Publication Styles: Print on Demand
Posted by childofthehive | Filed under Writing Talk
I’d like to continue my posts of publishing styles by talking about print-on-demand. Technically, this is a style of book production, but it leads to significant differences between traditional publishers and those that offer this type of book production.
The idea of print on demand is that books are printed one at a time as required, rather than as a big print run. This substantially reduces the upfront cost of publishing a book but costs more per individual book published. Because no one has to pay for printing 500 or 1000 or 100000 books before they know if it’s going to be a success, there’s almost no risk involved.
Print on demand has become known through sites like Lulu, where anyone can upload their book, add a cover image and see it on sale on Amazon. This can be a very appealing prospect to writers who’ve just seen a pile of rejection letters come through their letter box. You can be published with minimal effort and no upfront cost.
The main drawback here is that lots of other people also think it’s an appealing prospect. There’s no quality check. There are probably some really good books up on Lulu. Unfortunately, there are also several hundred books that were rejected by traditional publishers with very good reason. Your book will be sitting in that pile. The big retailers, agencies and most of the rest of the publishing industry are unlikely to take you serious with a book published on Lulu simply because they haven’t the time to look through the array of rubbish to find the gems. This is the same problem I mentioned with vanity publishing about the quality check, but with the added disadvantage that the ease of print on demand means you’ll be competing with even more aspiring writers.
You will have to do a lot of leg work marketing your book if you go this route. You’ll have severe difficulty getting it into shops so you’ll have to push and push to stand out from the crowd and you’ll have the label of “print-on-demand” dragging you back as you do so.
Sites like Lulu do provide some of the services around book production, such as cover design, formatting and editorial feedback. But there’s an additional cost to these services. This will still be significantly cheaper than self-publishing or vanity publishing because of the lack of print costs, but if you’re going to pay to have your book produced, I’d suggest looking somewhere other than these sites just to avoid the slush pile. If you go the free entry route, you’re not going to get any of the services that help polish of the rough edges of a manuscript.
That said, print on demand has a place and I’ve even used it myself. It’s brilliant for producing something of small print size for a limited market. I used Lulu to produce a book of quotes for a writing group I was in. Another writing group uses print on demand for their annual anthology, which usually sells between 100 and 200 copies. For this sort of thing, print on demand sites provide a quick, easy and cheap way to produce works for sharing around the group. If you want to produce a calendar with family photos as Christmas presents, or bind your dissertation as a book, then print-on-demand is perfect.
Tags: advice, books, print-on-demand, publishing
Publishing Styles: Self-Publishing
Posted by childofthehive | Filed under Writing Talk
I’ve written about traditional publishing. Now I’m going to jump to the opposite end of the spectrum: self-publishing. Self-publishing is exactly what the name implies. This is where an author publishes their own novel. They pay all the costs from printing as well as the other services required for producing a quality book: editing, proof-reading, type-setting, cover-design, marketing.
There are some major drawbacks to self-publishing. The first is obvious. If you choose to self-publish your novel, you have to cover the entirety of the costs. As well as that, you’re likely to need to find people to do the other tasks. Traditional publishers have experience with proof-readers and editors and so on. Most first-time authors don’t and therefore have difficulty being sure whether they’re getting a good service for their money.
There is another drawback that’s less obvious and that’s credibility. When your novel has been published by a traditional publisher, that means it’s gone through checking stages and someone professional thinks that your book is worth it. It acts like a stamp of approval. Bookshops don’t have time to check the quality of the work they put on their shelves. It’s going to be a lot easier to convince them to stock your book if it’s got a publisher’s name on the cover.
So, with all these drawbacks, why would someone self-publish? One reason would be frustration at the collection of rejection letters from traditional publishers. It can be incredibly difficult to get a publish to even look at your manuscript. Self-publishing skips that difficult stage. Another reason is control. As the author and publisher, you get complete control over the process and make every decision, whether it’s about the type-face or the text to go in the blurb. No one dictates your creative choices.
Some people are extremely successful with self-publishing. But they all have something in common. The authors have to be very good at marketing their own work. If you’re not, all you’ll end up with is boxes of unsold books and a significant drop in your bank balance.
Before your embark down this road, ask yourself seriously; will the book sell? Is the reason that publishers have rejected it simply that it’s not good enough? Are people going to want to buy it? Or should you sit down and write another draft?
You should answer yes to two of those questions. Make sure they’re the right two before you self-publish.
Tags: books, novels, publication, publishing, writing
Publishing Styles: Traditional Publishing
Posted by childofthehive | Filed under Writing Talk
I’m back from a brief holiday which unfortunately led to a gap in posting (the website was lying when it said the hotel would have internet in the rooms) and I’m going to talk about publishing. Specifically, I’m going to talk about publishing of physical books. Over the next few weeks, my Friday posts will give a summary of a different type of publishing along with the benefits and disadvantages.
First off: traditional publishing.
This is what a lot of people think of when they talk about publishing. An author submits a manuscript to a publisher and the publisher says that they’ll publish it. The publisher then takes on the task of editing, proof-reading, typesetting and finally getting the book printed and bound. The publisher pays all the costs and may even give the author an advance.
The book then goes on sale, with the publisher taking most of the profits and the author getting paid a royalty. The term “advance” comes about because the initial payment is an advancement of the money earned in royalties. This means that if the author is given £100,000 as an advance, they won’t get any more payments until the book’s royalties pass that threshold.
The major advantage of this form of publishing is the fact that the publisher pays all the costs. The author can earn money without having to pay a penny towards the costs. The other advantage is less tangible but that’s a sense of credibility. Because the publishing company has to put in such a large investment, they will only do so when they think the book is good and will sell. So having a publisher is a stamp of approval. Book sellers know that a professional organisation has put their money behind your book, so they’re more willing to give your book space on the shelf. Because the publisher has put so much investment into your book, they’re going to need it to be a success, so you’ll usually get some marketing effort behind it as well.
The biggest disadvantage of this style of publishing is the fact that it is incredibly hard, particularly for first time authors. A lot of the major publishers don’t take unsolicited submissions. The places that do get hundreds of submissions. Your manuscript will be in what’s referred to as the “slush pile.” This is the pile of all the submissions that the editor has to look through. Most manuscripts will get a brief glance before being consigned to the rejected pile. It takes a lot of persistence, a lot of care in the writing of your submission and a lot of luck to get your story taken off the slush pile and looked at carefully. Even that doesn’t guarantee you’ll get published.
Having an agent may help get your submission taken notice of, but getting a good agent can be as difficult as finding a publisher.
The other disadvantage of this style is the lack of control. Many publishers will insist on making changes to the book to make it more sellable and authors often find they have little control over things like cover design and blurb.
So, you get a big plus in terms of the money and the marketing but a long and difficult time trying to get your story noticed.
If you go for this style of publishing, be prepared to collect a lot of rejection letters.
Tags: advice, books, publishing, traditional publishing, writing
