Self-Publishing? It is A Great Divide? Part 2 of 12
Welcome to all who are new, great to have you here. Feel free to take a look around the various series, and comment on them. Self-Publishing? Okay, now it can be a hot topic or not, but still let’s look at it like all writer do. To help I’ll give an example:
You’re a writer, and you have a book, now It’s a great book, it’s in the first draft, and well, you like to start doing your research as to who might be interested in buying the book. Then you find that your book fits the definition of a niche market, a mid sized niche market, so you could with work sell say between 500-1,500 books. Marketing is sound, and it doesn’t seem like to hard of a goal… what do you do?
In this case consider all your options, you could send it to larger publishers, but with a “small” book such as this, a larger publisher probably will pass on it. So then where to next?
If it was up to me, I would look to the small traditional publishers, with the right query letter and the right personality, most of these will work with you, and possibly want you to work with them, so there is a possibility. I would say though, there would be long hours and plenty of work involved, and not for an instant could you forget your goals. Aming connection in this case is vital.
There is also one that I feel wouldn’t be a benefit to people, the vanity presses, or “subsidized” presses, such as AuhtorHouse, mostly because you’ll be spending more than what you will get back.
Again this is just an example, so my Question for today is this: based on this example, and after some good editing, what would you do?
2 Comments
Becky
It's definately one to research options on.
The main problem I see is that if you go to a small press they probably won't edit it. So either it'll only be edited by you – which should still make it better than the first draft, or you'll have to pay a professional editor yourself. With sales like that making even an investiment on professional editing is going to cut into any money you make severely. But not making the investiment may well cut into actual sales. Swings and roundabouts. If you can find a small press that actually edits books and they want your book then you're quids in – but you're still going to have to do most of the marketing yourself.
Given the very slim margin on this level of sales avoiding the Pod Subsidy Presses seems very wise – and the more they charge the more you should avoid them. Though CreateSpace might be an option for Americans given how inexpensively you can get a book up on Amazon there.
If you're very much a DIY person with a gambling streak and a head for business then genuine POD self-publishing with a short discount via LSI seems a definate option. You'll need to hit the upper level of sales for it to be worth your while (but this is likely true of any of these methods), and you really need to be able to sort out the internal layout yourself. Then there's the cover – a decent cover can cost a pile of pennies.
Offset self-publishing would probably not be economic in a book with such short run. The unit price would be too high.
In the end I'd probably make a spreadsheet and fiddle around with the figures. I'd see how much money I personally was going to have to put in on each option and how much I would get per book. Then I'd pick the option I deemed most likely to at least break even.
Christy Pinheiro
CreateSpace, Lightning Source, or Booksurge. This is the easiest answer for any niche book (non-fiction) you can have it up and running in less than a month on Amazon and selling 50-100 copies per month. I've done this quite successfully for the last two years and I quit my job. Forget bookstores and small publishers (for non-fiction). If you have a "useful" book, you can self-publish and earn all the income yourself. I am working on a book about this particular "niche" market right now. It's a great way to make a respectable living with almost zero out-of-pocket costs. But it only works for non-fiction. I can't imagine doing it with a novel.