What You Need to Know About Self-Publishing
(click on a question to see the answer)
Can I make a lot of money by publishing a book?
Probably not. There are valid reasons for wanting to publish your book, but if you’re hoping to generate substantial income, you’re probably going to be disappointed.
Well, then. Why self-publish?
Lots of reasons. Here are some of them:
Ø Professionals (doctors, lawyers, consultants, etc.) find that a quality book published by them is a form of advertising that can generate secondary revenue and enhance career status.
Ø First-time authors need to establish a track record of “sellability.”
Ø Being published makes you an instant “expert.” This can help you get promoted, get a better job, or start your own business. It can even lead to radio and television time that gives you increased visibility in the community (that’s why so many politicians and entertainers publish).
Ø Many self-publishers have a story to tell that needs to be preserved for history.
Ø Organizations (businesses, churches, governments, etc.) can benefit from publishing in many ways. These projects include works that function as advertising (catalogs, organizational histories, etc.), that contribute to employee morale or member cohesiveness (welcome aboard manuals, inspirational story of the founding, etc.), or that serve educational purposes (instruction manuals, policies, etc.).
Ø You have strong ideas on a burning issue and you’ve just got to get it off your chest.
Ø Maybe you just want to impress your family and friends.
Isn’t it better to get a publisher to fund the publication of my book instead of self-publishing?
Not necessarily. First of all, unless you’re an established author, it’s going to be a long, hard road trying to get a publisher to accept your project. This is going to take time, effort, and money. Your odds of success are remote and by the time you give up and decide to self-publish, your book is already old news. You’ll probably come out ahead to go right into short-run self-publishing (see below) and then try to get a publisher after you’ve got a track record of actual sales. In addition, if you have the capability of selling substantial numbers of a book you can actually make more money by self-publishing (this most often applies to people who give lectures or conduct seminars and sell their books at these meetings). Publishers who fund a publishing project will only pay you about 10 percent. If you can make substantial sales without them, you can keep all the profit yourself.
Do I need an agent?
Our experience has been that agents are only of benefit to established authors or to new authors who believe that they are sitting on a blockbuster. The agent needs to be paid and this means that any publisher who takes on the project will probably be asked to pay extra. They’ll need to be pretty confident of the outcome before they agree to that. We don’t see any advantage for agents to be involved in a self-publishing project.
What’s the best way to sell self-published books?
The most productive sales usually come from people who give lectures or conduct seminars and sell the books at their meetings. If this doesn’t apply to you, your best bets are:
1. Friends and acquaintances
2. Professional organizations or interest groups
3. Online sellers who’ll work with you (e.g., Amazon.com, but see below)
4. Online sales through your own web site
5. Targeted mailing lists (if you can get a list of people who are more likely to be interested in your book than the average population)
6. Consignment sales through local bookstores (but see below about national chains)
7. Independent bookstores
8. Trade fairs and conventions (you usually can’t generate enough income to pay for your booth/table, but if you’re going anyway, you’ll want to have your book available for purchase).
Why not get my self-published book into the national chain bookstores?
The economics don’t work well for self-publishers. National chains won’t deal directly with you. You have to have a distributor. Distributors will keep anywhere from 50 percent to 65 percent of the list price and return you the rest. In addition, they will hold a reserve against returns. It may be several months before you get any money. If you’ve published a short-run book, your cost per copy will normally exceed the money that you get from the distributor. In other words, you’ll be losing money with every sale. In addition, you should be aware that distributors can’t guarantee that your book will be in the bookstores. They can only make it available, the chain buyers need to decide they want it on their shelves. If they like the book, they’ll order one or two copies per store, a total of 2,000 or more books. If you’re a short-run publisher, you can’t provide this quantity. If you go into large-run printing, you’re taking a substantial risk, because the books will only remain on their shelves for a very few weeks. If they’re not sold by then, the chain will return all of them to the distributor, and you get no money at all, not to mention the fact that some of the returned books are scratched, scuffed, have store stickers on them, and will be hard to sell again.
Some of the same considerations are involved in offering your book for online sale by others. Amazon.com is the very best at this and they are good to work with and also easy to set up. However, they will most likely only pay you about 40 percent of list price, and this may well be less than what you paid to produce a self-published short-run book.
