Manhattan, culminating in the gala holiday party held by the Mystery Writers of America at the National Arts Club. I caught Amtrak’s 8:05 Empire Express from the Rensselaer station, but as I exited Penn Station, I experienced an acute attack of what might politely be called gastrointestinal distress.

I barely made it to the women’s restroom on Macy’s second floor – having lived in Manhattan for 18 years, I still knew my way around, even managed to find the secret old-fashioned escalator with the wide wooden treads – and found blessed relief in the nick of time. Next, I found a Duane-Reade drugstore, popped some Immodium, and headed for the Morgan Library to see the exhibit of William Blake watercolors and engravings. Happily, I also stumbled upon an exhibition titled “A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy.”

I’m shamefully ill-acquainted with Austen’s work, but the exhibit was fascinating. I was especially intrigued by the display featuring the first edition of Sense and Sensibility, written between 1795 and 1797. The description read in part:

It was published on commission by Thomas Egerton in 1811, an arrangement in which Austen paid all the publication expenses but retained the copyright and increased her potential profit.

Wow! That sounds exactly like my arrangement with my publisher, Virtualbookworm. So Jane Austen started out as a self-published author. Would she have been eligible for active membership in Mystery Writers of America? Absolutely not.

Today I received an e-mail from MWA, which begins as follows:

Dear MWA Member:

The Board of Mystery Writers of America voted unanimously on Wednesday to remove Harlequin and all of its imprints from our list of Approved Publishers, effective immediately. We did not take this action lightly. We did it because Harlequin remains in violation of our rules regarding the relationship between a traditional publisher and its various for-pay services.

What does this mean for current and future MWA members?

Any author who signs with Harlequin or any of its imprints from this date onward may not use their Harlequin books as the basis for active status membership nor will such books be eligible for Edgar® Award consideration. However books published by Harlequin under contracts signed before December 2, 2009 may still be the basis for Active Status membership and will still be eligible for Edgar® Award consideration.

When they address me as “Dear MWA Member,” they don’t mean I’m a full-fledged Active Status member. Rather, I’m an Affiliate Member, meaning I’m not a legitimate author, and I don’t get any of the major perks, but they’re willing to take my money. In fact, reading the criteria on their website, I may not even qualify for this level of membership. They mention agents, attorneys, editors and other professionals, but nowhere do they mention authors who are self-published, pre-published, or published with a press that doesn’t meet their lofty criteria. In their eyes, apparently we don’t exist.

National Arts Club

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that I was too sick to attend that fancy MWA party. I’m a firm believer in gut reactions and synchronicity. Normally, though I go through a fair number of Tums, my own gut is pretty sturdy, so I didn’t know what was happening to me. The Morgan Library is equipped with a beautiful new ladies’ room with lovely tiling and a large handicapped stall with which I became intimately acquainted over the course of several hours. During my fourth stay in that stall, fearing I might be coming down with the flu, I realized I was never going to make it to the Kandinsky show at the Guggenheim, much less the MWA party, so I trudged back to Penn Station and caught the 4:40 train back home.

The party would have been great; I had a wonderful time last year. But in addition to the lavish hors d’oeuvres, there was an open bar, and I might have said things I’d regret in the cold light of morning. Instead I spent the evening in bed – no food, no booze. I was fine in the morning, so fortunately, it wasn’t the flu  – just something I couldn’t stomach.

I was surprised  when I noticed the above question popping up in my internet search results recently, and I wondered if people were talking about some other Lulu.com to the one I’ve been using. But no, it’s the same one, and it seems there’s a problem – not with Lulu.com, but I think with the unrealistic expectations of some very naive writers, with dreams of stardom.

I’ve now got six books on their server, and I’ve never had any problems, either with the website or with the quality of the books they’ve delivered. Of the half-dozen proof copies of my own books I’ve purchased, the quality has always been top notch, both in paper-back and hardback – the equal of any conventionally published book. As for the cover design, what you see on-screen is pretty much what you get. You follow the template, upload your design at a decent resolution and the quality of reproduction has always been spot on. Perhaps I’m one of the lucky ones, I don’t know – I can only speak from my own experience – but everything Lulu promised me it could deliver, it has done so, consistently, many times.

So, is Lulu a scam? No. It’s exactly what it says it is: a print on demand publisher.  This is a new era. You need to forget the old way of doing things.

