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Comment by Michael N. Marcus on June 11, 2011 at 4:45am

After wasting significant time and energy experimenting with several e-book services, I tried eBookIt.com and have been extremely pleased. The company is good, fast, reasonably priced and responsive. Its website is very friendly. My money comes in every month. The report of my e-book odyssey is at http://bookmakingblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/more-details-about-my-eb...

 

Michael N. Marcus
-- http://www.BookMakingBlog.blogspot.com
-- CTRL + Click to follow link"">http://www.Self-Pub.info

-- http://www.GoodBadAndUglyBooks.com (reviews of books for writers)
-- Create Better Books, with the Silver Sands Publishing Series: CTRL + Click to follow link"">http://www.silversandsbooks.com/bo...
-- "Stories I'd Tell My Children (but maybe not until they're adults)," CTRL + Click to follow link"">http://www.amazon.com/dp/0981661750

Comment by Sj Heckscher-Marquis on June 11, 2011 at 2:51am

Would someone care to define 'serious author'? Those two words are bandied about a lot. If by serious author you mean you wish to tag your work as literary fiction and produce 300,000 word novels that are dead serious, to be brutally honest, self-publishing is probably not for you. Size of file does have cost implications. Also, if you are planning on producing a 1200 page novel, some printers will not be available to you. But more seriously, you must decide what you want to do with your work. Who is your audience? Are you looking for praise, prizes and plaudits from the literary community, or do you want to reach out to people. Would you rather sell fifty copies of your book and have ordinary people enjoy it? I take my writing very seriously indeed, and I wanted to be published; but eighteen months on Authonomy changed my mind irrevocably about the mainstream publishing houses. The concept of endlessly submitting to agents and gathering a massive pile of rejection letters while my manuscript gathers dust and accummulates postage fees seemed bizarre to me. Say you find an agent. They take 15%, the publishing house wants its cut for taking a chance on you, you may wind up with royalties of 15% of sales. You may wind up with a book that is unrecognisable from what you originally wrote. I know someone picked up by Harper Collins. The title of her book was changed, presumably to make it more bland for the paying public, her book cover was in keeping with the other books in that genre that they produced - there was definitely a house style - honestly, the new title was nice and bland and pretty meaningless, it lacked charm; her new cover fit the house style, but lacked the romance of her own design. Homogenised, packaged, and bland. We are all serious authors here, I imagine everyone wants to get into print, it all rather depends on what 'serious author' means to you. It is also not true that self-published work will not get reviews. It will. Please also bear in mind that the web is growing in power and influence, people are more inclined to trust peer review now, especially as they can interact with it, leave their own personal stamp. To say that this or that reviewer won't review your work, is only relevant if you allow it to be. As I said, I want people to enjoy themselves reading my stuff, I would rather make pennies than give my work to a mainstream publisher to be endlessly rejected, then homogenised and 'made safe', agents and publishers have only become the gatekeepers because we have allowed them to be. Since their bottom line is profit, they seize upon what they believe will be the most profitable, and try to force it into a package. How many times have you seen the sign 'if you loved 'X' you will love this'? Art and literature should not be predictable, safe and pre-packaged. I firmly believe that the longer we continue to embrace the concept of agent, publisher, mainstream, the tighter these restrictions will become until the mainstream publishing houses become the literary equivalent of cloners.

Comment by Love Babz on June 10, 2011 at 9:44pm

This is so divinely timely as I contemplate self-publishing and ebooks etc. This will be of such help to...I won't feel so overwhelmed trying to sift and sort through all the options weighing pros and cons.

Comment by Julie Achterhoff on June 10, 2011 at 8:14pm

I had my first two books published by a small publishing house. When I had just finished my third book I met someone on Facebook who had self-published a book. He convinced me that it was a good way to go for many reasons. He had some people who would do the cover, inner workings (fonts, etc.), publish it with CreateSpace, plus format it properly for smashwords and get it on amazon and B&N. I sent him my manuscript, got back a pdf to approve, sent that back with the OK, and Earthwalker was published within a week, available in print form or e-book form. Everything went so smoothly that I asked my publisher for the rights to my first two books and have self-published one of them plus a novella. It's been a great experience. I like CreateSpace because it has a dashboard where I can navigate to all the information about my books, such as sales, charts, info on other avenues for sales, etc. And of course I get a much bigger percentage of the royalties than with the publisher. I like the feeling of being in control of my own work.