Your best bet for self-publishing is to forget about the national chains. You can walk into most local bookstores (even the chains), tell them you’re a local author and you’d like to leave them a few books on consignment. You can also offer to have a signing (an offer that will be even better received if you’re being interviewed about your book on local radio or TV). You’ll have to offer them a discount. Offer 20 percent (they pay you 80 percent of list price and keep 20 percent), settle for 30 percent, and absolutely don’t agree to more than 40 percent (that’s their trade standard). Be sure you get a receipt for any books you leave with them.
Independent bookstores are also a good bet. You can find of list of them at your local library. There are about 17,000 of them in the United States. Send a flyer to some of the larger ones. You’re not working with a chain, and the local owner can decide on the spot to order your book if he or she likes the flyer.
I’m starting to get scared. Isn’t all this very risky?
It depends. Large-run publishing is indeed a risky venture. However, the risks involved in short-run publishing are minimal.
So what’s the difference between large-run and short-run publishing?
Large-run publishing (what we sometimes call traditional publishing) involves the use of large, expensive presses that have considerable setup costs involved. Because of this, the minimum cost-effective run is 1,000 copies. To make a profit selling in bookstores, etc., you usually need to run at least 2,000 copies in order to get the cost per copy low enough. This can involve a fairly substantial investment and if you don’t have a reliable sales strategy, entails significant risk.
Our short-run technology involves printing books on a digital printer called a Xerox Docutech™. In essence, it’s a fairly simple printer, not entirely unlike the laser printer that is probably connected to your computer except that it has much more capability and can be associated with collation and binding equipment. It prints at 600 dots per inch (dpi). This is a lot less resolution than the large-run printers, but the finished product looks good to the naked eye. Non-professionals usually can’t tell the difference between the two.
Business organizations have been using Docutech for years to produce office manuals, reports, etc. However, until a few years ago, we were one of only a handful of publishers who had figured out an economical way to get a good-looking color cover on these books. Now, a lot of publishers are doing it. Our covers are printed at 720 dpi, which, again, is not as good as the large-run presses, but the results are attractive and nearly indistinguishable to the untrained eye from standard large-run trade books.
What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of large-run and short-run publishing?
Large-run printing provides the best quality and the lowest cost per copy. In addition, it is still the only economically viable option for books with substantial color inside the book. The disadvantage is that it requires a significant investment, which is undesirable unless you are confident that you can sell at least half of the run.
Short-run printing has a higher cost per copy; thus, it is difficult to make a profit. However, the investment required is much less. Most of our customers find that an initial run of 200 copies works best for them. The risk involved is much less, since it’s not that difficult to sell 200 copies of anything at all. With short-run publishing, you won’t make much (if any) profit, but you are fairly sure of getting all your money back and nearly certain to get most of it back. In addition, after the initial run, you can reorder copies as often as you want (currently in quantities as low as 25) at a reduced rate. On the down side, the economics of the short run don’t work very well for books with a lot of color inside.
What if my short-run book catches on and I wish I’d opted for a large run?
The same files that are used to print the short run can be used for the large-run presses. The cost to do that will be less than if you had opted for the large run to begin with, since you’ve already paid for our work. You won’t need to pay that again, and we can simply switch over to a large run. You won’t have lost much, if any, money by doing the short run first.
How do your prices compare with other publishers?
We’re one of the least expensive publishers in the country doing quality work. There are companies, called “vanity houses,” that have lower prices, but they don’t offer the personal attention, professional copyediting, and custom designs that we provide. If you’re happy with a boilerplate production and no expert advice, they’ll do just fine. You can probably also find an out-of-work graphics designer somewhere who’s starting his or her own “publishing” business and offering cut-rate prices. If you want to help them learn the business, that’s your option, but we predict that you’ll regret that decision.
I’ve got a master’s degree in English and had a friend of mine who’s a newspaper editor proof my book. I’m sure it’s ready to publish as is. Why do you think I need a copyedit?
In decades of this work, we’ve never seen a single manuscript submitted that was ready to publish as is. Nearly all of the authors of those manuscripts thought they were ready to go and were amazed at the amount of work that remained to be done. Among other things, we bring our books into conformance with the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, which is the standard for U.S. book publishing. Even professionals in other fields, such as magazines and newspapers are not familiar with this style. Yes, since you’re paying, you can have the book any way you want, but we’ll point out departures from standard style. One of the reasons you come to us is because you want a quality, professional product that does not appear to be self-published. We strongly urge everyone to let us copyedit their manuscript. If you refuse this service, we will go ahead and work with you, but our Smithfield imprint might not appear on the book. Remember, it’s our name on the book, too.