Some of the comments I’ve read are regarding late payment of royalties, and if that’s true then, okay, there’s a problem there that needs sorting out. I can’t offer anything on that debate because I’ve set my royalties to zero and am consequently not making any money from my books at all. To be frank, I’d rather shift copies than optimistically charge the earth for them  and have them sitting there doing nothing. This means the e-book versions cost nothing, while the print copies are the cheapest they can possibly be, and every penny paid by my customers goes to the printer. I’ve managed to “sell” about 40 print copies to complete strangers, even one book of poetry, which was the last thing I was expecting, while my free downloads are currently in the region of about 8000 all told.

Perhaps I’m odd, but I’m actually very happy with this. Perhaps my expectations are pessimistically low, but I’ve been writing stories and sending them to commercial publishers for thirty years now and I don’t think they are.

Writing is a hobby for me. The odds of making it big as a writer are actually rather small and most of us just labour on in obscurity. We have to grow up and be accepting of this. My novels are never going to top the best seller list. Commercial publishers won’t look twice at my stuff because I’m an unknown scribbler, possibly crap, and unlikely to make them much money.

Lulu is a print on demand publisher. They’re different. They are not in the business of making you rich and famous. They will take anything – even if it’s a load of gibberish – and “publish” it for you. What they make out of it is what you pay them for your own copy of the book – there’s no obligation for you to buy it, but I think most writers will want to. Any more copies you sell to strangers is a bonus for them. If they can sell you an ISBN number, a marketing package and a listing on Amazon, then fine, it’s not expensive, but you’re straying a little deeper into vanity publishing territory there, and you really shouldn’t expect miracles. Now, multiply all of this by the million writers who have used Lulu, and you get an idea of their business model. It works for them. It works for us. But it’s not a scam.

If you want to be rich and famous, then study the market, as they say, write your novel, send it off to a big name publisher and good luck to you. The writers who follow this route and make it are the one’s who can still keep their heads together when their manuscript has been returned for the fifteenth time unread, and so many years have passed they can barely remember what their own story is about any more. I’m not one of them. I admit I can’t handle it. It depresses me. It takes my love of writing and turns it into a three-by-two that others can  use to hit me with.

I’m done with that. I didn’t want to waste my whole life negotiating the literary path to published authordom, finally to drop dead and with not a single person in the world having ever read a story by Michael Graeme. So b&**cks to it! I’ve got a day job to pay the bills, and I’m currently writing like there’s no tomorrow. I’m also thoroughly enjoying it. That’s entirely thanks to Lulu.com and other free to upload sites like Feedbooks.

Use them wisely, and be under no illusions. If you want your writing to make you rich and famous, then okay, Lulu is probably not for you. If you want your story to be read by people all over the world, tomorrow, then go for it. You’ve really nothing to lose.

Christmas Train by vladstudio
Design Full color post cards at zazzle

Loungekat & Bucket’o'Thought’s Aussie Christmas by LoungeKat
Browse more Christmas Cards

We are now in December, and everybody’s starting to go crazy about Christmas. So, I decided to join the party, and feature two Christmas cards on my weekly post about Zazzle. The first one is from the russian artist Vlad Gerasimov (vladstudio), whose work I wrote about before, in this blog. As usual, there´s a great atmosphere in this scene, quite whimsical and charming, and a beautiful use of color. The second one is a collaborative work from the illustrator and designer Kate McInnes (aka – LoungeKat), and vector illustrator Sean Kelly (Bucket‘o’Thought), both from Melbourne, Australia. This is quite different from the other, both in execution and style, with a much more relaxed take on this season holidays. But after all, Christmas is a celebration, and it´s not mandatory that it has to be lived only in the traditional way…

If you want to see these products in more detail, just click on the images above, or use the links below it, to see other products from these authors.

UPDATE: The Huffington Post carried an article by John Oakes (co-founder OR Books) last week which I missed.

I’m quite surprised there isn’t more news about this deal. Publishers Lunch* (apologies for the enormous robbery of content) reported on the sale of paperback rights for Going Rouge by OR Books:

Among other start-up muckrakers, John Oakes and Colin Robinson’s OR Books has sold paperback rights to their first title, GOING ROUGE, to Michele Matrisciani at HCI Books–which is reissuing the book today. Under OR Books direct-sale model, the book had not been available in traditional stores or online vendors, limiting sales despite the wave of Palin-related publicity. HCI president Peter Vegso says in their announcement “this title, although outside our usual publishing perimeters, presented an exciting and interesting challenge.”

Next up for OR Books is Norman Finkelstein’s book on “Israel’s Growing Isolation After the Gaza Invasion,” set for January, in which he “looks at how the reckless and disproportionate military action against the Palestinians in Gaza a year ago has led some of Israel’s closest allies to question their support for the country,” while “offering the possibility of something hopeful emerging from the tragedy of what occurred in Gaza.”

