But be careful. There are a number of “Gotchas” you should watch out for:
Paying for Services You Don’t Need - Many vanity publishers will sell you a package of services you probably don’t need - and may be performed by junior-level people who don’t know much about preparing a book for publication. It is ok to pay for an editor or a cover designer, if that is what you want, but it is important to interview these people individually and find someone with expertise in your field - someone with a proven track record. If a publisher is requiring you to pay for an editor, and they only allow you to use their staff, then it is probably a scam.
Make Sure You Get Books For Your Money - Too often “self-publishing” companies will sell you a package of services for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. You pay the money only to discover that you still don’t have any books. They cost extra. In fact it isn’t unusual at all for a self-published author to pay over a thousand dollars and only end up with ONE copy of his or her book. Make sure you know how many books you are going to get for your money before you type your credit card number into that website!
Distribution Promises - Many vanity publishers will promise book distribution. This is a sly deception. They cannot force a distribution company to accept your book or promote it to bookstores. All they can do is make it available. When they promise to put your book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, they aren’t doing anything you couldn’t do yourself for much less money. Without promotion, distribution means very little. Which brings us to our next point…
Promotional Services - If someone promises to be able to make your book a best seller before he or she ever sees your book, then that person is trying to scam you. No self-respecting book promoter is going to even accept a book to promote until he or she has had a chance to read it and research its marketability.
One of the great things about using WWAOW to get your first book published is that you only pay for the book production. There are no other fees or requirements. You can get several copies of your book printed up, and then take them around to book editors, agents, and marketers. You can even take them to bookstores, and sell them on consignment if you like.
While you are doing this, your book is also available for sale on the WWAOW website. This means you don’t have to wait months or even years for someone else to get around to publishing your book, and you don’t have to pay extra for services you don’t need.
It is becoming a common theme in the publishing industry. Bloggers who have a strong following online publish a book and become an instant success.
The formula makes sense. After all, as a blogger, you already have the content; and you already have the name recognition. Even better, you have hundreds, or even thousands of potential buyers coming across your website every day.
For a successful blogger, self-publishing can be a great option. This is because one of the primary reasons many authors work with large publishing companies is to leverage their marketing capabilities.
But as a blogger, you already have access to your market. Why not monetize the site traffic, and keep all the profit?
There are plenty of examples of bloggers publishing books, and making huge money. Here are a few:
Marshall Brain began by writing informative articles on his website www.howstuffworks.com. The content from the website was later published into a book, and today the business generates over $20 million per year.
Christian Lander created a blog called StuffWhitePeopleLike.com. The site stats show over 33 million hits - which got Christian a $350,000 book deal from Random House this year. This kind of deal is something that anyone would like, no matter what color your skin happens to be.
And in 2003, Robert Lanham published “The Hipster’s Handbook” and sold over 40,000 copies.
The trick, of course, is to get a huge following online. You’ll need the traffic to sell the book. You also need to come up with a compelling reason for people to buy the book. After all, they are already reading your blog for free - why should they buy a paper book? Answer that question, and you could make millions.
If you listen to the conventional wisdom, you would believe that no real author self-publishes; that all self-published books are doomed to obscurity. Following is a list of authors who did it anyway.
For some of these people, when their books were turned away from the established publishing houses, they persevered. For others, the “experts” told them they had to modify their books, or drop their prices, or that it couldn’t be marketed the way they wanted.
It’s a good thing these Self-published authors didn’t listen to the conventional wisdom:
Scott Adams - Creator of Dilbert
Arthur Agatston - The South Beach Diet
Julie Clark - The Baby Einstein Company
John Audubon - The Birds of America
John Bartlett - Familiar Quotations
L. Frank Baum - Author of the Wizard of Oz
Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson - Co-authors of The One-Minute Manager
Marshall Brain - How Stuff Works
Amanda Brown - Legally Blonde
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Creator of Tarzan
E.E. Cummings - No Thanks
William E.B. DuBois - Founder of the NAACP
Alexandre Dumas - Author of The Three Musketeers
Arlene Eisenberg - What to Do When You’re Expecting
T.S. Eliot - Nobel Prize Winning Poet
Howard Fast - Spartacus
Edward Fitzgerald - The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Benjamin Franklin - Poor Richard’s Almanack, One of the Founders of the United States
Galileo Galilei - The Starry Messenger
Zane Grey - Author of over 60 Western Novels
Nathaniel Hawthorne - Author of The House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter
Hugh Hefner - Self-published the first edition of Playboy
Ernest Hemmingway - Paid for his first novel to be printed
L. Ron Hubbard - Self-published Dianetics
James Joyce - Self-published Ulysses
Stephen King - Self published “The Plant” on his website in 2000
Robert Kiyosaki - Rich Dad, Poor Dad
Louis L’Amour - Smoke from This Alter
Herman Melville - Author of Moby Dick self-published several books of poetry
Richard Nixon - President of the United States, Self-published Real Peace
Thomas Paine - Self-published “Common Sense” to recruit soldiers for the American Revolution
Edgar Allen Poe - Author of “The Raven”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”
Beatrix Potter - The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Irma Rombauer - The Joy of Cooking
Henry David Thoreau - Self-published Walden
Mark Twain - Self-published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Noah Webster - Author of the First American Dictionary
Walt Whitman - Self-published “Leaves of Grass”
Virginia Woolf - Author of Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando
Tim and Nina Zagat - Self-published the Zagat Survey
And there are countless others. Many of the people on this list self-published to jump-start their careers, then ended up with lucrative deals with major publishers.
