How To Lose Your Money And Waste Your Time
The Washington Post this weekend published a ridiculous article in their little "How To" section. Yep, it was all about "How To Publish Your Own Book" and the piece couldn't have held more lies and half-truths had it been written by a con artist and published on the web. "How do you get your tome flying off the shelves at Borders?" the article asks. Not this way!

The hoary old roll call of dubious self-publishing successes are presented first. "James Redfield's 'The Celestine Prophecy' and John Grisham's 'A Time to Kill' started this way" author Rachel F. (the F stands for "Fire Me") Elson explains. Except that she's wrong. A Time To Kill was never self-published; it was released as a hardcover original by Wynwood Press in '89. The Celestine Prophecy was self-published, but its success is hardly easily replicable because the "novel" was actually an example of one of the few genres of work that can be legitimately and profitably self-published: New Age cultism associated with a seminar series where the book can be hand-sold to aging hippies by unpaid brainwashed volunteer table-minders.

Are you writing that kind of book? Probably not. Do you have a seminar series? Ditto. Brainwashed servants? Nuh-uh.

The article continues. "Publicizing your book shouldn't be the last thing you think about -- you should start even before the masterpiece is finished. Begin by lining up people to blurb it -- raid your Palm (and your friends' contacts) for former colleagues, teachers or other high-profile prospects." Blurbs don't sell very many books. They certainly don't sell very many self-published books, as those titles rarely if ever make it into bookstores where the blurbs can be read by eager browsers. And your "teachers" and "colleagues" probably ain't that high profile after all.

"Once you've typed those two gratifying words, 'the end,' call the local media, and submit excerpts to magazines and newsletters." Now this much is true, your local daily paper is likely to write you up...unless you live someplace actually worth living in. Excerpts are a hard sell, and even if you self-publish and can thus control the tempo of printing, you're not likely to get any nibbles until your book is out. Oh, and excerpts don't sell books either. Move Under Ground was excerpted in the June/July issue of Razor, which has a circulation of over 300,000. It didn't so much sell any extra books as it sold books a little faster -- amazon.com moved an extra 25 copies or so per week for the eight weeks the issue was on the stands. 300,000 readers equaled around 200 copies sold. That ratio of reader to buyer sounds about right. So, how many people read the South Bend Indiana Model Train Fancier Association Newsletter your excerpt will be appearing in? Ooh, that many, eh?

Here's another bit of almost good advice: "Hiring an editor isn't a bad idea; you can post ads on Craiglist.com, Copyeditor.com or local job boards (ask for references, and try out prospects with a few pages first)." Ah yes, you know what kind of editors hang out on craigslist? Me. The first thing I tell folks is that I charge a penny a word. The second thing is not to self-publish. I've found that there are very few people willing to pay $800-$1000 for a manuscript dripping with a red ink and an editorial letter that boils down to "Shred this and start over, but in English." (Thankfully, there are some.) Of course, most of the craigslist.org ads for editors I see say things like "I can't pay you now, but when I sell the book you'll get a share of the profits! I have a can't miss idea that'll be a great movie!!!" Hmm, maybe people should read this article, if it'll get them to look up the word "hire" in the dictionary...

I'll leave aside, for now, the massive difference between editing as it actually exists and editing as the average craigslister conceives of it, which involves "checking for typos." Or, to speak the native language of CL, "typo's." That ' isn't an apostrophe, it's a glottal click.

"Because consumers and reviewers do judge a book by its cover, be sure to find a good graphic designer." But the author forgot to explain, "And remember, the painting your fifth-grader did sucks, and no graphic designer can possibly transform it into a decent cover image so for the love of God don't use it. And don't think your cover art has to reflect a scene in the book because it doesn't and only mental patients insist on any such thing." Covers should not illustrate what happens in the book, but are in fact ads for the type of book being sold.

Then, the Post talks money, explaining that all this can run up a bill of over $7000 including printing. Yes. And it says "Prices typically start at $5 or $6 per book for 100 copies of a standard-size, 256-page paperback, but they drop as quantities rise." Also yes. But 100 copies of a book? Exactly how many of these are going to fly off the shelves of Borders? Well, none.

And here comes the kicker. "If you want a tiny printing, you might try a print-on-demand operation, such as Xlibris (www2.xlibris.com), CafePress.com or AuthorHouse (www.authorhouse.com). These companies can simplify the publishing process by providing layout and design services, the ISBN number, and a distribution network -- but they tend to have higher costs and lower returns." And they're not printers but vanity publishers. If you self-publish, you own the books that the printer prints. If you publish via a vanity, the publisher owns the books you paid for. You still have to do all the work of selling the title; buying copies, dragging them around to events and conferences, trying to get publicity, hand-selling, etc. And in return you get the privilege of giving the vanity 90% of the money...on top of their initial fees. Sweet!

The real pitfall of self-publication is distribution, but the article has suggestions here too! "Wholesalers, such as Baker & Taylor (www.btol.com) or Amazon Advantage (www.amazon.com/advantage), handle only warehousing and shipment, while "master distributors" like Biblio Distribution (www.bibliodistribution.com), a small-press distributor, have a sales force to present books to retailers. Again, the more marketing you've done ahead of time, the easier it will be to persuade a distributor to pick up your book." The author conveniently forgets to mention that B&T has massive issues with paying even its larger customers within six months of order fulfillment, and doesn't normally take self-published one-offs. The other major fulfillment company, Ingram, raised the drawbridges on small publishers a few years ago in order to compel them to go POD with Lightning Source, the print-on-demand company that is...wait for it...owned by Ingram! If you want in Ingram, you pay them to print and distribute, or you publish ten titles, sell them via magic, and then apply for a slot in the warehouse for your eleventh book.

Biblio, National Book Network, SCB, Consortium, my homies at PGW, and the other independent distributors that field sales reps and have their own warehouses (which feed into Ingram and B&T) aren't looking for self-published one-offs. This article, were it about becoming a rich doctor, would at this point simply say "To be a rich doctor, go to a good medical school, like Harvard's." Gee, thanks for the tip lady.

Amazon Advantage means a slot on amazon.com and nothing else, and a 55% commission on books sold on the site. Well, let's say you take that deal mentioned above and get a trade paperback at a unit cost of $6. It should sell, given 256 pages, for around $15. Okay, that's $9 as your margin. But you paid for editing ($1000), a cover ($400), and ISBN ($250), and copyright protection, shipping, marketing and other costs including $30 to be enrolled in the program ($200). That's $1850, and we'll spread that out over a print run of 500 instead of 100 because I'm feeling extra nice. That's $3.70 a book. Take that from $9 and your margin is now $5.30 a book. But what about that 55% commission? You're selling amazon.com your books for $6.75. Books that cost you $6 to print and $3.70 to create, for a total of $9.70 per unit, sell for $6.75 to your distro. That means that for every copy you sell via Amazon.com advantage...you lose $2.95.

You can, of course, name your price, and sell your trade paperback for $20, but given the choice between a $15 trade paperback (or a $25 hardcover, or a $7 mass market paperback) from a familiar author that's widely available for browsing and flipping through in bookstores and your expensive book with your son's painting on the cover and with you, Jimmy Joe Nobody as the author, how many people are going to spend an extra $5 on you that they wouldn't spend on their favorite authors? That's right, none.

And that, my friends, is how you publish your own book. Tune in next week when we'll discuss how to perform an appendectomy on yourself. Here's a helpful hint to whet your appetite: "Try not to die when you cut yourself open."