Are you any good at this?
It’s true, we’re a small company, but we have a stable of professional freelancers who also work for some of the country’s largest publishers. We’ve published hundreds of books, including several books contracted by some of America’s leading companies and personalities. We do a lot of work for other publishers who rely on us to produce their books. About two-thirds of our business is repeat business from previous customers. Our products are quality, professional products that are as good as any other publisher in the country can produce. Yeah, we’re pretty good.
I’ve worked on my book for years. It’s perfect. I’m afraid of losing control of it. Are you going to mess it up?
The advantage of self-publishing is that you’re in total control. The one who pays makes the rules. We’ll give you our best professional advice—and then we’ll do what you tell us to.
How about cover designs?
All of our covers are custom designed. If you’ve got some ideas, we’ll start with them. We’ll also add some of our own and give you a few concept samples (we call them “comps”). You can pick one of them or reject them all and tell us why. Once you agree on a concept, we’ll come back with a detailed layout that you can proof and change as desired. We won’t print anything until you’ve approved it for printing.
I want to put some pictures in my book. Will that cost a lot?
Only if you want them in color. There is no extra charge for a moderate number of black & white photographs. If you’ve got a lot of them (say more than thirty or so, we will apply a small charge for scanning the images). By the way, we can usually make your old, scratched-up photos look amazingly good.
What kind of marketing do you provide?
Not much. We mostly provide “no-frills” self-publishing. We offer low prices for quality books. It’s your job to sell them. Most self-published books are sold by the author anyway, so why pay for a service that you won’t use much? We will give you free advice on how to best market your particular book and we’ll help you design and produce flyers for nominal extra fees (enough to cover our costs).
We can help you with fulfillment and marketing if you want us to. We have two basic programs. For books that sell at least 20 copies per month, we’ll store your books in our warehouse (charging you a monthly warehousing fee ranging from $15 to $75), accept orders from your customers, and collect the payments from them. We’ll send you monthly checks for what they pay, less the warehousing fee, shipping costs, and a charge of $3.00 per book (max of $12 per order). This approach only works out for you if your book sells well; otherwise, our fees will eat up all of your profit.
A viable alternative for books with lower sales volume is to leave a limited number of books on consignment with us (usually less than 100 copies). We’ll sell the books and pay you 50 percent of whatever we get. There are no fees. This is the approach that works best for most self-publishers. You do the bulk of the sales, but we’re available to help you out with special orders, etc.
In either of these two cases, if your book meets our standards and you so desire, it will appear in our catalog and on our web page. If you like, we’ll also put it on Amazon.com under our name.
One of the advantages of having us do the fulfillment is that bookstores can special order. You probably won’t want to try getting your self-published books in the national chain bookstores, but your book will be known to them on their computers. If a customer asks for a copy, they can special order it from us.
How do I get a copyright?
We handle that for you. The copyright is in your name. If your book is eligible (most are), we’ll also obtain Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data or control number that will be printed on the copyright page. Regardless, we'll issue you an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) and your book will appear in Books in Print. Information about your book will be available on computers in bookstores and libraries around the world.
What about having a bar code on the back of the book?
If you want a bar code, we’ll put one on at no additional charge. They are usually only necessary if the book will be sold in bookstores.
How much will it cost to publish my book?
It depends on a lot of factors: the size of your book, the type of paper, the kind of binding, how many pages, how many copies, the current world price of paper, and the time of year. Here are some rough ballpark figures. These figures include typical services provided by us (copyediting, layout, etc.).
1. A typical contract for a hardcover book of about 208 pages usually runs in the vicinity of $7 per book for a thousand copies and about $5 per book for 2000 copies.
2. A typical contract for a trade paper book (paper cover) of about 208 pages usually runs in the vicinity of $4.50 per copy for 1000 copies and about $3.50 per copy for 2000 copies.
3. A typical contract for 200 copies of our short-run technology for a 208 page book usually runs in the vicinity of $10 to $12 per copy.
4. Our short run contracts range from a minimum of $1600 (100 copies of small book with few pages) to about $3500 (200 copies of big, fat book).
5. Short-run books can have hard covers, usually for about $3.50 to $4.50 extra apiece. However, we cannot currently economically print dust jackets in short run.
6. Short-run books can be reprinted, currently in quantities of 25 or less, usually for somewhere around nearly half the initial price, typically between $5 and $9 per copy.
