Photo © 2008 Quinn Dombrowski CC BY-SA 2.0
Click here for the original image.

In yesterday’s post, I distinguished between the “indie author” and the “self-published author.” A reader named Wendy commented, with a question.

This is a distinction that I originally got from Bob Baker, author of 55 Ways to Promote & Sell Your Book on the Internet. Bob got his self-publishing start with a book about indie music marketing, back in the mid-90′s. He told the story in a recent interview about self-publishing:

In 1996, I self-published the first crude version of the Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook… one of the first books to advocate self-reliance and taking your music career into your own hands (as opposed to “getting signed” to a record label, which most music business books were all about back then).

My DIY perspective came in handy when the traditional music biz began to crumble around 2001. Before long, going the “indie” route became the way to go…

Eh. So the book industry is 10 years late.

Anyhow, (a few years ago, as I recall) Bob pointed out that most people don’t care who published your book. But if someone does ask you who, you can say, “I’m an indie author,” rather than saying, “I self-published it.” He got the “indie” tag from the music industry, where “indie” is no longer looked down upon as less legitimate than being signed by a big record label.

I took his advice to heart. When I talk about “self-published authors,” I’m usually referring to authors who use modern publishing technology in pursuit of their hobby. When I talk about “indie authors,” I’m referring to those who take their writing seriously, take their books seriously, and treat them as part of a business plan.

(I’m not sure if that’s what Bob originally had in mind. But that’s the gist of what I wrote yesterday.)

In reply, Wendy wrote (and I paraphrase):

Hi, Tim.

I’ve never contacted you before but I have read your blogs and comments on Holly Lisle’s blogs… My question is how does one start/run her own publishing company? Any information or resources you could point me to would be greatly appreciated?

Wendy C. Boston

Hi, Wendy. Thanks so much for commenting. This answer is going to gloss over a lot of material, but I hope that I at least provide a useful link or two.

The easiest way to get started is to publish ebooks under your own name using Smashwords and/or Amazon KDP. Smashwords’s site is designed to be author-friendly; that is, you don’t have to be a publishing expert to use it. (However, once you are a publishing expert, you’ll probably learn to hate it. Ba-dum bum.) Amazon has also designed their site to be used by authors, but you’ll need to convert your ebook appropriately for their system. Both sites have good help guides, and Amazon has user forums as well.

You can also set up a small business, file a fictitious name, and use that as the publisher name. Whether and how to do that is the same for a publishing business as for any other business. Nolo Press has some great self-help legal books on how to start a business legally. Starting a modern small publishing business is easier than starting many other businesses, because you don’t need a storefront, and you don’t need any government licenses or permits (at least not here in the U.S.). You don’t even need to deal with publishing contracts, if you’re only publishing your own books (and if you are publishing your own books, you should probably think twice before you also publish someone else’s… but that’s another topic).

Even if you use your own name, the key, I think, is to treat your authoring and publishing as a business or career, not as a hobby. That is, engage it seriously, put into it the time and effort it demands, and plan well in order to ultimately succeed. Of course, hobbies are wonderful. I have hobbies, too. And I think everybody should write stories as a hobby—at least everyone who isn’t pursuing it as a career. But you were asking about self-publishing as a business. The real difference is in attitude, whether it’s a hobby or a career, because that difference will help you make certain decisions and affect your level of commitment, especially over the long haul.

I can also recommend Aaron Shepard’s book POD for Profit: More on the NEW Business of Self Publishing, or How to Publish Your Books With Print on Demand by Lightning Source. Lightning Source is the printer/distributor that many boutique and indie presses use (even Lulu and CreateSpace use them, at least sometimes). Lightning Source is not “self-publishing company,” like Lulu. Rather, they offer book printing services (both POD and offset) and distribution services (through Ingram), and they work with publishers, not authors. In fact, when I filled out their client application form, it seemed to me more to assure them that I was a publishing company, and not just an author.

Aaron Shepard in POD for Profit also goes into some of the business aspects of running a small publishing company. You might be interesting in the first book in that series, Aiming at Amazon, too. (I personally think those two books are out of order. Lightning Source first, because that gives you something to sell to all your readers who have been interacting with you via your blog and email and Twitter and Facebook. Then Amazon, because you want your book to look as good as possible on their site. But most people seem to think in the opposite direction: Amazon first.) In any case, you should check out Aaron’s self-publishing site.

(I should also add that I have not myself read POD for Profit, but it clearly has some of the information he was originally planning to put into the second edition of Aiming for Amazon, which I did review. In any case, I can personally vouch for Aaron’s status as a bona-fide self-publishing expert, because I’ve been following his work for some time. And so I trust that he knows what he’s talking about, even if I haven’t personally read the book.)

Hope this helps. Best of luck in whatever you endeavor.

Keep writing!
-TimK

Photo © 2009 The Ewan CC BY 2.0

First of all, a clarification: when right-wingers talk about “closing the borders,” this isn’t what they mean.

The big news over the past week is that Borders Books is officially going out of business.

Book lovers have expressed grief and dismay. One Borders fan called it “a case of internet outsourcing.” He’s not too far off the mark. And this has been coming for a long time. (The photo above was taken a year and a half ago in Oxford.)

But Barnes & Noble continues to succeed, because there’s a difference between Borders and Barnes & Noble, a difference in how the two companies approached the book industry. Barnes & Noble has embraced the ebook—a little later than Amazon, but at least they did. Barnes & Noble has embraced online ordering. You can even special-order copies of my books at Barnes & Noble stores. And Barnes & Noble got the Starbucks deal, too. Barnes & Noble probably sells more coffee than books.

A friend recently asked me whether books would completely disappear. I had to correct her: ebooks are books, too. Now, I don’t think paper books will ever completely disappear. (That’s a different post.) However, ebooks present a number of advantages to authors, not only in what ebooks do for authors, but also in the market changes they portend.

Everyone keeps talking about the demise of the book industry, because people no longer buy books at bookstores. But if you include ebooks and online sales, the book industry is most certainly not dying. And if you include all reading of all online content, the writing industry is more active than ever. And the book industry is changing in ways that portend more and more good things for authors.

The Transformation Has Completed

It used to be that if you wanted to build a fan-base and share what you’ve written with the world, you would find a publisher. If your writing showed promise, the publisher would help you whip it into shape. And as you wrote more books, your new fans would go back and buy books from your growing backlist. Your publisher would make money by helping you further your writing career.

Then there was the Thor Power Tool court case against the IRS. And it was no longer cost-effective to keep inventories of non-selling items (such as an author’s backlist), against the hope that some of them would indeed sell. And so publishers stopped stocking mid-list authors’ backlists. Only backlists of famous authors continue to remain available for purchase.

