Your thoughts on self-publishing?

One of my favorite books was self-published.

[URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738844772/officchuckpalaha?dev-t=D3FHEEBA8BTJZL%26camp=2025%26link_code=sp1][i]The Extinction of Rhinos in Mexico[/i][/URL]

Self Publishing makes the book a little expensive. And I think that it would've sold better if he'd had someone to promote it. I mean, his sells rank is 1,846,135 and [i]The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States[/i] is number 8.

And that is pretty much my limit on self-publishing knowledge. Doubt that I would ever be interested in doing it.

Kabol

POGA:
Your comment about editing is well taken. Quality editing services are expensive, and doing it yourself is an uphill battle at best. I did it myself, with help from friends, so I can tell you it's freakin' hard. I spent the better part of a year doing proofreading and having some folks that write/review technical documentation go through everything. From its beginning, the whole process took about four years, including a complete rewrite of nearly a third of the book that took place back in early 2002. I look at some of the work that is being self-published through the same place I used, and it seems like some people don't even know how to work a spell-checking tool. I guess you get out of it what you put into it.

JKabol:
It is definitely more expensive, although the costs are coming down. My book has 236 pages, but sells for $11.99 if you buy it direct from the source. Retail price uses a different formula though, and forced the cost up to $15.99, and I had to accept a lower cut to keep the retail price at that level. I make $2.18 if you buy the book direct, but only $1.36 if you buy retail. Obviously, I only link to the direct sale site from my webpage, since the price is better for the customer, and I get a higher cut. Shipping time is another issue though - buying direct will give you a four-day wait before it even ships out. Retail waits are even longer unless someone else has recently ordered the title. Promotion is a real pain, although in the internet age it is quite possible to spread your mental cooties much easier than in the past. I released a freeware game back in 2000 and I'm still getting hundreds of hits a month for it. Just search for "spryjinx" on google and you'll find it all over the freakin' place. Of course, it's easy to spread free stuff. Pay-for-play is a whole different story.

vandamage:
You and I have a basic difference of opinion, and I respect your position on that. I'm a control freak myself, so for me, not participating at each stage along the way of bringing my work to the masses just feels, well, irresponsible. And since one of the core themes of my book is responsibility and its dual-edged nature, it would be downright hypocritical for me to dump the book on someone else to have them deal with all the behind-the-scenes processes. On the other hand, there is something to be said for letting people do what they do best, so I won't try to say that you're wrong - most of the world works the way you describe, because it's more efficient.

You should know however that if you have some material that you truly believe in, you don't have to pay anything to set up a print-on-demand storefront for it. You only need an ISBN if you want to be sold in retail outlets. If you choose to sell direct online only, set-up is free at some places. You only pay for the copies you want, and you keep all the rights for yourself. To see your words, in print, bound with a cover and all, is a really rewarding experience, and it shouldn't be limited only to those who are "marketable".

Cheers and best of luck to all of you,

Ah, and yet how [I]Futile[/I] I am.

Shoulda checked first. Good shit. Ima read your story tomorrow.

JKabol:
I'm enjoying participating in the workshop very much. There is some seriously good work in there, and I've gotten excellent feedback.

sick girl (is that a trainspotting reference?):
Self publishing can be done for pretty much any reason. Vanity publishing, depending on who you ask, is a subset of self publishing.

If all you want to do is to see your work in print and have no ambitions of being a big-time author and whatnot, the technology is available today to do just that. Most people call this vanity publishing. I think it's kind of unfair, since 'vanity' carries such a negative connotation, but like I said, it depends on who you ask. It's just cool to see your work in a professional format. If you want to keep things simple, your local copy shop can probably do this for you at fairly reasonable prices.

Self publishing is very popular in non-fiction, particularly with people who write technical manuals and whatnot. I just recently saw a very very well done book on how to tell the difference between a real and a phony expensive watch. If you write non-fiction for niche markets, you can sell quite a few books this way.

If you've got the do-it-yourself mantra going, there is a lot you can do for surprisingly little money. To start, you can download [URL=http://www.openoffice.org]Open Office[/URL], which is Sun Microsystem's big middle-finger to Microsoft. It's a very comprehensive suite of office software, including word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. Their word processor is as good as Microsoft Word for most of your routine tasks. The only thing I've found so far that Microsoft does better is their spelling/grammar checking tools. But the key thing to remember here is that Open Office is [B]FREE[/B]. Microsoft's Office suite costs hundreds of dollars.

One thing that Open Office does that Word is missing, is built-in export to PDF format. The "P" in PDF stands for "Portable", which means that many print shops support it, and it will print exactly the same at any shop that uses it.

Once you format your document and export it to PDF, you can upload it to an online print shop or publisher if you like. There are quite a few places online that offer publishing services, with a wide range of prices. The cheapest I found was [URL=http://www.lulu.com]Lulu.com[/URL]. They will let you do basic print-publication (without all the ISBN overhead) at cost. A 200 page book costs less than $10 per copy, including full-color cover. [URL=http://www.cafepress.com]CafePress[/URL] offers similar services, but for my purposes they turned out to be more expensive.

There are fancier shops, including [URL=http://www.xlibris.com]Xlibris[/URL] (which is where "The Extinction of Rhinos in Mexico" comes from), [URL=http://www.trafford.com]Trafford[/URL], and [URL=http://www.iuniverse.com]iUniverse[/URL]. I almost went with iUniverse myself before their prices went up. Places like these offer additional services like editing and whatnot, and their service is better in most cases.

