wgjones3
06-21-2006, 01:24 AM
Courtesy POD-dy Mouth (http://girlondemand.blogspot.com/2006/06/guest-blogger-chris-meeks-discusses.html) (a.k.a. girlondemand):
Print-On-Demand Books: A Guide to How to Get Your Book to
More Than Just Friends and Family
By Christopher Meeks
Many serious writers get frustrated with agents and publishers who send anonymous poker-card-sized rejection slips that state the enclosed work “is not appropriate at this time.” Oh, yeah? When’s it appropriate? Without helpful feedback or an idea of where to turn next, many writers have turned to Print-on-Demand (POD), which is the focus of this whole website.
Such companies as AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Xlibris, and Lulu Press make it fairly simple to upload the text of your book, get help with graphic design and distribution, and turn your dream into a real bound book. What POD offers over the old vanity presses is you can be published without needing to spend a lot of money or fill your garage with copies. The cost is anywhere between $200 and $2500, depending how crafted you want to make your book. Your book is then printed and bound in a kind of super photocopy machine, one book at a time when it’s ordered. Online vendors, such at Amazon.com and BN.com, can sell your book, and the eventual reader may have no idea it’s self-published.
My latest book, The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea, happens to be POD and is reviewed here earlier this year. I approached POD cautiously. I had a certain idea of the many pitfalls, and, having once been a senior editor at a publishing house, I hoped to avoid them. I’ve learned a lot since publishing the book under my imprint, White Whisker Books. What follows is my best advice in how to POD, with warnings along the way.
In 2005, just over 172,000 books were published with ISBN numbers, according to Gary Aiello, chief operating officer of Bowker, which compiles publishing statistics. An ISBN number gets you logged into Books in Print, and allows your book be distributed to bookstores and online vendors. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, one quarter of the books launched last year with ISBN numbers were POD titles.
Not everyone wants an ISBN number, however, because it’s an extra cost. In fact, Lulu Press presently publishes over 1500 titles per week, and only about 5% of the titles get ISBN numbers, according to David Spain, who goes around the country promoting Lulu Press. This number equals more than 78,000 titles per year, 3900 of which might be available through Amazon.com. Most of Lulu’s titles are distributed through Lulu Press alone or bought by the author to be given to family and friends. To get into Lulu’s all-time top 100 bestsellers takes less than 300 sales.
According to the New York Times, in an article by Gayle Feldman, the average POD book title sells just 150 to 175 copies. Lulu’s David Spain thinks it’s really less than a hundred, and I’ve heard as low as fifty. This can disillusion an author, but, hey, you’re up against the marketing arms of major companies. Print ads can cost thousands of dollars. Traveling around the country costs thousands more—and to what adoring lines of fans are you flying?
Even so, I PODed. Here’s what I did.
Read the Rest... (http://girlondemand.blogspot.com/2006/06/guest-blogger-chris-meeks-discusses.html)
Print-On-Demand Books: A Guide to How to Get Your Book to
More Than Just Friends and Family
By Christopher Meeks
Many serious writers get frustrated with agents and publishers who send anonymous poker-card-sized rejection slips that state the enclosed work “is not appropriate at this time.” Oh, yeah? When’s it appropriate? Without helpful feedback or an idea of where to turn next, many writers have turned to Print-on-Demand (POD), which is the focus of this whole website.
Such companies as AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Xlibris, and Lulu Press make it fairly simple to upload the text of your book, get help with graphic design and distribution, and turn your dream into a real bound book. What POD offers over the old vanity presses is you can be published without needing to spend a lot of money or fill your garage with copies. The cost is anywhere between $200 and $2500, depending how crafted you want to make your book. Your book is then printed and bound in a kind of super photocopy machine, one book at a time when it’s ordered. Online vendors, such at Amazon.com and BN.com, can sell your book, and the eventual reader may have no idea it’s self-published.
My latest book, The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea, happens to be POD and is reviewed here earlier this year. I approached POD cautiously. I had a certain idea of the many pitfalls, and, having once been a senior editor at a publishing house, I hoped to avoid them. I’ve learned a lot since publishing the book under my imprint, White Whisker Books. What follows is my best advice in how to POD, with warnings along the way.
In 2005, just over 172,000 books were published with ISBN numbers, according to Gary Aiello, chief operating officer of Bowker, which compiles publishing statistics. An ISBN number gets you logged into Books in Print, and allows your book be distributed to bookstores and online vendors. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, one quarter of the books launched last year with ISBN numbers were POD titles.
Not everyone wants an ISBN number, however, because it’s an extra cost. In fact, Lulu Press presently publishes over 1500 titles per week, and only about 5% of the titles get ISBN numbers, according to David Spain, who goes around the country promoting Lulu Press. This number equals more than 78,000 titles per year, 3900 of which might be available through Amazon.com. Most of Lulu’s titles are distributed through Lulu Press alone or bought by the author to be given to family and friends. To get into Lulu’s all-time top 100 bestsellers takes less than 300 sales.
According to the New York Times, in an article by Gayle Feldman, the average POD book title sells just 150 to 175 copies. Lulu’s David Spain thinks it’s really less than a hundred, and I’ve heard as low as fifty. This can disillusion an author, but, hey, you’re up against the marketing arms of major companies. Print ads can cost thousands of dollars. Traveling around the country costs thousands more—and to what adoring lines of fans are you flying?
Even so, I PODed. Here’s what I did.
Read the Rest... (http://girlondemand.blogspot.com/2006/06/guest-blogger-chris-meeks-discusses.html)