Oakes says eliciting a paperback partner will “certainly be a goal for each published work of ours.”

This is the almost perfect example of how one might expect a pure ebook play to develop over time, publishing ebooks to a time sensitive market while selling the rights to someone else for a paperback edition, enabling them to keep stock costs lows and cash flow high and letting someone else worry about the odd economics of the traditional model!

Mike Shatzkin has written quite a bit on these topics so it’d be worth reading one or two or even three of his posts.

We live in the most interesting of times!
Eoin

*A service of Publishers Marketplace a site that anyone interested in publisher should pay for.

In choosing a print-on-demand vendor there was one factor that sealed the decision for my client.  Namely, with Ingram’s Lightning Source he gained an instant in-road to nearly every bookstore and library in the country with Ingram’s distribution arm.  Through Ingram’s iPage, bookstore and libraries can order our books instantly.  Of course, just because they can, doesn’t mean they will.  We still have to aggressively get the word out about ourbook.  Ingram also offered a number of add-on marketing services like e-mail blasts to up to 10,000 retail accounts and 16,500 library accounts, podcast & trailer creation, a browse & buy html page and embeddable widget and advertising in Ingram’s trade publications like the monthly Advance Magazine.  We opted to create our own trailer, but did take advantage of the browse & buy widget and e-mail blasts to targeted group of buyers.  The bottom line is that availability through Ingram means over 26,000 bookstores and libraries could potentially stock our title.

In addition to printing through Lightning Source my client chose to work with a publishing partner called Wingspan Press to interface with Ingram as well as handle details like securing ISBN numbers, Library of Congress number and bar code, listing the title with online retailers and with Books In Print, assisting with interior/cover layout and more.  We retain full rights and have the choice of publishing under our own imprint.   Couldn’t we have done all of these things ourselves?  Of course, but off-loading some of the grunt work allowed myself and the author to focus more on marketing and publicity.  The end result is professional packaging and design to compliment an already stellar manuscript.

It’’s not difficult for the average self-published author to rack up north of $10,000 to bring a book to market.  When setting a budget there’s certainly a balance to be struck between spending enough to “do it right” and paying through the nose for ancillary services and set-up costs.  I think we’ve hit the mark, but time will tell.  So far, we’re pleased with our publishing partner and print-on-demand vendor.

Black Calendar by VioDeBlack
Get a calendar from Zazzle

2010 calendar INK by anneliolander
View more Artsprojekt Calendars

We’re now almost in December, Christmas is coming, and soon , the new year will be here, so today, on my weekly post about Zazzle products, I decided to feature two 2010 Calendars. The first one with some beautiful and stylish black and white floral patterns, and the second one with some great ink illustrations by swedish illustrator Anneli Olander. If you want to see these products in more detail, just click on the images above, or use the links below it to see other products from these authors, or search for other calendars on Zazzle.

After Sunday’s post I was asked to clarify my stand on self-publishing. Although it’s not an option I intend to pursue, I think self-publishing is a legitimate means of meeting the publishing needs of many writers. It’s important, however, to know what self-publishing is and isn’t.

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True self-publishing leaves the control of all aspects of the process in the writer’s hands – cover art, print style and pricing. All rights, including the ISBN, remain with the writer who also keeps all proceeds from any sales.

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Often confused as self-publishing are Print On Demand, or POD services. A POD service offers a specific package of services and the publisher will retain ownership of the ISBN and certain publishing rights. The author’s payment comes from royalties which are typically based on a book’s net price, not retail, so the author pays both the initial printing costs and a per book fee. “In fact, POD services more closely resemble vanity publishers–which is how they’re widely regarded by professional writers and publishing industry people.”* I’m told Author House is one of the biggest POD providers, and continues to grow as it consolidates with and buys up other POD companies.

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If a writer assesses his or her publishing needs, examines carefully what is offered and makes an informed decision without unrealistic expectations of the outcome, both self-publishing and POD services can be considered as useful options.

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That’s my opinion anyway. What’s yours? Have you had experiences with self-publishing and/or POD? Were they problem-free? Would you recommend them to other writers?

* http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/pod/

A meaningless word that is used very often, not just by newbies, but also by several industry insiders is on-demand publishing. On-demand publishing really does not mean anything. It is the printing that is done on demand. Self publishing is not the same thing as print on demand. This excerpt from our self publishing guide explains the same. It also talks about the two printing options available to publishers in the form of Print on Demand (POD) and Offset Printing.

If you have not already done so, you may want to read the following articles from this series before reading this one.

