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That
leaves you, the author, coming to terms with the reality that you
won’t be able to afford to give up your day job on the royalties
from one book alone. Even if you had a dozen published books, assuming
they had average sales rather than being bestsellers, you would
have to think twice before telling your boss where to stick it and
marching confidently home to your new working environment; your
shed.
Why
not turn the whole thing on its head and put yourself in the position
of publisher as well as author? That way you’ll keep that ninety
per cent as well as your author’s ten per cent. Deals don’t get
much sweeter than that, do they? But, of course, there’s a time
and a financial investment associated with publishing your own book,
and with any investment comes risk. By committing your own cash
to the project you have to be prepared for the possibility that
you will never see that money again.
It’s
something that happens to all mainstream publishers too: not every
title they produce will sell enough copies to earn back their investment.
Publishing is about gambling. Publishers have even been referred
to as ‘bookies with A-levels’. Experience in the book industry is
the only tool available to reduce that risk, and if you’re lacking
in that department then it’s reasonable to say that you’ll have
a better chance of making a profit by betting two months’ wages
on a horse than by publishing a book.
Self-publishing
means that you, the author, pay for and control all aspects of turning
your written words into a format suitable for dissemination amongst
the general public. The format could be a printed and bound book
or an electronic simulation of a book, known as an eBook, which
can be bought and downloaded from the Internet. Whichever format
of book you create, you will be starting a publishing company.
Most
people do this as sole traders, with no legal formalities to worry
about when starting up. Printing isn’t difficult, either – you just
have to pay a printing firm to do it. So why do you need this book
to help you publish your masterpiece? What you do between finishing
the writing of your book and handing it over to a printer can be
the difference between success and failure. Success means a profitable
project that actually results in people reading your work; failure
means you end up with a pallet of books that sits in your garage
gathering dust until you eventually decide to use the unsold copies
as firelighters. Worse still, failure means that hardly anyone reads
your book.
There’s
no point in spending your life savings on publishing a book if no
one buys it. You want people to enjoy your writing, to think of
you as a bona fide author. You want to recoup your investment so
that the exercise doesn’t appear to your friends as folly.
The
self-publishing secrets that can mean the difference between success
and failure will be revealed in this book. How do I know those secrets?
In 1992 I co-founded Britain’s first company to offer all the services
an author needs to publish their own book.
Over
the next decade we ran this self-publishing company alongside our
main publishing business, helping hundreds of authors to become
publishers and producing books for them in all genres, some of which
won awards for self-publishing.
I’ve
watched authors make terrible mistakes in their cover designs which
have cost them dearly in terms of lost sales (they would often insist
on using their own artwork or photo on the cover, no matter how
inappropriate or amateurish). I’ve seen books poorly edited and
full of irrelevant content. But most of all I’ve seen authors who
don’t have the faintest idea how to sell their books when they arrive
on the lorry from the printers.
I’ll
tell you all you need to know about the book trade, how to publicise
your book (for free), and how to sell it both to shops and to customers
directly. You’ll also learn the essentials of page layout, cover
design, editing and ways to ensure your book does not look self-published
– because to a book trade professional, self-published books often
stand out a mile and for all the wrong reasons.
This
guide will provide you with the equivalent of years of experience
in the book industry. The insider tips are crucial in reducing the
level of risk to which your financial investment will be exposed.
I’ll start by explaining how to get your book printed and bound.
Since
publishing a book is an expensive process, it’s necessary also to
explain how to recoup that investment by maximising the number of
copies sold. Furthermore, we’ll be looking at other sources of income
from which publishers can benefit: there are many potential revenue
streams that ownership of copyright text can generate, and most
self-publishers are completely unaware of them.
Download
the eBook
edition now.
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