Leah

Also, you may find some resources and links of interest on my website:
http://www.aprillhamilton.com

Blue skies! =’D

There’s only so much one can fit into a single article, which is why I’ve written an entire, how-to reference book on indie authorship. I will never understand why someone will assume that just because I haven’t explicitly said this or that specific thing in a single, specific article, I must be unaware of that thing or advocating against that thing.

OF COURSE an indie author must put considerable effort into marketing and promotion; I never proposed that they should just get the book out there and wait for the royalties to roll in.

OF COURSE an indie author must do everything in his or her power to create a quality product that can stand toe-to-toe against a mainstream-published book.

OF COURSE there are indie author success stories among both POD and minimum-print-run indie authors. Personally, I feel POD is the better way to go nowadays because it’s far less expensive for the author, it’s far more ‘green’ (less waste from manufacture & shipping, no remaindered cartons of books to be shipped back to manufacturer and destroyed), and doesn’t require the author to either store large quantities of books or hand-sell them. I’m a big advocate of ebooks, as well.

If you’re truly interested in ALL I have to say on the subject of indie authorship, I suggest you pick up a copy of The IndieAuthor Guide on Amazon — which was published via POD, of course!

It took three offers from Simon and Schuster before she accepted a contract. She wasn’t too quick to jump at a contract, so obviously she was doing just fine on her own. In fact the reason she was offered one is because her sales were impressive. They approached her.

How can one have impressive sales on their own if it’s impossible to do anything without a NY publisher?

Clearly if a major publisher offers a really good deal, most authors will take it, but the kind of success most of the self published books that got picked up experienced, are far above and beyond the success level of most traditionally published books.

Plenty of books published by NY houses make very little money for the authors.

While the examples she used were not self publishing success stories that used print-on-demand technology, someone should point out that there have been POD success stories.

Jeremy Robinson has gotten a 3 book deal from a division of St. Martin’s Press, which happened after he published a book with POD, and got James Rollins to blurb it, and got an agent. None of that would have happened had he not put his own book out.

And he wouldn’t have been able to put his own book out if it weren’t for POD.

But others have followed that trend.

And it hasn’t just been POD. It’s been ebooks and podcasts as well. There is a big wide world out there of formats to put your work in and ways to get it into people’s hands.

There is nothing “magic” about offset printing. Many large publishers use POD through Lightning Source for their backlist. POD is a technology and nothing more.

Connie Shelton is an author who started her own imprint with the purpose of publishing her own books. Intrigue Press. Later she branched out to publish other authors, but not because she had to, because she kept getting submissions and found worthy books.

She continues to publish her own books. So obviously it’s a good business model for some people. Though yes, she uses offset printing. But Samhain a major romance epub uses POD for their print books. And they aren’t even self published.

It also depends on how you define “success.” Since an indie, even using POD technology can end up making 4 times as much per book as a trad published author, then they obviously have to sell 1/4th the same number a trad published author would for the same amount of money.

I agree that professional design is important.

I don’t agree that offset print runs are necessary.

I don’t think you need “contacts” unless you use them instead of glasses.

No one has just stuck a book anywhere and made much money off it. Marketing is a big part of the picture. But with the internet, it’s not nearly as hard to reach potential readers as it once was.

I’d also like to point out that the examples of self-publishing success stories you used, did not employ print-on-demand (POD).

The Celestine Prophecy was printed before POD was even available.

If you think Mama Paolini didn’t market the heck out of Eragon on behalf of her son, you need to go back and read the numerous writer’s forums (AbsoluteWrite.com, for instance) and publishing sites she posted on before she went to press. Also, the book was not a success until it was picked up by a traditional publisher, which happened in what seems like 15-minutes.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid was published online as blog entries. It was never POD. Harry N. Abrams made the author a deal to publish a series under the Amulet imprint.

Self-publishing and POD are great things, for sure. But you need to be realistic. If you want to earn money from your book, it needs to be treated like a business and the first step is to check out how every self-published book became successful.

1. Professional design??

2. Offset press runs, with plenty of ARCs sent out?

3. Previous contacts in the industry?

No one has ever just stuck a book on Amazon and made much money off of it. It’s a lot of work, a lot of marketing. Very few actually make money off self-published books, quite often they are successful only after being picked up by a bigger publisher.

Thank you. I feel like crying. My wife and I have written twenty children’s books. We sent them to an agent four weeks ago. She said that if we don’t here from her for eight weeks, then she’s not interested. We’ve been wringing our hands for a month now. The thing is, not to sound cocky, these stories are fantastic. They’re all done in rhythm, rhyme, and repetition, with an unforgiving vocabulary. We run a preschool and read them to children all day long. Even without the pictures, they are often the preferred stories. They’re not really like anything else in the bookstore. Which we know might be the problem. Today, we thought, why not just contact an artist and get some help with the illustrations. So I went online to research self-publishing. After an hour, I found your site. Thank you so much, your words meant a lot to me today.

I’m about halfway through what I expect to write (although we’ll see where the pen takes me) and just started looking into self-publishing and what it involves. This page was certainly beneficial. Thank you very much for the insight.

I do hope that novels become like music today, where the public can find what they like online (self-published novels included) and not just be sold the mainstream push.