And then big-box book stores, like Borders and Barnes & Noble, started ordering to the net. And that gave you exactly one chance to become a best-seller, because only best-sellers got reordered. And that killed the career of the mid-list writer… at least of the traditional mid-list writer.

And then print-on-demand made it possible to “stock” titles without actually keeping a physical inventory. Indie publishers and indie authors flocked to this technology, and even some larger publishers started making some authors’ backlists available via print-on-demand. But not enough to save the career of the mid-list writer. Most publishers resisted change, because they were wed to the big-box mass-market model. They couldn’t see any value in the long tail, in serving the mid-list author with a large backlist.

And now with the rise of ebooks, the transformation has completed. Big publishers still resist it, because they resist change, and so they’re terrified of ebooks. But they do so to their own demise. In this new market, ebooks represent cheap, low-risk, impulse purchases. And they sell. Now, any author can publish her growing backlist on the Kindle and on Smashwords, with almost no publishing investment. And she can build her fan-base, risk-free. And she can make a larger royalty doing that than she ever had before with a traditional publisher. And the career of the mid-list author has begun to rise from the ashes.

The Only Reason to Get Published

An extended family member asked me a year or two ago about getting published. I explained that I ran my own publishing company, but that wasn’t for everybody. And I really didn’t have any good advice for her, any strategy that I felt I could recommend without possibly leading her astray. I couldn’t in good conscience tell her to publish her manuscript on the Internet, because if it didn’t work out, I couldn’t tell her it would still have been the right thing to have done. But should she try to get a publisher? Getting published is still a dream, alive and well, with many aspiring authors. But the traditionally published route is hard and painful and isn’t really a good way for most people to build a writing career. Getting published is more like being the rube of honor in a reality TV show. (But that’s a different post.) I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, most of all a family member.

So I had nothing to tell her. But since then, epiphany struck. I learned that some mid-list authors make less money off their books than even I do, because they sold their souls to their publishers, who are keeping their backlists off the market (out of print and unavailable as ebooks). And now I do have something to tell my family member.

There’s only one real reason to “get published.” — Correction: there are several emotional reasons why someone might want to get published, such as a desire for status, the feeling of being an insider, social recognition. But there’s only one business reason to get published—and if you’re talking about building a writing career, this is all that counts. The only business reason why you’d want to get published is if you’re going after the mass market.

And by “mass market,” forget Barnes & Noble. I’m talking Walmart. If you have a plan to see your book on grocery store shelves, and you honestly feel you can pull it off, then pursue traditional publishing, because that’s the only chance you have to realize that dream. You want to sell a gazillion copies. You want everyone to read your book, and you’re willing to write down to the lowest common denominator in order to see that happen. If true, as science-fiction author Theodore Sturgeon wrote, that 90% of everything is crap, then you dream to be counted amongst that 90%.

For most of us, that’s not what we want. As for myself, I’d be embarrassed to see one of my books ranked among the tripe I see stocked at the local drugstore. Because I have so little respect for that market.

Most of us, we have a passion for what we write, and this passion sustains us in our writing. We don’t just write to the lowest common denominator. We write to specific readers. We write for those who will share our passions with us. We write to make a difference. We are mid-list authors, but only if we keep writing and keep sharing what we write. It used to be that the only way to share was to find a publisher who would support your career. But that’s no longer true.

The End of Borders

Borders tried to hold on to a bygone era, and that’s why they failed. They didn’t embrace ebooks, and they didn’t even embrace print-on-demand. (You couldn’t even special-order a copy of one of my books through Borders; call me vindictive, but I’m not all that unhappy to see them go.) I don’t think they were trying to snub ebooks, but they overlooked the future in the changing book market.

Most aspiring authors will do just as Borders has done. They’ll continue to seek publication through a “respectable” publishing house, not realizing that this route—if they’re lucky—will mean the rapid demise of their writing careers. Because whether you get published or self-publish, you—and you alone—are responsible for your own success. No “respectable” publisher will look out for your writing career, not anymore.

There are indie publishers who may help you with your career. Niche publishers. Boutique publishers. They don’t get into Barnes & Noble, either. (Nor into Walmart.) You might find one who has developed a business model and market that works well with what you want to write and who you want to write it to. In terms of “getting published,” they are part of the future.

The other part is the indie author. Not the self-published author, who’s only publishing her own stuff so that she can see it in print, or so that she can give copies to friends and family, or as an experiment or stop-gap measure until she can find a “real” publisher. But the indie author, who pursues self-publishing as part of her business model, who runs her own publishing company, and who thereby manages her career for her own ultimate success.

The end of Borders doesn’t portend the end of the book industry. It announces the arrival of the new book industry. Be proud to be part of it!

Keep writing!
-TimK

Photo © 2005 Jenn Calder CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Click here for the original image.

Related to last week’s extensive post on book-cover design for indie authors and publishers, Roger C. Parker posted over the weekend a few more tips for better book covers.

He also linked to a page of interactive book-cover makeovers at Dunn+Associates Design’s web site. For a kick, check out a few, and think about how the “before” and “after” designs use the 10 elements of book-cover design that I talked about last week. Pay particular attention to the title and front-cover graphics. How do the new designs use these more effectively than the “before” covers. Especially if you’re wrestling with a book cover right now, this little experiment should inspire you, if not give you a spark of enlightenment.

-TimK

P.S. With at least one of the book covers in Dunn Design’s exhibit (Mark A. Williams’s Your Identity Zones), the author rejected the book cover that his publisher preferred. Traditionally published authors should understand book-cover design, too, in order to use whatever influence you have with your publisher to ensure your book gets an effective design. (Although, as far as I can tell, both the “before” and “after” covers of that book were good covers. The “after” version was marginally better, because it had more focus—less clutter—and highlighted the title more. So it might split-test significantly better than the “before” version. Yeah, at some point, I’ll have to write an article on how to split-test a book cover.)

P.P.S. [update] Kristen Lamb posted over on her blog an interesting guest post by Maria Zannini, a list of Down & Dirty Tips for Creating Cover Art. I’m not sure I agree with all of her advice, e.g., to necessarily put something visually stimulating on the left side to guide the viewer’s gaze toward the right—I would usually start in the middle and work toward the edges, keeping in mind the rule of thirds… but that’s a whole other blog post. Her tips will certainly get you thinking.

-TimK

Cover for "From the Ashes of Courage," so that you can see how I made use of cover elements, and how I could have made better use of them. (Click for a larger view.)

