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A New Way to Publish |
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These days, there are several ways to get your book pub-2403258503801684lished. You can get an agent and go the traditional route, you can self-pub-2403258503801684lish, or you can take advantage of a new form of pub-2403258503801684lishing called "print-on-demand" or POD.
What exactly is print-on-demand pub-2403258503801684lishing? Think of it as self-pub-2403258503801684lishing with a twist. It used to be, if you wanted to circumvent the traditional pub-2403258503801684lishing houses, you had to tackle everything from printers to cover designers, ISBNs (International Standard Book Number) to distribution. Feeling dizzy yet? Sure, there were also self-pub-2403258503801684lishing houses called vanity presses. They churned out about 6,000 titles per year and the author paid anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 to pub-2403258503801684lish his or her book. Cost alone was usually enough to discourage anyone who had not spent a great deal of time in the industry. Options were pretty limited, until the Internet explosion occurred.
Enter the on-demand pub-2403258503801684lisher. Now, for a minimal fee (usually from $159 to $1,500), you can see your book in print. Essentially, what you're doing is hiring a pub-2403258503801684lisher to pub-2403258503801684lish your book. They take care of the cover, the book interior, the ISBN, and the distribution. They are compensated for this by receiving a portion of the profits every time you sell a book. You are compensated through royalties and while these do vary, they typically fall somewhere in the 18-20 percent range per book. The great part about POD pub-2403258503801684lishing is that the "on-demand" part enables them to print books as they are needed, meaning that someone (probably you) won't get stuck with a garage full of books you can't get rid of. If you only sell 100 books, that's what they'll print. There are no minimum orders, and your book will always stay in print.
To give you an idea of the scope of the on-demand pub-2403258503801684lishing industry, consider this: the typical big New York pub-2403258503801684lisher prints about eight hundred new titles a year. At last count, some of the print-on-demand pub-2403258503801684lishers were doing five hundred a month. Early estimates indicate that POD pub-2403258503801684lishers printed around half a million books in 2001. This year, there are indications that this industry will hit the $78 billion market. These indicators tell us that the POD industry is growing at a pace no one anticipated. Why? Because the traditional pub-2403258503801684lishing field is narrowing. Only one percent of books pub-2403258503801684lished each year are by unpub-2403258503801684lished authors. Does this low number tell us that there are fewer new authors out there? Absolutely not. What it tells us is that pub-2403258503801684lishing houses are cutting back, merging and no longer willing to take chances on untested material.
The challenge with this industry is that you can't get pub-2403258503801684lished unless you're pub-2403258503801684lished it's a cycle from which we all aspire to escape. Now, we can. If you pub-2403258503801684lish your book through a POD press, you are no longer considered a first-time pub-2403258503801684lished author. That is, if you sell the book. You still have to market your book. But take heart. With shrinking pub-2403258503801684lishing budgets, you have to market your own book, no matter who pub-2403258503801684lishes you. The hefty marketing budgets that used to accompany new releases are dwindling quickly.
So, let's say you pub-2403258503801684lish your book through a POD pub-2403258503801684lisher and you market it. You market it so well that you begin to garner interest from bigger pub-2403258503801684lishing houses. How many books you need to sell is anyone's guess. Traditionally, the range has been between 5,000 and 8,000. Recently, however, Kensington Books (an imprint of Citadel Press) formed an alliance with POD giant iUniverse (www.iuniverse.com) to consider any book that sold over five hundred copies. By "consider," they mean they will consider pub-2403258503801684lishing it. At five hundred copies, this levels the playing field considerably. If you've written a good book and you market it effectively, you'll sell five hundred copies in the blink of an eye.
Publishers I've spoken to at some of the biggest houses in the industry (Time Warner, Simon & Schuster) readily admit they watch these books very carefully to see what's selling. By picking a book that is selling moderately well, the pub-2403258503801684lisher knows two things: the book has found an audience, and the author knows how to market it.
Even if you don't get picked up traditionally, there's still hope. If you sell a reasonable amount of books and you still aspire to a bigger pub-2403258503801684lishing house, you can include this first pub-2403258503801684lishing experience in your query letter.
