And I Have To Write Too? Publicizing Your Book

These days, the publishers’ buzz word is platform, which means that writers have to bring to the table an audience they’ve built up through giving speeches, conducting workshops, writing articles or columns, or having a visible web presence. In short, in addition to doing the writing, editing and marketing, today’s authors now have to sell their books as well. All this in exchange for an often pitifully small advance and the prospect of equally small royalties should their book make back its advance, which most never do. That explains why I often recommend self-publishing to the writers I coach. If you’re going to do all the work anyway, including publicizing your book, why not reap all the profits?

Of course, not everyone who writes feels need to publish professionally. With print on demand (POD) publishing, individuals who want to chronicle their life stories, share their family recipes or create an anthology of their personal poetry can publish just enough copies for friends and family.

However, PODs are not all created equal. When choosing a POD, consider the following:

• Is personalized attention or economy more important? If price is the bottom line, you might want to go with one of the larger PODs, where you fill in a form, follow instructions, hand over your money and get your books. If, on the other hand, you want to be able to talk about the book that you care so much about and control how the book is actually published, a small POD like Incubation Press might make more sense.
• Make sure you understand the deal. Some PODs will print your book, but retain the rights. You want to retain 100 percent of your book’s rights.
• Understand the difference between POD and a vanity or subsidy press. With a subsidy press, you subsidize the full cost to publish your book, but the press actually owns the book. So you wind up settling for a royalty for each book sold (i.e.: a percentage of the profit). Vanity presses generally charge a single, supposedly all inclusive price (usually in the thousands), but often the editing is sketchy and the promised promotion and distribution negligible.
• What are you getting for the money? Print and paper quality varies hugely. In addition to ordering a proof to make sure that your books meet your expectations, educate yourself about paper options. I warn you, they’re confusing. You’ll find my blog entry called Paper Primer in the archives. I hope that helps.

– By Linden Gross

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