Considerations On Self-Publishing and Warnings for New Authors

Self-publishing is certainly an option for authors out there today. There are a ton of opportunities from companies that allow you to work through their platforms to authors simply doing it all on their own and creating their own companies. These options really started to rise after 2008 with the recession as publishers started cutting back on who they were signing and the number of authors they signed. Today, companies are offering authors the moon (or at least they are claiming this).

One company I saw made the claim, "Have you written a book and want it published? We can make sure you make a profit immediately through our program." Really? I don't know one publisher, editor, or agent out there who can make that promise, simply because we cannot control who spends the money to buy your book. Needless to say, self-publishing is not for everyone.

In an article that popped up last week from THE GUARDIAN that sort of went viral on social media started to warn of some other sides of this business. This focused on the number of scams out there really taking advantage of authors.

This article did highlight a lot of big name authors who were getting nailed on scams involving plagiarism and "book-stuffing" but I think there is a bigger picture here, and one that should seriously considered by new authors out there. Please understand, this article really focused on trying to shoulder the blame on specific programs and authors intentionally taking advantage of they system to ramp up sales. While these are certainly issues that do need to be addressed, I think there is another side of this that is being overlooked and it is also something I have been screaming about over here on the blog for sometime.

Authors, in today's publishing world, are simply not educated. They have gone out, written a book, and are immediately diving into the professional side of publishing without a clue of what they need to do to be successful, or for that matter, things they need to do to protect themselves from scams such as this.

As an author, it is up to you to not just write the books, but to also know how your books are being marketed, who is having access to your books and to watch everything going on with your career. While the article makes a comment from Amazon about a warning to the scammers, "“you are responsible for ensuring that no tactics used to promote your book manipulate the Kindle publishing service”, and that any manipulation “may” result in “termination of your account and loss of royalties”." this is also a warning that authors who CHOOSE to put their books out there unprotected need to be aware of. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE.

Many of my authors spend time regularly scanning the online bookstores to see new releases and where their names and titles show up. Like the article noted, every now and then, some scammer slips through the cracks. As soon as we discover situations such as this, we launch into a full attack, contact the publishers and within 48 hours or so, the problem is solved. Why? Because we were responsible to pay attention to this, but on an even bigger level, we had publishers with knowledgeable legal teams trained for such a situation.

When you read the article, you will notice that the high named authors out there ALSO were people who had been around the business for a while and were trained professionals. They still had the legal teams from their publishers there to help out.

I am not in any way saying people should not try this on their own. What I am saying, and trying to do so loudly, is to make sure you are smart. Make sure you are trained. Make sure you are educated. Bad people are out there, but if you are clued out to the business of publishing, you will be the next target!

Who Pays For Publishing Your Book?

I often hear authors interested in self publishing arguing that a big factor is that the fact that they get 100% of the profits. No agent commission. No publisher taking part of the money. It all comes back to the author. While this is sort of correct, I did want to take the time today to discuss a twist to this that is often not brought up.

In the traditional publishing model, authors are often given an advance for their book. This is simply a prediction of how much the publisher thinks the author will make on the book after sales. That is the easy part. Now, the author is not getting 100% of the profits from those sales. The publisher is taking a piece of that pie. But where is that money going?

The publisher is responsible for the legal side of things including ISBN numbers and so forth. The publisher also handles much of the marketing, the printing, the editing, the copy editing, they cover work and so forth. The publisher will also likely be marketing your book to foreign markets, the movie industry and the like. This is built into that contract you sign when you work with that publisher.

If you decide to do this on your own, guess who picks up that tab? That's right! You! When we hear authors talk about taking home all of the profits, this is GROSS PROFITS. What we often do not hear about are the outside expenses that author has to put out there. In many cases, they are paying for a PR person to handle the marketing. They may be hiring outside editors, cover artists and so forth. All of those services are now your responsibility.

I would also add that you now have a time factor to consider. If you do traditional publishing, please understand that you will lose some of your writing time for that marketing you do on your end. You may also have expenses for book marks, and other advertising that you have found to be successful for you. But for those of you doing this on your own, you will likely lose a lot more of that time.

I think it is important to remember that publishing is not an easy gig. There are no free routes and there is nothing glamorous about this. I also wanted to take the time to remind those of you being swayed in the direction of self-publishing to understand that, all that you have heard, my not be the full picture.

For Sale By Owner: The deceptive side of self-publishing

DISCLAIMER: In no way am I saying self-publishing is bad or good. Like everything out there in publishing, there are multiple approaches for doing things.