As an indie author, you probably need to understand book-cover design. Traditionally published authors have their publishers’ experts to design their covers (whether or not those experts are worthy of the designation). Self-published authors, just printing up a few copies for family and friends, will probably be satisfied with the très kewl cover design tools at Lulu. But us indie authors need something more than a bare-bones, stock cover. And we don’t have the budget for a professional designer. And even if we do, we don’t have a publishing company helping us choose the designer. So we need to understand book-cover design, if not to design a decent cover ourselves, at least to know what to work on with our designer.

So what makes a good cover?

The cover is the first thing a prospective reader will see of your book. This is true whether she’s looking online or whether someone hands her a copy, or even if she happens to see a copy in a bookstore.

When someone picks up a new book for the first time, watch them. Here’s what they do:

1. The examine the front cover.
2. If they like what they see, they turn the book over and read the back-cover copy.
3. If they still like what they see, they flip the book open to the first page.

This is the order in which you should design your book cover. The front cover must pique her interest and make her want to find out more about the book. And that’s all it should do. The only function of the front cover is to make the prospective reader want to read the back cover. The only function of the back cover is to make her want to crack open the book. And the function of the first page inside the front cover is to set her on a “slippery slide” (to use Joe Sugarman’s terminology) that will end with her buying and reading your book.

The front cover should contain prominent elements—like the title and cover image—that catch the eye and pique the interest. The back cover leverages those elements with descriptive text, to excite and hook the potential reader. The inside-front cover and first page contain additional sales elements, such as bulleted features or testimonials, to close the sale if the cover failed to do so.

Book-cover elements

To make this sequence work, you have a number of elements you can use:

1. Title – This is probably the most important element of your book (unless you’re Nora Roberts or Stephen King—more on that later), especially if it’s a non-fiction book. The purpose of the title is to make your reader look at the subtitle, and the purpose of the subtitle is to make her turn the book over and read the back cover.

   For From the Ashes of Courage, I began with a list of words that related to the theme of the story. Then I combined them in various ways: adjective + noun, noun + preposition + noun, and so forth. I chose my three favorites. Then I actually tested the prospective titles and subtitles in Internet ads, to see which one provoked the most interest.

2. Subtitle – All non-fiction books should have a subtitle, and most fiction books as well. The subtitle expands on the title and helps incite your reader to turn the book over and read the back cover. Your book’s title and subtitle must make the right prospective reader want to know more, and you should probably ad-test them to verify that they accomplish that purpose.

   The subtitle of the Ashes of Courage book is “An Ardor Point Novel.” I actually ad-tested this with the title, knowing that I hoped to reuse it over a series of books.

3. Photos or drawings – A photo adds visual richness and an emotional dimension to a cover. This is especially true for novels, but no less so for non-fiction books. The purpose of the photo is to get your reader’s attention, hook her with an emotional subtext, and lead her to the title and subtitle. Glancing at the cover photo, you should be able to tell whether the novel is a romance, a thriller, a fantasy, a murder mystery, a space opera, or whatever. For a non-fiction book, a well-chosen front-cover graphic should support the main theme of the book and serve as an icon for its content.

   In the Ashes of Courage book cover, I used a stock photo for the front cover. You can license high-quality, royalty-free, stock photos from several sites, for less money than you’ll spend on your first box of books, and such a photo adds a pro flair to your cover design. For the back cover, I found a shot that a photography enthusiast had taken of Merepoint, Maine (the real-life location that inspired Ardor Point). I licensed this photo from her, manipulating it slightly to fit in with the rest of the cover design.

4. Color scheme and fonts – Some graphic designers swear by their favorite colors and fonts, and swear against other colors and fonts. I don’t know that it’s quite that big of a deal, but you should definitely be aware of your color and font choices. The color scheme and fonts on your cover should first of all be legible, and second of all, they should support the feeling you want to evoke. A fantasy-romance, for example, would probably use a different font than a business textbook, but there are any number of fonts that each of these might use.

   The font and colors of From the Ashes of Courage, I chose them thinking “a romantic sunset on the beach,” which is also the theme of photo, coincidentally (or maybe not so coincidentally).

5. Author – If you’re Stephen King or Nora Roberts (or Kathy Reichs—as in the book cover example below), your publisher will put your name top and center on your front cover, in huge letters. That’s because your name is what’s selling the book. On popular novels, the author’s name is usually more important even than the title of the book. Maybe everyone knows that Stephen King has a new book out, but maybe they don’t all remember what it’s called. I’m not convinced that this rule holds for indie authors (or even for mid-list authors). And I’m certain it doesn’t hold for non-fiction books. While you might still want to put your name on the front cover, you probably want to keep it subservient to the title and subtitle.

   As you can see, I kept my name at the top of the cover, but off to the edge and in a smaller font than the title. I reasoned that it would probably be important someday to my die-hard fans, but that the title and photo were the central elements that should dominate the cover.

6. Front-cover text – You may have opportunity to include snippets of text on the front cover, to reinforce the front cover’s mission. If you do have such an opportunity, take it. This is why books often have words like “New York Times best-selling author!” in a smaller font on the front cover, because the author’s name is selling the book, and any little bit of “Ooh! Aah!” you can add to reinforce that strategy, you Ooh! it and you Aah! it.

   You can see that I put no supplemental text on the front cover above, not even a glowing quote from an unknown nobody. Change of strategy: publicize the next book at least to fellow indie authors, and ask for a marketing one-liner.

7. Back-cover heading and text – The back cover should tell the reader something about what’s in the book— unless you’re selling the book solely on popularity, in which case you should fill the back cover with testimonials. For most of us, the back cover should begin with a heading that leads into a block of text. This text is an advertisement for your book. I don’t have the space in this short (and quickly growing longer) blog post to talk about what makes a good ad. However, I can say this: the back cover is not a description of the book; it’s not a book report for your fifth-grade school teacher; rather, it’s a teaser, something that must make a prospective reader want to read the book.

   I started with my single-sentence description of the novel, which was designed to highlight the “I gotta read this!” points of the story, and I expanded on it. Since the book is a romance, I said something about the characters, and their problems, and the hook, and a hint that there might be an unexpected twist in their story.

8. ISBN – In your cover design, remember to leave room for the ISBN bar code, at the bottom edge of the back cover. Most books put it in the middle, but it is acceptable to put the bar code off to one side or the other. And while the bar code can be on a field of any light color, the more contrast (white and black), the better.

   In my process, this bar code is added later, after the cover is designed. But I still had to allocate a 1.75″ x 1″ space for it, which I marked with a white-filled rectangular.

