Don't Make Assumptions—Ask Questions

For many novice authors, self-publishing can seem a daunting venture. It involves plunging yourself into an industry that you probably know very little about, and can result in expensive and time-consuming mistakes. The good new is that most of these mistakes can be easily avoided if you educate yourself before and during the process.

As a book editor and designer, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard authors shamefully admit: “I'm new at this...I’ve never done this before.” Of course you haven’t. Believe it or not, this doesn’t come as a surprise to me. Almost all the authors we publish are in the same boat—most are rookies. The good news is the learning curve can only go up.

One piece of advice I’d like to give new authors is this: Watch your assumptions. As a matter of fact, don’t assume anything. Ask questions. Remember, this is all new to you, and your publisher understands this. They don’t mind answering your questions and would prefer this to having misunderstandings later on down the line. There are many things that new authors assume, and in almost all cases, their assumptions are wrong. Here are just a few:

1. Don’t assume that you know how to prepare your manuscript so that it is in a format that can be easily understood by your book designer. Instead, ask your designer what they need. For example, I often get books that have block text on nearly every page. Block text is an excerpt of text that is set apart from the regular body text by larger margins and often smaller type. If an author wants these types of excerpts in their book, they need to format their book so that it is evident to the designer. If you are unsure about how to do this, ask your designer how they would like you to communicate this in your manuscript. Whatever you do, do not try to make text look like block text by pushing the tab button on the left side of the margin and the return button on the right side. This will only create a headache for your designer and will likely cause additional labor charges to you when all of these tabs and returns have to be taken out.

2. Don’t assume that you know how to send images to your publisher. Images can be tricky and often need to be a certain resolution in order to be book quality. Find out what these specifications are and how you need to send the images. Make sure that you indicate inside the manuscript where the images need to be placed and include captions for the images. Also understand that space constraints in book layout change after taking your manuscript from a 8.5x11-inch Word page format into a 6x9 InDesign format. That picture of Uncle Henry may no longer fit between paragraph five and six because paragraph five is now near the bottom of a page. Be flexible.

And while we’re on the subject, remember that published books are commercial items. You can’t “borrow” images you find off the Internet and use them without permission. In most cases, these images are at a low resolution anyway. If you didn’t purchase the image with permission to use it for commercial use, or you didn’t create the image yourself, then don’t use it. It’s against copyright law.

3. Don’t assume that all books are the same. What I mean by this is, don’t compare the price of your self-published, print-on-demand book with the mass-market paperbacks you see at the grocery store or in Barnes and Noble. They are two different animals. Mass-market paperbacks are printed on offset printers churning out thousands at a time. Print-on-demand (POD) books are printed on digital printers as they are ordered. The paperbacks at the grocery store will naturally cost less because of the volume involved in the printing process. But let's face it, not everyone can afford to print thousands and thousands of books at a time and then have the market appeal to sell them at the grocery store. POD technology is far superior for self-published authors, but does have some trade-offs. Because POD books are printed in small volume, some of the printing costs will go into the retail price of the book. Because of this, they will be more expensive at the retail end. However, the good news is many of the books sold online will also be POD and therefore comparable in price to your book.

That’s probably enough assumption "no-nos" for one blog post. If any of you bloggers would like to add to them, please feel free to comment. I’ll keep a running list on my end and will try to update it every now and then.

BusinessWeek Wants You to Get Published

This just in: publishing a book is a smart move for your business. Yesterday, BusinessWeek ran a nice article about how to get a book published to help you grow your business.

To summarize:

1. You could try getting an agent and selling the book to a publisher of business titles.

2. You could publish the book yourself by getting an ISBN and marketing it online.

3. You could use a "transitional" publisher. (This, apparently, is a new way of referring to a "self-publishing service.")

It all sounds so simple!

All sarcasm aside, however, the article is a good introduction to the broad strokes of how book publishing works.

To read the full article, click here.

Internet Domain Name for Your Book

An Internet domain name for your book is a part of some of Wheatmark's book publishing packages, and a question I often hear from authors is, What's it for?

Let me explain.