How do you find these on-demand pub-2403258503801684lishers? A list of some I've worked with follows this article, but who you pick will depend entirely on you and the needs of your book. For some, it's the turnaround time; for others, it's whether or not they can print in hardcover. Generally, though, the final product should be your first consideration; distribution or shipping time should be second. Once you've narrowed your pub-2403258503801684lishers down to two or three, a good idea would be to order a book from each of them. This will tell you two things. First, you'll get a sense for their ordering process and how quickly they ship the book to you, and second, you'll get a firsthand look at the quality of their books.
What about the selection process? Do these pub-2403258503801684lishers accept anything that's sent to them? The answer is no. While the approval process is far less restrictive than traditional pub-2403258503801684lishers and you don't need an agent, some POD pub-2403258503801684lishers still have guidelines as to what they will and won't consider. These guidelines vary from pub-2403258503801684lisher to pub-2403258503801684lisher, so you'll need to check their individual sites or contracts for specifics. Also, some pub-2403258503801684lishers will even read the manuscript to determine the quality; if they feel the work is so poor it's unmarketable, they will turn it down.
While you're in the selection process, download the pub-2403258503801684lishing company's pub-2403258503801684lishing contract and look it over carefully. You'll want to make sure a few things are in place before you sign on the dotted line. First off, be certain you're able to retain all the rights to your book (foreign, film, audio, hard cover, paperback, and ebook). This is extremely important. Never give or sell any of the rights away to a book you're pub-2403258503801684lishing through the POD process. Second, determine how quickly you can cancel this agreement. Ideally, cancellation should be immediate. Cancellation clauses will benefit you if your book should get picked up by a traditional house or if you decide to switch pub-2403258503801684lishing companies.
Your time to market, meaning the time it takes them to format your manuscript into a book and get it ready for sale, will vary. Generally, you should see a completed book within ninety days, or in some cases, even less. This turnaround is incredible when you consider it takes a traditional house about twelve to eighteen months to get a new title ready for sale.
As with anything, there are drawbacks to this form of pub-2403258503801684lishing. One of the biggest issues with print-on-demand is that there is a no-return policy in place for these books. Returns are a crucial part of doing retail business in the U.S. In fact, a whopping 35 percent of merchandise purchased is returned. Still, authors are finding ways around this issue. Some place books in specialty shops because these stores have a lower return factor. Others sell books on-line. Some bookstores will even carry a non-returnable book if the demand exists.
Secondly, this form of printing is more expensive than the traditional trade paperback model. Generally, POD books will be priced higher. Their price is often determined by the page count. As print-on-demand machines become more efficient and the per-page printing costs decline, POD book prices will drop. Many have already decreased considerably from where they were a year ago.
Despite the obstacles, there are many success stories emerging from this industry and many more are finding their way to success everyday. Here are a few titles you might recognize that were (or are) POD books:
· "Legally Blond" (AuthorHouse.com)
· "The Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club" (iUniverse) currently on the New York Times bestseller list
· "The Pearls of the Stone Man" (Xlibris.com) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002
With on-demand pub-2403258503801684lishing, what was once a dream can now be a reality.
In an industry that is saturated with exceptional talent, the advent of these pub-2403258503801684lishers has afforded authors an opportunity that might otherwise not be available to them. It is an opportunity millions are taking advantage of. For some, it's a way to finally see their book in print. For others it's a road to pub-2403258503801684lishing success.
Print-On-Demand Publishers:
http://www.iuniverse.com/
http://www.infinitypub-2403258503801684lishing.com
http://www.traffordpub-2403258503801684lishing.com
http://www.xlibris.com
About the author:
Penny C. Sansevieri
The Cliffhanger was pub-2403258503801684lished in June of 2000. After a strategic marketing campaign it quickly climbed
the ranks at Amazon.com to the ##1 best selling book in San Diego. Her most recent book: No More Rejections. Get Published Today! was released in July of 2002 to rave reviews. Penny is a book marketing and media relations specialist. She also coaches authors on projects, manuscripts and marketing plans and instructs a variety of coursing on pub-2403258503801684lishing and promotion. To learn more about her books or her promotional services, you can visit her web site at www.amarketingexpert.comTo subscribe to her free ezine, send a blank email to: mailto:subscribe@booksbypen.com
Copyright ã 2004 Penny C. Sansevieri
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