I really don’t mind if my work is reprinted or used for noncommercial purposes. Every now and then, I hear from someone who’s in a writing group or who is teaching a workshop who wants to hand out my Comic Book Writer’s Guide. I need to revise it, but hey, they’re welcome to it, as long as they’re not charging anyone for it. My only stipulation is that they credit me and reference the URL of my website.

But there are loopholes in this system that allow people to use my work for commercial gain, whether I like it or not. For example, if someone wants to parody a piece of writing I’ve published, they are legally entitled to do so… so long as it’s not longer than the original piece and contains enough original writing that it’s clearly a different piece of work. If someone wants to write a biography about me and use large chunks of text from individual articles on this website, they’re permitted to do so, without my consent, under the “fair use” guidelines. (Here’s a detailed explanation of what those provide.) And if someone wants to take my work, change just enough of it that it’s original, and republish it without attributing me, they’ll probably be able to get away with it under the law, because I have to prove that they actually plagiarized my work in order to stop them from using it. That’s a problem.

And there are flaws, too. Most people who want to read my work will read my website. But what if someone wants to make a copy of an article I wrote and file it away for reference? If my copyright language does not state that they’re allowed to do so, and carries that ominous line, “All Rights Reserved,” they’re violating my copyright. The same is true if someone emails an article to a friend, or copies the article onto their own website in “mirror” fashion, with full attribution, just because they’re concerned that my site might go down and the article might be lost. Even something as benign and useful as the Wayback Machine, which archives the entire Internet, regularly violates the copyright of millions of authors without their knowledge.

To face some of the challenges presented by the information age, some folks got together about six years ago to create a “Creative Commons License” (or CCL) system that would allow writers, musicians, graphic artists, photographers, software developers, and other creative people to distribute rights from their copyrights to individual users through a free licensing system. On the surface, it seems like a really good thing for anyone to use, but it does have its own set of problems. The question I’m going to address today is whether or not a publisher should consider using a CCL for his or her printed work. The answer might surprise you.

Now first of all, let’s be clear on what a CCL is: it’s an addition to an author’s copyright, not a replacement. The purpose of a CCL is to give authors the ability to dictate how their work can be used by others. There are four dimensions of a CCL that can be used in six different combinations. I’d list them myself, but this slide, from the Creative Commons License website, explains it quite succinctly:

This is a slide from “Sharing Creative Works,” a comic that explains the purpose and details of the Creative Commons License. And I’m posting it here under the CCL, for what it’s worth! It’s available at the following URL: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Sharing_Creative_Works

Each of these attributes represent a certain set of guidelines. Attribution means that those who re-use the work have to cite the name of the work’s creator. Noncommercial means that the work can’t be used for money-making purposes (something we’ll discuss more in a moment). ShareAlike means that when derivative works are created, they fall under the same license as the original work. And No Derivatives means that users are not permitted to create derivative works from the original.

In all of these combinations, a work can be copied and re-used on a personal basis. That’s great if you want people to be able to legally copy and distribute your work to friends, but not so great if you want them to pay for every copy made.

For the purposes of publishing, I would say that it would be a rare occasion not to use the “Attribution Noncommercial No Derivatives” model, if a CCL should be used at all. This license would allow users to copy and share the work, which could potentially be of great use to the publisher if it could inspire those reading the copies to make a purchase down the road. From a marketing point of view, using such a license could be a smart move, since it sounds progressive and makes the content freely available to people once the book’s money is made and it’s out of print. The license can always be revoked down the road if needed, and it doesn’t affect reprint rights in the slightest.

If you are publishing nonfiction and you want to get your ideas out to be discussed and applied, I see very little reason not to apply this form of a CCL to your work. Remember, your work can only be copied and shared for personal use (something that’s not likely to happen regularly with a full-length book), and the goodwill you’ll create will likely boost your initial sales. Using the same license for an eBook is less advisable, since it’s more easily copied, but if you are less concerned about money than you are about discourse, you’ll certainly reach a wider audience with an eBook that can be copied and shared with friends… and if your content is good enough, people will pay for it.

