Like some 30,000 other people a year, I recently decided it was time to do more than write a book. It was time to be published.
Since I’m no longer affiliated with an academic institution and its hierarchy of snobberies that pass for tenure requirements, I didn’t care if it was an act of vanity. I soon discovered there’s a more dignified name these days: publishing on demand.
I noticed in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books that several of the major electronic publishers listed books in the small press advertisement. The books they selected, or, more likely the ones whose authors paid for marketing services, tended to be books I would actually want to read.
Something is obviously wrong with the publishing industry if the independents are more interesting than the commercial and the academic. We can all make educated guesses about the influence of conglomerate ownerships and books treated as cost centers. The internet, or more specifically computers, have reintroduced the diversity that existed in the past.
When I began, I wanted to know which company to use, and, more particularly, if any, or the industry as a whole, were a scam. I didn’t find much useful information on the internet. Since there were no reports from states’ attorneys general, I assumed the industry was legitimate. A friend gave me a writer’s magazine, but its article was promotion. It would never name names lest it offend potential advertisers.
I later realized these bastions of consumer protection couldn’t work. When I got angry at my publisher for its multiple near breaches of contract, I realized the cost to sue would be greater than the cost of the book. One appeal of the publishers on demand is their affordability, which means they attract customers who don’t have resources to fight back. The absence of legal actions means nothing.
When I was looking, I couldn’t find any comparisons on the web. I’ve since heard Mark Levine has published one that’s available for a small price. His focus is the legal contract and rights the author retains to his or her manuscript. Many web commentators made the same point: avoid any publisher who makes any proprietary claims to your work. You want to be able to change publishers quickly if you happen to be successful.
A year ago, only Morris Rosenthal made any recommendations for free. He lumped all the companies together, and said it didn’t matter which you selected because they all used the same technology. They made their profit from bogus services, and the main criteria should be price. He suggested their biggest snare was your Cinderella dream that someone would do what a commercial publisher had not, discover you were the next best seller or Nobel prize winner.
He is technically correct. But, it is a service you are buying, not a generic object in a plain brown wrapper. And there are very real differences in what you get.
The way to begin, at least for me, is to define what you need and what you expect. One publisher required a copy of the manuscript before it accepted it. While it suggested it was reading it, its main concern was eliminating pornography, libel and books that didn’t have enough sales potential. These included children’s picture books, religious testimonials, and some kinds of fiction. Some publishers don’t do poetry or cookbooks because of difficulties with formatting.
Even though I had jettisoned prejudices against vanity presses, I found I still cared about the company I kept, and thought I would be more comfortable with a publisher that was a little discriminating in what it accepted. I didn’t much want to show up next to a porn sight in an alphabetical list of authors, although it might increase my sales.
Other writers are interested in royalties and selling prices. There are differences between companies, but with a typical company, you need to sell at least 100 books to break even on a $500 investment in a 250 page book sold through the publisher’s website. It’s 200 books if you sell through other outlets, like bookstores.
Lest that sound easy, Lee Goldberg quotes some Publisher’s Weekly numbers that less than half a percent of the books put out by the largest self-publisher sells 500 copies in a year. My initial investment translated into 300 books sold through both kinds of outlets. Add-on costs took that to 450 books before I even had something to hawk.
I didn’t expect to break even on the project, and so did not worry about who had the best or most efficient royalty effort. I simply assumed picking a larger company might be a guarantee against the rapaciousness found in the music industry.
I wanted the book to have enough respectability to be acceptable to town librarians, a group I considered to be discerning about quality. That meant it had to have the attributes of a commercial book., an ISBN number, a copyright, and Library of Congress citation.
Everyone offers the ISBN, along with on-line availability through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Borders in a modestly priced package. They profit on your sales, and so they want to make sure it can be purchased. Cheaper options exist and are ideal for family, club or community projects.
The other items I valued were options, and not offered by everyone. One publisher said it didn’t bother with the copyright office or Library of Congress because you could do it yourself and gave web site addresses.
It’s true you can do the copyright yourself. The copyright office tells you the basic cost is two copies of your book plus a fee. I figured that came to about $100 for my book, if I did it myself. Anything in the option price above that was overhead and profit. If it was not exorbitant, I was willing to pay for the convenience.
The Library of Congress web site refers only to submissions by a publisher. Further it says that while it will provide a pre-publication control number for any submitted book, it will not consider it for inclusion in the collection and catalog card unless it’s a hardcover. That requirement narrowed my options to publishers who offered both the LC registration and a hardcover option.
My next decision was based on what was required to submit a book. I called or wrote to different publishers for specific information about formats. Some refused to send information without repeated requests; some sent advertising and not technical specifications. I decided how they responded to my questions was probably a useful indicator of the service I would receive and eliminated some more companies from my list.
I subsequently realized this is the single most important element in satisfaction with the publisher. I did not have a single customer service rep who answered email, and when I coerced them to answer, found none could implement my sanctioned requests with the production department.
If you don’t like the response from the sales person who handles your inquiries, do not expect things to improve, and don’t be surprised it things deteriorate once the company has your money, which most demand at the time you sign the contract.
Once I had my list of potential publishers winnowed to those who offered what I wanted at a reasonable price, I compared the available methods for submitting the manuscript. I live in a rural area with poor internet service and a manuscript that was potentially too big to transfer without corruption. Some companies would allow me to mail them the manuscript on a disc, some refused, and some wanted to charge a hefty fee for what is ultimately five minutes work transferring files from one media to another. That became my final criteria, and effectively narrowed my choice to one.
Sources:
Copyright registration, see copyright.gov.
Goldberg, Lee. Quoted by Morris Rosenthal.
Levine, Mark. The Fine Print of Self-Publishing, available at book-publishers-compared.com.
Library of Congress registration, see pen.loc.gov.
Rosenthal, Morris. 2005. Several columns at fonerbooks.com.
