The Scoop on Self-publishing

by Catherine MacCoun

I used to discourage my clients from self-publishing, for until rather recently, it had a terrible reputation. As the last refuge of rejected authors, “vanity publishing” was tantamount to an admission that a book wasn’t any good. Now the picture is changing. With the advent of on-demand printing, both the hassles and the cost of self-publishing have been greatly reduced, while online booksellers have helped to solve the problem of distribution. More and more authors are choosing to self-publish because they want to, not because they have to. As a result, traditional publishers are beginning to lose their status as the sole arbiters of quality.
            It remains true that the average self-published book sells far fewer copies than its commercially published equivalent. If you want to make a decent living as an author, traditional publishing is still the way to go. But many authors are not looking to profit directly from sales of a book itself. Instead, they regard a book as a marketing investment: a prop for a publicity campaign to promote whatever it is they do to earn serious money. In the hands of an energetic publicist, a book that sells very few copies can still generate a lot of media buzz and open the way to lucrative opportunities: seminars, speaking gigs, consulting jobs, and so forth.
            Most of my clients fall into this category, and many of them elect to self-publish. Two of them chose to do so despite having been published previously by renowned firms. Having reached what many authors would consider the pinnacle of publishing success, they found the experience a disappointment. It didn’t meet the needs that had driven them to write books in the first place.
            Here’s a quick rundown of the beefs about traditional publishing I hear most often:

1. It’s too slow.
Getting a manuscript accepted can take months, or even years. On average, another year passes between acceptance and actual publication. To business people, this delay in bringing a product to market is unfathomable. Some feel they simply can’t afford the opportunity costs associated with letting a manuscript sit in limbo.

2. The rules are unfair.
Most publishers object to multiple simultaneous submissions. You’re supposed to let your manuscript molder in one slush pile at a time. Until you’ve gotten an answer, you’re left sitting on your hands.

3. The book goes out of print.
Titles that don’t get off to a brisk sales start tend not to be restocked by booksellers, and may go out of print in under a year. Should you wish to reissue an out-of-print title on your own, you have to arrange—and sometimes pay for—a reversion of the rights. This can turn into a major hassle if the publisher has meanwhile folded or been acquired by another company.

4. They want you to have a platform already.
What publishers mean by “platform” is an author’s public visibility prior to the release of a book. They would prefer that the book have a guaranteed audience, which the author has usually built by doing something other than writing. Paris Hilton and Kermit the Frog have platforms. You probably don’t. This causes a chicken-and-egg dilemma for professionals who hope that writing a book will create a platform. No publisher, no platform. No platform, no publisher.

5. Promotion is disappointing.
In an interview on CNN, a very well-known politician once held up a book written by one of my clients and said that every American should read it. You might expect that the publisher would hastily print more copies to meet the surge in demand. They didn’t. When the author called the company to find out why his now famous book was unavailable for purchase, nobody there seemed to recognize his name. While that might be an unusually heinous example, the fact is that publishers do very little to promote the average first-time author. If you want a book tour, you’ll probably have to arrange and pay for it yourself.

