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How-To: Self-Publishing with Publishing On Demand
By Jason Levitt
2005-04-22
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Self-publishing compares favorably to the traditional book publishing model, but it's not without its trade-offs. One author abandons the traditional book publishing model and lives to tell the tale.When I tell people that I self-published my new book, their usual response is, "Didn't that cost a lot?"
The second question is usually, "How will you market it?"
My answers: "No," and "The Internet." Self-publishing is a strange new world for me, but I'm a total convert, thanks to the emergence of an Internet-based service called Publishing on Demand (PoD).
Most people's idea of self-publishing is a poorly formatted manuscript that's stapled or spiral bound and languishes in some niche bookstore on the bad side of town. The reality is that traditional publishers usually demand no more control over the finished product than you have when self-publishing. My finished book looks just like it would from any publisher as far as binding (perfect binding is standard), paper and color. In addition, when you self-publish, you can choose from a range of book dimensions and bindings.
Like any DIY (do it yourself) endeavor, there are trade-offs to self. In this case, there are some substantial trade-offs compared with the traditional publishing model, but for many people, it's well worth it. Here's a step-by-step guide to taking your work from manuscript to the market using PoD.
Finding a Publisher
To get your book into print (and onto the shelves, real or virtual, of booksellers), you need to have a publisher. In the traditional publishing model, you don't have a chance unless you can persuade a publisher—perhaps through your agent, if you're lucky enough to have one—to publish your work. This alone discourages many would-be authors from following their muse. And traditional publishers choose what books they take on based on a number of factors—most of them related to distribution and marketing concerns rather than the merits of the book ideas themselves.
Self-publishing gives you another option. There are a growing number of PoD publishers ready to take your manuscript. Sites like Lulu.com (the service I used), AuthorHouse and Trafford act as intermediaries between you and the printing service. Lulu.com, launched by Red Hat co-founder Bob Young, is probably the lowest-cost alternative for self-publishers, with a basic publishing service that's free for authors.
Lulu.com serves many roles for self-publishers. It's a community for self-publishers, a conduit for getting your manuscript printed and a store that lets self-publishers sell their works; plus, it acts as the primary distribution point for their works.
Next Page: Creating your manuscript.
Creating Your Manuscript
Traditional book publishers (at least in the technical book market) usually give you a Microsoft Word template to use when entering your manuscript, but most will also take raw text files and format them into a book format. The publisher takes care of the entire book production process, so all you, the author, has to do is type in the text or fill in a template. The publisher's staff takes care of editing, indexing, proofreading and sometimes structural suggestions.
Having self-published, I can now fully appreciate just how much work those people do. For my book, I did most of the editing and proofreading myself, and I even created the index, a black art unto itself. To learn more about indexing (or find someone to do it for you), visit the Web site of The American Society of Indexers.
I had some good tech editors who looked over some of the material, but mostly I can take the blame for any problems. It takes more time to do all the proofreading yourself, and you may not be up to the task, though you can certainly hire a friend to help out. Some PoD companies, such as Authorhouse and Xlibris, offer copyediting and other manuscript services for an additional fee.
With Lulu.com, you must submit your final manuscript as a "press quality" Adobe Acrobat PDF file, from which the book will be directly printed. "Press quality" is basically a 1,200-dpi PDF file that can be created from almost any desktop publishing application. I used Adobe Framemaker, but Adobe InDesign, PageMaker, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, and even OpenOffice can be used as long as your final output is an Acrobat PDF file.
In order to create an Acrobat PDF file, you need Acrobat Distiller, which is part of the full Adobe Acrobat software package. You simply "Save As" PDF format from your desktop publishing application, and your file is handed off to Acrobat Distiller, which creates the PDF file. Lulu.com offers a free PDF translation service for Microsoft Word files that can save you the cost of buying Acrobat.
To create 1,200-dpi PDF files, you need a full copy of Adobe Acrobat or an application that includes Adobe Acrobat Distiller. The "press quality" setting is a setting in Distiller; You simply "Save As" PDF format from within Framemaker (and other major desktop applications), select the "press quality" setting, and your PDF file is created. If you don't own, or know how to use, a desktop publishing application, this is yet another cost factor you need to deal with.
Other services may not give you as much control over your internal book design, or allow you to submit them online. Xlibris, for example, takes your manuscript as a Microsoft Word or WordPerfect file, and can handle electronic or hard-copy images. But you need to send in your work on CD-ROM or disk. Xlibris then sends back a PDF of the manuscript for you to review.
Next Page: Packaging and marketing your work.
Size, Binding and Cover Design
Traditional book publishers usually don't give an author (at least most authors) much leeway about the size format of a book, cover designs and choices of binding. They have risked some dough to bring you to market, so they aren't likely to let you go crazy with your book cover idea.
When you self-publish, the cover is your blank canvas, and anything your heart desires can be on the front and back cover provided you allow the space for the little bar code stamp on the back cover. Lulu.com accepts your cover as a four-color JPEG file formatted to specific dimensions for the size of your book.
Lulu prints books in four formats: journal (8.5" x 11"), paperback (6" x 9"), comic (6.625" x 10.25") and landscape (9" x 7). You can also choose to distribute your book as an e-book; if your book doesn't fit into one of Lulu's size templates, that's your only option through them.
Regardless of what size book you publish, you don't get to design the printing on the spine, unfortunately. That's because it's difficult to predict how much printing space will be available. Lulu will automatically print the title on the spine in a reasonable point size.
Marketing and Distribution
Some, but not all, publishers do some serious marketing that's hard to duplicate. For example, if your book is in a high-volume niche, such as computer books, your publisher may sell your book at computer industry trade shows and make it part of their targeted (U.S. Mail) mailouts.
But as far as getting listed online, this happens automatically when your book is listed with Ingram, the primary book distributor in the United States. As new books are listed in Ingram's database, the listings are scooped up and made available online from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and numerous smaller online booksellers.
In nearly all cases (unless your book is of a prurient or hate-related nature), your book magically surfaces in all the online booksellers. For $34.95, Lulu.com assigns you an ISBN; for an additional $115, Lulu.com lists your book in Ingram and sets your book up with a higher-volume printer that can handle orders from Amazon. Your traditional publisher does the same for free.
Next Page: Getting paid.
Advances and Royalties
You get an advance on book royalties from a traditional book publisher. It's nice to get that wad of cash upfront and feel that the publisher is invested in your book idea. However, sales of your book pay back the publisher for their advance (usually quite slowly), and typical percentage book royalties are not high.
In other words, if your book doesn't sell a lot of copies, you don't get much. That's fair, because the publisher is usually taking some substantial risks by advancing you money and paying for the printing of many copies of your book.
When you self-publish, you get no advance, but you get to set the royalty rate on each book sold. Since you're undertaking all of the risk yourself, you can make quite a lot (perhaps 25 percent of the cover
price) on each book sold.
Lulu.com lets you set your royalty rate and determines the book price based on your rate, printing costs and a commission for books sold from its site. If your book is sold through Amazon or another online bookseller, the price may be lower because of differences in distribution, but your royalty is a fixed amount per book and doesn't change based on discounts.
Self-published books are printed on demand, which means that it's only printed after it's purchased.
This costs a bit more per copy than doing a print run of 5,000 copies at once, but it feels better to know that people (or bookstores) are paying for every copy. Fewer dead trees is also cool.
Jason Levitt just self-published "The Web Developer's Guide to Amazon E-Commerce Service: Developing Web Applications Using Amazon Web Services and PHP," which can be found at www.awsbook.com.
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