7. Indexes cost more if you want us to compile them. The charge runs about $4 per page, varying with the format of the book and the content complexity.
8. Color (inside the book) is a substantial additional investment. On a typical project, it can add up to about $2000 or even more to the total cost.
Do I have to pay everything up front?
No. You pay one-third of the total cost when we start work. You pay the next third before the book is printed and you pay the last third after you get the book. We’ve never had this happen before, but if you should decide to cancel in mid-project, we would not be able to refund payments already made. Once work is underway, your money is spent on that work. Note that if the specifications of your book change (e.g., if you decide to add more pages), the estimate will have to be revised. We won’t, however, do anything that would increase your cost without your approval. In other words, if you don’t change your book, what you see on the invoice is what you pay—sort of. There is one more small-print proviso. The quantities of your book that we deliver may be up to 10 percent more or less than what you ordered. This is a standard trade practice and results from the fact that printers overprint to allow for wastage. If they’re having a bad day, the wastage will result in not enough copies being available. On a good day, there are extra copies. Your final payment will normally be adjusted by plus or minus the overage or shortage, charged at the reprint rate. If there is an overage and you don’t want to pay for the extra copies, we’ll normally keep them if you’ll agree to let us sell them and keep whatever we can get for them.
Do I have to pay sales tax?
If you live in Texas, you will have to pay us 8.25% sales tax unless you can provide us with a resale certificate or an exemption certificate. The latter is for nonprofit organizations. You can get the former by registering yourself as a business and obtaining a state sales tax license.
How do I get started?
The first step is to call us, toll-free, at 888 788-2280. Give us the details of your book and we’ll send you a binding estimate. It’s valid for 60 days (see the small-print stuff about our estimate in the answer to the question “Do I have to pay everything up front”).
When you’re ready to proceed, you send us a signed copy of the estimate, a check for one-third the total amount, a copy of your manuscript on a diskette or CD (see below), and, if available, a printout of your manuscript. You should also send us any ideas you have for the cover. In addition, we need the following information for the Library of Congress if your book qualifies for the CIP program.
1. Your full name (including middle name, even if you don’t use it on the title page).
2. Your date of birth (need this so the LOC can differentiate between authors with the same name. The year of your birth will normally appear on the copyright page, but we can arrange to have it left off if you ask us to do so).
3. Any earned academic degree higher than a bachelors.
4. Your telephone number.
5. Your email address if you have one.
6. The last two books that you’ve published (if there are any) that were issued Library of Congress CIP data.
How should I submit my manuscript?
We’ll need the file output from a standard word processor (MS Word, WordPerfect, or MS Works). If you don’t have the manuscript in a computer file, but have a musty old typewritten copy, we can scan it for you, but we’ll charge for that service. You might come out ahead to hire someone to type it into a computer for you if you can’t do that yourself.
If you have a computer file, but have used a different word processor, give us a call. The odds are that we can work with what you have.
You don’t need to do a lot of formatting. All we need to know is where each paragraph ends, any words (other than headings) that need to be italicized, any words or items that should be superscript or subscript, and any paragraphs that should be indented as block quotations. If you have any other formatting in your file, the first thing we’ll do is remove all of it so that we can start from scratch. If you’ve already done extensive formatting, don’t worry about it, we’re used to removing it and can do so easily. If you haven’t, don’t waste your time. Let us come up with the best custom page design for your book—that’s what you’re hiring us for. We’ll produce a design that complements the tone and content of your particular book. Once you see what we’ve done, you can have it changed any way you want.
If you’ve got a layout software file such as MS Publisher, QuarkExpress, Ventura, FrameMaker, or PageMaker, we would much prefer to have instead the word processor files that you imported into these files. We have had such bad experiences trying to publish other people’s files that we no longer do it. We can open any of the above-mentioned files, but we will export the text and start all over. You not only won’t save any money, we might even charge you a bit extra, depending on the size of your file and the software program involved. You’ll need to make special arrangements with us before starting.
We can accept your file on floppy diskette, CD, DVD, or 100 meg zip. We can accept either PC or Mac media. We can accept files via email. We also have an ftp site to which you can upload your file (call us for details).
It doesn’t matter to us if you have your entire book in one file or if each chapter is in a different file.
How long will it take?
