OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
I am passionate about adventures in publishing, as well as writing and marketing! You can find details on the publishing quadrant here, and the short video below explains it.
In the video I briefly explain traditional publishing, self-publishing, print-on-demand and digital publishing. All are possible publishing options for your book.
What publishing options have you used, and which ones would you like to try next? Please let me know in the comments.
View Comments (8)
Dear Joanna,
Nicely articulated description of the various options.
After some abortive attempts at the traditional publishing route, and after watching midlist author friends get dropped by their publishers, I decided to go the digital publishing (smashwords and kindle) and pod (CreateSpace) publishing routes for my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery. While there still seem to be a strong resistance out there to using any route but the traditional one on the part of many people within traditional publishing industry (writers, editors, agents), I have found the non-traditional routes quite rewarding. I do appreciate bloggers such as yourself who don't feel that this is an either/or question.
I can completely understand the benefits of going the traditional route-if you are fortunate enough to have a book that fits into what publishers currently believe will sell. But, I don't believe that traditionally published books are the only ones that have value-and while it is important not to sugar coat the obstacles to success within the non-traditional routes, I also feel the need to testify that success is possible.
Particularly if you define success as positive reviews, happy readers, and a steady increase in sales. After 10 months, I have over 1300 sales, last month I averaged 11 books a day, and this month so far my average is 14 books a day-and I have just sold my first 2 books on Amazon UK, so hope for a steady increase of sales abroad. And, while I have no advance, since the bulk of my sales are ebooks, I am getting at least 70% of list price as royalty. And this means my sales are in the medium where everyone agrees there is the most potential for growth.
I hope that blogs such as yours will continue to educate, and evaluate, and provide authors with realistic ideas about what their options are.
Thanks
Thanks so much Louisa, it's fantastic to hear such a great story of success. I think the advance model will disappear over time except for the big names. The higher royalties are better for the author over time if the book sells. It continues to be a challenge for authors to find their way through this maze, but you provide an excellent example. Thanks, and all the best with your books!
Wonderful information as usual Joanna - to give a little more insight, this I think all authors & publishers should read this amazing article by CraigMod on Post-Artifact books - http://bit.ly/j7ztUe
Joanna, this is the most useful information that I have come across. Thanks for providing such a wealth of amazing stuff.
My question was, would you publish the same book with all the different websites? I mean Lulu.com, createspace, etc, would you put the same book or does just one of the websites cover all the distribution media?
Thank you very much, this blog is amazing!!
I'm glad you are enjoying the site!
On your question, you only pick one site - so if you use Createspace, you don't also use Lulu or LightningSource. They each cover the distribution to all the online stores. I hope that helps. Thanks, Joanna
Good morning, Joanna!
So very timely that I should come across your work right now. I have been blogging for nearly 7 months and have amassed enough material to go forward with ideas I have about tourist guides for families (and children in particular). I've liaised with the tourism office who support my ideas and agree that there is a definite need for the kind of book(s) I have in mind. I think I may be able to look to them for some help promoting the end product(s), as in essence their work will be encapsulated too.
And now you have delivered to my door the next steps to take - thank you so much!
Kind regards,
L
(based in the UK, not Austria!)
Thanks from me too, Joanna. Great, useful information. Two questions: my book (on shopping and fashion) has a lot of color illustrations. Can Create Space do a high quality job with this kind of material? Also, is there a way through any of the POD companies to also get distribution in the bricks-and-mortar companies?
Createspace have a lot of options but the POD service that many photographers use is http://www.Blurb.com so you might try there for really high quality printing (but of course, that is more expensive). The other tip I always give is that you can have the bulk of these on a website and direct people via URL links to those pages - gives you traffic and also means less cost in printing and also downloads on the ebooks.
POD companies do struggle to get distribution in bookstores - my friend Ben Galley has been successful at getting his books into Waterstones, a UK bookstore though - through hustling the first copies i.e. getting friends to go in and order, and eventually the chain ordered more for stock - he has lots of advice here
http://www.bengalley.com/BenGalley.com/Publishing/Publishing.html
There will be some 'assisted publishing' houses that can do this for you but it is likely to be more expensive.