Oh you don't need a company to self publish.  If you can do the marketing, I can walk you through the cover art, setting it up as a self-publish book, putting it as an ebook.  All for almost nothing out of pocket.  The hard part will be promoting it.

Once you've gone through CreateSpace or LULU once, it's not that hard the second time.

But if you go with a company who puts it together for you, ask for when they discount (often right after Xmas) you can get half off deals.  You always want a company that sends you a proof to approve before any final prints.

Also you'll want to see the quality of the binding.

As for cover art, I can help there depending on what you want.

Without a good solid marketing plan that you work (see  The Bum Magnet and Priscilla The Great), self promoting doesn't work.  You need to have a plan with promotions and to cross-list your book.   If you have the marketing worked out, the rest is the easy part.

Tirz

Last edited by TirzahLaughs (05-02-2011 14:48:20)

After more than 30 years in marketing and sales, from a door-to-door salesman in Los Angeles to selling interests in modest oil and gas ventures in Texas, I know that each rejection is just one step closer to acceptance.

Rejection? Pshaw! Thank you! Next!

Last edited by jaames (05-02-2011 15:35:49)

s_thatcher wrote:

Sales pitch aside, are you really ready to get published? Either way, best of luck. Many have found vanity publishing to be a good and fruitful option. Many have found that taking matters into their own hands is extremely satisfying.

Nope. I'm not ready. My pieces are not ready.  I think there's a certain mental state that you have to achieve. A hunger to be published. I am realizing that being here seems to be enough for me. When I get 20 hits and 5 reviews, I am thrilled. Being here makes me feel validated. And I'm not sure that I really need anything more.

TirzahLaughs wrote:

Oh you don't need a company to self publish.  If you can do the marketing, I can walk you through the cover art, setting it up as a self-publish book, putting it as an ebook.  All for almost nothing out of pocket.  The hard part will be promoting it.

Once you've gone through CreateSpace or LULU once, it's not that hard the second time.

But if you go with a company who puts it together for you, ask for when they discount (often right after Xmas) you can get half off deals.  You always want a company that sends you a proof to approve before any final prints.

Also you'll want to see the quality of the binding.

As for cover art, I can help there depending on what you want.

Without a good solid marketing plan that you work (see  The Bum Magnet and Priscilla The Great), self promoting doesn't work.  You need to have a plan with promotions and to cross-list your book.   If you have the marketing worked out, the rest is the easy part.

Tirz

I've started researching the companies. It looks like what you pay the most for is the marketing. Even at CreateSpace, the price to market is high. I get the feeling that the people who have the time to invest in self-promotion have back-burnered their day jobs. Can't do that, so I'm going to have to go with a deal that does most of the work for me.


I've looked back over my stories and they don't need as much work as I had thought.  So I'm tempted to start with someone's standard package so that I can get it sent for reviews that can be put on the back cover. I have it in my head that I'd like someone's art on the front cover. I'm going to talk to a few artists to see what is possible.


I definitely would like to have a guide, so if you're willing, I'll love you forever.

OK. What about proofreading and copyediting. is that worth paying for?

QWLauren35 wrote:

s_thatcher wrote:

Sales pitch aside, are you really ready to get published? Either way, best of luck. Many have found vanity publishing to be a good and fruitful option. Many have found that taking matters into their own hands is extremely satisfying.

Nope. I'm not ready. My pieces are not ready.  I think there's a certain mental state that you have to achieve. A hunger to be published. I am realizing that being here seems to be enough for me. When I get 20 hits and 5 reviews, I am thrilled. Being here makes me feel validated. And I'm not sure that I really need anything more.

Why bother to self-publish then? The reviews you get here will not be reflective of what you get 'out there' if you get any at all. What if you only sell ten books (to other than friends and family)? What then for your ego? Won't it be even more shattered? I urge you to at least hire a professional editor. Story collections are a tough sell, unless you're Alice Munro, or Richard Ford, or Tony Doerr. Even those few emerging writers (from the Iowa Writers Workshop) who are getting short story collections published by traditional means have had most of those stories published in literary magazines prior. And they only realize sales in the few hundreds, not thousands. You may be setting yourself up for worse disappointment by jumping the gun than you would be from getting rejections from agents, publishers and magazines. Have you tried duotrope.com? Vanity publishers want to sell you something.

Anyway, I'll shut up now, and just wish you the best of luck. For all I know, you could be the exception to the rule...

s_thatcher wrote:

Why bother to self-publish then? The reviews you get here will not be reflective of what you get 'out there' if you get any at all. What if you only sell ten books (to other than friends and family)? What then for your ego? Won't it be even more shattered?

No, I won't be shattered if it doesn't sell. I don't think I can explain why, perhaps because I've sold things on Zazzle.com and it wasn't a lot. I've sold lots of things over the years, and when I'm confident in a product, I can sell it.

I feel pretty confident about my writing, but it's a niche. I'm writing for the African-American literary market. I'll probably also cross over into a few other markets, but not in any major way.

My goal is to sell 1000 copies. Okay, not a goal. A dream. I think I'm willing to hustle for the first 25-100. But more than that is icing.

Suffice to say, I won't break even. The more I think about the more I realize that that's not my goal. My goal is to have my work read... and enjoyed. Oh, and my dream is for one of my stories to get into the annual Best African-American Short Stories anthology.

Maybe that won't happen unless I go the literary journal route. But I think it's the waiting that I'm not sure I can deal with. Sounds like you wait for responses, you wait for publication, and there's little you can do to move things along. And I'd have to submit different stories to different genres...

It's just a mess.

And to be honest, I think I'll eventually give up on self-publishing because it's too expensive, but I've decided to be open to it.


Am I making sense? Maybe not! But I'm writing from the gut here.

And don't worry about discouraging me. I've gotten bad reviews here and survived.  Or rather, bounced back. I don't know why submitting to journals bugs me except that it's so slow, and I am impatient.

crazeesharon wrote:

Somebody here, maybe Jeni Decker (?) once posted that she found a deal and spent something like $40 to go this route. Jeni, was that you?

Actually, I just uploaded the entire thing to CreateSpace for free. I'll let you know what happens. So far all I've spent is $25 on some cover art.

I too, have written a novel. I have written the blasted thing five or six times! Each time, I believe, better than the last. My aim is get it right for publishing but, like others on this site, I am totally confused about the best way to go. I know nothing about marketing. Strategy is, to me, something that doesn't seem to work in politics and other situations. I do not want to spend a fortune only to find out that, what I think is a good story, is, in fact, absolute rubbish.
I would like to know what publishers are prepared to do for free? Who buys stories? What are literary agents and what do they do, exactly, and how can a naive ignoramus negotiate a mine-field of pit-falls and disappointment without being disillusioned, disheartened and ripped off! Does anyone know?