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What is Self‐Publishing? A presentation for The Inkwell, a gathering of writers from Pennwriters.org. Introduction I’m a writer of fantasy and science fiction stories. I wrote and published my first novel in 2012, and I currently have 9 novels in 3 series, short stories, and book bundles – 23 titles now, with 3 more novels expected for 2018. I have always been a self‐publisher – what is known as an “independent author” (indie) – and wouldn’t dream of mortgaging my ordinary rights to an agent or traditional publisher. I publish in ebook, print, and audiobook, and I’ve just commissioned my first translation. My books are published worldwide through dozens of retailers and a handful of distributors. You can find my books online anywhere. I’m just an ordinary author with an ordinary following in my genre, making ordinary proceeds – not any sort of superstar or major bestseller. I started this business while I was employed full‐time, and now I’m retired and able to devote more time to it. Books as manufactured goods You can take 200 of your family’s recipes, do them up in a word processor, and take the file to your local book‐printer and have them run up 100 bound copies for you to sell or give away to friends and family. Church groups do something like this all the time, to raise money. Corporations publish their annual reports in glossy hardbound editions for handouts at meetings. Your collection of recipes ‐‐ that’s a book. But it’s not part of the book trade. No one can order it online. It’s not in any bookstore (unless your local shop decides to take a few on consignment and add them to the “local region” section, because you asked them to.) It doesn’t have an ISBN number, that fundamental identifier that distinguishes one book from every other book in the world and lets it be ordered from anywhere. This is not what we mean by “self‐publishing.” Vanity Presses Vanity publishers, like the notorious Author Solutions, are predatory organizations that take advantage of would‐be authors. They make their money by selling services, including unnecessary ones, at tremendous markups, upselling as many of their service offerings as possible, and then producing some form of book product, often badly‐edited, poorly formatted, and ill‐covered, distributed somewhere obscure. Since their revenue does not come from book sales, they don’t care what quality of writer buys their services, and are not much concerned with the quality of the products they produce. Karen Myers, Tyrone, PA PerkunasPress.com 4/1/2018 1 KarenMyersAuthor.com [email protected] HollowLands.com Many are even worse – downright crooks who take the money and run, and then pop up again under a different name. It’s common to hear of some grandmother who’s written a memoir who pays thousands of dollars to see it become a book (of some kind), if she actually receives a book at all before she gives up. See www.sfwa.org/other‐resources/for‐authors/writer‐beware/ for some horror stories about vanity presses and some fraudulent small publishers. Here’s an excellent overview of one of the worst of the vanity presses: Author Solutions. http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2018/01/army‐of‐clones‐author‐ solutions‐spawns.html This is certainly not what we mean by “self‐publishing,” though ill‐researched news articles sometime confuse vanity presses with self‐publishers. Small Publishers These are miniature versions of the large Traditional Publishers. They have a submission process, take ownership of some part of your copyright (as much of it as they can for as long as they can), and make most of the editing and cover and pricing and distribution decisions. They do some marketing (not necessarily including your suggestions) and may require some marketing from you (e.g., author websites, book signings). Some may charge you for setup services (fees for a cover, for example). They make their money from sales, so at least they are aligned with your interests, unlike vanity presses, and are only interested in acquiring manuscripts that they think will sell well that fit their catalogues and publishing calendar. You receive a percentage of the sales, usually quite small, and you may or may not receive an initial advance against those revenues. There is usually language in the contract about how long they can hold your copyrights, or under what conditions you can ask for your rights back (rights reversion). Like all traditional publishers, there are many horror stories about the contracts they use, which typically lock up far more rights than they need for much longer than they need, for not very much return to the author. If you get to them via an agent, then you have introduced yet another parasite who (for a one‐ time service) will take another 15% of your income for the life of the deal. The big difference between the large publishers and the small/micro presses is that the former stay in business better than the latter. A one‐man micro‐press is vulnerable to death/succession woes that a larger company can weather. A one‐woman micro‐press can rob the incoming royalties to pay emergency medical bills, and then vanish. The “writer beware” link above will give you some examples to read about. This is far from “self‐publishing.” So, what IS self‐publishing? The author (“self”) produces a manuscript, takes it through all the stages that turn it into a completed product, and launches it into the book trade in a way indistinguishable from any other book. In return, the author retains all the rights and receives all the sales royalties. Karen Myers, Tyrone, PA PerkunasPress.com 4/1/2018 2 KarenMyersAuthor.com [email protected] HollowLands.com The author does all the work (or pays for parts of it to be done), takes all the decision risks, and gets all the benefit. Sounds simple, and it is – but there are a lot of details. Self‐publishing is nothing new – this is how many authors used to get their work published. http://bookstandpublishing.com/famous‐authors‐who‐have‐self‐published/ https://indiereader.com/2016/10/6‐famous‐authors‐chose‐self‐publish/ Prior to circa 2010, this was a much harder activity. You could buy ISBNs, you could get manuscripts cleaned up and ready to go (buying editorial services where required), but how did you engage formatting services (print editions and the new technical ebook editions), how did you produce print editions without incurring capital investment and inventory costs, and how did you get to retailers? The industry really took off when Amazon and others launched usable ereader devices and made it possible for authors to reach them directly (an end‐run around the book trade’s distribution methods) and get paid directly. More service providers quickly followed, offering broad distribution (using the tools of the book trade), formatting services, and audiobook‐creation services. A veritable forest of freelancers and companies offering to create industry‐quality covers sprang up. At the same time, the improvement in quality for POD (Print On Demand) made inventory‐less print editions a reality. Today’s self‐publisher has a mix of skills and expertises (beyond the manuscript production). They learn to do as much of it as they can themselves (to save money or to learn enough to supervise others), and they look at their books as investments. Costs and rewards Here’s an example of how to think about self‐publishing financially. I write fantasy and science fiction, mostly novels. Each book has an investment cost: covers, setup fees at distributors, etc. And each book has a creation cost (hours to write, edit, etc.) at some nominal wage amount. I use $25/hr as a labor cost, for calculating what it costs to produce the book. (That’s a wage of $52K/yr). In principle, I could be spending my time at a job, after all. I do the editing, formatting, and cover creation myself, and pay for background art for the covers. I do all my own website work, go to a few retailers directly, and use distribution services for the rest. So, I’m an extreme example of doing just about all of it myself (my background in computer technology, photography, and music is valuable). Still, since I “charge” myself for the hours it takes me, it’s not very different in valuing the investment than if I paid a freelancer to do it instead. Karen Myers, Tyrone, PA PerkunasPress.com 4/1/2018 3 KarenMyersAuthor.com [email protected] HollowLands.com Looking at one ordinary mid‐series novel of 121000 words, I spent 214 hours on it ($5600). I also spent a little actual cash initially, and a little more each year for annual distribution charges or for changes (like a new cover). By now, 5 years after it was published, that’s a lifetime total of $623 out of pocket. Let me repeat that – every actual dime I spent over 5 years is around $600, for a book which has earned about $2600 so far. Some years it will earn less (not actively marketed), some years it will earn more (advertising, new cover), but in any case, my new ongoing investment is small, and it just keeps on producing. Each year, that book sold some units and I made some money. Each year, the money I made as a percentage of my overall investment (cash & labor) in that book varied, ranging from 23% to 2%.

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