Comment by Rebecca Elswick on June 10, 2011 at 7:58pm

I was thrilled to see your post and read all the information pouring in because I have a self-publishing story to share. I recently won the Pitch2Win Contest held by Writer's Digest and Abbott Press. I entered the contest after a year of querying agents. Even though I had amassed some "nice encouraging" rejections, they were rejections all the same. My novel was gathering dust.

Then I saw the contest. Never expecting to win, I entered.

After being notified I was one of 50 finalists, I went on to part two of the contest - submit a synopsis and a bio. Long story short, I won a publishing contract with Abbott Press.

I freely admit I was thrilled and terrified. After all those rejections, somebody was saying this is a great book and we want to publish it. BUT... Did I really want to let an independent press publish my book? If they wanted it, wouldn't an agent want it and therefore, a publisher?

I read everything I could find about self-publishing. There are success stories out there - more than you might think. But what I discovered is bottom line, if you want your book to be successful, you have to WORK - no matter how it gets published! The author has to be willing to promote her book.

I finally decided to publish with Abbott Press, and I am getting ready to submit my manuscript. They will first take me through the editing process. Stay tuned and I will let you know how it goes.

Comment by Anna Solomon on June 10, 2011 at 7:01pm

Definitely check out Steve Almond's series of pieces in Poets & Writers on his experiences. Both concrete - and funny - advice.

Comment by Jane Galer on June 10, 2011 at 5:06pm

Lightning Source is the printer that the other ones use to print the books. they are owned by Ingram. They are a print on demand as well as offset printer. They require complete ready to go files. They are for indie publishers. One fun thing they do have is a book making machine. I think there's one in the Harvard book store. You walk up with your file, load it in and stand there and watch your book get printed! Great for proofs.

Self published books don't get reviewed or taken seriously, sad but true. Kirkus Reviews won't even review POD books. Now that's old fashioned! If you want to have a real chance, keep working at finding a real  publisher, why not a micro publisher, or coop with your friends to start your own. Let Bloomsbury live on! Yes, you have to have ISBNs and bar codes, no stores will take them without it. Amazon's CreateSpace might be the better of the self publishers because of it's control.  The bottom line for me is that I completely disagree with Sherrie's comment below about how great vanity publishers are. Money makers for the publishers but a dead end for serious authors.

Comment by Lynn Jaussi on June 10, 2011 at 4:55pm

Wow..you must have been reading my mind!!  I have finished my book too and I am looking for answers on the same thing! I did my layout with booksmart/blurb.com..but they dont work with amazon or anyone else. They have their own bookstore which is great, but the price of the book is a little high. I am in the position that I would have to now pay a publishing company to do all that I already did..and I love my layout as is...so if anyone has any information that would be great!! There is also a group on FB called savvy book marketer they have alot of folks who are kind enough to help.

 

Comment by Laura J. W. Ryan on June 10, 2011 at 4:01pm

Sherrie Wilkolaski is right, an author who wants to self-publish really has to do it properly, or they're shooting themselves in the foot putting out a book that is desperate need of editing, proper formatting and design...I understand wanting to get it out there, but it's really worth it to do it right the first time. My mantra through the whole process has been: Practice, Patience, Persistence. It's an investment to spend the money to hire out, or to invest in the software and learn how to do the work on your own. I've been printing paperback copies using Createspace, I bought my own block of ISBN's from Bowker so I have my own imprint name (Field Stone Press), my husband also publishes his novels and a book of poetry, and we just published our first art book featuring our paintings (we went with Blurb.com to print that, it's a really beautiful book!) I have used PubIt to make my two novels available for the NOOK, I'm planning for Kindle editions next...in the meantime, I'm working on the final rounds of edits for novel #3. I've been pretty pleased with the experience, so far so good, the books sell, they're being read and reviewed.

Comment by Stacy Green on June 10, 2011 at 3:38pm

What a great discussion. I'm just finishing my WIP and trying to decide which route to go after however many rounds of editing it takes.  I've always told myself I will query for at least six months if only for the experience, but self-publishing is sounding more and more appealing. It's just the idea of the marketing/networking/doing everything myself that's daunting, because I'm pretty green in that area.

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