• What is publishing?
• What is self-publishing?

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Self Publishing and Print on Demand (POD)

There is a difference between self publishing and Print on Demand. The two terms are often used interchangeably by most of us since POD is the most prevalent technology used by self publishers. But the two are not the same.

Publishing is the entire process of preparing the manuscript, editing, designing the cover, printing, distribution and marketing. Printing is only one step in the process of publishing. At the printing stage, the publisher has to choose between two technologies – offset printing and POD. If the publisher is confident of selling a large number of copies (500+), then he may opt for offset printing. If the sale is not expected to be in large numbers, then even a normal publisher may prefer POD. In short, publishing is the entire process whereas POD is a technology which can be used by a full-fledged publisher as well as a self publisher.

POD versus Offset Printing

POD is a relatively new printing technology where the cost of printing does not depend on the number of copies being printed. This is essentially digital printing, where each copy is printed independent of the other.

POD has its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of POD

• Flexibility to print even a single copy at a time. The unit cost of printing one copy and 1,000 copies does not vary much.
• Each copy can be personalised. You can even dedicate different copies to your different bosses or friends and earn brownie points, for instance.
• The content can be updated over time at no cost since the printing is done directly from a soft copy.
• Since one can print exactly the number of copies ordered for, with no significant addition to costs, there is no need to maintain dead inventory (unsold copies).
• The entire process is faster.

Disadvantages of POD

• The cost per copy is slightly higher as compared to bulk printing done by offset.
• Although black and white/grayscale printing quality is now at par with offset, accurate colour reproduction may be an issue in some cases.

Offset printing is a more prevalent and older technology. This involves setting the book in certain specialised software and cutting a plate of the image. The inked image is transferred (or ‘offset’) from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface. The plate making process is costly and once made, the plates cannot be corrected or changed. Revision in the book requires cutting new plates. But once you create a plate, you can use it to generate a large number of copies. Therefore, one needs to print a large number of copies (typically 1,000+, minimum 500+) to distribute the cost of plates over all those copies. As a result, printing just a few copies is not cost-effective with offset printing; the cost per copy decreases with increase in the number of copies printed.

Offset printing too has its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of Offset Printing

• Per copy cost is low if number of copies is high. Works well with the current distribution setup in the industry.
• Quality may be better, especially for coloured printing/photo books.
• Wider choice of printing paper and other production options are available.

Disadvantages of Offset Printing

• Large upfront investment in bulk printing. Because of high setup costs, short print runs are not feasible
• Need to maintain the inventory and logistics

If you’re new to book publishing, you’ve no doubt heard and read about the POD printing process which is commonly used in today’s industry. However, many first-time authors don’t fully understand what POD is, what POD stands for, and why the POD process is, well, so common.

Actually, it quite simply. The letters P-O-D stand for the phrase “Print On Demand.” This is a printing process born from today’s digital technology, in which books are printed “one at a time” on a computer-operated press. And much like you’re able to print a document on your home PC and print in any quantity you want — ranging from one copy to, oh, let’s say, 200 copies — the POD process allows printing companies to produce books in any number desired. Including one single copy . . . if that’s what is ordered.

The beauty of POD printing is obvious. It’s quick and easy, for starters. Once a printer has the files for a book’s cover and interior pages loaded into its computer system, it’s essentially a matter of that printer hitting a “print” button to produce a book.  Next week when three more orders for the book comes in, the files can be uploaded and three more copies can quickly be printed and shipped. And in three months, when the author wants another order of 50 copies, those are printed and shipped right then and there. Simply, the books are printed only when they’re ordered. And in the specific amount requested.

What’s more, the POD process keeps the publisher and the author from having to take on the cost and hassle of keeping a large inventory of unsold books lying around collecting dust  in a warehouse or spare bedroom. For a publisher working with many authors, it’s extremely costly to warehouse boxes and boxes of books that may or may not ever be sold. And while authors certainly enjoy having some of their books around the house to show off and give to folks, most writer’s don’t want to have stacks of boxes of their hard work taking up space in their house or garage.

And if you’re wondering about the quality of POD printing, there’s no need to worry. To most people’s eyes, there is virtually no difference that can be detected between a book that been created in a POD process and one that was printed using the industry’s other printing option: offset printing. Today’s digital technology has advanced to the point where printing quality is rarely an issue.

One last benefit from POD printing is that most publishing houses, as we do at Zone Press, can afford to give authors substantial discounts when ordering their books via POD for themselves. So with each sale of a book from their own inventory, the author gets his/her initial investment back while also making a nice profit that usually is  more than they’d receive from a royalty.