So what does it look like? Here's what the inside of my books look like:

[IMG]http://www.bucketweb.com/rtb/pics/rtblores.jpg[/IMG]

Zoom in on the upper left of that pic:

[IMG]http://www.bucketweb.com/rtb/pics/rtbzoom.jpg[/IMG]

A hi-res version of the first pic is [URL=http://www.bucketweb.com/rtb/pics/rtbhires.jpg]HERE[/URL].

If you've got more questions about the process, feel free to PM me.

Cheers,

Spike:
Thanks for that link, very helpful.

There are definitely a lot of piss-poor POD shops out there. I've read a few nasty horror stories where people gave up the rights to their books in order to do self-publishing, hated the results, and had to wait 3-5 years before they could take it anywhere else. That should NEVER be the case. If someone wants the rights to your book, they should be paying YOU. Definitely proceed with caution.

Cheers,

Chixulub:
Your reference to Ani Difranco gives me a lot to think about, actually. She totally went after her dream like a full time job, and I think she makes for a fantastic story. Ironically, despite her accomplishments, she's been quoted as saying that she'd hate to be remembered more for her business savvy than for her music.

Personally, I could never envision myself as a full-time writer, otherwise I have no idea where my stories would come from. If I were to have any success at all, I'd probably be more like Harvey Pekar and keep my crappy day job, because it's a source of endless frustration that I've learned to channel creatively.

Anyway, I appreciate the thoughtful reply. Very valid points.

Cheers,

As far as keeping a day job, I think I heard an interview with David Sedaris from a few years back, before he got huge, where he explained to Terry Gross that while his writing brought him enough income to live on, he could not quit working menial jobs. He said he'd try it, he'd get up and sit down at the typewriter and ten minutes later wonder what his hair would look like parted ont he side. He'd go to find out, and by the time he went to bed, he'd never made it back to his typewriter. On the other hand, if he cleaned houses or picked fruit or whatever, his time at the end of the day was limited and he had to get down to business.

I think he replaced menial labor with trying to figure out how to be French, but he's also reached a level of fame where it would be harder for people to be quiet about David Sedaris cleaning their apartment. Most writers do readings just to encourage book sales and gain visibility: Sedaris charges $25 a ticket for the privilage of hearing him read these days.

Oh man, I loved "Me Talk Pretty One Day", especially the first half. I'd never heard that, but I think it's pretty funny that he kept some menial jobs going to keep that pressure on. I can totally relate. I know that I can't write at all whenever I have plenty of time to write. There's some kind of power in procrastination, like the urgency spikes some kind of artistic adrenaline to get my ass in gear.

I'd love to pull a Lester Burnham and go back to working some highly physical low-responsibility job. I think it's funny to see people paying to go to the gym to stay in shape when there's plenty of opportunity out there to do physical labor and get paid for it. I keep waiting for the local beer distributor to put up a 'now hiring' sign, I did that back when I was a kid and I was in the best shape of my life.

Cheers,

Wow, that's depressing. But there's still Canada and the UK, which (last time I checked) read books by US authors.

[QUOTE=jase]Those are definitely depressing statistics, depending on how you look at it.

I read a quote somewhere from Chuck, I don't know the specifics off the top of my head, but it had something to do with the typical audience for books these days being mostly housewives and whatnot. Since this wasn't his audience, he pretty much figured he could get away with anything.

I thought that was such a liberating way to think about things. Some people would see these statistics and see a waste of time. Chuck saw it as untapped potential. He didn't blame the decline on television or movies or whatever, it was just a shift in what people wanted. He made stories that reached people like me who thought of books as a bore.

Having already written music for an audience that was already inundated with similar material (alternative rock), I found this whole idea totally inspiring, not in the sense that I wanted to be like him, but more like being set free creatively. I stopped caring so much about the trends, and started writing something that made me happy.

Here's to you, Chuck

*raises glass*[/QUOTE]
Stephen King said in an interview I heard years ago that, if he'd known how bad his odds of success were, he would have been paralyzed, incapable of writing a word.

Here's to hubris, self published or otherwise. For that matter, maybe it's better that writing doesn't make the average author rich: people who have no monetary struggles tend to be out of touch with almost everyone. It's like the 'Friends' thing, how is it that all six of them aren't crammed into a studio on Avenue D with bad plumbing?

Or in the book world, I remember noticing back when I read Robert Ludlum in my early 20s that money was never a problem for the hero. One of his characters bought the biggest Mercedes available for safety reasons after being run off the road or something. I'd have a LOT easier time rooting for a guy in the same scenario who ends up having to take a userous loan at Krazy Karl's Kar Lot to get a 10 year old Town Car with a dubious transmission.

[QUOTE=Spike]Wow, that's depressing. But there's still Canada and the UK, which (last time I checked) read books by US authors.[/QUOTE]

Very, very true.
Canada has a very large, supportive writing community that spans the nation, but I think it's safe to say that 85% of what we read is still American.

Well, it's been three-and-a-half years, let's update this thread. The self-publishing ladscape has changed quite a bit. I'm sure some folks will want to vent about BookSurge and their strong-arming of LightningSource et. al. . .

I'm probably going to be forced to jump into the POD pool soon, myself.