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NOTES ON SELF-PUBLISHING
Originally posted in December 2003
(c) Dianne Durante
I’ve learned a lot about self-publishing over the past six months, while getting Forgotten Delights: The Producers (henceforth referred to as FDP) ready for publication. The comments below apply specifically to that book, but they may give you useful information about benefits, hurdles, and expenses.
The first thing to remember about self-publishing is that nothing ever takes the amount of time you expect it to – sometimes much less time, but usually much more. If you want to produce a book for a deadline (Christmas sales, Valentine’s Day, etc.), allow yourself about double the time you’d expect to need, especially for your first self-published effort.
Layout & Design
FDP was laid out in MSWord 2000, which is not
designed to do sophisticated page-layouts. When I have to shift tinted
boxes and photographs, as I did this past month, my days are not merry and
bright. On the other hand, PageMaker and Quark, which are designed for
precisely this kind of project, have a steep learning curve and are very
expensive ($500-$650 for new users) - especially when I consider
how many copies of the book I'd have to sell to recover the cost.
The more important consideration in deciding what program to use for layout may actually be the printer: not the desktop printer, but the professional printer who’ll produce the finished copies of the book. Some printers will only accept files in PageMaker or Quark, although many ask for a file converted to PDF. (You can create a PDF file from almost any program at www.Adobe.com , for a small monthly fee. The full-strength program for PDF conversions is Adobe Acrobat, about $450 for new users.)
Despite the hassles of breaking tables across pages, checking for widows and orphans, and proofreading again and again and again, I usually enjoy doing layout. Having complete control over the appearance of the book is satisfying.
Printing
(including Offset and
Print-on-Demand)
I had the original hundred copies of FDP done
at Kinko’s. Each copy cost about $9, which I soon found out is very,
very expensive for a 168-page, 8.5 x 5.5 inch book. That’s why I looked
for another printer when I didn’t find a publisher willing to take on the
book immediately.
There are two distinct options if you decide to become self-published. Whichever printing option you choose, make sure you see a sample of the books that printer produces before you commit to using him. Check the quality of printing on the cover and the text, whether the pages are aligned and trimmed precisely, and the quality of the glue on the spine. Abuse your sample copy to see if the pages fall out.
OPTION 1: Offset. Offset printers run enormous rolls of paper through huge, efficient machines. I haven’t found any offset printers that are interested in setting up their machines to produce 100 copies, or even 500. To get their attention, I had to talk about a run of 1,000 copies.
Asking on the web for quotes for 1,000 copies, I got prices as low as $2 per copy for 168 pp., plus shipping. This is much better than $9 at Kinko’s, but it meant an up-front expense of over $2,000, and storing a LOT of books in my house.
Offset printers may be the only way to go if you must have color in the text of your book. Color photos of poor quality aren't worth printing, and an offset printer has much better quality control. I decided early on that I’d only use B&W photos, and offer a CD with color photos, because the cost of printing color was prohibitive: roughly twice as much as B&W at Kinko’s, even if only the pages with photos were run off the color copier.
Incidentally, even a B&W photo looks better printed on a color machine. Try printing a B&W photo on your desktop printer with the color on, and then in B&W only.
OPTION 2: print on demand. This is what I'm doing now via Lightning Source Inc., https://www.lightningsource.com. (I was referred to LSI by Amazon when I asked about selling ebooks. It was reassuring that Amazon liked LSI enough to establish a long-term relationship with them.) “Print-on-demand” means literally that: they don’t print copies until ordered to do so, hence I don’t have to pay an up-front fee for hundreds or thousands of copies.
LSI offers a limited range of sizes and bindings, and will only print inside text in B&W. The quality of the photos in the sample LSI sent me wasn’t terrific, but it was adequate, and from the variation in quality I suspect some of the fault lay with the illustrations sent by the author.
Lightning Source requires files in PDF format or Quark or PageMaker. It took me a while to sort out their requirements for submitting files digitally and laying out a cover. I ended up using a professional printing bureau to convert my MSWord text and cover files to PDFs: the Adobe online conversion process doesn’t give control of a lot of minor options for the finished PDF file that LSI wanted controlled. (The professionals charged me $17 to convert 4 files, which seemed very reasonable.)
