POD- Print on Demand and Publishing

What is POD? Aka Print On Demand?

If You haven’t already done so: read part one here. but don’t forget to come back!

Dollar signs

To POD or not to print

Christelle (my co-author and marketing partner) and I had long discussions about printing a number of copies so that we could feel and touch the product, and to use as a marketing tool. We agreed in principle that we want to do this, but we’re going to first test the appetite for the market using the ebook. That limits our risk and investment outlay.

Developing a media promotion plan

We developed a media promotion plan to work out where we would send announcements of the book launch. This is a living document that we constantly update as we send out information about the ebook or copies of the ebook to be reviewed.

 

gold coins

Setting up an online store was easy

A friend of mine had set recently set up an online store on Facebook. Even here on Living A Life of Writing, there is a Facebook page with a ‘shop now’ it’s simple and easy to do thanks to Facebok.

So when I set up mine, I knew where I had to start. Truly, it was very very easy. All I had to do was follow the logical steps, doing the next thing that the menu indicated was needed, much like setting up a blog. Within a day, the online store was up and running.

Test it first

Then I asked Christelle to test the store and things didn’t go as well as I expected. There are so many things that we, as people who have been conducting transactions online take for granted that new users who are interested in our products may struggle with! So I had to put in some more information, make some small changes, and then we were ready to sell.

We also offer a sample chapter for potential buyers to read.

The big launch event

The launch happened online within our online community and business. I’m happy with the results – while we’re not getting rich off the sales, the ebook has set the foundation for us to grow a strong blacklist of titles which will earn us income for years to come.

Just one promotional event a day

Life carries on after you’ve launched a book, especially if it’s self-published and you don’t have millions of fans waiting with baited breath for it to become available. So we’ve undertaken to do one promotion event per day. This could be writing a blog post like this one, sending an article to a magazine, newspaper or web site, or making a call to a radio show host to ask him to review the book.

In our case, self-publishing is a long-term investment, not a quick money-making scheme, and we expect to see the rewards long after our fingers have stopped being sore from the typing.

Biography

Damaria Senne is a writer based in Johannesburg. She recently co-wrote an ebook with Christelle du Toit entitled:” How to get quoted in the media.” The ebook is available for download at . You can also download a free sample at her online store. Learn more about Damaria at Storypot

Thanks Damaria!  This is great and educational.  I enjoyed it and it gave me tons of new ideas.  It’s always good to have guest bloggers.  Once again thanks to Damaria for sharing her experiences about self-publishing.