Self publishing is quickly becoming the first choice for many writers. In the past writers would have been happy to spend months, or even years, submitting to traditional publishers but things are changing. Self publishing is now considered by many as their preferred route to publication. In fact, self publishing is now big business.
However, with so many options many writers are making the wrong choices when self publishing their books.
Self Publishing Tip: Look Professional
Here’s a question – Who published the last book you read?
I suspect most people will not know the answer to this question. The origin of a book is of little concern to most readers. However, what does matter is that the book looks, feels and reads well. So the first lesson for anyone self publishing is that you must make your book look professional.
Here’s the three step process to self publishing a professional book:
1. Cover design – Pay a professional designer to design your cover. It’s that simple. Cutting corners here will mean you are self publishing a book that looks…well…cheap! This will stop casual readers picking up your book.
2. Copy edit - Pay for a professional copy edit. OK this is what BubbleCow does for a living but you don’t need to use our services, there are many literary consultancies out there that will do the job. What is important is that the book you are self publishing has been professionally edited.
3. Proofreading – Pay for a professional proofreader. This is not the same as a copy edit and will make sure that you get rid of all the typos and grammar mistakes.
Self Publishing Tip: Printing
I am sure you have all picked up copies of self published books and thought…ermm. You know the sort, printing is cramped, pages have been cut so they lay slightly off line, basically the book looks…well…cheap. When self publishing a writer needs to be aware that readers might not care about publishers but they do care about quality. So how do you avoid this kind of shoddy printing? The answer is to pay for a professional printer to print your book. Poorly printed books are almost always Print On Demand. Simply put these are books printed on high quality laser printers. If you employ the services of a professional self publishing company they will almost certainly ensure your book is printed by a real printer using what is known as short-run printing. This means you may have to print somewhere between 300 and 1000 copies but the quality will be good. For what it is worth BubbleCow recommends either Matador or YPS (in the UK).
Self Publishing Tip: Marketing
The big problem that faces any writer who is considering self publishing their book is distribution. The stark reality of the publishing world is that book shops have limited interest in stocking self published books. The main reason for this is logistics. It takes thousands of books to fill the bookshop pipeline. Writers who are self publishing their book are wise not to print this many books at the first stage, since many of the books sent to bookshops will be returned unsold. Matador in the UK are going some way to solving this problem, yet it still exists.
The lack of distribution (i.e. a system for getting books into bookshops on a large scale) means that anyone self publishing their own book needs a realistic marketing plan. You need to build an online platform, develop a plan to get reviews and produce a viable system to develop real world buzz around your book. This is not easy and takes both time and money.
Self Publishing Tip: The Business Model
The only way you can make self publishing work is if you approach the whole adventure as a business opportunity. Books, even self published books, are products and these need to be sold for profit. Before any writer spends their hard earned cash on self publishing their book I would suggest they work out just how much money they will have to spend on the cost of preproduction (cover, editing, ISBN etc) and the cost of printing (including the cut to self publishers). You can now add to this the cost of any marketing, web costs etc., you should really also add the cost of your own time into the equation. This will give you a figure of just how much money you need to spend when self publishing. From this you can work out just how many books you need to sell to break even. Just a word of warning here, this may be a lot more than you think.
OK if you have managed to get this far then you must be pretty serious about self publishing. If you have any further questions then add them to the comments and I will look to answer them. You can also check out BubbleCow’s Self Publishing Package if you are looking to save some money in preproduction.
Best of luck.
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