A Flowchart For Diagnosing Self Publishing ProblemsCopyright 2007 by Morris Rosenthal -All Rights Reserved contact info |
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This is the first draft of my flowchart for self diagnosing problems with
self publishing. It's based on my large correspondence with self publishers
over the last five years.
Warning! Consult with spouse or legal guardian before self publishing. Do not mortgage your house, run up credit card debt or "invest" money you need to pay the bills or buy food next month. |
Starting a Self Publishing Company
Copyright 2007 by Morris Rosenthal All Rights Reserved
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Click on diamond symbols for verbose
explanation then return to flowchart
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Note that these steps correspond with decision points on the flowchart and are reached directly by clicking on the diamond symbols. The text below cannot be read sequentially.
Researched market? No matter what you write, no matter how good you write it, if there's no market for your book, publishing it isn't good business decision. There are plenty of reasons people have for publishing books they don't expect to make money on, but this diagnostic doesn't apply to hobby or movement publishing. If you are going into self publishing in order to earn a living, the first step is market research. Even before you get worried about business infrastructure, ISBN numbers, publishing software, taxes or a marketing platform, you have to determine if a market exists for the book you want to write.
Book Written? If you've already written the book without doing any market research, there's a good chance you're writing fiction, poetry or memoir. These books are the least suitable for the self publishing business model, and therefore, many authors who are otherwise pretty sharp manage to avoid thinking about the business side until the book is written. It's also common for authors to turn to self publishing only when every trade publisher in the country has turned down the manuscript. While being turned down by trade publisher is hardly the seal of doom, it's not a positive indicator either. If you haven't written the book yet, stop, do your market research, and start building a platform suited to helping you promote your book to the relevant market. That may mean a website, it may mean building up your professional credentials, it may mean making 10,000 "friends" on MySpace. I'd suggest reading Steve Weber's Book "Plug Your Book" about social networking.
Signed w/ subsidy? Paying a subsidy or vanity press to publish your book is not self publishing. They are the publisher, you are the author who paid to have a book published. There's nothing wrong with that, especially if you are publishing a book that doesn't have a market in any case, but I hope you read the contract first. If you sign with a subsidy publisher and only get serious about self publishing afterwards, you may find that you've signed away the rights to your book, you've literally paid them to take your rights away for a period of time. If your subsidy publisher is ethical, you'll be able to get out of the contract with a minimum of hassle should you want to actively publish the book yourself or sell out to a trade. Without those options, investing more time in making the book successful for the subsidy publisher doesn't make a lot of sense.
Printed books? If you haven't printed the book yet, it's not too late to stop and go back to market research and platform building. I've written at least two books that I've never published, despite the fact it's a fairly easy and very inexpensive proposition for me to do so at this point. In one instance I didn't like the finished book, in the other, I didn't think I could sell it. In both cases, I didn't see any compelling reason to go out and fail with a book I didn't feel strongly about. The self publishing business has to be about selling books, otherwise it's not a business.
More than a thousand copies? If you've printed more than 1000 copies, you've moved from investing a lot of time into a learning experience to investing substantial cash into a learning experience. There's no "take-back" deal with any printer I know, it's not like buying something at a store that can be returned, or at worst, sold for a discount to another consumer. Books that don't sell usually won't sell at any price. If there's no market for your book, you may as well start looking for ways to give it away with dignity, and maybe get a tax deduction if your accountant approves. If you only published a short run of a hundred or two hundred books, or even just ordered up a few dozen from a POD printer, than you can treat them like sample copies and get back to trying to succeed without worrying about a garage full of books. I spent around $1500 giving books away one year, getting them out of the attic and into the hands of institutions where they may actually be read. Some of the best good money I've ever thrown after bad:-)
Distribution Deal? - Since you've printed books, you'll want to make sure that any potential customers will be able to order them with a minimum amount of stumbling blocks. The way most small publishers get their books into warehouses is by signing a distribution deal. There are all kinds of book distributors out there, but if you haven't signed up with one yet, I'd recommend trying to go without. Book distributors take a huge chunk of your gross, frequently go belly-up with your money, often have large print run requirements, and don't always push your book into stores. You can go direct with Amazon, apply to the Barnes&Noble small press program, and focus on selling books direct your first time out. The PMA (Publisher's Marketing Association) usually has some sort of sweetheart distribution deal available to members who don't have a conflicting distribution deal, since distribution deals are often exclusive.