Once I’d set up an account with LSI, I uploaded the PDF files and LSI set up the book in 2 days, then sent a bound copy for proofing via overnight mail. Set-up and proof ran about $100.
The uploaded digital files are, I learned, turned into a book without human intervention. The file for the spine of my cover was turned the wrong way, and came out upside-down (reading bottom to top) on the proof. Correcting this and adding the price to the bar code was done on an $80/hour basis, with a $40 minimum charge. LSI really doesn’t want to be doing your layout work for you.
LSI’s contract guarantees things like correct page sequence, accurate trim (at least a dozen of my Kinko’s copies have off-kilter covers), and tidy glue on the binding (another flaw in Kinko’s). Their standard cover stock for paperbacks is laminated: shiny and resilient. They will print color on the covers, although not in the inside text.
Once the book’s set up, LSI will print copies as requested by me, on demand. For FDP, the cost is about $3.50 each, and I can order any number I want at a time.
One big problem: LSI can’t distribute the CD of supplementary photos that should go out with every copy of FDP. I added a page before the title page in the LSI edition, telling the purchaser that the CD could be ordered on my website.
Sales
and distribution (including Bookstores and
Amazon)
As a self-publisher, I get to set the retail price,
but since I want to distribute the book through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and
other bookstores, I had to find out normal expenses and discounts first.
Bad news: you can’t just print a book any-old-where and get it listed on Amazon or sold in Barnes & Noble. Most large bookstores won’t deal directly with me as a self-publisher: it’s just too much hassle to handle paperwork for thousands of one-book publishers. The bookstores deal with Ingram or Baker & Taylor, the two big book distributors in the U.S., and the distributors deal with the publisher (self- or otherwise).
One reason I chose LSI is that it works closely with Ingram. (In fact, LSI might be an offshoot of Ingram: not clear to me.) Since LSI’s printing my book, it’ll automatically be listed by Ingram, and Ingram will send the listing out to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everyone else on their list.
Incidentally, having Ingram distribute the book involves signing another agreement with LSI, the “print-on-demand” agreement as opposed to the “short-run” agreement, which tells them to produce books for you and only you.
The standard discount ("wholesale discount") from me, as author/publisher, to Ingram is 55% off the retail price. From that 55%, Ingram offers bookstores a substantial discount (probably 40% off retail price). Getting 40% of the retail sales price is how the bookstores make enough money to stay in business. I could tell LSI and Ingram that I’ll only offer a 30% discount, for instance, but there are bookstores whose budgets are so tight that they’ll refuse to carry the book if they can’t make their usual profit on it.
Another issue: LSI asks if I will allow returns from bookstores that order my book and find it doesn’t sell. Again, I could refuse returns, but some bookstores will order fewer copies if they know they can't get their money back. LSI charges me for returned books, and when the books are returned, they may be too decrepit for resale.
Shipping / freight isn’t an added expense with LSI, possibly because of their affiliation (?) with Ingram.
So, to get back to retail pricing. If I price FDP at $20, give Ingram the 55% wholesale discount, and deduct the LSI printing charge (which is about $3 for copies printed for Ingram), I get about $6 for every copy sold.
Amazon.com
Amazon’s a slightly different case from brick-and-mortar
bookstores. If Amazon carried every self-published book, and
purchased them directly from the self-publishers, they'd have to hire the
whole population of the state of Washington to track orders and inventory,
and they'd never make a profit. (No, wait ... Hmm.) To avoid dealing with
thousands upon thousands of independent publishers, Amazon requires that a
self-publisher either 1) send copies to the Amazon warehouse and pay a
hefty commission plus a yearly fee (55% plus $30 annually), or 2) have the
book handled by one of the two major book distributors in the U.S.
Since I'm having the book printed by Lightning Source and distributed by Ingram, the book's basic facts (author, title, ISBN, number pages, binding, size) have been uploaded to Amazon's database. (It's there as of 1/10/04. LSI warned me that this process could take 4-6 weeks.) Once the book is on Amazon, I get to tinker with the description to promote sales - adding blurbs, back cover copy, table of contents, etc.
Orders go from Amazon to Ingram to LSI, and ship out from there, with the standard 55% wholesale discount and $3 printing fee, as described above, for a profit of about $6 per copy.