It depends on the size and complexity of your book, how busy we are, how fast you return proofs to us, and the time of the year. A typical short-run project takes 6-12 weeks from the start of work until books are shipped to you. Large-run paper covers usually take 2-3 weeks longer, and hard covers require an additional week or two beyond that.
If you’re in a great hurry, we can produce most books in just 4 weeks, but we may have to charge a premium.
Do you do books for children?
We have the technical capabilities to produce children’s books, but marketing for these books is a different prospect than most of the books that we do, so we can’t offer you much in the way of marketing help. We have found that short-run publishing of children’s books is very difficult, almost impossible, from an economics standpoint. These books really need to be in color, and that drives the cost per copy of a short-run project up to the point where it’s not competitive with other children’s books that are on the market. You just about have to go the large-run route and you’re looking at a fairly substantial investment.
How can I figure out the number of pages for my book?
When we lay out a book, we set it up very differently from what you see on your computer. Thus, the fact that you’ve printed it and it runs 196 pages really has little to do with how many pages will be in the published book. Since page count is a major determinant of the cost of publishing, it is very important to have an accurate estimate. When you tell us about your book, the first thing we’ll ask is, “How many words.” You can usually find out the answer to this with your word processor. Look under Tools in most processors and you’ll find “Word Count.” Click on it, and it will tell you how many words are in your file.
You can send your manuscript to us and we’ll tell you the page count estimate. If you like, you can make your own estimate from the data below.
Ø Number of words per page depends on type of book and size: For 5.5 x 8.5 popular trade book (fiction, self-help, business, etc.) you should aim for an average of 250 words per page. For more technical work, you can go up to 300 per page average. The most number of words per page is 400, and is recommended only for serious academic works (upper class textbooks, dissertations, etc.). If your book is 8.5 x 11, you can multiply these figures by 1.9. You can interpolate for intermediate sizes (e.g., multiply by 1.1 for 6 x 9, and 1.4 for 7 x 10).
Ø Divide the average number of words per page into the number of words.
Ø Add 6 to 14 pages for front matter (6 is minimum, 8 with dedication, 10-12 with preface, 12-14 with preface and foreword).
Ø Add one page for every two photographs that you want to include
Ø If the project is short run, the final number must be evenly divisible by 4. If large run, it must be evenly divisible by 16.
Example: 6 x 9 inch book, popular trade, large run, 57, 214 words, 13 photos, preface, no foreword:
57214/(250 x 1.1) = 208 pages + 10 pages front matter + 7 pages for photos = 225 pages
225/16 = 14.0625
Thus, the final book will be either 224 pages (14 x 16), if we squeeze it, or 240 pages (15 x 16), if we stretch it. It’s hard to squeeze more than four pages without affecting the design, so in those cases, unless you’re willing to accept more words per page, it’s better to stretch.
What format is appropriate for my book?
Most trade paper books are 5.5 x 8.5. A good number of them are 6 x 9. Textbooks and handbooks are often 7 x 10 (this is the largest format that we can provide with our short-run techniques, unless you want to discuss alternative cover options). Workbooks may go up to 8.5 x 11. Most hard cover books are 6 x 9. Coffee table books, hard bound, are usually around 8.5 x 11 or 10 x 12. Often, they are oblong (11 x 8.5 or 12 x 10). Gift books (paper or hard cover) are often smaller, 5 x 7 or even 4 x 6.
What are the considerations I should make in cover design?
Good question! Here’s our theory on covers.
Most beginners make the mistake of trying to completely describe their book with the cover. The result is often a very complex design that’s hard to assimilate quickly. We believe that most covers have one purpose in life—to encourage potential customers to pick up the book. Except for textbooks, dissertations, etc., covers should grab your attention and draw your interest. They should, of course, be related to the content of the book in some way, but they need not tell the whole story. If they succeed, your potential customer will turn the book over and read the back cover. That’s where you sell the book.
How do you compare to XLibris?
The last time we checked, it works out that you'll pay about the same to us as to XLibris. XLibris will produce a good book for you (although you'll get more personal attention and customization from us--we're a smaller company). However, the real difference is that when it's all over, with XLibris, you won't own any books. With us, you'll own all of them. XLibris will sell your books for you and give you a 10% royalty. If you get the books from us and sell them yourself, you keep all the money and only have to sell one-tenth the number of books to get your money back that you would with XLibris. Typically, you'd need to sell about 2,000 books with them. With us, only about 200 or less. XLibris only works better for people who can't sell their own books or just don't want to be bothered.
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