They say that there is a book inside every one of us. That may well be true, but until quite recently, finding a publisher willing to invest in your masterpiece has been the hardest part of the process.
Even Harry Potter was rejected by twenty publishers before JK Rowling found one willing to take a risk on an unknown author.
Self publishing has always been a possibility. However, the fact that it has acquired the name 'vanity publishing' makes you realize that going that route has really been seen as something for the desperate. If no other publisher would take you on, you'd vanity publish to satisfy your own ego.
Many self-published books have gone on to enjoy enormous commercial success. One such famous example is 'The One Minute Manager' by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. They wanted to charge the then unheard of price of $15 for their book and all publishers said it couldn't be done. So they self-published and cleared out 20,000 copies in the San Diego area alone before a publisher took it on to more than 12 million worldwide sales.
Amanda Brown wrote a novel that underwhelmed traditional publishers but she believed in her story. So she went the self-publishing route to start with. Legally Blonde went on to prove her right and the publishing industry wrong.
Until very recently, self publishing had a major drawback - while you could produce the book yourself easily enough, the self publisher doesn't have access to the publishing houses' publicity machines. That's why the vanity publishing name stuck - you were far more likely to end up with a brown cardboard box in your garage with 500 copies of your book inside than ever seeing it on sale in the bookstores.
But things are changing fast.
For one thing, real world publishers are struggling under the triple onslaught of the growing popularity of ebooks and ebook readers like Amazon's Kindle. The availability of most bestsellers in electronic format at a lower price than the paper versions, with the added convenience of being able to store your entire library in a device that is thinner and lighter than the average paperback is quite compelling. And traditional publishers have been very slow to notice this paradigm shift in their own market.
For another, online bookstores like Amazon are rapidly stealing market share from real world bookstores. Household name chains of book sellers have been closing their doors for a few years and many more are heading that way. Small local independent bookstores are all but extinct already.
And finally, the cost of publishing your own book has never been lower and the ease with which you can make it instantly available to a huge market - even without the publishing houses' publicity machines is open to almost anyone.
So here are three ways that you can have your book published and on sale, faster than you'd ever have thought possible.
1. Amazon CreateSpace.
Amazon are unimaginably huge. They are the biggest book seller in the world and are growing fast.
Recognizing that a lot of people would like to publish a book but don't want the hassle of finding an offline publisher, Amazon set up their own print-on-demand operation.
You write your book on your own computer, format it in a word processor, like Word or Open Office, to the specifications that Amazon give you (page size, margin widths and so on) and make it look and read exactly how you want it to.
Then you upload the file to CreateSpace and either also upload an image file for the cover or use the inbuilt cover making software and you are done. A few days later you'll be mailed a proof copy of your very own paperback book.
You can then order as many copies of your own book as you like so you can sell then it to your friends or offer it at talks you may give.
But being part of Amazon, CreateSpace will also list your book in the Amazon marketplace alongside all the regular books. So you can expect to make a few sales there too.
2. Lulu.
Another company that lets you upload your files in a very similar way to CreateSpace is Lulu.com. Lulu's process is also dead easy and if you opt to have an ISBN barcode on the cover, Lulu can offer you book to the independent book trade as well as making it available on Amazon and other online book stores.
3. Go Digital!
If you have created your book in a word processor and made it look pretty, turning it into a physical book may not be the best option available to you.
If your book is information based (as opposed to fiction), you might consider simply using the word processors inbuilt ability to turn it into a PDF file and build a website to offer it for sale as an instant download.
Prices for such digitally downloadable information products are often a lot higher than their paper and ink equivalents, so you can expect to make a lot more money too!
You can manage the payments yourself with PayPal, or sign up for a company like ClickBank, who will also help you find affiliates to sell your product for a commission.
Of course, for fiction or non fiction, you may consider making your book available as a Kindle ebook - Amazon have a service that helps you do just that - and take advantage of that massive, and growing marketplace.
Publishing is changing fast. Self publishing has moved away from the old vanity image to being a real money-making alternative now.
Within a few years it will almost certainly become the mainstream as traditional publishing houses fail to keep up with the changing marketplace.
No comments:
Post a Comment