When the book is listed in Amazon’s database, I can also sell copies via the Amazon Marketplace. That means I stock the book and I ship it. The catch is: I can't list the book for more than Amazon's selling it for, and Amazon is substantially discounting it (30% off the $20 list). So if I sell copies via the Marketplace, I get $14 less $3.50 printing cost to LSI, less Amazon's comission of $.99 plus $2.10 (15% of $14), for a profit of $7.40. Amazon charges the customer for shipping and passes that fee on to the Marketplace seller, but it's a minimal fee: enough for postage but not packaging, and certainly not for the time involved in wrapping things properly and hauling them to the Post Office. So I'm planning to let Amazon do the selling and shipping.
For more details on sales through Amazon, go to their home page and scroll down to the “Make Money” section on the left side of the home page, then Associates, then Publishers & Vendors.
Other expenses involved in self-publishing: websites, advertising, permissions, ISBN numbers, taxes
- Website, to promote the book. If you'll be including lots of photos, you'll need 50MB or more of server space. Check the Net for prices and services. I use InteractiveOnLine.net, which has been very reliable, and was (when I signed up a year or more ago) very competitive. I originally used MSWord to lay out my website. MSWord is a great word-processing program, but for website design it was incredibly frustrating. I now use MS FrontPage ($180), which handles pictures and links and everything else you can think of much, much better. It's the one piece of software I own that paid for itself, in time saved, within a month. ALSO: If you plan to take orders on your website, sign up for a PayPal account, so you can accept credit cards.
- Advertising online or in print media. Costs vary so widely there's no point listing them here.
- Permissions: As a self-publisher I’m responsible for getting permission to use any copyrighted material that appears in FDP. If the copyright holder wants payment, I’m responsible for paying. In one case the proposed permission cost was so high that I simply cut the FDP chapter that covered the sculpture. Fortunately most of the artists I've dealt with have just asked for complimentary copies of the finished book. If you’re using anything you suspect may be under copyright, look up “public domain” on Google and try to sort out the rules. If the text or picture dates to 1923 or later, you’d better check its status.
- ISBN numbers: packet of 10 from Bowker (http://bowkerlink.com/corrections/common/home.asp) costs $240. (You can't buy just one.) Very few bookstores will carry a book without the ISBN and the bar code for price scans that's built around the ISBN. Bowker will give you a list of online sites that will generate a barcode graphic for you if you tell them the book's ISBN and retail price; cost for the graphic is $10-$20. LSI generated the barcode for the forthcoming edition of FDP without a separate charge.
- Taxes: As a resident of New York City, I’m required to apply for a Certificate of Authority to collect taxes, and then to collect taxes on any items shipped within New York State, and to submit a quarterly report to New York State. I'm responsible for this even if I don’t happen to sell any books to New Yorkers for a given quarter.
Ebooks:
Microsoft Reader,
Adobe,
Palm,
Distribution
An ebook is a lot cheaper to produce than a printed
one, and the overhead’s a lot lower. On the other hand, far fewer people
(me included) enjoy curling up in front of a computer to read. But
Forgotten Delights: The Producers is about outdoor sculpture in
Manhattan, and Manhattan probably has the highest per-capita ownership
of PDAs in the world (unless Tokyo beats us?), so I will be issuing FDP in ebook formats as
well as printed.
The main programs for ebooks are Microsoft Reader, Adobe and Palm. The software for reading all three of these types are free for the downloading. Advantages and disadvantages, procedures and problems:
1. Microsoft Reader: To create an ebook, you download a free plug-in for Microsoft Word from the Microsoft website. Once you’ve installed it, the MSReader icon appears on the tool bar. Click it and the document you have open will be converted to an MSReader document (a .LIT file) in less time than it takes you to make a cup of tea. This is one of the few things in self-publishing that was infinitely easier than I'd imagined.
I simplified the layout of FDP for MS Reader ebook format, so that the sidebars and the photos didn’t interrupt the flow of the different sections of text. I also inserted color photos rather than B&W, but reduced the image size to the web-ready option in Microsoft Picture It! 2000 – just so the ebook file wouldn’t be enormous. And I assigned the styles “Heading 1” and “Heading 2” to chapter titles and subheads so that Word could automatically generate a table of contents.
