Self-Publishing Prospects
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
I'm currently hours into researching the fundamental basics of self-publishing, from Print on Demand and eBooks, to the Kindle and iPad. Not to mention marketing and templates and getting documents ready for publication. As you probably guessed, self-publishing is something Advent's considering for CWM.
It's going to take a while to take all the information about self-publishing and POD into account and crunch it down into a course of action. I'm amazed how much the market has become more friendly to self-publishers. It's not just a last resort anymore--some writers are turning down lucrative publishing offers because they know they can make more money in the long run by self-publishing than by going with a traditional publisher.
Of course, this can mean that the self-publisher assumes a lot of risk. He has to market it, edit it, put the cover together himself, or else pay someone to do it for him. The marketing and advertising seem to be the biggest risk, but if he can strategically target specific groups, people, and social networks, it seems likely that he can get at least some return for his product, especially if he's getting the lion's share of the profits.
I'm trying to find the ultimate do-it-yourself, bare-bones, cost-effective self-publishing route. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please let me know!
3 comments:
I self published my book Playoff Time with a Nebraska company called Morris Publishers. They were pretty helpful on describing exactly what they needed and were usually available by phone if I had any questions. The best part was they were affordable, I got my books published with them for half the cost of doing it at a local print shop.
http://www.morrispublishing.com/Default.asp
Thanks, Ian! I appreciate that information. I'm about to post some research I compiled over a couple weeks of intense self-publishing research.
First I just want to say thanks for writing this book! It has a great message and I'm looking forward to reading it.
Since you posted this in March, you've probably decided what you're doing for publishing, but if not, I know I've seen that Barnes & Noble has a self-publishing option (http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home). It looked like they just get a percentage of the money from sales, so I think that would be cost-effective.
Just curious: are you planning to do your own layout?
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