July 16, 2006

• a rare bit of prose...the is the main body of a email I sent a friend in a writing group regarding self publishing and why I chose it and I thought it would be appropriate to share here as well as on my email blog

  
  

  Thank you for the compliments about the covers, You choose the cover of your book, you can either pick from the ones they have availble or upload your own. I am not a photographer so on the first book I was able to choose a picture from a feloow on-line writer and he agree to let me use the picture as long as I gave credit on my title page which I did. The second two I used their covers mostly because I wanted to get them completely quickly. As I have said I intend to go back and get ISBN on each after I have gotten a majority of my poetry "out there" and have a little extra money to afford the extras. My desire to publish has been for the most part simply to give access to my poetry to a wider range of people. That is why if you go to the store front you will see the first volume of poetry is actually free as an ebook (and publishing cost only as a book) The other two are both under $10 in book format (under $3 as ebooks). My earlier poetry was written as a way to meet and explore an incredibly deep and momentous love and loss, some of that still exists in the poetry I write now, (5 years after Stephen's death) but my strongest reason for wanting to get published was to share what I felt and had gone through with other dealing with a similar loss. So my definition of the success of self-publishing will be different than other people. I feel my self publishing was a complete success and expect it to continue to be...that said I have not sold tons of copies and dont really expect to have sales pick up much until I can afford to get the ISBN and get them listed through Amazon.com. Even then my success was determined the first time one person went to the lulu.com store front and ordered the book. I would love to reach more yes but I already feel I have been a success.

  
  

   

  
  

  There are of course real issues with self-publishing. Mainstream publisher rarely want to take on a book that has been published else where. Some times they will but it is rare. You will often put your own money and effort into getting a book to the marketplace (rather than the publisher's money) obviously if you are going to do book talks/signings those are also going to be paid for by you rather than the publisher. In addition many times book store will not stock self-published books as they can not return the unsold copies (or covers) (if you read the small note on the inside of your paperback you will find that note about purchsing the book without a cover...book store can return the covers and receive credit for those books not sold) Since self publishers like lulu.com don't stock or warehouse the books (they are a print on demand self publisher) they do not have a policy where the books can be returned. I suppose if you work something out with a local or regional book seller you could get them to stock the book if you agreed to accept returns when they decided it was not selling but it would be doubtful. However once the ISBN has been aquired and the book is available through Amazon.com the dynamics of your ability to market the book succesfully may be slightly different. Again it will all depend on the time, effort and finances you can give to the project. I am a full time employee and a mom of a 20 year old son, my writing and a quilt I am working on are my "projects" when I am not completely exhausted with life, my house and everything thing else that comes at one in a day so I dont have a lot extra to devote to it but it receives what I can give. I have thought about submitting some of my poetry for publication in magazines, etc but even the work involved with that is beyond me at this point. rgiht now I want to write and edit and not worry about rejections or acceptance, that is why self-publishing works for me.

  • 3:31 pm
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