Self publishing used to mean shelling out thousands of dollars for 15 boxes of books that then went mouldy in your garage while you desperately tried to find ways to sell them to unimpressed local bookstores and your (dwindling) circle of friends.
It isn’t like that any more.
Three things have drastically changed the way we self-publish in this decade.
1. Print On Demand (POD) technology
Then
With offset printing (the way most books used to be printed) you had to print at least 4,000 copies to make the per-copy cost bearable. It was an “economies of scale” thing.
Now
Now you can print one book at a time!
A machine a bit like a photocopier on steroids does the whole thing — print, bind, trim. There are various types, and the big companies tend to be very protective of their technology which is why it’s hard to find any videos of them, but you can see a related Espresso Book Machine in action in the video below.
The big publishers are still printing most of their books the old way, because it has advantages for large quantities. But even the big publishers are starting to use POD for some of their backlist… older books that are still selling but in a trickle rather than a flood, and they don’t want to store them.
And POD is fantastic for self-publishers.
Big POD printers include:
- Amazon’s KDP Print (which replaced the previous Createspace)
- Lightning Source
- Ingram Spark (the self-publishing arm of Ingram’s Lightning Source)
- and various others that you can find by googling “print on demand”
The new technology works like this:
- you prepare electronic files containing the cover design and text pages of your book, usually as pdf documents
- you upload these files to a POD printer via the internet
- they get it all set up to run correctly on their machine, and send you a proof copy to check
- you approve the proof and the book is officially “published”
- when a reader buys a copy of your book (usually online) the POD printer prints a copy of it, then mails it to that reader
- the reader holds a normal-looking paperback book in their hands and generally has no idea it wasn’t created the same way all their other books were.
You don’t have to pay for or find places to store “inventory”. Not even one copy if you don’t want to! (Although you probably should at least have a few…)
2. Ebooks
Then
Ebooks as a popular medium are so new that there isn’t really a “then”!
Now
Depending how much time you spend online reading about publishing, and how tech savvy you are, you may or may not be familiar with ebooks.
The Kindle I thought I’d never buy (with my other books beside my bed…)
An ebook is basically an electronic book. It contains the words and sometimes the pictures of a print book, but all contained in an electronic file.
The earliest ebooks were pdf files that people read on their computer, but now there are different file formats which allow the text to reflow to fit the screen of the device that you’re reading it on. That means the reader can make the text as large or as small as they like.
Readers read ebooks:
- on computers
- on tablets like the iPad
- on mobile phones
- on specialised e-reading devices such as the Kindle
(affiliate)
which aim to give a similar feel to the traditional book reading experience but can hold hundreds or even thousands of ebooks without all that weight.
Ebooks are created as a computer file, beginning in a normal word processing program you probably already have such as Microsoft Word or Open Office, or perhaps even a cheap specialised book-writing program such as Scrivener.
From that document, you generate a special ebook file in one of several major formats, either by doing it yourself, or you can pay someone to do it for you and save you having to learn the technology.
The electronic book is then uploaded via the internet to a variety of places that sell such books online, and you are in business.
Ebooks have made self-publishing a novel feasible all of a sudden. Previously, it was a one-in-a-million chance that a self-published novel could take off. Now those odds are much shorter. In the past couple of years, several people have sold millions of novels via self-publishing ebooks, and many more have made more modest but still solid sales. A lot of self-published novelists are now choosing to produce only an ebook, and never a printed version.
With non-fiction books it varies. Some will produce just an ebook, some just a paperback, and some will produce both. It depends on the book and the writer/self-publisher and their readership.
3. Distribution
This is the really really really big one. It has changed everything. Not just levelled the playing field but dug it up and built a jet runway on it. 😉
Then
Big publishers have contracts with distributors, who sell their books on to bookstores (both physical and online stores). Distributors were always “closed doors” to self-publishers, so self-publishers were left trying to persuade individual bookstores to stock their books, or sell them from websites, or by advertising in news media and magazines, or by carting books around the country with them. And then if someone did actually buy the book they needed a way to process the payment and provide a receipt. If someone ordered the book, they had to package it, address it, and take it to the post office.
Now
Online bookstores and even some distributors are now open to self-publishers.
So global giants like Amazon.com will sell your self-published book. Really truly.
Big distributors like Ingram will list your self-published book so that it can become available to a variety of online and physical bookstores.
Why? There is no cost to them under the new system because they don’t have to keep your book in stock in order to sell it. They don’t have to order 100 copies and figure out how to get them back to you if they don’t sell.
This is how it works.
With ebooks:
- the online bookstore sells the book
- they process the payment
- they deliver the book to the reader via the internet
- they send you a cheque (usually once a month, if you’ve sold enough to make it worth writing a cheque).
With POD paperbacks:
- the online bookstore sells the book
- they process the payment
- they print the book if you’ve used their own POD printer, or they order it from the POD printer you’ve chosen
- they post the book to the purchaser
- they send you a cheque (usually once a month as above).
So, what do you think about the new self-publishing? Have you tried it, or are you thinking about trying it? Let me know your comments and questions!
Article © Belinda Pollard 2012
Hi,
I just published a chinese taichi eBook with an eBook store the first time but the people doing taichi want a solid hardcopy on their hands. Where could I find a Print On Demand service so that potential reader of senior age could have the real paper back on their hand.