If you are publishing fiction, there are fewer incenctives to publish under a CCL. It can be done, and has been done by Cory Doctorow, among others. But I see it more as a publicity tool than anything; something that suits the mindset of a subset of Internet users and inspires them to support the work. But on a grander scale, it can mean seeing even lower returns than the already small amount an author will see on a self-published novel, since people will feel more free to make copies of the work and give it to their friends.

But there’s a dark side to the CCL, and it’s something that bears mentioning. You see, the whole point of using a CCL is to respect the end users of your product and to grant them legal permissions to use your work in what you deem a normal manner. After all, we all know that viral marketing works best with products that can be distributed freely, and we like to believe that consumers will want to pay a fair price for our work, even if it’s after they’ve downloaded it from a friend for free.

While that ideology is nice on the surface, it misunderstands how consumers view products. Price plays an important role in the perception of a product; if a product can be distributed for free, consumers will often assume it’s because that product is inferior and isn’t worth anything. If that product can only be distributed for free under illegal means, consumers are more likely to look into purchasing it first, unless they’re amoral enough that they insist on pirating it no matter how reasonable the product’s cost may be. But the group that will download for free if it’s permitted to do so is exponentially larger than the group that will download for free if it’s not permitted. So why not just make a 99 cent eBook available to those who are willing to pay, and encourage them to recruit their friends to make the purchase as well? That seems just as reasonable to me, and it can be done under the current copyright laws quite easily.

Another aspect of the dark side comes from the meaning of the word “noncommercial use.” Under a CCL, it is technically all right for a user to purchase my product and then post it online for others to use. That user can’t sell the book, but might post it on a webpage where he or she is benefiting from ad revenues or referral links. In my mind, this violates the license. But in his or her mind, the monies being raised might be transferred to an account used strictly to pay hosting fees. It’s a tough problem to work around, and though I can revoke the CCL at any time, I’m going to have a hard time enforcing that without getting attorneys involved.

Conversely, a major media company could see my CCL and, not fully understanding what it means, assume that my work is free to reprint for their own uses. This has happened many, many times with photographs and music, particularly in advertising. In some cases, the work was correctly licensed for this usage, but in one well-known case, a photo of a 16-year old girl was posted by a youth group counselor online using a basic CCL license. Virgin Mobile’s ad firm used the picture in an ad that included some inneundoes that offended the girl, and the whole thing wound up becoming a huge legal mess. From Virgin’s standpoint, they’d done nothing wrong; the picture was licensed for attribution only. But the 16-year-old had a case as well; the picture had been used without her consent, and she’d never signed the standard release that a model might have been asked to sign. Had the picture been fully copywritten, it’s likely such a mess never would have occurred.

What the whole dilemma of a Creative Commons License boils down to is this: do you, as a publisher, want to give away some of the rights you have under standard copyright protection so that others can legally share or modify your work? If so, CCL is a nice option to define your terms to users. If not, you should probably stick with a standard copyright; it’s not a perfect system, but it usually does the job. You can always specify permissions within your copyright for free noncommercial use, and they’re much less likely to be abused.

As a side note, one thing that many small publishers might not realize is that US copyrights that are not registered with the US Copyright Office are extremely hard to defend in court. Any published work, whether it’s set up for CCL or not, should be registered here. Registered copyrights are much easier to defend in court; they’re currently $35 per book. Keep in mind that techniques such as the “poor man’s copyright” — where you mail yourself a manuscript in a sealed envelope, thus procuring a time and date stamp from a government source — do not hold up in court, and they’re no substitute for registering with the US Copyright office.

If you’re still interested in this topic, I’d recommend an article that I found very useful on CCL, by photographer and writer Dan Heller. This article goes into detail about how photographers can game the system and rip people off. It’s an intriguing read, to say the least!

-SJJ

An acquaintance of mine — let’s call him “Donny” — is excited because he just got published, and he’s asking all of his friends to buy his first book so they can support him. Donny’s always wanted to write a fantasy novel, and now he’s achieved that goal — he’s got a 206 page paperback novel available on Amazon.com and in bookstores for $24.95. He keeps telling me that if I buy a copy, he’ll sign it for me.

