Self-Publishing for Charity: Does It Really Work?

Self Publishing for Charity, Does it Really Work?

Many people say that going down the self-publishing route is not the best way to get your works known, but what if you’re trying to raise money for a charity? Often books are brought out in aid of different charities, be it a recipe book, book of poems or a book of jokes and they all sell well because people want to help raise money and they get something for their donation as well.

Those books are normally published by the bigger publishing houses and sold on a wider scale, unless you’re already recognised as a good author or a celebrity then it is unlikely that they will publish your charity book on a small scale. So, what do you do?

First of all you need to decide on a charity, I chose Cancer Research UK as the charity I wanted to support as I have had help off them in the past. Contact your charity, make them aware of the project and find out how to pay in any funds raised, they might even help you get your charity book in the local papers or on the internet. You can also register for a Just Giving page at this point (https://www.justgiving.co.uk) where people can make one off donations that go straight to your charity without you having to collect the money from them.

Next and most importantly you need to write the book. Will it be a collection of short stories? Poetry or recipes, or you could even publish a blog of a charity expedition you have done. Will you write it alone or will there be multiple authors? As I am studying a creative writing course I asked the other students if they would like to participate and send me poems and stories, of course they keep full copyright of their works and each piece is credited with the author’s name. The amount of material soon built up and before I knew it there was enough to publish a book.

Where to publish? Once you have all the materials you need to decide where to publish your book. Are you going to be paying for them in advance and selling them by hand or will you hand out the web address for a print on demand service? I chose to use Lulu.com a print on demand service based in the USA, they have a very easy system for you to use to publish your book, by designing your own covers and uploading the work done for the inside. They also give you the option of purchasing a batch of ISBN’s in case you want to sell your book in bookstores and on Amazon.com this is useful if you have contacts that you know will be able to get your book a prominent place in local bookstores and supermarkets.

So now you’ve decided on the charity you’re supporting, have designed and uploaded your book onto the print on demand service you are using and it’s ready to be sold. What do you do next? Market of course! Send everyone in your address book an email, add an email signature onto the bottom of the emails you send out normally with the address your charity book can be purchased, write to local papers and magazines telling them what you have done. Get posters up in the office at work or on the notice boards at college and university. Use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace or Bebo to let all of your friends know about it. The purchases will start rolling in as more and more people know. One good thing about Lulu.com is that they will also let you purchase the book in Adobe Acrobat .pdf format so if people don’t want to pay for postage they can download it instead. Because there are no printing fees involved even more money goes to your charity.

Still not sure have a look at http://www.justgiving.com/a215anthology08 and http://stores.lulu.com/nudul1985 where you will see that it really does work as a fundraising activity and also helps new authors get their names in print!