9. Spine – The spine is what a prospective reader will see first if he doesn’t see your front cover first. So the spine has the most important elements from the front cover, usually the title and author name. Sometimes, publishers will also include a selling point, like “#1 Best-selling Author!” on the spine, because in a bookstore, most books are spine-out. A prospective reader will browse book spines on the shelves, looking for one to pull out and look at more closely. So in that context, the purpose of the spine is to make the reader want to look at the front cover.

10. First-page text – The first page, just inside the front cover, even before the title page: oft-overlooked prime real-estate. Here you can include bullet points describing features the reader will find in the book, or reviewer testimonials, or even an author bio (if you think it’ll help sell the book). You can even include reviewer comments regarding an earlier book in the series, or another book written by the same author. Anything that didn’t fit on the back cover can go here.

    For Ashes of Courage, I didn’t forget about the first page. Rather, I ran out of material, a definite lack of marketing foresight. (For my previous book, I filled this space with bullet points and reader testimonials.) As I said, for the next Ardor Point book, I’ll have to get more feedback from fellow authors and ask for testimonials.

Death du Jour, by Kathy Reichs

Another example, this time by a pop author, that demonstrates the principles above.

• The two most important elements are the author’s name and the title, in that order. These two elements dominate both the front cover and the spine.

• There’s no front-cover image to speak of—there’s no room after the author’s name and the title. But in the background is a map of Montreal and the surrounding area, where the story takes place.

• The large, capitalized, serif font and the black-and-red-and-white color scheme enhance the feel of a mystery thriller (which this novel is).

• Front-cover and spine text: “New York Times Bestselling Author…” and “#1 International Bestselling Author,” as well as a quote from People magazine and an announcement of an upcoming TV series based on the novels. Even the publisher’s logo on the spine. All these help reinforce the impression that this is a well-read and well-liked popular book. And if everyone else is reading it… Well, my personal gut reaction is that if everyone else is reading it, that probably means it falls into Sturgeon’s 90% that constitutes “crud.” And my momma always told me, if everyone else jumped off a cliff, does that mean I should, too? But that’s one of my unusual quirks. Most people go with the more instinctive reaction: if everybody’s reading it, then I have to, too.

• Similarly, on the back cover, more praise for Kathy Reichs, along with a one-sentence hook about the novel’s story, followed by the title. That kicks off a more elaborate teaser. I myself would have omitted the title from the back cover, and put the sentence at the top in boldface… or at least I would insist on split-tests that proved that the way they did it was better.

• The back cover also has a quote from USA Today. And the raves continue inside the front cover, with more quotes about Death du Jour, some reviewer raves for another of Kathy Reichs’s novels, and a smattering of cover images for other books, along with short quotes about those books. All of this supports the impression that Kathy Reichs is a prolific, well-published, and popular author. Everyone is reading her books, and her books keep getting published and keep selling. Therefore, if everyone is reading her books, I gotta read them, too!

• One side note: On the back cover, just above the ISBN barcode, the publisher has included a note: “Register online at www.simonsays.com for more information on this and other great books.” I would be interested to know how many people actually see this note and respond to it. It’s in completely the wrong place, and it’s not specific enough. The note should be on the book’s title page or on the last page, after the story, in a location a satisfied reader is more likely to see it. And if you pull up that URL in your web browser, you simply see the publisher’s web site. Nothing about “registering,” at least not prominently displayed there. It’s a good idea to use your physical book as a calling card to connect with readers online, and a strategy I include in every one of my books. But I’m not convinced that cover real-estate is best used for that function.

Talyn, by Holly Lisle

And one more example, one of my favorite novels of all time (which is why it’s so well-worn), by mid-list author Holly Lisle.

• Title: “Talyn.” Author: “Holly Lisle.” Subtitle: “A Novel of the [sic] Korre.” (Oy vey. Korre is a place, not a thing.) Holly is a mid-list author, so her (rabid) fans (among which I proudly count myself) will notice her name. But most new readers will be swayed by the graphics, title, teaser, and testimonials.

• Graphic elements: A semi-nude Talyn, with her warrior’s braids and tattoos, standing before an altar of candles; the wall of a primitive structure in the background; a sword; red and brown and yellow colors; a sword-like stylized font. Could it be a fantasy about a beautiful female warrior from an exotic culture? Yeah, it just might. All of these front-cover images have special meaning to fans of the book, as well, since they’re prominent elements in the story universe.

• Front-cover text: a testimonial by a “New York Times bestselling author.” Because we all know that New York Times bestselling authors have more valuable opinions on books than, say, you or I. But again, it triggers a human instinct, that if a well-liked celebrity author loves this book, even if I’ve never heard of her or her work, then it’s gotta be worth reading. Note also that including the name “Jacqueline Carey” and the title of her bestselling novel “Kushiel’s Dart,” these pieces of information add credibility to the testimonial, even if you’ve never heard of Jacqueline before or her novel.

• Back cover: Highlighted header leading into a teaser. And another testimonial. (All this should be old hat to you by now.) Leading into the first page inside the front cover, which displays more testimonials, including— Hold on! Haven’t I seen that quote from Robin Hobb somewhere before?

• The only thing they could have done better, perhaps, is to include a brief author bio in the empty space on the first page: “author of over 30 novels, two-time Campbell Award finalist,” and so forth.

I haven’t gone into any of the nuts and bolts, what software to use and how to create any of the effects you see here. That is so another post (or two or three or ten). But hopefully, if you’re serious about indie-publishing your books, this will give you an idea of how to approach the design of the cover.

Keep writing!
-TimK

Photo © 2008 demented pixie CC BY 2.0

Agent Kristin of the Pub Rants blog posted some of her comments on how hard it is to be self-published. Those are my words. She put it differently:

Regardless of whether an author self-publishes or pursues traditional publishing, some writers just win the publishing lottery and their books become major successes.

Kristin points out how hard successful indie authors have worked, and laments the common misconception, that somehow indie authors have stuck it to the man, given the finger to the industry gatekeepers. Well, maybe they have done the latter, but only because the industry gatekeepers have different priorities than indie authors, and different visions.

Contrary to what many traditional and indie advocates will tell you, going indie is neither better nor worse than going traditional; it’s just different. If your vision as a writer melds well with the traditional publishing industry, you may be well be better off going that route, because the one thing that traditional publishers still bring to the table is their business model. Indie publishing is all about alternative business models, alternative markets, alternative strategies, and sometimes even alternative alternatives. That means you need to understand the insides of the publishing business, and that requires a lot of skill, a lot of knowledge, a lot of learning, and a whole hell of a lot of stuff that is the opposite of writing. If you’re not ready to take that on, you’re not ready to be an indie author.