To which I responded… “Are you nuts?” Because I knew something about Donny’s book that he didn’t…

There are a lot of folks out there who want to get published — in fact, many of the people who visit this site are would-be authors who are frustrated with their inability to get picked up by one of the big trade publishers and who are instead thinking about self-publishing. That’s all good and well; self-publishing is a noble pursuit, and something I encourage, if you can support your efforts with adequate marketing and investment capital. But many writers would rather take the expedient route, and that’s where vanity publishers such as PublishAmerica step in to take advantage of people like my friend Donny.

As I’ve mentioned in several other articles, a publisher can generally be identified by:
1) Owning the ISBN to every book it publishers.
2) Assuming all the costs of production, printing and marketing.
3) Registering its products with the Copyright office.
4) Paying everyone involved for work published.
5) Having access to standard distribution channels within the book industry.

Anyone who claims to be a publisher but does not carry out these five activities probably falls into the category of being a Vanity Publisher or a Print-on-Demand Publisher (also known as a Print-on-Demand Broker). Since these terms have come to have negative connotations, some of these firms will swear up and down that they are not Vanity or POD publishers. But a little bit of research, along with some common sense, can help you not to make the mistake my friend Donny did when he decided to print his book through PublishAmerica, which definitely is a vanity publisher no matter how much its owners deny it.

Now, for those who haven’t read up on this company, here’s how it works. You submit your manuscript to PublishAmerica through the company’s website, and wait for an acceptance letter, which is soon followed by a contract. Once you sign the contract, PublishAmerica puts out a form letter press release announcing that you’ve been signed. In exchange for allowing them to publish your book, you get a $1 advance and two author’s copies. And from what I understand, you’re not allowed to republish your material anywhere else for 7 years. It’s not a good deal for an author, unless you just want your name on the cover of a printed book.

What initially tipped me off in Donny’s case was the fact that his 206 page novel was being sold for $24.95 in paperback. Donny’s excuse for this was that he’s a new author, which means his book will take longer to sell than a book by an established writer, so the publisher has to charge more money to make up for the difference. This makes perfect sense to Donny, because that’s how the publisher probably explained it to him. But think about what he’s saying here — the publisher is telling him that they’re going to charge more for his book because he’s not established? Why would readers pay more to read the work of a brand new author when they could spend a fraction of that $24.95 to read the work of someone well-known?

I told Donny I’d accept a copy of his book for review, and he told me I’d have to buy one if I wanted to read it. “Why can’t you just give me an author’s copy?” I asked. “You should have boxes of them.” But Donny doesn’t — another sign that he’s dealing with a vanity pub. A normal publisher overprints because of economies of scale — you can often print 5,000 books at half the unit price that you’d pay for 1,000 books, and that gives you five times as much product to sell. Often, receiving a set number of author’s copies is a standard part of a writer’s contract with the publisher. But vanity publishers don’t print in large runs, and they know that their clients are going to sell most of their copies to friends, family and co-workers. So, their authors either have to sell every copy of their books that they receive, or give them away at a loss.

Donny also wouldn’t tell me how many copies of his book PublishAmerica printed. At first, I thought it was because he didn’t know, but the more I asked him, the more evasive he got about it. He claims he can’t tell me due to his contract, which is probably untrue, but I have no doubt that he’s been told not to talk about his deal to outside parties. I explained to him that companies like PublishAmerica are known for very small initial print runs (100-500) , and that books after this run will probably be done on a POD basis, which means they’ll be slightly inferior in quality.

Of course, Donny insisted that wouldn’t happen; after all, since the book has an ISBN, you can buy it at Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com! We looked up his book, and sure enough, there it was, listed on Amazon, for $24.95, available for immediate shipping. We called the local B&N and they told us that they don’t carry the book, but that it can be ordered if we know the ISBN. Donny gave me one of those “I told you so” smirks. I asked him how he expected people to buy the book if they had to know his name, the title, or the ISBN just to order it. After all, I explained, PublishAmerica books don’t get reviewed by any reputable sources like Publisher’s Weekly or ALA Booklist. And PublishAmerica doesn’t mail out catalogs or send out sales reps like a trade publisher would. Donny muttered something about word-of-mouth advertising, and told me he was going to be doing lots of signings to promote the book.

“It’s a good book,” he said. “People will want it when they hear about it.”

