If you’ve always wanted to be a published author, but don’t want to wait the years it can take to get an agent and land a publishing contract, or you think you can achieve more profit by selling the books yourself and keeping 100% of the profits, publishing yourself might be a good option for you.
The easiest and most cost effective way to sell book yourself is to go down to Kinkos and have them print and spiral-bind an 8.5 x 11 book. It certainly doesn’t have the look of a professionally published book, but if your work has a waiting audience, people will buy. Any speaker or performing artist knows that the biggest profit margin is to be found in merchandizing. While a gig has travel expenses and lots of time outlay involved, when you sell CDs, books, and tee-shirts, the profits are huge.
If you’re starting on a shoe string, and people like what you have to say and want to bring the live experience home with them, having a printed book to sell is a great idea. Musicians have printed their poetry with nice drawings. How-to speakers have bound up their best ideas in spiral, and promoters of little known herbal remedies have found willing buyers. If the content is good, the public will buy.
The next level up in how to publish book yourself is to use a Print On Demand publisher (or POD). Print on Demand publishers are set up to print small numbers of books at a time. The cost per book is much higher, but the initial outlay is much, much lower. Be aware that many Print on Demand publishers are not just printing services. They are publishers and want to be able to sell the books themselves. Read the fine print carefully.
Once you make enough money to do a larger run, you will want to switch to a “Vanity” publisher – a publishing house where you pay to print, but they are set up to do large runs of the book at a great savings per book. This will help you keep the sales price of your book down. Once again, these vanity publishers are publishers, not just printing services. So read the fine print and make sure that you understand what they want out of the deal.
If you really want to know how to publish book yourself, you need to understand that in order to be a “published” book, (rather than just a printed and bound set of papers), a book needs to have an ISBN number and bar code. Even e-books often have ISBN numbers to give them more credibility and open up additional sales avenues. In order to purchase an ISBN number, you need to register a business name and become a publishing company. This is not hard to do and will allow you to call all the shots.
Having your own book will add to your success as a writer, speaker, teacher, or performance artist. It will give you another item in your product line. It will increase your credibility, and your profits. So what are you waiting for?
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