Here's how the system actually works: you write a book. Unless your publisher spends large sums of money on marketing and promotions to convince booksellers that you will be a blockbuster, your book remains obscure, often quickly sinking out of view, and few people have a chance to see it, let alone encounter the ideas it contains.
To see the truth of this, go to a Christian bookshop in the UK and find the bargain books section: Being published by the normal route is no guarantee of sales, and sales are not an indicator of quality as some of my bargains from the remainder shelves testify to the gems that get overlooked for whatever reason. It seemed to me that better would it be to publish on demand and sell the book myself as part of my own ministry. That way it stays current and I get more say in it's development. It also means that if it isn't an instant hit, there's less pulping going on, less trees are felled and the footprint of my work is lower.
Of course, you might want a copy yourself ...
Technorati Tags: book, selling, self-publishing
4 comments:
So a year or so down the track, how do you feel about this direction? What is the main thing that really annoyed you about self-publishing? And what one thing was the best part of the experience?
What good questions! I feel that it may have been the right move. After all if I had gone the big-name route, I would only now be having the thing published. I am pretty sure that had it been published by, say, SU or Lion or SPCK, I may have had a few more initial sales but would have seen less profit per copy. It was great to learn about the practicalities and to see the completed product. I had intended to market virally as part of the way that things went and I've learnt things about that too. I would do it again and plan to in due course launch a prayer book -just services and liturgies and prayer ideas like the prayer cord/rosary.
On the downside is the lack of respect that some people have since print-on-demand self publishing is seen by some as vanity publishing. In fact this is a fairly arbitrary distinction since the publishers often get it wrong and publish books that don't sell while some books that are self-published have done well.
Add to this the less waste involved...
Cheers for that.
How did you go about the copyediting bit? Did you "employ" a third party to examine and rework the text?
I did it myself [tho I missed about 3 things -still that compares well with some books I've read that have supposedly been copyedited]. The company I use to print the book do offer a suite of paid for services among which is the proof-read copy edit thing ...
I tend to leave things I've written for a week or two and then when I go back to it I tend to pick up most errors and infelicities. Of course having done so it may be prudent to leave it a few days and recheck the edits ...
Alternatively get friends and relations to read bits with a pencil in hand...
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