I wish him luck. But I hope that others won’t fall into the same trap. If you want to be published, do the tried-and-true submission process, even if you get a lot of rejection letters. Or, better yet, if you think you’ve got a good product, self-publish, and reap the rewards on your own. But don’t get locked into an agreement to get some overpriced books printed up just so you can browbeat the people you know into buying them. That’s not what being an author is all about.

Still, don’t take my word for it. Here’s PublishAmerica’s website:

PublishAmerica

Here are some links you can check out if you want to learn more about PublishAmerica from people who have been published by them:

AbsoluteWrite Forums

The Ripoff Report

Wikipedia

Fortunately, there is a starting point…

…and it’s called an International Standard Book Number, or ISBN. These numbers were first established in 1966 as a means of keeping track of commercial books, and they’ve since become the primary identification system for books sold around the world. In the United States, a publisher must obtain ISBNs from R. R. Bowker and register themselves to correspond to their numbers if they want to sell books. The most simple method for determining who the publisher of a book is, then, is to find out who owns the ISBN, or at least who owned it when the book was actually printed and sold.

But this litmus test doesn’t work for everything, and since there are many different types of people and companies involved in the publishing process, it’s probably a good idea to start defining them.

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Author: The creator of a piece of intellectual property. This term is generally related to writing, but the most general definition of “author” means “creator” and applies to anyone who has recorded an idea of any sort. Thus I am the author of this website, Leonardo da Vinci is the author of the Mona Lisa, and God is (presumably) the author of the Ten Commandments, with Moses simply playing the role of secretary.

An author may sell his or her rights to an intellectual property to another party, but originally, the author owns the copyright as well. Copyright does not begin when ideas are published; it begins when they are first recorded. (Remember: at its most basic meaning, “Copyright” simply means “the right to make copies.” An idea must exist in some recorded form to be copied.) But it’s difficult to prove copyright without a published document of some sort, which is likely why many authors get confused about the issue.

Literary Agent: A professional who works on behalf of an author to sell his or her work to prospective publishers. The agent does not purchase the author’s intellectual property or take possession of the copyright or ISBN; the agent simply acts as an intermediary in exchange for a commission, much like a realtor helping a family to sell their house.

Publisher: In the broadest sense, the publisher is the business entity that creates the packaging through which an author’s property can reach an audience. A publisher does not print a book, but it designs, markets and sells it. Generally, the publisher owns the book’s ISBN and design rights. In some cases, the publisher also owns the copyright to the work or even the story’s premise, world and characters.

The title of “published author” carries a mystical connotation among writers, separating the pros from the amateurs. But all the phrase really means is that a writer convinced a business to package his or her work for sale.

Printer: A printer is not a publisher; it’s simply a company contracted to produce books by printing pages and binding them together.

Many people have trouble differentiating the process of printing from the process of publishing, so here’s a practical parallel. Say you’re producing a newsletter for your family’s annual Christmas card, and you create the original document on your computer. The process of creating and finishing that document is similar to publishing; you start from scratch, author, design and create that document, and prepare it for distribution. When you run to your local Kinko’s and run off 50 copies, that’s just like printing. Kinko’s isn’t doing any of the creative work; they don’t own the newsletter or have any input into what it says. They’re just putting ink on paper for you.

That’s a printer. And, like Kinko’s, they usually get no credit for their role in production, because no one really cares who did the printing — they care far more about the quality of the final product.

Print on Demand (POD) Printer: Print On Demand is a relatively new process that involves using laser printers to produce books instead of traditional “offset” printing presses. POD offers publishers the ability to print small quantities of books cheaply, which is useful for publishers who are producing niche or vanity titles. A POD printer is a company that provides this service to publishers; they do not deal with authors.

Print on Demand (POD) Publisher: Also known as a POD Broker, this is a company that offers POD services to authors at a markup. POD publishers often are intermediaries who outsource their printing. These companies are generally considered to be shady operations that take advantage of would-be authors by offering them the chance to be “published,” but forcing them to pay most of the setup fees.

POD Publishers have a reputation for dishonestly, and often charge authors far more than they would pay if they simply self published on their own. They also tend to keep the lion’s share of the profits. POD Publishers almost always retain ISBNs, making it difficult for the authors they contract to reprint the book elsewhere when they realize they’ve been had.