(Note that I’m distinguishing “indie” authors, who pursue their craft in an alternative business model, from “self-published” authors, who are just publishing for fun or who self-publish as a stepping stone to a traditional publishing contract.)

Amanda Hocking’s post encouraged me in the publishing work that distracts me from writing.

This is literally years of work you’re seeing. And hours and hours of work each day. The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn’t writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me.

Yeah, I’ve been feeling the same way. I’ve been trying to get Love through the Eyes of an Idiot up on Smashwords, which has only served to remind me why Smashwords is not my primary (or favorite) distribution platform. (Their submission queue is backed up to a 20-ish-hour wait, and I stammer at how much time we could save if they were to provide a downloadable version of the Smashwords Meatgrinder, to run on my computer for testing purposes, so that when I finally do submit a document to their website, it would be the final version that actually works and that successfully accounts for all the Meatgrinder’s quirks and that comes out looking the way I want it to.)

Meanwhile, I’m quickly finishing up two new free ebooks, “Pine” and 7 Other Short Romances and “Disorder” and 7 Other Flashes of Character. If you follow my story blog, you’ll have read most of these stories before. But preparing these short ebooks for publishing is all about editing and formatting and cover art. And in the meantime, I’m making zero progress on the second Ardor Point novel, on the Second Edition of 1001 Character Quirks for Writing Fiction (which includes a couple hundred pages of new content), or on Catnapping for a Living (a book of humorous sketches about the life of an indie author, compared to what non-writers think it’s like).

So, yeah, crazy stressful sometimes. But you know, this is still a hell of a lot better than sinking into depression.

Keep writing!
-TimK

Photo © 2008 Bill Roehl CC 2.0 BY NC ND

Craft Beer

I’m not a beer drinker. But when I watched a recent Reason.TV video about craft beer, I wanted to become one. I’m not interested in YellowWater Light beer. I’m interested in the niche, microbrew beers, dark, stimulating, challenging, insightful. Craft beer, say the experts in the video, has “taken traditional styles and [run] with them… providing choices for people.” They go on to point out that the big 4 breweries “make the lightest beer imaginable in order to create the lowest common denominator of flavors, so that their marketing and their image is what people buy into, and there’s nothing about the flavor that challenges that decision for them.”

In fact, my only real exposure to beer was at a microbrewery, the Watch City Brewing Company, in Waltham, MA. We all went out for a farewell lunch there, one of the few rituals I miss about office life. We enjoyed burgers and fries, and a couple pitchers of brew, which I sampled. Interesting flavors, reminded me vaguely of herbal tea. And I still remember the experience fondly.

I myself enjoy wine. But I generally stay away from whatever pop wines are discounted at the front of my favorite wine store, because they usually cater to the lowest common denominator. Rather, I prefer the aisles nearer the back. I’m not a wine snob, but you can call me a “wine snob wannabe.”

Microbrewing, like winemaking, is about manipulating the flavor of the beverage via the brewing process, achieving a variety of taste sensations. That’s what excites me about the prospect of exploring craft beers. There’s very little right or wrong, or good or bad. There’s only what you like, what you don’t, and the pleasant surprises you didn’t expect to come out of that particular bottle. And apparently a growing crowd of beer lovers agree, as the craft beer industry continues to swell.

Garage Bands

Compare this to the indie-music scene of garage band musicians, who write and perform music that they enjoy, not to cater to the masses, but with the hope that they will find just a few others who also enjoy the same music experience.

Back when I was in an indie band, if we had hopes of a money-making future, it was only by getting signed with a label. That was the dream, to get signed. Not all garage bands held that dream, because they didn’t want to compromise their music and they knew that getting signed might mean artistic compromise. Others realized that getting signed was a long-shot, that it very likely would never happen, and they, too, performed their music for the music’s sake, as a form of self-expression.

I don’t ever remember being made to feel inferior simply because of the music that we played, an eclectic flavor of Christian hard-rock that even today would be considered alternative. Yes, we did some more mainstream-sounding tunes, like a keyboard ballad that I wrote, or a fun, bluesy number by another band member. These we did next to some crazy guitar pieces, wild melodies that our vocalist loved to run with, and even a song I wrote in 7/8 time, which borrowed from jazz, rock, and celtic music styles. (We practiced that song for weeks, section by section, until we got it right.) No matter what we played, listeners and fellow musicians alike respected and even sometimes enjoyed our twisted do-re-mi’s.

It’s interesting, if not surprising, that today’s technology, which makes it easier than ever for indie bands to record and distribute their music, has done little to change the basic motivations that musicians have for playing or that fans have for listening.

Self-Published Authors

Compare this to the life of the self-published author. I can tell you a song has an “indie feel,” or that it sounds like a “garage band,” and you know what I mean without necessarily thinking badly of the song. In fact, an indie feel can be a big plus, especially if you—like me—get easily bored with the screed that fills top-40 radio. But say the same thing about a novel, that it feels “self-published,” and everyone recognizes the statement as an insult, because apparently “self-published” means “reads like shit.” Except that it doesn’t, not any more than “garage band” means “sounds like shit.”

(By the way, feel free to point out that I misused the word screed in the above paragraph. I’m keeping it in!)

No one expects a garage band to limit themselves to a music genre. “So are you metal? Are you jazz? Or are you celtic or middle-eastern or latin or what?” Musicians get excited about songs that combine disparate musical styles into a brand new unified whole, not quite like anything played before. And so do their listeners. But writers—those who “are published” and those hoping to be someday (which just about covers all of them)—they go through great lengths to “understand their genre,” by which they mean that they want to know what the genre’s readers expect so that they won’t shock them too much. Sometimes I get the impression—listening to industry insiders—that the only thing romance readers want is “Boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy gets girl.” And as a writer it’s hard to get excited over that. (Good thing I don’t buy it.)

We don’t tell the indie musician, “No one will take you seriously unless you have a four-chord song.” (In fact, I struggle to take seriously any band who does have a four-chord song.) But everyone tells the self-published author that no one will take her seriously unless, for example, her character has “a problem,” which is revealed early in the story and only gets worse as she gets closer to solving it.

For example, Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman give the following advice in the first chapter of How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them:

Typically, the plot of a good novel begins by introducing a sympathetic character who wrestles with a thorny problem. As the plot thickens, the character strains every resource to solve the problem…

The plot of a typical unpublished novel introduces a protagonist, then introduces her mother, father, three brothers, and her cat, giving each a long scene in which they exhibit their typical behaviors…

A typical plot event in an unpublished novel is when the protagonist gets a disastrous haircut, at a moment when her self-esteem is hanging by threads. This sets the character up for the ensuing “Mother thinks protagonist spends too much on haircuts, but is made to see that self-esteem is crucial to mental health” scene… Cue waking up the next morning on page 120, with anything resembling a story yet to appear on the horizon.