2. An Adobe PDF file can be read by Acrobat Reader as an ebook, although it’s easier if it’s a “tagged PDF file” (an option you choose when converting the document). The advantage of the Adobe file is that the layout is maintained. Also, a reader can click on an image and enlarge it, which can’t be done in MSReader. For a book that relies heavily on photos, as FDP does, that’s important. On the other hand, I figure anyone reading it on a PDA is reading it there because he’s walking to see the sculptures, so why does he need to see enlarged photos? And if he’s reading it on a home computer, he can look at the CD-ROM of supplementary photos that comes with FDP.
The PDF file of FDP's text that I sent to LSI would make an ideal ebook for reading on a desktop, but not for reading on a PDA, whose screen is a mere 3 x 2 inches. I’ll probably convert the simplified file that I made for the MSReader ebook into a PDF that can be read on a PDA.
3. Palm (.PDB files): It’s possible to create a Palm ebook from scratch, but you have to go through the text and add “Palm Mark-Up Language” (PML) for an incredible number of things – like doing HTML for the web before the programs were written to do all that invisibly. A $30 program called Palm Ebook Studio will add the PML for you, but if you want the option of protecting the final product so it can’t be copied or altered, the commercial version of the program costs $130. Since Palm handhelds can be programmed to read Adobe files, I’m not sure conversion to PDB format is necessary. Hence conversion to Palm format is low priority on my ebook list.
Distribution of ebooks
You’ll need ISBN numbers or some sort of unique ID
number for your ebooks as well as your printed books, if you're planning
to distribute through major retailers.
If you want to sell copies of your ebook yourself, you can collect money and send the ebook out as an attachment. Since people ordering downloads aren’t very patient (at least, I’m not), you’d have to be around to acknowledge receipt and send the file, or you’d have to somehow set things up so the customer can download as soon as his payment’s cleared. This is beyond my skills as a website programmer: you’re on your own.
If you want to sell your ebooks via Amazon, be aware that they don’t store the ebooks they offer for sale on their own computers. They take the customer’s payment and send him to LSI’s site to download the ebook. To distribute ebooks via Amazon, I’ve signed yet another agreement with LSI. Again, I set the price and the wholesale discount. (55% is recommended, as for printed books.) The 55% discount is the only expense for ebooks sold via LSI, so if I set the price at $20, I'd get $9.00.
I also (via LSI) set the encryption: who can open the ebook, whether it can be copied, whether a password is necessary to open it, etc. When I’m ready to distribute each format of ebook, I’ll upload to LSI, they’ll do the encryption, send it out via the Ingram distribution list, and eventually it’ll show up on Amazon.
I haven’t checked into selling the ebook format on other sites than Amazon. If I get useful info, I’ll post it here later.
Recommended readings
William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. Extremely useful
ideas for making your writing more attractive to readers: working on the
leading paragraphs, pulling the reader from one paragraph to the next,
etc.
Ayn Rand, The Art of Nonfiction, A Guide for Writers and Readers.
Leonard Peikoff, "Objective Communication." Taped lecture course available through www.AynRandBookstore.com
Robert McKee, Story. Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. Aimed at fiction writers, but nonfiction writers can learn something about structure and pacing.
Lilyan Wilder, Seven Steps to Fearless Speaking. Of the dozen or so books I found on Barnes & Noble’s shelves, this looked like the best combination of practical and theoretical advice on public speaking. I found particularly useful Wilder's emphasis on making and keeping a connection with the audience, by keeping focused on the point you want this particular audience to retain on this particular occasion.
I never sit down to edit
without:
Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus.
Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary of Synonyms.
Correction as of October 2007: I never sit down without the Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus, a dictionary combined with a thesaurus, which allows me to check nuances and etymologies. The synonyms are sorted according to the dictionary definitions, not listed in one long alphabetical list like Roget's.
And for
marketing:
Levinson, Frishman & Larsen, Guerrilla
Marketing for Writers. Not the best organized book, but full of
interesting and thought-provoking ideas for getting the word out about
your writing.
Vast array of articles (of varying quality); some of the suggestions can certainly be adapted for whatever project you have in mind: http://celebratelove.com/articles2.htm.
CD with
350 JPGs of New York City
architecture
$15 including shipping and handling (within the U.S.)
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