Vanity Publisher: Similar to the POD Publisher, a Vanity Publisher seeks out would-be authors who would like to publish their books, but who don’t have the confidence or the commercial appeal to publish through a major publisher. Vanity Publishers go one step further than POD publishers by requiring the authors to “buy in” to a set number of copies of their book to help cover the costs of printing. Rarely do these books make it beyond the author’s personal circle. Though vanity publishers claim they have ties to distribution networks, they are generally looked down upon by the bulk of the publishing industry.

One scam involves approaching professionals in science or medicine and offering them the chance to be published in books that feature articles from famous or respected people. Though these articles are usually reprints, they are presented as being written for the collection. The author submits an article and “buys in” to the book, assuming that it will one day appear on bookstore shelves. The vanity publisher makes no effort to sell the title and uses the same set of articles to lure in other victims, printing essentially the same book several times, but each with one article by a different would-be author.

Another common scam are the “Who’s Who” books, which tell prospective clients that they will be listed in a prestigious tome alongside other academic or industry leaders. All they need to do is “buy in” to receive their copy. The publisher will usually claim that the book will be registered at the Library of Congress, which makes it sound official, but which actually means nothing since virtually every publisher registers books there.

Self-Publisher: An author who goes into the business of publishing his or her own material, assuming all the costs and responsibilities of a publishing company. The self-publisher owns his or her own ISBNs, registers published titles for copyright protection, and hires contractors for services like printing, cover design, pagination, and editing. Thus a self-publisher is really just a publisher in the early stages of operations. Many self-publishers eventually become small publishers.

Small Publisher (a.k.a. Independent Publisher): A business entity that publishes books, but generally for a small or targeted audience. Small publishers own their own ISBNs and generally contract authors for work. Most publishers are small publishers. The largest small publishers are sometimes called “mid-range publishers.”

Trade Publisher: A term for mass-market publishers like Harcourt, Random House, Thomas-Nelson, Penguin, and so forth. These publishers are generally very large, based (partially or fully) in New York City or London, and well established. Most operate multiple imprints so that they can narrow their marketing efforts for individual lines of books. Trade Publishers usually own all their own ISBNs and design work, but if they are operating imprints, they generally register their ISBNs under their imprints to make it easier to transfer ownership of an imprint’s books should they decide to sell one to another company.

Imprints: Subsidiary publishers that are either owned by a larger company or who have a contractual relationship with a larger publisher. For example, Vertigo is an imprint of DC Comics, but also owned by DC (and parent company Time-Warner). Dabel Brothers Publishing is technically an imprint of Del Rey Books, though the company is independently owned.  The publisher Del Rey Books, which produces sci-fi and fantasy novels, is an imprint of Ballantine books, which is an imprint of Random House. Del Rey Books also has its own imprint, Del Rey Manga.

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If you are looking for a publisher for your book, it’s absolutely vital that you understand the differences between all of these categories, because the publishing industry is filled with predators who are more concerned with making a fast buck than they are with ensuring that your book will make you rich. And I’m not just referring to the obvious bad guys like POD Publishers and Vanity Publishers, either; many authors fall victim to agents, small publishers and trade publishers as well.

One famous example includes Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, who created the character of Superman only to lose him to their publisher due to their lack of business savvy. Siegel & Shuster spent decades bitterly trying to make a living once they were removed from their own creation, until finally, in the 1970s, public outcry led Warner Communications (who had since become the owner of the character) to offer both men a limited pension with benefits.

Another example involves Peter S. Beagle, a writer who is considered by many to be one of the best fantasy writers of all time, made famous by his 1968 title, The Last Unicorn. Beagle has written over a dozen fantasy titles, but he’s spent most of his life working as a freelance copywriter because his fiction has made him very little money (despite its success!). What many people do not realize about Beagle is that he wrote the screenplay for the film J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings back in the 1970s and was ripped off in a big way by producer Saul Zaentz. Beagle has also received very little in the way of licensing monies from other products, including the animated version of The Last Unicorn, due to what seems to have been poor advice from his agents. He’s a successful author with an impressive set of books under his belt, but he’s struggled to put food on his table for most of his life.

Most authors who are taken advantage of by others within the publishing industry never see their work succeed, and thus never find out what might have happened. It can be a sad cycle, and it’s one of the primary reasons I advocate self-publishing over submitting books to a publisher or agent. After all, why put yourself in a position to be taken advantage of when you can make the same amount of money and exercise more control over your book by simply self-publishing?

