Stacked Odds? You don't need an agent
and a publishing deal to call yourself
an author anymore

Southwest Airlines Spirit By Beth Mayall

March 2005 — International sales trainer and certified management consultant Dr. Jeff Magee had an idea for a book. In fact, he had several. First, he went the traditional route and signed with two well-known royalty publishers. Unhappy with the lack of control he had over his projects, he produced his next book himself. “The ability to have complete control over the book process was very educational, and with aggressive marketing, extremely lucrative,” says Magee.

Once upon a time, self-publishing held a stigma and a hefty price tag. Your other options were to go with a traditional royalty publisher or, if no publisher nibbled, you'd hire a vanity press, paying a flat fee (around $20,000) to a company to publish and market your title. But authors found once their book was published and the check was cashed, their books didn't move. Vanity presses had no financial incentive to sell the books; they'd already been paid everything they were getting.

Nowadays, the model has changed. Self-publishing is losing its stigma, and services abound to make the process easier and make your books appear more professional. As a result, the number of people taking publishing into their own hands is on the rise. “If you self-publish, you will get more money, get to press sooner and keep control of your work,” says Dan Poynter, author of the industry bible The Self-Publishing Manual.

Bobbie Christensen, author of seven self-published books and director of BooksAmerica.com, which helps authors publish, self-publish and sell their books, agrees. “Yes, I pay for the printing up front, but I get to keep all the royalties,” says Christensen, who makes about $100,000 from her titles. “I'd rather self-publish than go the traditional publisher route, where I'd end up with +-only 10 percent royalties. I'm an independent person; I want to do things my own way.”

Even the days of having a garage-load of books you can't sell are coming to an end. Print on Demand (POD) enables self-publishers to print one or more copies of a book at a time, as the books are needed. As each copy sells, author royalties are paid—usually 10 to 25 percent of the purchase price. Companies such as Xlibris and iUniverse offer POD packages starting at $459, more if you add in a la carte items such as editing and marketing services. The books themselves can copy from $10 to $19 per copy to print. Another drawback: Major bookseller won't work with POD titles because PODs are nonrefundable.

And before you settle down at your key-board, you might be wondering: How many of those books really sell? Good question. Take the example of Xlibris, who had published roughly 10,000 titles through March 2004. Of those, the average sold 130 copies.

The key to success, most agree, is all in the marketing.

“You should start the marketing before you even finish the book,” Christensen says. “And if you don't want to do the marketing, you shouldn't even bother writing the book. It's that important.”

Here's what to know if you're taking your title into your own hands.

1. Know your audience. Before you crank out 50,000 words on a topic, write a short article or make a presentation to your niche. Find out what they really want to know.
2. Set a daily writing goal and deadline for completing the first draft.
3. Write up and print a publicity flyer for your title, stressing its two or three main selling points. Send it to independent bookstores, libraries, and the media. Give copies to everyone you meet.
4. Once you've written your book, invest the extra cash to have a professional edit and copy-edit it.
5. Before you print your book, copyright it. Get a Library of Congress catalog number before you publish, and incorporate this info on your copyright page. Info at copyright.gov.
6. Two months before you print, start setting up book signings. Stores like Waldenbooks have more liberal policies than the bigger chains. At signings, you'll need to greet people and be aggressive.
7. Print only the number of books you can really sell.
8. Find extra ways to market your book, such as parties, giveaways and radio shows.

And keep in mind that marketing takes time. Lots of it. If you're a busy executive with a book idea in mind, the time that it will take to just get a book from manuscript to hard copy, let along marketing, is enough to make you want to shelve your idea. That's where a publishing partner can help.

For Magee, the key to success on his latest title, The Management Leadership Bible, was to find a company that could help him with editing and design, but not dip into his royalties. Enter Brown Books Publishing Group. The Dallas, Texas, publisher helps authors create books while allowing them to retain the rights to their intellectual property and keep all the profits.

“I saw a need that wasn't being met in the publishing world today,” says Milli Brown, the company's publisher and founder. “The only options for publishing a book were vanity presses or royalty publishers—two extremes. Our clients have complete control over their projects without having to self-publish.” Her company assists writers with professional editing, ghostwriting, cover design, Web design, marketing, public relations and fulfillment and distribution—services that Magee says have already paid for themselves.

“With my latest book, I'm able to sell directly to the client and generate more revenue, profit and leverage than with previous mainstream experiences,” says Magee.

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