And Not Just Non-Fiction, Either... Menu The Writer as Owner/Operator ✔ Why Publish? The entire concept of self-publishing has been ✔ What Kind of Books? debated, confused, falsely-praised, falsely-damned, ✔ Author/Publisher and generally misunderstood in recent years, but one aspect of the decision to be your own publisher is ✔ The Profit Part ✔ seldom stated in the endless articles and internet Work your "Niche" bombast--the option of making money from writing ✔ Not Just "Non" with all profits and process under the author's ✔ Now Sell It control. ✔ "The Chart" ✔ Success Stories This workshop discusses ways an author can make money by publishing in a variety of processes and ✔ Resources business models. There are many reasons an author ✔ Confused Terms might self-publish: desire to pay the rent, a platform ✔ Who Is This Guy? to building readership, sheer vanity, or just the fun of it. None of these is anybody else's business: that's what being an independent entrepreneur is all Navigate this document by about. clicking on red links. Menus and contents tables Your opportunity and ability to publish your own are starred, all red text is work is far greater than any time in human history. linked. Click any red Publishing is a writer's tool. And... headline to return to it's home menu. A writer, like any other craftsman, should be Use the controls of your pdf aware of any and all tools available to him reader for scrolling and or her, become familiar with any that seem other movement in the text. to offer an advantage, and learn a great deal about those that offer the best chance of accomplishing self-expression and achieving his or her artistic, financial, or social goals. WHY Be Your Own Publisher? Don't let's get started on the whole “vanity publishing” issue. The term is clarified in the “Confused Terms” section, but it's safe to say that all self-expression stems mostly from ego, and therefore vanity. For our purposes here, we'll assume there are two reasons to want to publish your writing: ego and profit. And will address the latter. Because the fact is, you can make money publishing your own writing. It's done all the time, and I'll cite some examples. The situation is not that any given writer can decide to publish any given book and make anything out of it, but the right book, well-handled, can turn a profit.. And what makes “the right book” is not as cut and dried as people like to think. This manual will proceed through a tree of options with an eye to helping you decide if you want to wear the “publisher hat” or if it's even feasible for you. (Or perhaps workable for one book, maybe not even yet written, but not another.) So who makes money publishing their own books? A lot of people, actually, including quite a few I know personally. One thing the advent of Lulu.com and POD books did was create a sort of stereotype of self-publishing as some loser popping his failed collection of angst-ridden poems out on the internet and running around writer forums trying to get people to pay twenty bucks for it. (And like many stereotypes, there's so much truth to that cliché that it hurts. Hurts everybody, actually.) But consider some real-life cases: ✔ Mexican Slang 101, my own book. This title has sold over 100,000 copies. I have made a living off it, currently pay my rent with it in a dozen outlets. It works out of a special niche, and dominates it. Like all of these books, it has no ISBN and is not primarily targeted to bookstores. ✔ Six Figures from tax cheats A friend puts out a book once a year. It sells for $100 a copy and sells out immediately. Lucrative specialized knowledge is probably the best sales niche you could dream of. ✔ Six Hundred a Month on the Internet Two guys I know net this much from books that are essentially sex tourism guides to the Baja, Cuba, and Dominican Republic for horny gringos. Books cost the same to produce as my $5 slang book, but sell for $25 ✔ Business Set-Up Manuals A CPA selling books on setting up corporations in each state of U.S. He figured out it wasn't worth doing print books, switched to downloadable pdf documents he makes and delivers for nothing, makes very nice money on them ✔ Cruise ship book I know this guy only from the internet, but have watched him cruise to success with this book about his career working on cruise ships. A wonderful niche: moneyed people with time to kill, gift stores on the ships, websites and targeted mags. ✔ Restaurant Spanish/English A great idea: this book is similar in format to my own, cheap and pocket-sized, but has two “front” covers--half the book is English to Spanish for managers and waitresses, the other half Spanish/English for the cooks and busboys. Sells through restaurant supply houses and jobbers, not book stores. This sort of alternate distribution is usually a hallmark of a successful independent book. ✔ Vietnamese and Cambodian for Police, Fire, and Hospital Workers. Title says it all. In some areas this book was a very hot seller among professionals who needed basic communications. Again, sold through cop gear and uniforms stores, as well as off a website. ✔ Dining Out In San Francisco for Under $5 Okay, that was a long time ago. But same principle and proof you don't need websites and POD to do this. A cheap pocket-sized guide that everybody in S.F. had a copy of in the late Sixties. They were constantly approached to sell ads on the inside covers. ✔ Local Tourist Area Guide Lots of these, and they work. The one I know best was essentially a book that folded out into a map. Fixed amount of ads and they sold out every time. He had a new edition every six months. Exactly the same thing, but that was all your ad money got. Nice wrinkle... pretty girls handing it out in the airport. ✔ This eBook Manual Hey, eBooks are book publishing, too. I do a line of these, all of interest to writers. Cost to produce...zero. Cost to distribute...zero. Net... 100% of gross. I make five times as much off one of these than a $17 novel. And the thing is, they need to be eBooks... the way they're used, and the links make print useless. Which brings up my principle of a book's “appropriate vocation”. Which Books Self-Publish Profitably? Let's be real: not every book has much of a shot at making money for an author/publisher. Before looking at what types of books do have a shot, I'd like to introduce a term that helps explain the difference. Forget people saying only non-fiction has a chance: that's not the way it breaks. Books that succeed are books with what I'm going to call an “appropriate vocation” for being published independently. What it means is that some books just “want” to be worked by their authors through independent efforts and channels and some just don't. You want to look into publishing your book if it has that “vocation” or “calling” and avoid the hassle if it doesn't. So what is the difference? One of the big words is “niche” (although that's getting as meaningless as “platform”) and it's a powerful concept. The self-published money- maker will tend to appeal to a niche group of readers that is easily identifiable-- efficiently reached. That latter word is a biggie, which we'll return to. “Niche market” tends to be seen as a group of readers that is small, and non-mainstream. In fact if can be any sized group (steampunk fans, gay romance readers, actuarial accountants, Latino immigrants, expatriates in Eastern Europe) and defined in many ways from job title to national origin to hobby interests to shared perversions. The niche exists to their degree of identifying with the characteristic of the niche. Ferret owners are more likely to buy a ferret book than people named Cavendish are likely to buy a book on Cavendishes. And one major of way of not only judging, but using that identification, is in the existence of targeted media or opportunities. This is that “reachable” factor--as good a definition of “niche” as any. If there are a half dozen very active websites for people who like to dress up like fuzzy animals for fun and eroticism (there are) then you are seeing a niche that you can reach. There are magazines for iPhone users, JetSki owners, Jaguar restorers, Civil War re-enactors. Meaning a group of people identifying and reachable. iPhone owners, per-se, might not be a niche. But if they take the magazine or log onto a chat board about it, then there they are, identifying and qualifying themselves. Bringing up a significant factor: affordable reachability. You can, just by putting in internet time, probably reach ninety percent of ferret fanciers or home-schoolers in the United States for free. But if the qualifying medium for your niche is subscribing to Robb Report, you're going to have to pay big money to reach them. Bringing up another factor: is it worth it? You might not be able afford to sell your book on how to buy millionaire yachts to Robb Report readers, but very easily reach the population of homeless plastic collector/recyclers.