One argument is that self-publishers don’t gain the level of national exposure that authors who publish through trade publishers do. But that argument isn’t as compelling as it might seem when you consider that self-publishers can always license printings to publishers down the road if a book appears to be commercially successful. What’s more, in doing so, an author can remain true to his or her vision of the text and license the work based on its merits and not on a perceived notion of its commercial viability.

The other is that self-publishing costs money, which many writers do not have. But think about this for a moment. With Print-on-Demand printing as an option, an author’s initial costs can be well under $1500 after purchasing a set of ISBNs, hiring a cover designer, hiring a paginator, and setting up a print run with a POD company. The author can then begin selling the book immediately, and he or she will only need to sell 100-200 copies at cover price to make that initial investment back. These days, $1500 can be easily charged on a credit card. If an author believes in his or her book enough to seek a publisher, why not put their money where their mouth is and shoot for higher returns?

-SJJ

Oh, it can be hard to get published writing the things that you want to write, especially if you’re trying to write fiction. I’ve known people who have written manuscripts and spent years trying to find a publishing company who will give them a chance. Some of them have succeeded, but most of them haven’t. And you know what?

Of those who have, most didn’t get much more out of it than a few cheaply books with their name on the cover.

What a lot of writers fail to understand is that the publishing industry is just like any other entertainment or information industry out there: it’s a business built on exploiting the contributions of others. “Exploit” is not necessarily a bad word; it just means using something to its maximum potential. But the reason it has a negative connotation is because the entity doing the exploiting is benefiting at the expense of the person being exploited. And, in the case of the publishing industry, that usually means that the publisher is taking advantage of its authors.

It doesn’t make sense, really; one would think that the authors, being the creative types who come up with new ideas, should have the upper hand. After all, the publishing industry needs authors to survive; without them, it won’t have anything of value to publish. But the problem is that the supply of would-be authors is much larger than the demand. And publishing companies have money, and connections, and credibility, while most authors do not.

If most writers understood what’s involved in getting published, they probably wouldn’t want to go through with it.

Search the web, and you’ll find tons of articles on “how to get published.” But most of them are just advice on what a writer needs to do to catch a publisher’s attention; they don’t talk about what to expect from a publisher, or how things like advances, payments, and royalties work. That’s partially because it’s impolite to talk about your salary, but it’s because most authors who negotiate these deals themselves are embarrassed to talk about the details, while those who have agents are generally forbidden to because it will lose them leverage in the future.

There’s no standard rate an author gets paid to write, but there are some ranges that tend to show up. From what I’ve pieced together (and I welcome input in the comments section from those who know more), most adult fiction authors get between $5,000 to $25,000 in advance to sell their manuscripts to publishers, with a royalty rate of around 3-5% of cover price sales, paid out quarterly. The advance must be covered by the royalties that roll in before any additional royalties are paid out. So, a book that generates $550,000 in sales for a publisher (a hit title) nets the writer a tidy $2,500 in royalties after the advance, giving the writer a maximum total of $27,500 for a book, plus any additional monies that might trickle in.

Before you get big dollar signs in your eyes, consider that the writer may have spent a year or more on that manuscript, and that $27,500 is on par with a retail assistant manager’s salary. An author would have to sell two or three books per year at this rate to make a comfortable salary, especially once taxes are taken into account. Remember too that this is the maximum the writer could have made, and that he or she likely made more around $15,400 on the sale. And remember that the writer has likely surrendered control of that manuscript to the publisher in the process, which means that he or she cannot go elsewhere for a better deal down the road.

And even if the publisher made, say, $50,000 in sales, which is far more realistic, the author still only gets a paltry $1,500-2,500 in royalties, assuming they aren’t trying to pay off an advance.

See why I said writers get embarrassed?

Publishing can be a crummy system, because it forces the people doing the actual work (the writers) to find a company willing to pay them a small sum to take a big risk. If the risk pays off, the publisher reaps the rewards, and the author gets a small amount of leverage for the next time around. If the risk fails, the publisher can still write all the expenses off on its taxes and recoup some of its losses. But the author loses credibility and has that much harder of a time getting something else published.

