| | John, congratulations! I am pleased to see this article on your self-publishing experiences, and hope you found the whole process rewarding in many ways.
Let me share my own, in brief summary form.
I worked for a while in the early '90s on contract for the Foundation for Economic Education. FEE had been publishing books for many years, but it operated very much like a self-publisher: It simply slapped together and edited manuscripts to make them ready for publication, then -- with no thought about preparing attractive covers, obtaining ISBN's, Library of Congress registrations, bar codes, etc. -- simply mailed them off to a book printer to be slapped into print between two covers. Having little concern for marketing, most of these titles wound up gathering dust in the basement of FEE's Irvington, NY, mansion.
My job for FEE was to create some new titles that would be "bookstore-worthy," and actually get them into bookstores. To do that, I first had to get a thorough understanding of how the book trade worked, and what it takes to self-publish and successfully market a book.
In this educational process I found two books exceptionally valuable. One is The Self-Publishing Manual by Dan Poynter. The other is The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Tom and Marilyn Ross. I urge anyone who wishes to explore self-publishing to obtain these books, whose information is largely complementary, then to absorb it thoroughly and follow their advice to the letter.
For me, the result was that my own FEE-published book, Criminal Justice? The Legal System Vs. Individual Responsibility, appeared in bookstores from coast to coast, as well as the big online outlets like Amazon; that I engineered a 30-city book tour during which I did signings in dozens of Borders, B. Dalton, Waldenbooks and Barnes & Noble outlets; that I appeared on scores of radio and TV talk shows, many syndicated to hundreds of broadcast outlets; and that my book sold thousands of copies, even being distributed to most members of Congress. I even wrote up my book-marketing experiences for a two-part series that was published in Writer's Digest in 1997 under the title, "Take Your Book and Sell It." (Incidentally, two other FEE titles that I worked on also made it into the bookstores.)
I'll warn you that each phase of this process -- the writing, the publishing and the marketing -- takes up a great deal of time and effort. But if you've got the passion to get your own book "out there," the advantages of doing it yourself can be significant. For one thing, even a major publisher (if you can get one) does almost nothing to promote your book: it focuses its marketing efforts and money on pushing a few big-name authors in its stable. But by focusing on publishing and promoting only one book -- yours -- you can give it maximum attention as to design and marketing. For another thing, you reap a much higher profit margin on each sale, since you don't have to share earnings with a huge corporate publishing superstructure.
So I urge you to buy those two valuable books and try to incorporate as much of their advice as possible into your own self-publishing efforts. Most importantly, follow the timetable they recommend. The book trade has long "lead times" for their seasonal purchases, and you want to fit their schedules as closely as possible.
Good luck. And again -- congratulations, John. "Happy sales to you."
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