It’s becoming clear that marketing and distribution are the key factors in making a success of your venture – I’m taking it as read that you’ve written a first-class story and had it professionally edited/proofed.

I've started browsing for any useful information I could find, and thought I’d share it with anyone who might be considering a similar route. So here’s a start. I don’t know how difficult it is to get into major book wholesalers, but they must be worth a shot.

http://www.gardners.com/pubmenu/pubindex.htm

Dee

Fucking impossible! Unless you're printing 10,000 copies and can prove they will sell.

Try these: [url=https://www.lightningsource.com/index.htm]Lightning Source[/url] - I've heard some good reports.

Colin M

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not sure what went wrong: Lightning Source

Aren’t they printers/publishers? I'm thinking more along the lines of distribution into shops beyond my local area.

Dee

Dee,

Thanks for this - I'll store it. Keep us posted ... could well be following you into self-publishing, so would love to know how it goes.

Andrea

Good for you, Andrea. I honestly believe that, given enough enthusiasm, SP is the alternative way to get a book out into the public domain at the moment.

Go for it. I’ll keep posting what I’m doing, and I’m sure HollyB will be happy to help. I think, at this level (pondlife in terms of the mainstream publishers… Goldenford excluded cos they’re already established and on a roll) we can do nothing but support and help each other. There may be an advantage in, eventually, joining forces as a WW publishing venture… but that’s way in the future at the moment.

Dee

Good idea, Dee. Jackie at Goldenford did a deal with Gardners re distribution, and they seem happy with that - though not much comes via them at the moment to be honest - most of our sales are direct. Jennifer has some alternative marketing plans, which we hope to pursue later this year - eg put our 2 alcoholic-themed books into local vineyards and also one of our local estate agents was considering using Goldenford books as part of a "welcome to your new home" package - but as ever these plans/deals take time!

Mutual support of small publishers is definitely the way. I'm helping to man (woman?) a table at the Winchester Writers conference for Goldenford, Bewrite & Writers' Promote people - whilst writers' conference rarely drum up much trade, they do mean people begin to recognise the name! Ever onward ...

A
xxx

Mutual support is a good idea. There is a network up here called Northern Independent Publishers, which acts as a conduit for all smaller presses who can't distribute or sell.

Dee, the firm above is not a publisher - they are a new form of printer who do a bit more than your average printer by registering the book with Whitakers, which makes it appear on Amazon and in the bookshops' order computer thingy and they can distribute direct to wholesalers - if you can get a deal. There's a lot to read on their site, and to be honest, I can't work out if they are solely POD (which is probably too expensive for something 120,000 words long) but they are probably worth looking into.

For children's picture books writer/illustrators, they are probably a good solution.

Colin

Vanity presses give the whole species of printers-who-help-self-publishing-authors an unfairly bad name, which is a pity. I think there are several out there who offer various services beyond the basics of short-run printing or PoD, honestly and straightforwardly.

Emma

Dee, you sound as if you've done lots of research already, but I thought I'd post these there for others. These are culled from the advertising pages of the Society of Authors' mag The Author, as offering services to self-publishers

I don't know anything about them, but they might be worth a look:

www.amolibros.com
www.authoritypublishing.co.uk (members of the Independent Publishers Guild)
www.proprintpublishers.co.uk

And these are from the listing of 'books of interest to writers':

Pauline Rowson, Publishing and Promoting your book, Rowmark £9.99
Jo Anthony, What do I have to do to get a book published! The essential guide to self-publishing for the UK market, Pen Press, £12.99

Emma

What usually sets alarm bells ringing for me is the term "publishers" - if they call themselves publishers then they are going to keep certain rights. The only reason I mentioned lightningsource is that they make it clear that they are not publishers, and don't offer the full package, but what they do offer is a little bit more than your average printer.

True, but the IPG for one is a very respectable and respected body. Any company that does more than physical printing is technically a publisher, so I don't think that title on its own is cause for alarm. The main thing is that they're up-front about costs, and don't promise more than they can deliver on any front, particularly on sales and marketing where it's harder to quantify effort and achievement. They should also let you check up on titles they've worked on.

In fact, anyone going down the self-publishing route could do worse than get in touch with the IPG, which represents all sorts of publishers from minute one-person bands to major names.

Emma

Any company that does more than physical printing is technically a publisher

no it's not.

Just thought I’d bring you up to date with what’s going on.

The local printer isn’t an option unless they make more than 2000 on the first run. Doesn’t seem much lined up against Emma’s signing marathon but I have no idea how easy or difficult it would be to sell that many. They quoted to fold and stitch the pages, though so, if I shop around, I'm sure I could get a cheaper quote for perfect binding (is that the right term for glued pages? See how much I don’t know !)

I contacted IPG three weeks ago for advice about the name we want to use but I'm disappointed to say they haven’t replied.

In the meantime, I've had TWH professionally edited and proof-read, so it’s all shiny and clean. Very interesting exercise. Most of her editing was formatting — changing en dashes to em dashes (and explaining to me how to train my laptop to do them) and taking hyphens out of ‘no one’ — but she also queried a few places where she thought someone was acting out of character, or the logic was wonky, and one place where I got the continuity wrong.

I've put that last bit in italics to stress the point. I can’t count how many times I've gone over this ms checking and quadruple checking the details, it’s been read by two experienced fiction writers, one agent and one publisher – and we all missed this glitch… which makes the editor’s fee money well well well spent.

Dee

Dee, it's so exciting that you've got to this stage, but it's a steep learning curve, isn't it! Yes, perfect binding's what you want. The printers Antony Rowe specialise in short-run work, so they may be set up for more sensible prices; printing's a very compartmentalised trade, because the right machine to do any kind of job costs the earth, so they can't afford to have the right machine for every job. Would it be worth having a nose in a local bookshop to find out who printed the 'local interest' books, if you haven't already? They're likely to be nearby.

You've probably realised this, but the crucial sum in printing is unit cost, which comes down dramatically the more you print. So as long as you've got somewhere to keep them you would probably be better off printing the most copies you can imagine selling/giving away/sending for review/propping up the wobbly table leg in all the years to come, and getting the print run up to a number which means the unit cost is economic. FWIW, when I was publishing the rule of thumb was that cover price should be six times the production cost, if you want to cover your costs and hopefully make some money. Could be five times, if you're not really costing your own overhead or time, I guess.

Have you got hold of the Society of Authors' Quick Guide to Self-Publishing and Print-on-Demand? Might be worth a look.

Emma

Thanks Emma.

I've got quite a few of their guides but not that one so I've been trying to download it this morning, but there seems to be a problem with it and it won’t download.

I keep looking at the Anthony Rowe site and then forgetting about it until the name jumps up and smacks me in the eye again. I’ll go have another look.

Cheers

Dee


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Antony...