When you publish your book with Wheatmark, your book will have its web page on the Wheatmark online bookstore, as well as on most major online bookstores. Here is an example of such a bookstore page for the title, Transplanted: A Love Story:

http://www.wheatmark.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=BS&Product_Code=9781587368974

This is quite a long web address, isn't it! At this point, when you set out to market your book, you can either tell people, "Go to Amazon.com or the Wheatmark website and search for the title Transplanted," or you can email them the complete web address to click on.

It doesn't have to be this hard, however.

You see, an Internet domain name for your book can serve as a shortcut that will take your audience straight to the bookstore page selling your book. Generally, the domain name is the same as or is similar to your book's title.

Here's how it works:

Click on transplanted-alovestory.com. You will see that it takes you directly to the same page as the long address above. Now all you have to do is mention the domain name and people will no longer have to search for your book. Print this domain on your bookmarks, postcards, business cards, and add it to your email signature so that everyone you contact knows about your book.

When you get a domain name for your book, it doesn't have to be pointed to your book's page on the Wheatmark bookstore site. You can set it to go to your book's Amazon.com page, or to any other web address.

Another great destination for your domain name is your book's online press kit. When you are targeting the media, you may want to set up a domain name that takes them directly to your electronic media kit. For example, the book Rangers in Combat has an online press kit located at:

http://www.bookflash.com/press_kit/lock/rangers/

The Internet domain www.rangersincombat.com takes you directly to the book's online press kit. Now you can tell journalists: "Go to www.rangersincombat.com to view my press kit."

It's that simple!

The Future of Print-On-Demand

What does the future hold for independent authors? How about access to the same unlimited shelf space—the kind of space that online booksellers like Amazon currently make available to all—only inside physical "bricks-and-mortar" bookstores, instead?

The day hasn't arrived yet, but all signs point to this happening over the next several years. How will this be achieved?

Basically, by installing print-on-demand printers inside bookstores. Then, if a customer wants a book that a store hasn't got in stock—presto! they'll just print out a copy for you.

Currently, print-on-demand printers take up a lot of space (think "the whole room") but engineers are hard at work "miniaturizing" the machines for retail space.

That means that one day in the relatively near future, any book ever published will be available to any bookstore visitor instantly—or at least, in the time it takes to drink a cappuccino while they're waiting for it to be printed.

The ramifications of this are enormous for independent authors and small presses competing with big publishing houses for retail space.

For more on these ramifications, check out the article at the following link by clicking here.

Book Marketing & Social Networking

One of the latest Internet trends we've been following closely at Wheatmark is the use of social networking sites to market books.

Sites like MySpace, Facebook, and numerous others have been touted everywhere as The Next Big Thing for selling books.

The problem, in my opinion, is that nobody's ever figured out how to generate sales on these sites—not even the companies themselves (Facebook, which is currently valued at something like 15 billion dollars [according to a segment on 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago] has never made much in the way of revenue, and every time they try, their audience revolts).

This phenomenon (social networking sites not delivering sales) reminds me a little of attending a writer's conference last year. Many independent authors purchase booths at writer's conferences and try to sell their books to conference attendees.

The problem with this approach is that pretty much all the attendees of the conference are other writers—each who's selling his/her own book and/or attending seminars about how to write and/or market books.

So if I were trying to sell a book about how to market books, a conference would be a great place to have a booth. However, if I were selling a book about tulips, a writer's conference would not be the best place for me to go. I'd be better off at a garden show, probably.

Of course, I'd love nothing more than to be proven wrong. Have you been successful using social networking sites to market a book? Please leave us a comment below telling us about your experience.

To read about the latest self-publishing service/social networking partnership in the industry, click here.

Bookstore Chain Goes "Long Tail"

Borders has announced that it's bringing the "Long Tail" of publishing into its stores, the first being a reworked 28,000-square-foot outlet in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The article notes that the new store concept centers around a "Digital Center" that will "enable customers to download books, burn CDs, self-publish their own books and research their family background."

I received a press release that gave me a little more insight into what the "self-publishing" part refers to: Borders has partnered with Lulu.com to provide kiosks in their stores for self-publishing.

I couldn't figure out exactly what that means, but I'm guessing that customers can upload files to Lulu's site, then order copies of the book to be picked up at the store at a later date.