Note the contrast between “good” and “unpublished,” as though they were opposites. (They’re not, by the way.) And feel free to substitute “self-published” for “unpublished,” because to industry insiders, they’re one in the same. Of course, I’ve never read a self-published novel that starts by introducing the protagonist and her family in a rambling fashion. More significantly, there is nothing in the “self-esteem” plot described above that would turn me off; what they describe there actually sounds like a potentially interesting story.

But cue the most telling of all, their final snub, the lack of “anything resembling a story.” What they actually mean is, the lack of any story they are used to. It’s the four-chord song again, the light beer, the pop-fruity wine, the lowest common denominator, the three-act structure and its variants.

First of all, stories need conflict to push them along and keep them interesting, not “problems.” Conflict is a perception by the reader, which the author can easily invoke by giving problems to a sympathetic character. Industry insiders tend to conflate problem and conflict, because it simplifies their life. But if you as an indie author want to play with different kinds of conflict, don’t let industry insiders tell you you’re wrong, because you’re not.

Secondly, characters have needs, which do cause problems when they go unmet… and self-esteem is indeed a fundamental human need. That bad haircut may be just the thing to push our character over the edge. Maybe it would make some readers roll their eyes, but those readers can always find refuge listening to four-chord songs and drinking light beer.

Thirdly, the main conflict of the story—much less the character’s main problem—doesn’t need to be revealed early in the story. Some wonderful stories reveal the main conflict slowly, pushing the story along with lesser conflicts, sometimes insignificant ones, until the main conflict builds momentum. I love to talk about the pilot episode of my all-time favorite TV show Gilmore Girls, which begins with a scene in which Lorelai (the main character) needs coffee, and Luke (the diner owner) won’t give her any. Yes, that’s her “problem.” She needs coffee. Not a huge problem. Hardly even worth mentioning. But it takes us through a half a scene, introduces us to the characters, and gets the story rolling.

Most astonishingly, I’ve seen readers rave over short stories that bore me to tears, because—hello!—no conflict at all. Now, either those readers are lying, or they’re stupid, or maybe they’re just expressing their opinion about a story they enjoyed reading.

Brew what you love; play what you love; write what you love

In the craft-beer video, Ron Lindenbusch talks about brewing a distinctive beer: “We started making our IPA in 1995, and it immediately became our flagship, because the first people that drank it said, ‘My God! Nobody’s gonna drink this!’” But of course, they did drink it, and lots of it.

That doesn’t surprise me in the least. Microbreweries grew out of home brewing, people experimenting and making beer that they enjoyed drinking, and sharing it with others. Craft beer is now the fastest growing segment of the beer industry. They brewed what they loved, and the fans followed.

In music as well, if you play what you love, the fans will follow.

In writing, if I write what I love, won’t I find anyone who also loves the same thing?

As craft brewers brew and indie musicians play, writers write primarily to express themselves. And I think that’s okay.

It’s okay to experiment, combining elements of disparate styles, in order to seek a unique reading experience.

We should stop pretending that all writers are only trying to “get published,” to go mainstream and hit the mass market.

We should acknowledge that there is a place in the world for literature that breaks the rules, maybe even that reads a little rough around the edges. That’s not a quality to be afraid of. It’s something to play with, to experiment with, to have fun with. Something to experience!

We should definitely acknowledge that there’s a place in the world for literature that we may not understand. Just because it challenges our minds, just because we don’t know how to analyze it, that doesn’t mean it’s no good.

We should stop encouraging unpublished writers to lock up their manuscripts where the world will never see them.

And we should never again look down on the self-published author for accomplishing her passion.

Keep writing!
-TimK

A friend of a friend asked me the following questions:

I am writing a book. I have finished the first half and just need some editing and advice as to how to orient the story so I can complete the second part.

I would say, whatever else you do, finish writing the story. You can always go back and edit afterward. Don’t let editing hold you up.

If you want specific advice on how to clean up your manuscript, you can pay a freelance story editor. (You’re looking for someone to do story editing, not line editing.) You want to find someone who works on the kind of story that you’re telling. You also want to start small, because you want to be able to get a feel as to whether you can work together, without risking a big chunk of money. And you want to work with someone who is sympathetic to how you want to publish your book and can give you advice in that context. (See below.)

Alternatively, you can get free advice from online and offline writers’ groups. Online, there’s WritingForums.com and Forward Motion for Writers. There are also local, offline writers’ critique groups. Some of these you can find on meetup.com, on online writing forums, or by networking with other writers in your area. But remember that you get what you pay for. No one on a writers’ forum or in a writers’ critique group is going to read through your manuscript and critique it. They might be willing to critique a part of a chapter once in a while. And the quality of the critiques you get will vary; you’ll need to use your own judgment above all else.

Of course, you should use your own judgment anyhow, because this is your book, and you need to be comfortable with how its written. (Once you find a publisher, there are lots of war stories told about “negotiating” with the editor over the manuscript. But that’s a different topic.) The whole purpose of bringing someone else into the picture this early is to get experienced advice and ideas that you would not have thought of yourself. This helps you grow as a writer, but you still need to decide yourself whether to accept that advice. This becomes painfully obvious on online writing boards, where you may get three different critiques from three different people, each saying something completely at odds with the other two. You are the author. You need to choose. Because it’s your book, not theirs.

I should also add here that a mentor can be invaluable. Mentoring is a topic all its own. But one of the keys to maintaining a relationship with a mentor is not to overload her with questions. Your mentor is not your assistant. She is just there to help you understand conceptually where you might go. You need to do all the actual work, including finding and paying for a freelance editor, if that’s the path you want to take.

Publishing the book…

I would appreciate any help or information you could give me along the way as to how to get this book published.

There are basically 4 ways of publishing a book:

1. Sell your manuscript to a traditional, third-party publisher.

   This doesn’t necessarily mean a big publisher. There are lots of boutique publishers that sell niche titles. The publisher will help you edit your manuscript, bring it to market, and work out a marketing plan. You yourself will still have to do most or all of the actual marketing–it’s not like they show it on TV.

   In order to convince a publisher to buy your manuscript, you need to develop contacts inside the book-publishing industry. You may need to find an agent. And you may need to keep trying for many years before you can convince a publisher to bite. At that time, the publisher will also want to feel that you can turn out a second and third book, and more, if your first book succeeds.

