Over at TechCrunch, James Altucher has been writing about Why Every Entrepreneur Should Self-Publish a Book. He’s right. But I fear he may have given you slightly too simple a path if you want to be serious about your self-published work.
Altucher says “I’ve published eight books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), one comic book, and the last two I’ve self-published.”
I’ve published 5 books since 2001, one with a self-publishing service (a HORRIBLE experience with Xlibris) and four on my own. Like Altucher, one of mine was also a comic. I’ll even one-up what Altucher says you can do with self-publishing. Two editions of one of my books have been adopted as a college text. (And not a class I was teaching, either.)
The quibble I have is the choice of provider. Altucher says CreateSpace/Amazon. Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Amazon. I just think you should think bigger and cast your net wider.
When I do self-publishing, I use Lightning Source. Lightning Source is the Print On Demand (POD) service owned by Ingram, one of the big two book distributors. There’s a little more upfront cash involved and you don’t get your hand held as much, but if you want to put on your grown up pants, this is a better way to do things. Lightning Source puts you in Ingram’s catalog and I have yet to find an online bookseller that didn’t offer one of my books through this service. If you want to use Amazon’s extended distribution system… guess what? Amazon outsources that to Lightning Source. Do you really need to hear a better endorsement than Amazon’s? You want deep details on Lightning Source? Aaron Shepard is the expert on POD with them. (Note: I have never experienced any of the “Plan B” Amazon issues the site talks about.)
The first thing you need to do is buy yourself an ISBN number. That’s going to run you $125 for one or $250 for 10. Buy more, write a few more books. Plus, you easily have your own publisher name to use when you do this, so if you’re clever, maybe everyone won’t think you’re some lame person putting out their own book.
Next thing you’re going to need to do is format your book. Instructions are on the Lightning Source site. Shepard has some thoughts on it. Man up, it’s not that hard. You can do it in Word if you have to and non-typographers are unlikely to know the difference. Lightning Source will even generate a cover template with a working UPC barcode for you. Yes, it will be a real book.
If you can provide them with digital files for the cover and text, set-up should cost you $75 and there’s a $12 annual catalog fee.
With POD books, you need to embrace the fact these are going to be a special order and no bookstore is likely to order them for the shelf. Then again, there are a number of bookstores that ABSOLUTELY won’t order them for the shelf and might be mad enough not to do a special order if they see CreateSpace (read: Amazon) on the title. Drop your discount down to an academic discount (20-25%) and make more per order. That’s how this new publishing game is played. My most successful POD book surpassed one, possibly two of the advances Altucher discusses. And, let’s face it: if I can make the financials work better than traditional publishing, you should be able to as well.
Please remember, you have to be actively promoting your book or it will stagnate and stop selling. If you have a regular column in print or online, drop a link/note about the book as your sign-off/.sig. Back in the early aughts, I covered the Knicks for New York Resident and every time my basketball column ran with a line about my humor book at the end, I’d sell around 7 copies of the book. Your columns can be your best marketing and the subject matter doesn’t necessarily need to match up.
The other half of the self-publishing equation is eBooks. You get a lot more money if you format your books directly with the seller. Kindle/Amazon, Nook/Barnes & Noble and iBooks/Apple are the big three. You really should upload your book directly to those services if you can. For any you can’t, and to get on all the other random eBook sites, click over to SmashWords.
Kindle is still the big dog in overall sales, but I’ve encountered people who sell better on the Nook and I’m sure there are people for whom iBooks is the main market. Publishing is a game of aggregation. Do not limit yourself to one vendor or platform unless they’re specifically making it worth your while.
By all means, you should write a book. Just do make sure it’s where you can reach the widest audience.