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 provider
of publishing services to both traditional
book publishers and individual authors, we provide
a full portfolio of excellent tools,
production services and promotional vehicles to authors
interested in publishing their own book. Use your
hard-won knowledge and ideas to inspire and inform.
We'll build your content into a truly unique and professionalbook.
Publishing Your Own Book
Publishing your
own book is more a conversation about whether
or not an author should use self-publishing companies
or take on the tasks of publishing their book by themselves.
It is my opinion (though I own a self publishing company)
that the easiest and most profitable way of publishing
your own book is to utilize the services of a high-quality,
price competitive self publishing company. Not a surprise,
I'm sure.
Throughout this site you'll
find me using the example of building your own house
- and I tie it back to publishing your own book. Many
people looking to build a home do all the work themselves
- most, however, do not. Most people building a home
hire contractors that know the process and are experts
in what they do. Self publishing companies, for the
most part, play the same role in helping you publish
your own book. I really feel that accumulating all
the available data will help authors make better publishing
decisions regarding publishing your own book.
Compare
Self Publishing Companies
HERE
See
how much it REALLY costs
to publish a book.
Authorhouse, iUniverse, Outskirts Press and Xlibris
pricing analyzed and compared.
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This page is designed
to offer some thoughts on publishing
your own book . I heartily recommend that
you follow up with your own research. As you move
through the industry, many publishers talk about their
up front publishing package costs and how inexpensive
they are in relation to everyone else in the market.
The author who has written a book using their sweat
and tears now brings it to light in the market for
a very reasonable fee. However, they've also condemned
the book the sit stagnant on the bookshelf. Why? Because
to reduce the up front publishing costs, the book
publisher had to significantly raise the costs they
charge for book printing. The number one factor impacting
if you sell books - even beyond the quality of your
writing - is the price you have to charge your readers!
The more book printing costs from your publisher,
the higher your retail price - often beyond what someone
will be willing to pay (except of course for Mom and
Aunt Martha... )
Publishing your own book - that
someone will buy...
We try to discuss target
markets and on whom the book publisher should focus
for each of our authors when we are talking about
how to publish a book. Quite often
an author will tell us their book is for everyone
- every reader needs this book, but all for a different
reason. One of your core tasks as an author, when
learning publishing your own book,
is that you must target a specific audience and pursue
them relentlessly. "But what about the sales
I'll lose from the other segments?" is the next
question we get. Successful book sales are a long
pursuit that requires consistent and persistent effort
- and has quite a bit to do with the pursuit of targeted
audiences and very little to do with reaching out
to 'everyone'
Publishing your own book
- chasing best-sellers...
We all dream of conquering
the world of publishing. We cannot do it without bothering
to learn about publishing your own book.
Authors often fall within two camps - some start off
very conservative, with realistic expectations and
desires, while the other camp dashes in with the wild
pursuit of book sales in the tens of thousands of
units. These authors head into the market chasing
the bestseller lists, with the thought that 'my book
can sell just like X.' Chasing a best-seller list
is an exercise in futility - in only the rarest of
cases do books make the best-seller lists without
spending tens of thousands of dollars in marketing
and placement fees (often more like hundreds of thousands...)
Don't put yourself in this position - it's frustrating
and unlikely to create any meaningful success.
Publishing your own book
- it's about the marketing...
Last, but not least, in
our segment on publishing your own book
is the statistic that often authors are not as willing
as they need to be to spend time marketing their own
book. All too often they want to throw money at the
problem rather than time and effort. We've addressed
this is our articles
before, self publishers who are willing to spend
more money than time on marketing techniques. This
just doesn't make sense, since self publishers are
almost always short on cash and more than likely to
be publishing a first book to make some money. You
can hire someone like Dog Ear to perform 'technical
marketing' programs, but you ultimately are the
number one advocate and marketer for your book. Miles
and I spend a lot of time speaking with authors about
book marketing and their book
marketing plan ideas. And, all too often, the
marketing plan is unfocused and aimed at 'everyone'
so that they can sell a million books in a hurry.
I'm sorry, but you need to focus and target - if you
can't identify a specific reader and why they might
buy your book, don't do it...
Ppublishing your own book
- traditional or self publish...
So lets go back to the
original question about publishing your own
book - using a self publisher or starting
your own publishing imprint or publishing company.
I've an interesting statistic that shows that you
are slightly more likely to be successful when self
publishing a book than you are when deciding to pursue
the traditional book publisher market. Now, honestly,
both avenues present slim chances for overwhelming
success - but only in self publishing do you have
the chance to control your own destiny. How many of
the books published each year actually are promoted
as a premier or best-seller? Did you know that nearly
70% of the books published by traditional publishers
were returned in 2004?
The difference between
being a self publisher and using
a self publisher to publish a book
is who performs each of the publishing tasks. I use
the example of building a house - most of us hire
a contractor to build our houses. There are the occasional
few (like my father) who build their houses themselves
or act as the general contractor. But it's not the
norm. A self publishing company should merely act
as your general contractor for the building of your
book. For most authors, who may publish one, two or
even three books, it is much more advantageous to
use a self publishing company than to go through the
processes themselves.
I've tried to provide
an answer to the question "publishing your
own book?" Dog Ear Publishing provides writers
a simple, quick and economical way of getting published.
Dog Ear Publishing's cutting edge publishing technologies
completely eliminate the need for printing books in
huge quantities and our unmatched processes provide
our authors the fastest time-to-market of any full
service self publisher.
And - we make your books
affordable enough that you can actually sell them
and make a profit. That is VERY different that most
of the competition in the self publishing market.
That's publishing
your own book... thanks for reading!
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