That’s why some authors turn to self-publishing. Self-publishing has long had a bad reputation in the publishing industry because it’s synonymous with high cost, low quality books that would-be authors finance out of their own pockets and then sell direct to friends and family. (That’s actually because they’re often lumped in with the “vanity press,” which we’ll discuss in another article.) Publishers often sneer at self published books, as if the books are less credible because they don’t bear the imprint of some company with an office in New York. They tell would-be authors to stay away from self-publishing, and to just keep playing the standard publishing game until they finally find someone who will give them a chance. After all, who doesn’t like rejection letters?

In the old days, I would agree that self-publishing was a risky endeavor. But now that writers have the power of the Internet at their disposal, self-publishing is definitely worth a second look, because it’s entirely possible now to sell a book online directly to customers without having to deal with the hassles of working with a publisher. Here are a few things to consider.

1) Self-published fiction is a hard sell unless you’ve got some amazing hook at your disposal, like being the nephew of the President or something. It’s not impossible to self-publish a novel and sell it directly to readers, but you’re going to need one heck of a promotional strategy. On the positive side, you don’t have to sell that many copies to succeed as a self-publisher of fiction; by selling 4000 copies directly to customers, you could probably match that $15,400 I quoted above. A trade publisher would have to sell more than double that many copies to realize that sort of profit since their expenses are so much higher.

2) Self-published books can be really costly to print since small quantities are generally involved, so it’s better to use a printing on demand service like Lightning Source. I like Lightning Source because they’re owned by Ingram, and they can intercept orders from both Ingram and Baker & Taylor and get them shipped out within days. Better yet, the shipping costs are built into the price. From what I’ve seen, you can expect to pay about $3.50-$4.50 per book for a simple black and white title around 200 pages once you factor in setup fees, but you don’t really have to worry about distribution or returns, so it’s not a bad deal at all.

Sure, you’ll pay less for traditional offset printing if you shop around (as low as $2-3 per book for 500 copies, and $1-2 for 1000 copies of a simple black and white title around 200 pages), but you’ll have to pay for the books up front, you’ll have big setup fees, and you’ll have to store them somewhere and ship them out when they’re ordered. The main difference will be quality, though print on demand books are getting closer and closer to looking exactly like their offset counterparts.

3) One of the nice things about self-publishing is that you can start selling directly to customers through your website. Yes, you have to be a shameless self promoter, and no, you won’t be able to rely on publications like Publisher’s Weekly to review your material if you self-publish. But your chances of getting a one-paragraph review from PW are slim anyhow, and you’ll make a lot more money selling directly to customers. The trick is to give your readers a nice preview of your writing on your site, maybe with some promotional ebooks, guides or short stories that tie into your book in some way. If they love what you give them for free, they’ll likely assume that they’ll get even more out of reading whatever you’ve taken the time to publish!

4) Self-publishers get to be their own bosses, true. But if you’re going to self-publish, think like a businessperson and make some smart decisions. For starters, give your imprint a name, just in case you decide to continue publishing down the road. Make sure you register the domain name, too — it’s only 10 bucks to do it through EasyCGI, and it’s worth having.

If you have a friend who’s an editor, cajole them to edit your book for you. Otherwise, go hire a grad student or an out-of-work English major and have them work cheaply with you to make sure you writing is the best it can be. From there, all you’ll need is someone to paginate the book and someone to design your cover. Unless you have the skill, outsource all of these jobs to cheap but experienced contractors; there are plenty out there.

Morris Rosenthal’s website has some great articles about this topic, as well as book you can order on how to publish print on demand titles. I recommend checking it out!

5) Promote your book wisely once you get it set up; use all the tips I’ve published on this site, and then some. Be careful about public book signings, though; they can be a disaster for a small publisher if they don’t go well. At the very least, have your friends hang out around your booth and talk about how wonderful your book is amongst themselves so you don’t look pathetic and lonely if no one else shows up!

As a final note: I went into self-publishing because I worked with several publishers on the corporate level and found the process agonizing. Many other writers have done the same. Sure, it’s a tough road to walk, but the rewards are worth the trouble. And now that you’re at least open to the idea, keep checking out this website for ideas on how you can make self publishing a profitable venture. You’ll be glad you did!

-SJJ