Show me the money

Until a few years ago, your self-publishing options were to work through a vanity press or to handle all of the production details yourself. The latter entails finding and paying a copyeditor, a page layout designer, a cover artist, and a printer. You also have to arrange for an ISBN bar code, talk booksellers into stocking your title, figure out where to store the books and how to transport them to the point of purchase. (Two thousand copies doesn’t sound like a lot until the truck rolls up and piles them into your garage.)
            On-demand printers have now dispensed with most of these hassles. If you don’t mind using one of their templates, you pay little or nothing for page and cover design, and the process couldn’t be simpler. Just upload your manuscript file and they do the rest. Your ISBN code and listing with online booksellers are often included in the deal. “On demand” means that copies don’t get printed until they’re ordered, and you can order them one at a time. Thus, your upfront investment is negligible, and you need never get stuck with unsold inventory. The trade-off is that you don’t get the volume discount offered by conventional printers, so your per-copy price is considerably higher. If you’re sure you will sell a lot of copies—and have some place to store them—conventional printing might still be the more economical solution.
            On average, traditional publishers pay the author 7-10% of the cover price in royalties. Given how much they do to delay the book and how little they do to promote it, this strikes most authors as a lousy deal. Regardless of how you go about it, producing the physical book is the least expensive aspect of publishing. Since you’re going to have to invest in promotion no matter how you publish, why not spring for printing as well and pocket all of the profits?
       Sounds like a no-brainer, but there’s a catch. Even if they do nothing at all to promote your book, commercial publishers have the distributive muscle to sell a lot more copies than you could sell on your own. While it’s easy now to get listed with online booksellers like Amazon, self-published titles rarely attain placement in the “brick-and-mortar” stores. Most periodicals decline to review them, and libraries are less likely to buy them. Thus, the average self-published book sells fewer than 1000 copies. If you want to do better than that, you will have to invest heavily in marketing—which pushes your break-even point higher. Sales may go up, but profit will continue to elude you. It’s true that a handful of self-published titles (example: What Color is Your Parachute?) have become phenomenally successful. But the big money for their authors came from subsequent deals with commercial publishers. Without those deals, their books probably could not have achieved bestseller status.
            Oddly enough, the self-published books most likely to earn their authors serious money are not bestsellers at all. They’re titles you and I have probably never heard of. If your book appeals to a very small, select audience--and you know how to reach them--you can make a healthy profit from sales too modest to interest a commercial publisher. Why? Two reasons. When you know exactly where your readers are (on your mailing list or in your seminars, for example), marketing to them costs little or nothing. Secondly, if these readers are very keen to buy the book and can only obtain it from you, they’ll pay more for it than casual shoppers would. Say you’re the nation’s’ leading expert on risk management for the meat-packing industry. The audience for a book on the subject is so miniscule that no commercial publisher would touch the project. But every member of that audience needs the book, and you have their names and addresses. Sold by direct mail only, at a hefty cover price, the book could yield a handsome profit.

Traditional vs. Self-Publishing at a Glance: A Comparison Chart

Getting into Borders

Naturally, you'd like to see your book in Borders, Barnes & Noble and other major book stores. You probably fantasize seeing a whole stack of your book on the table that displays new titles when you first come in the door. As a customer, you may be used to looking there to see what's knew, or what the bookseller especially recommends.

What you're actually seeing are the titles for which publishers have paid the bookseller a premium display fee. The same is true of books that are shelved with their covers facing outward. Landing a major commercial publisher is no guarantee of such VIP treatment. Most new titles go immediately to the category shelves, where they are displayed spine out. Titles that haven't sold well in the first two months are usually not restocked.

The small press alternative

Small presses are, for the most part, traditional publishers with low budgets and high standards. If anything, they’re more selective than the big name companies. To promote  literary excellence is often their very reason for being. Their advances to authors range from scanty to non-existent. Some even expect authors to foot the bill for part or all of the production costs. On the face of it, this sounds like the worst of both worlds. Yet the authors I know who have published with small presses have been very satisfied with their experience, and would do it again.           

Many publishers themselves are unhappy with the current state of commercial publishing. As more and more of them are bought up by corporate conglomerates, they find themselves under increasing pressure to turn a quick profit. People who went into the business because they love good books feel awful when they have to turn down a worthy but financially risky project. Many of them have struck out on their own to form companies that better reflect their values.

What a good small press lacks in money, it often makes up in effort and care. Some take great pride in the quality of their books as physical objects, lavishing attention on every detail. You’ll have more control over design decisions than you would with a large publisher, and more talented helpers at your disposal than you would as a self-publisher.

Small presses take pride in their authors as well. The head of the company returns your calls, and everyone involved in the project treats you like a VIP. This dedication to quality often pays off in the company’s reputation. Their name on your book reflects well on you, and they take pains to get it into the hands of reviewers who will say good things about it.

Many small presses have banded together to form distribution networks. They do better at getting your book into stores than you could do yourself, and you don’t have to mess with storage or transportation. You’ll probably sell more copies than you would as a self-publisher, but don’t count on earning much from book sales. The financial advantage to you is in the enhanced visibility and prestige that a small but “legitimate” publisher can bring. If your motive for publishing is to make a name for yourself, the small press is an alternative you should seriously consider.