I use my own isbn.
Thanks for advise.
Hi there, I use ingramspark.com and https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/
Where are you located in the world? Can you access both of these services? Best wishes with your publishing. 🙂
Thanks for response. I am from Hong Kong. Is it the location will increase the mailing cost.?
Yes, it could. Try this tool to see if it helps answer that question: https://myaccount.ingramspark.com/Portal/Tools/ShippingCalculator
And do you have an Amazon account already? If so, you can check how much it costs to get a book delivered to your personal account.
The people who are ordering your books, however, might be in various parts of the world. Print on demand helps you make the book available to them, without having to order lots of copies yourself.
Thanks Belinda again for your kind advice.. If I am correct, they seems not taking any more new account. But one thing, you mean though Amazon does not publish Chinese eBook, they still do the Print On Demand for Chinese book?
I am now trying to read through the IngramSpark.
Regards.
Sorry, I didn’t realise you were publishing in Chinese. KDP (Amazon) doesn’t currently support Chinese. I’m doing some research to find out if IngramSpark does!
According to my own IngramSpark dashboard, Chinese is one of the available languages for me to choose. Have you had any success confirming this? Apparently, printing is available in China via Global Connect print channels. This is where Ingram distributes via partner printing facilities.
To confirm what’s possible for you, it may be worth setting up an IngramSpark account, and then asking via their help-desk exactly what is available to you in your location and language. Best wishes with your book! 🙂
Many of our customers have taken the advantage of our book printing service to test market their books’ sales potential only to re-print the book in larger quantities later on. This is a very popular strategy
I found a small printers in October 2011 to do my first book, he got it out very quickly, but when the summer comes everything takes months, and I have just found out he subs the work out, but won’t tell who he sends it to, so I am now using Createspace, but have not seen their work yet, I now have a PR guy who takes 12% of sales but works very hard for this, he advised me to try Createspace.
I’ve used Createspace and the quality is very good.
I’ve also used Lightning Source, who is the other really big player in print-on-demand. In fact I have two books here by one of my clients, the same book, one copy printed by Lightning Source and the other printed by an offset printer (when the author needed bigger print runs after the book became successful). It’s virtually impossible to tell the two books apart. The quality of digital printing has become that good.
I hope you are delighted with your book when it comes, and I wish you the greatest of success in your publishing career. Thank you so much for sharing what you’ve learned, as it will help others!
I wrote my first book in 2011, treated as if it was my first child, just could not wait to show the world my new creation, had about 200 copies printed, was lucky enough to be able launch the book in two book stores, one in Glasgow and the other Somerset. The feed back was muted and had a few people taking the Michael, about my spelling ability and typo errors, moi thought they were just jealous!!! could they write 85000 words and tell a good story !!!!!!! 18 months later brought out me second book, and was not as excited this time, as sale were very low or non existent, However, this time I got a PR Guy who looked over my first book, OMG it was like being called into the head,masters room he dressed me down for not getting the book proof read, and how stupid I was allowing the printer to check it (HOW RIGHT HE WAS) so I pulled the book, sent it off; paid £500 to be verbally torn apart again, the 400 pages came back with more RED Marks,than I have ever seen on a piece of paper!!!!!! every page had errors!!!! how embarrassing, anyway this lady sorted me out gave advice that the story was quite good and I should keep writing,I have learned my lesson the hard way, don’t give books away, check your work again. & again, put it down walk away for a month and send it off to your Proofreader, she is the only person I trust with my work, as she is not a friend or family member, and she tells the truth (I hope) my third book is on its way to her, and I await a tongue lashing very soon LOL
Nicholas, thank you for sharing your experience! How right you are, we all absolutely must have fresh eyes look over our manuscripts… eyes that are not afraid to be quite honest with us. 😉 I’m glad you’ve found a proofreader you trust.
You might also like to see my set of articles on Beta Readers (click the drop down menu above) who are volunteer critiquers. They are great for whipping your work into shape before you get to the editing or proofreading stage.
And this article shows all the stages of editing that traditional books go through, so it’s handy to get a sense of just how many “tongue lashings” authors get en route to holding a book in their hand! 🙂
https://smallbluedog.com/why-you-shouldnt-ask-beta-readers-to-do-copy-editing.html
Congratulations on compiling all the dos and don’ts about self-publishing in this ever-advancing digital age in a user-friendly way. Your website is an absolute treasure trove of relevant information for the beginner self-publisher.
Thank you for your kind words, Lorraine. I’m so glad you’re finding it helpful. 🙂
I”m a newbie self-publisher on Amazon. I got a review the first day and thought to myself, ‘This could be easy!” Wrong! Still have one review, but three sales – looking good!
I love the notion though. So many of us in the past were knocked back by pubishers who judged us within a couple of minutes of reading our work. When you considet the effort and time that went into writing,then the parceling of manuscripts, and the posting of them, time, money, effort, it was soul-destroying to get the ‘Dear John’ a few weeks later. I’m sure a lot of worthy writing was lost to posterity in the bad old days. Give me ebooks any day.
Welcome to the Brave New World, Maranna! Hope it really works out well for you. For many people, it’s a long slow process, but there can be great satisfaction and even quite a bit of success if you keep working at it. 🙂
Thanks Belinda 🙂