I'll keep an eye out for further details, but it certain seems that—if nothing else—independent authors are going to play a major role in 21st century bookstores.

A final note: I wonder how this move will affect Borders' relationship with its customer-authors? Barnes and Noble had a terrible problem regarding the customer service involved with this kind of relationship when it was a part-owner of iUniverse, another self-publishing service (customers kept asking when their books would be carried on B & N bookstore shelves; the answer almost always disappointed them).

The problems were so severe, apparently, that they eventually led to B & N severing its relationship with iUniverse altogether last year.

I guess Borders—a bookseller whose financial problems have been well-reported over the last few years (in large part because they completely missed the boat on online bookselling)—has decided that the possible rewards are worth the risks.

To read the full article, click here.

People Everywhere Shopping Online, Buying Books

Wondering just how big the market for book sales on the Web is?

A just-released Nielsen Global Online Survey reports that more than 85% of the world's online population has used the Internet to make a purchase. That's a 40% increase in just the past two years.

What are all these people buying?

You guessed it—books. According to the survey:

1. 55% of German shoppers said they had purchased books online in the previous month

2. 45% of shoppers in the U. K. had bought books online

3. 38% of American shoppers had bought books.

Worldwide, more people shop for books online than for any other product or service: a whopping 41% of people had purchased books via the internet in the last three months.

To read the Center for Media Research's report, peel your eyes away from Amazon for a few minutes and click here!

A New Era in Book Publishing

As president of the Arizona Book Publishing Association, www.azbookpub.com, for the last two and a half years, and as head of the self-publishing firm Wheatmark, www.wheatmark.com, for the last eight years, I’ve talked to hundreds of publishers and authors, and read countless articles and studies on the publishing industry. This experience has made it clear to me that a significant transition is taking place in the book publishing industry. The era of the major publisher and the bestseller is ending, and the era of the independent publisher and the micro market is beginning.

Major publishers’ titles account for an ever decreasing portion of overall book sales in the United States, while independent publishers’ titles and self-published titles account for an ever increasing portion. Similarly, bestsellers constitute an ever smaller portion of the total publishing pie, while books selling in the few thousands or hundreds account for an ever larger portion.

This shift is the result of the advent of two major new technologies: the Internet and inexpensive digital short-run printing.

The Internet contributes to this change by allowing for infinite virtual shelf space for books online. Major publishers’ business models are built around the assumption that there is a limited amount of shelf space in bookstores. Major publishers compete vigorously with one another for this finite shelf space. In their worldview the publisher that gets its books placed in the bookstores wins, the publisher that doesn’t loses. This has, over the years, resulted in publishers making major financial concessions to bookstores and bookstore chains, including low list prices, huge discounts, 100% returnability, and high prices for premium in-store placements. The result: bookstores and bookstore chains have become the least lucrative place for publishers to sell books. Happily, thanks to the Internet, independent publishers and self-publishing authors are no longer limited to the shelves of brick-and-mortar bookstores. Even self-publishing authors with only one title can sell directly to readers. Major online bookstores like Amazon.com can carry every title that every brick-and-mortar bookstore carries plus every title any publisher or self-publishing service publishes.

Inexpensive digital short run printing technology contributes to the change in the publishing landscape by allowing publishers to publish more titles, and by allowing more authors to self-publish. Major publishers’ business models are built around the assumption that all print runs need to be fair-sized and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Major publishers, therefore, eschew books appealing to small or micro markets for fear that they will be stuck with unsold inventory. Thanks to digital short run printing technology, publishers can now afford to publish more titles in shorter incremental runs without this risk, and more authors can afford to self-publish.

Independent publishers and self-publishing authors can profitably publish books that appeal to micro markets however small or geographically dispersed. And they’re doing it – the number of books published has skyrocketed in recent years. And, there is evidence that book buyers are changing their buying habits as a result of having a broader range of choices. The number of weeks the average bestselling novel remains on the bestseller list has declined precipitously in recent years. Just as big hits are becoming less frequent and less “big” in the film, television, and music industries, so bestsellers are taking up an ever dwindling portion of the total book publishing pie. Bad news for the major publishers. Good news for the little guy.