   Holly Lisle has some excellent advice on getting published in the “writers” area of her site: www.HollyLisle.com/fm/.

   A third-party publisher is good if you can get one and don’t want to set up your own indie press (see #2 below). Sometimes, an author will use a subsidy press (#3) or value-added printing service (see #4) as a stepping stone to catching the attention of a third-party publisher. (Note that in these cases, it’s the marketing and persistence of the author that gives him some level of success after self-publishing with a subsidy press, and that success is what catches the eye of the traditional publisher.)

2. Start your own, independent publishing company.

   This is what I did. This strategy is sometimes called “self-publishing,” but I don’t like to use that term anymore, because “self-publishing” can also refer to strategy 3 below. Also, the term “self-publishing” has taken on a negative connotation in some circles, even though there are numerous famous (and successful) books that were self-published. So on Bob Baker’s advice, I call it “independent publishing” (similar to “indie” music labels).

   Starting your own publishing company can get your book to market faster than going with a third-party publisher, because you don’t have to sell it to the publisher first. But this option also means you and you alone are responsible for making sure it’s salable, for learning all about what it takes to bring it to market, and for making it succeed. You need to be a writer, a business wizard, and a marketing expert, all rolled into one. There will also be people and companies in the book industry who will look down on you for “self-publishing,” and they may refuse to do business with you. So you have to factor that into your marketing plans.

   If you want to start your own company, I highly recommend the book Aiming at Amazon by Aaron Shepard, for the business and publishing end of things. (See Aaron Shepard’s publishing blog for information on the upcoming new edition.) His marketing approach, however, is incomplete, because “sell my book on Amazon” is not a marketing strategy. Even if Amazon is the biggest single book store in the world, Amazon should still be the smallest piece of your marketing effort, because Amazon’s philosophy (as far as I can tell) goes something like: “Please send us all your products and your web visitors, so we can make lots of money.” And that’s not going to do you much good.

   I recently discovered Bob Baker, and I’m turning into a huge fan of his indie-book marketing materials, because his mindset is almost identical to my own (which was honed on the teachings of Perry Marshall, Dan Kennedy, Ted Nicholas, and other direct-marketing gurus). Bob Baker’s “Full Time Author” site is an excellent place to start: FullTimeAuthor.com.

   If you plan on publishing more than one book, and you plan on doing it yourself, then go this route. Take the time to learn the ropes and start your own company. If you only plan on publishing one book, such as if you’re publishing a memoir primarily for friends and family, consider using a subsidy press (#3) or value-added printing service (#4).

3. Hire a subsidy press to publish your book.

   This is a compromise between options 1 and 2 above. It’s also a form of “self-publishing,” but not indie publishing, as I’ve used the term.

   Subsidy presses used to be called “vanity presses,” and going with a vanity press used to immediately brand your book as worthless in the industry. That attitude has softened a bit. Still, as it is when you start an indie press, many people in the industry will look down on you and may refuse to do business with you if you hire a subsidy press.

   Here’s how it works: You plop down a couple thousand dollars, and they provide a bundle of services. They might help you design a cover, for example, and go through the mechanics of manufacturing the book and getting it on Amazon and BN.com. They’ll also charge you a higher per-unit cost for copies your book than you could get using option 2, because the subsidy press is actually the publisher of record, and they’re the middle-man between the printing company and you.

   A subsidy press will probably NOT be able to help you with marketing. Don’t do business with any company that makes wild marketing claims, such as saying your book will be in every bookstore in the country, in return for a few thousand bucks. In fact, be very careful with subsidy presses in general, because there are still a number of unscrupulous ones out there, who promise desperate writers the world and then can’t deliver, leaving the writers despondent and broke. Realize that hiring a subsidy press is not “getting your book published” in the traditional sense. With a traditional publisher, the publisher pays you to publish your book. (That’s what advances and royalties are.) With a subsidy press, you pay them (and then the two of you split the profits). Hiring a subsidy press is just that: you’re outsourcing part of the self-publishing process to a company who can do it cheaper and easier than you can. But you and you alone are the one responsible for the success or failure of your book.

   Some people advise that you avoid subsidy presses completely, because (they say) the subsidy press is going to take your money and not provide you with anything you couldn’t do yourself. But that’s not necessarily true, because not all of us are business whizzes who have time to learn the ins and outs of the book industry. The subsidy press can handle the mechanics of many of these issues for you, which can be extremely valuable to someone who can’t do it himself but still wants to go the self-publishing route.

   For a comparison between setting up an indie press and hiring a subsidy press, see the post “How Much Does It Cost to Publish a Book?”

   A subsidy press is best if you plan on publishing a limited number of titles. For example, if you’re publishing your memoirs for friends and family or for vanity’s sake. Or if you want to publish a book to give out as a freebie at seminars you give or some such. A subsidy press can also be an option if you plan on building up a fan base in order to attract the attention of a traditional publisher.

4. Use Lulu.com (or some other value-added printing service).

   Lulu is a strange animal in the book industry, strange enough to deserve its own entry. It’s a little like a subsidy press in that you pay them money for services. They even have a “distribution” service via which they’ll buy you an ISBN and get your book on Amazon. And you can even publish it under your own name. (That is, your company can be listed in the space under “publisher,” instead of the publisher being listed as “Lulu.”)

   But Lulu provides fewer services than a subsidy press. They’re more like a print-on-demand printing company, except they do business with authors directly (not with publishers, as most printers do), and as a result, they provide a slightly different service model. Their per-unit prices are also substantially higher than a print-on-demand printer, for the same reasons a subsidy press charges you more for copies of your book.

   Amazon’s CreateSpace is similar to Lulu, but offers a slightly different set of services. They’re also an alternative if you want to go this route to publishing.

   As with a subsidy publisher, you and you alone are responsible for the quality, marketing, and success or failure of your book. You’re just outsourcing part of the process to a third party. Except that with Lulu and CreateSpace, you’re outsourcing less of the process than with a subsidy publisher.

   And like a subsidy press, value-added printing services are best if you plan on publishing only a limited number of titles, because it’s more expensive in the long run to publish with Lulu or CreateSpace than it is to start your own indie press. And like a subsidy press, you can also use these services to build up a fan base in order to attract the attention of a traditional publisher.

I hope this gives you some idea of what book publishing is like. Of course, this just scratches the surface. For even more information, check out the the podcast episodes and articles at The Writing Show (WritingShow.com).

Good luck in whatever you decide to do.

Sincerely,
-TimK

A friend of mine emailed and asked:

If you don’t mind me asking, how much did it cost you to publish your book (or your dad’s)? You seem to be doing all of the important things that subsidy presses do and probably at considerable savings.