One website, www.longbets.org has a system whereby members can bet on long-term social and scientific changes and developments. Back in 2002, member Jason Epstein predicted that by 2010, half of all books would be printed on demand in bookstores right at the cash register.
Challenger Vint Cerf took the bet and the two agreed on a wager of $2,000 (the winnings are donated to charity). Cerf’s argument wasn’t that books would continue to be produced in the same way. Rather, he contends that the market would settle on a digital distribution model. In other words, that people would read books on their laptops and PDAs.
We are now 18 months away from the conclusion of this bet. Who will win? Is it possible that neither prediction will come true?
Isn’t it interesting that neither of these bets takes serious consideration of the possibility of OnDemand printing by online book sellers?
Self-Publishing simply means an author acts as his or her own publishing company to bring a book to market. Often, but not always, this means that the author wears all the hats: author, publisher, publicist, sales rep, distributor, and shipping clerk.
These can be extremely time-consuming tasks which is why many self-publishing authors outsource some of these “jobs” to other organizations. They remain the legal owner of the book, but the tasks of selling and fulfilling orders, marketing and so forth are handled by others. This allows the author to focus on the task of writing books instead of tracking down shipments and dealing with collections.
Self-publishing authors who publish with WWAOW do not have to worry about most of these activities because all aspects of the sales, printing, and fulfillment are handled by the WWAOW system. Authors simply write and market their work.
Many self-publishing authors ask this question, and unfortunately the answer is difficult to predict. The truth is that your success as an author depends to a large degree on the following factors:
The quality of your book
The size of market for your book
How well you are able to market and sell it
Book quality affects whether anyone is going to recommend your book to others. Reviewers and critics will only recommend a book if it is good. After all, their reputations are on the line.
The size of your market also plays an important role. Your niche may be the most exciting thing in the world to you, but you will sell more books if your niche happens to be “Mysteries” than if your niche happens to be “Gestational Trophoblastic Neoplasia.”
Thirdly, your sales and marketing capabilities will also play a role. If you master the techniques of book marketing, or you use your self-publishing experience to leverage a book deal with a major publishing house, then your book will do very well for you.
Keep in mind that you can use your books to make money in many more ways than simply selling them. Often, you can make more money by giving your books away than by selling them. Consultants often use this technique to attract consulting contracts. Professional authors also give away copies of their work to get writing gigs and columns in magazines, newspapers and websites.
The trick with self-publishing a book is to keep your eyes open to opportunities. Sometimes creativity in how you make your money is almost as important as the creativity you use to write your books!
One of the questions we have been asked about WWAOW a number of times is the issue of Copyrights. Specifically, what if an author gets a book deal?
With WWAOW, if you get a book deal with a big publishing company, then you just sign and publish your book with them. Each author on the WWAOW system is, legally speaking, their own publishing company. This means when you publish your book through WWAOW, you own the copyright, and can sell it to whomever you please.
There is no need to do any paperwork with WWAOW about your Copyright.
Often churches and other religious organizations need to publish small quantities of books. Until recently, doing this was cost-prohibitive – especially for books that would only be used a few times within the church.
Now, with WWAOW, churches are finding that they have the ability to print seasonal publications and specialized Hymnals for church programs. The low-cost of small run publishing allows churches to not only create these specialized books, but also to turn them into a source of revenue as their members can purchase them online or in the church bookstore.
Answering this question is a lot like answering the question of how much does a diamond ring cost?
The answer? Between about $79 and “How high is your credit limit?”.
If you work through WWAOW, then you can upload your book at no cost. Making your book available for worldwide distribution requires you to purchase just five copies. So, the average cost is around $79.
Other services charge much more. Many self-publishing authors who use different services often pay as much as several thousand dollars just to get their book into the publishing company’s system. These fees generally do not include copies of the book. They cost extra.