Is book selling? If the book is selling to your expectations (or better), you don't have any need for this diagnostic flowchart, unless you're a hard-hearted fellow who likes to chuckle at the misery of the majority of self publishers who haven't gotten it right yet. Go on, write another book, find out if your first success was due to doing something right or dumb luck. Most self publishers who succeed with two titles in a row go on to write the nest title about self publishing. Some don't wait for the second title, some don't even wait for the first. In any case, make sure that the books are selling through, not just sitting i the distributor warehouse or store shelves, because you could get them all back. The easiest way to determine sell-through is with a Nielsen BookScan report, they sell them for single ISBN numbers to authors and small publishers on request for $85, but don't rush into buying a report until you need it.
Sales estimate over 10,000 copies per year? If you did your market research and came to the conclusion that you'll sell over 10,000 copies a year, 99% of the time you'll find you made a mistake somewhere. Did you confuse the number of people who might buy the book with the number of people who are likely to buy the book? Did you write a book about Massachusetts and figure on a 1% sell through, ie, six million citizens means 60,000 sales? Market research is primarily focused on how competing books are selling, because anything else is just whistling in the dark. If you can't find any competing books, there's a good chance that there's either no market or that you aren't a very good researcher. Get an opinion from a disinterested third party.
First book? Is this your first book, the first time you've done market research? Better do it again, and read up on the kind of research other publishers do. The problem with doing anything for the first time is the lack of a frame of reference. Without any experience, it's difficult to know how far to go or what consists of a serious effort. It's not easy for most new publishers to differentiate between good advice and bad advice, since bad advice may sound reasonable, even superior, to the gritty truth. Don't trust advice from anybody who you can't check up on, see their track record in publishing. Ignore advice from people trying to sell you their services, there's an obvious bias there:-)
Other books sell? If the other books you've self published didn't sell, that's a strong indication you aren't doing your market research properly. By the time a publisher gets to their third or fourth book, they've probably worked out the production value issues through ongoing criticism, have discovered the value of editors and proofreaders, of hiring a professional designer where there own skills aren't sufficient, and learned something about marketing. The one thing a self publisher with a string of market failures is likely to be ignoring is that horrible research into whether or not there's a market for the titles being written
New book same subject? There's probably no more of a "sure thing" in publishing than publishing a new title that's closely related in some way to a title you've already published and succeeded with. It's not a guarantee, but it's as close as you'll ever come to understanding the market dynamics for a title before publishing it. If the book is on a new subject, go back and do your market research again, because the things you :"know" about the book market may turn out to be entirely specific to your previous title. It's like the old carpenter's saw, "measure twice, cut once."
Lightning Source POD? Lightning Source is currently the best way I know for small publishers to kill two birds (Ingram and Amazon) with one shot. If you aren't publishing with Lightning Source but you want to use POD to avoid inventory issues, I'd suggest looking into Amazon's Booksurge first, and Baker&Taylor's Replica second. While Replica does have an Amazon deal, their B&T network isn't as useful as the Ingram connection you get with Lightning, and probably doesn't offset the advantages that Amazon is in the process of rolling out for Booksurge customers. If you plan on printing offset, I'd look into direct relationships with Amazon and Barnes&Noble before signing up with an exclusive distributor who won't extend your real reach much beyond those retailers in most cases. It depends greatly on the title and the market. If you're willing to bet on selling primarily through Amazon, read Aaron Shepard's "Aiming at Amazon."
55% discount, returns? If you're using Lighting Source with the short discount model, you've.chosen to minimize your risks and maximize the profits on the books you sell. If your heart is entirely set on breaking into Barnes&Noble and Borders for shelve stocking and you consider your efforts a failure if you can't achieve it, regardless of cost, than a 55% discount and accepting returns offers you the best chance of achieving that goal. It's also a reasonable decision for a new publisher who is simply testing the waters with a new concept or title and wants to give the books the best chance of maximizing sales to determine the potential, again without necessarily caring about the bottom line. A 55% discount, with or without returns, is also common for trade publisher shifting their backlist to POD.
Earn a living? The litmus test for self publishing isn't whether or not you're getting rich, it's whether or not you can earn a living. If you're on your first book and you're already earning a living, you're doing a lot better than I did. Most self publishers will find that they need several successful titles to provide a steady income, though it's not unusual for one title to provide an outsize share, even more than half of the total. It's always nice to be a little diversified as well, so a single new competitor or a single change in the market won't have you back looking for a salary job:-)