I’m still refining my publishing process, and I don’t intend to publish many books by other authors (which is more expensive than publishing my own books, because you have to coordinate between two people, rather than just between the two sides of my own brain). But here’s what I’ve found out so far:

• I didn’t keep track of how much it cost (in hours spent) to edit and lay out my dad’s book. It wasn’t cheap, and I also found that adding changes after layout took a long time, because I had no good process for integrating those changes. So if I were to go through that again, I would first define a process for submitting changes to a manuscript that has already been laid out.

  In general, I could easily see it costing $200 or more to hire someone to lay out a book, assuming it was already in electronic format and fairly well organized. No, I didn’t have to pay for someone to do that, because I had the technical wherewithal to do it myself. But the opportunity cost was that I could not do other things with my own time while I was hacking with Dad’s layout.

  This is usually not an issue for me, however, because when I write my own books, I write them already laid out, so there’s almost zero layout cost. (Or rather, it would cost me more just to describe what I wanted to a third party than just to do it myself.)

• The cover design for Dad’s book Can You See God in This Picture? my brother Josh put together. We used images from my dad’s archives. I gave Josh guidelines to use in designing the cover, based on my marketing knowledge, because a book’s front cover is its own advertisement. But we did zero market testing on Dad’s cover. For The Conscience of Abe’s Turn, I used a process that can be applied to any title. I used stock photos from iStockphoto, and I ad-tested the cover image and wording, even before designing the cover.

  Living in a Police State
  Every government needs a conscience
  to keep it honest. An online drama.
  AbesTurn.com

  The winning ad

  For the front cover wording, I ran text ads on the Google content network (those “Ads by Google” you see everywhere). I tried different keywords and phrasings to try to determine which ones resonated with my target market. This became “Living in a Police State” on the front cover and “Every government needs a conscience to keep it honest” on the back. While these ads were not expensive, I did spend close to $300 on them.

  To choose the image, I started with “XSmall” size images for each candidate cover image, at $1 for each different image. I used these to create image ads, which I ran on my own websites. Each ad had the same wording on it, but a different picture. Then I drove traffic to those web pages and measured the click-through rate of each image ad. (I could have spent a lot of money on these ads if I had run them on other sites as well, much more than I had on the text ads, and that might have been money well spent, but I didn’t have the cash to invest at the time.) Two images tied for the greatest click-through. I chose one to be the cover image for The Conscience of Abe’s Turn, and bought a Medium ($5) or Large ($10) size image with which to create the cover design.

  Now, while most subsidy publishers will design a cover, they’re probably not doing any ad testing. Probably not even any focus-group testing. If you can’t afford real market testing, however, I’d at least mock up the cover of a book and show it to my friends before committing to the design. (In fact, I’m planning to post a little YouTube video to try to drum up opinions on the cover for an upcoming small book. Not anywhere near as good as ad testing, of course, but it’s probably better than flying blind.)

  Laying out the cover for Abe’s Turn is something I would in future contract out in a heartbeat, if I had the money to invest, because it’s a pretty complex cover. Simpler covers are pretty easy to put together, if you have and know how to use the software. (I believe Josh used Adobe Illustrator. I used the Gimp.) I created a mock-up of a cover for an upcoming book People Stories, and did it very quickly, because it was just a stock image, front-cover text, back-cover image, back-cover text, and white ISBN block (where the ISBN eventually goes), and maybe some spine text. For the Abe’s Turn cover, start with the fact that the original stock photo was not big enough for the cover, so I had to extend the dark bars in 3 directions through graphic manipulations. Then you go from there. Way more complex. Way more expensive. You could spend $100 to $1000 and up on a cover design, once you know what elements should be on it.

• I started a publishing company, not a big one, just big enough for me. That means buying a block of ISBN’s. A block of 10 ISBN’s costs $275–grossly overpriced, yeah, but that’s what you get with a government-enforced monopoly. (I understand you can get a single ISBN for $125, but it hardly seems worth it if you plan on publishing multiple books. And if you only plan on publishing one book, you’re probably better of with a subsidized publisher or using Lulu’s distribution service.) And when you “apply” for an ISBN, you have to know what you’re doing, or else you’ll fall prey to all the useless offers Bowker makes, like trying to sell you barcode images that you can get for free elsewhere.

• I used Lulu to print up advanced copies. Lulu is much more expensive than dealing with the printer directly, but their system is completely automated and fast, and you can make changes for free. So it’s good to try things out with, but a 208-page 6×9″ trade paperback costs $8.69 + shipping & handling (which ain’t cheap). (Compare the Lightning Source price below.) I included this “Advanced Copy” step both with Abe’s Turn and with CYSGiTP, but I plan to skip it with my next title, because it doesn’t seem to add anything once I’m confident that I know what I’m doing.

• I use Lightning Source for printing, which is a very popular choice for small publishers. Lightning Source doesn’t do business with authors; they do business with publishers. So in order to open an account with them, you need to provide your ISBN prefix (because only publishers have ISBNs, by definition), and then they have an application that seems designed more to make sure you know what you’re talking about than to specify what you want them to do for you.

  For each title that I print at Lightning Source, it costs $75 to set up, plus $30 to buy a proof (if I want one, which I so far always have), plus $12 a year to have it listed in industry catalogs. (The industry catalogs are how it gets onto Amazon.com and how bookstores can order it, if they want.) It also costs money to revise the title once you set it up, so that’s why it’s good to have used Lulu ahead of time, to make sure the book is going to turn out right. But once the title is set up, I can get copies (trade paperback) for $0.90 + $0.0015 per page + shipping & handling, and wholesalers get them for even less. So for a 208-page book, like my dad’s, each copy costs me $4.67 apiece (including shipping) if I order a full case.

So I could get the actual cost down to about $150, if I needed to. That’s probably a tenth what many subsidized presses charge. And then I could get copies for a little over the actual printing cost. But this is all true only because I have such a wide range of experience in writing, layout, graphics, and business and because I did my homework before diving in. That makes me an expert, but that expertise did not come easily. And now that I’m set up, I’m hoping to outsource much more in the future, everything I don’t need to oversee personally, as my publishing empire grows.

-TimK

P.S. If you do want to start your own self-publishing company, a must-read book is Aaron Shepard’s Aiming at Amazon. (But you might want to wait for the 2008/2009 edition.) His advice on setting up as a publisher is all pretty sound, even the part about getting on Amazon. What I would add to it is that you should never depend on one sales channel, even Amazon, unless that one sales channel is you yourself (or rather, your own company), and that you should probably be your biggest sales channel anyhow.