Let me be the first to admit that when I have sold a house in the past, and when I sell a house in the future, I use a real estate professional. Why? They know what they are doing. They have the connections. They have the time to make the sale for me. I also know that when we are out looking at houses (we do this for fun some times) we only visit homes for sale that are being represented by real estate professionals. Why? Because we know the house have been prepared for sale, and we know that when it is time to do the paperwork, the professional will know the most effective and efficient path for everyone.

And yes, we know we pay for this service.

The same goes for buying food. We pay to have someone process that ground beef for us from the raising of the cow to our plate.

At restaurants, we pay to have someone prepare that fantastic meal.

At the market, we pay those farmers to grow the carrots and so forth.

At the auto repair show, we pay the mechanic to fix that transmission.

Again, it is because they know what they are doing!

When I got up this morning, I scanned through my email and my various social media outlets. On Facebook, there was a company proclaiming the fantastic benefits of self-publishing. The slogan they had?

SELF PUBLISHING MADE EASY

AUTHORS RETAIN ALL RIGHTS AND KEEP 100% OF NET SALES!

Seeing a add like this sounds amazing and the reason is clear. We see several concepts jump right out at us: EASY, RETAIN ALL RIGHTS and 100% OF NET SALES. Add in all of those authors who tell us at conferences or write these amazing articles of the millions of dollars they are making in self-publishing. They have told this to me as well. "You know Scott, this book has brought in more sales this month than my traditional books have."

But there is a catch to this and it all goes back to the words we are not looking carefully at from this add. 

Let's start with the 100$ concept. Note the one word here. It says NET SALES! I have to admit this is one of the first times I have seen this word used. I know I have never once heard those authors proclaiming their great sales figures using the word NET. We have to remember what the concept net sales means. This is the figure AFTER all of the other discounts, allowances and other dollar figures are taken out.This also includes any of the expenses. 

In publishing these expenses do include all of the discounts, allowances and returned books, but this is also including items such as advertising expenses, cover design, editing, copy editing, formatting and so forth. Therefore, when that author is talking about all of the amount of money that book has generated, what they are often leaving out is the amount of money they paid up front for the book, the amount of money they have personally spent out of pocket for cover design, external editing and so forth. 

And companies like this one I saw online will make you pay. It is a business. They are not going to give this away for free. In fact, this company openly admits on their home page that they will do this for you with as little as $89.00 a month. Did you catch that? That comes out to "as little as" $1068.00 a year!

But now we move to another level that many inexperienced authors miss, but this advertisement (and other proponents of the DIY approach) take. IT'S EASY!

Yes, doing this on your own is easy if you are someone who understands how to develop your own book cover, how to get your books to the book buyers, how to edit your book, how to get it to those international markets or audio book markets. It's easy if you have the technology at your fingertips to digitally format your books and so forth. 

Are there people out there who can do that? Yes there are. Are there computer programs you can "purchase" to do that? Sure! The basic price of PHOTOSHOP is around $80.00. This company, like all of these other companies have a template they let you download to type your own work into. That part is easy, but if you are like so many people out there today, you are probably pretty weak when it comes to understanding that computer technology. Remember, we aren't teaching computer skills in the public schools any more (or at least a limited amount). 

And yes, you do keep all of those RIGHTS for your book, but what are you going to do with those rights? Do you have the connections or know how to get that book into the international market? Are you going to fly to the London Book Show, or the Frankfurt Book Show and market your book? Do you have the connections to get your book to an audio format? The list goes on and on. 

This goes right back to my comment about selling houses. Why do I have a real estate person take care of this? Because they know their stuff and yes, I am going to pay for this through their commissions. When it comes to publishing through a traditional route, consider this. When that editor buys your book they are giving you an advance. They just paid you $3000-$15,000 for our book up front! The bigger the advance, the more work they will put in to making those sales happen for you. They take care of the marketing, the cover design, the printing costs, the distribution, the rights, etc. And you are sitting there with that cash in your pocket!

Again, let me say that there is no right or wrong way to approach publishing. You can do it yourself or you can go through agents and traditional publishers. But remember, to do this on your own means you have the knowledge and the resources. And also, when you do this yourself, this does not mean there are no expenses. It WILL come out of those book sales. 

So, you new authors out there. Please be careful when you decide to publish your book. Know all of the facts. Know the costs. Know your skills. Know the experience of those you are working with. This is your book you have worked so hard on and you want to have success.