New Ways of Publishing

It used to be that if you wrote well enough you would get published eventually. Then there came a period when you also had to network furiously. Now, with a hard hitting recession even that is not enough. Small indies are going under. Larger firms are being cautious.

But there are alternatives.

Vanity publishing is never an option. Self-publishing, on line and print-on-demand are. In fact self-publishing often uses print-on–demand.

There are pros and cons:

Self-publishing pros:

§         You take all of the profit

§         You control all of the design.

Self-publishing cons:

§         You have to do the marketing yourself and the distribution

§         You may not have the services of an editor.

On line pros:

§         Very cheap set up costs

§         Very quick publishing

On line cons:

§         Not so respected – yet

§         Not that easy to earn money

Print-on-demand pros:

§         Your book is never out of print

§         Very few upfront costs

On line cons:

§         Your book is always in print.

§         Single copies of your book are a little more expensive

Here are some typical costs in setting up a book:

• ISBN – £1.54 – £10.00 – always buy 100 in one go if you can. You do need an ISBN if you are serious about selling.
• Legal deposits 1 – 6 X copy of book to you plus postage. You have to deposit with the British Library. The others may ask for copies. So far, with eleven titles out there, we’ve not been asked for any extra copies. 
• Author copies – however many you give out X raw cost of book X number of authors.
• Review copies – however many you give out X raw cost of book
• Set up with printer – about £48.00
• Art work for cover – at least £250  but you may have your own creative solution to this  

Then per copy:

• At least 35% discount plus postage to booksellers (but you can avoid the  postage if you accept the wholesale package with the printer) 
• 7.5 – 10%  author royalties if you’re not the only author
• Print costs – in the region of 70p per book plus 1p per page but gets cheaper as the print run gets bigger.     

You can make money by on line publishing. There are two ways to do this:

• Put advertising on your site.
• Give some of your content away for free and make the rest down loadable for a price.

The biggest obstacle you have as an unknown is that you are an unknown. If you are good you may make it through to the general consciousness. Networking and viral marketing become important again.

It’s hard work but it is fun. I’ve done both. Been published the conventional way and done my own thing. They’re both a joy.