The Ins & Outs of Self-Publishing – Part Two

This
is Part Two in a five-part series summarizing my remarks in the “Ins and Outs
of Self-Publishing” panel discussion sponsored by the Washington, DC chapter of the Women’s National Book Association.

During the panel, I offered an overview of
how an aspiring author might get her book published. In Part One of this series, I discussed using
a traditional publisher and began a definition of what it means to
self-publish. I noted that there is
debate over the definition of “self-publish” and listed three methods of
self-publishing:

• Using
  Print-on-Demand Printing
• Publishing via
  Vanity or Subsidy Press
• Working Directly
  with Wholesalers and Distributors

Using
Print-On-Demand (POD) Printing

Print-on-Demand printing, or POD for short,
is a method of printing by which you print one book at a time. In other words, you do not have to print a
book until you generate a sale for the book.

POD is how the Wall Street Journal and much mainstream media define
self-publishing. Many self-publishers
bristle at equating POD with self-publishing and explain that print-on-demand
is not publishing. Instead, print-on-demand is a means of printing that is used
by self-publishers, by small presses, and even by larger, well-established
publishing companies that want to keep an older title with limited demand
available without printing the 1,000+ copies required for an offset print-run.

Lightning Source (LSI), is one of the
largest POD printers. LSI will work only with publishers using their own
ISBN. ISBN stands for International
Standard Book Number and is a thirteen-digit number that uniquely identifies
each book as well as each edition of a book. American-based publishers can obtain ISBNs through www.isbn.org. Also, LSI does not offer much hand-holding
and requires that publishers deliver a digital file ready for printing. For this reason, several companies, many of
which offer a wider assortment of book production services, act as
intermediaries between LSI and self-publishers. They include Booklocker,
Infinity, Lulu, AuthorHouse, and Xlibris. Some of these LSI middlemen might be
categorized as subsidy publishers, a category I discuss below.

The primary advantage to publishing via
print-on-demand printing is minimizing or eliminating your initial upfront
costs and the financial risk. However,
while POD lowers upfront investment and financial risk, it increases your costs
of producing each book. For example, a 250-page paperback, perfect-bound with a
trim size of 6 X 9 would cost as much as $4.65 if printed through LSI or $9.53
if printed through Lulu, one of the LSI intermediaries. Costs for printing the
same book as part of a offset print-run could be as low or lower than $2,
depending on the number of copies in your offset print-run.

The higher per unit cost makes it more
difficult for publishers using POD printing to sell through bookstores,
wholesalers, and distributors. If your
book has a cover price of $20, wholesalers, distributors, and bookstores want
to purchase it at a 40% to 60%+ discount on the cover price (i.e., you would
receive $8 – $12 or less for each book, depending on whether you’re selling to
a distributor, wholesaler, or directly to a bookstore.). The high per-unit POD costs make it difficult
or impossible to offer this discount and often make bookstore sales
inaccessible to self-publishers using POD.

However, note that there are
self-publishers who have built successful business models by combining POD
printing, a short discount to wholesalers, and sales through amazon.com and
other online bookstores.  Aaron Shepard
is one of them and talks about this model at length in his book, Aiming at Amazon.

Come back for Part Three, to be posted on
Saturday, November 10, in which I’ll discuss method two of self-publishing:
publishing via vanity and subsidy press.