Bob Baker, an author using BookLocker for his ebook, forwarded this post to me today.

It talks about some comments a Kent Larson made to one of Bob’s previous posts on self-publishing.

Kent wrote:

1. There are a lot of companies that prey on self-published authors, selling them services that, they say, will get their books sold or better known. Some of the so-called “Print-on-Demand” publishers (really vanity publishers that use POD) are particularly agregious.

He is right that many POD companies have a business model where selling services is their primary revenue generator. It gives companies like BookLocker a bad name by association. We’re trying to provide an inexpensive alternative to the traditional publishing route, with an emphasis on “inexpensive”.

We can put a book into the marketplace in six weeks (usually much less) for a setup and original cover design fee of $392, and small percentage of each sale. We take care of everything necessary to package the book, to sell the book online (through our site and all the major online bookstores), and to distribute the book through Ingram so brick-and-mortar stores can order it. And we do all that without taking an author’s rights, or restricting their ability to negotiate a traditional contract or walk away from us at any time.

There is no way someone wanting to self-publish could get all those benefits on their own at a lower cost. (Just securing the minimum-sized block of ISBNs is $270.)

However, there are definite caveats with our model which I haven’t been able to resolve to my satisfaction (though I’m trying to come up with ways every day). The most glaring is marketing. Our model really requires an author with the aptitude for self-promotion. We shy away from offering specific marketing services because we have a ethical problem with the “double-dipping” issue - getting paid to perform a service which results in sales that we also get a piece of.

Also, a good marketing campaign is a custom endeavor. Anything custom is by definition expensive because it requires an expert. (The services other POD companies are selling as “book marketing” are weak efforts at best.)

That being said, the BookLocker model, as defined now, works. We sell tens of thousands of books each year. And those are books sold to the public, not authors buying their own books.

Our model works because, among other things, the costs to get into the market (setup/service fees) are very low and the commission we pay authors on sales is high. The benefits of using a POD company starts to decline precipitously as you raise those setup/service fees.

Kent wrote:

2. All self publishing has a poor reputation in the industry. Booksellers often assume, without reading, that any self published book isn’t worth reading, let alone stocking in their stores. Self published authors usually have to do quite a lot of work to overcome this disadvantage.

A lot of self-published books are crap because there is no vetting process. This is because most every POD company publishes everything submitted to them. They have to. Otherwise their revenue stream - selling services to authors - dries up.

BookLocker, on the other hand, does not. We reject most of what is submitted to assure the quality of what we do publish is above average. This is one of the reasons, I’m sure, that we regularly process orders from bookstores.

But Kent’s comment implies something that isn’t true - namely, that the book has to be “stocked” in a bookstore in order be a commercial success. That is just not true. Most traditionally published books aren’t stocked in bookstores.

In addition, consider that at least half of the books on the shelves of any large bookstore chain will never sell copy one. They are there simply for decoration. Bookstores can afford this type of interior design because they don’t have to pay for those books. They can return those books to the distributor for credit.

Our sales to brick-and-mortar stores represents a fraction of our total book sales to the public. Most sales are online through BookLocker.com, as well as Amazon.com, BN.com and all the other online bookstores. Of course, you could argue that is by design. And it is. But also realize that the online customer base for books is enormous - certainly large enough to support self-published books.

But here is the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about - the traditional publishing process sucks. Many manuscripts go unpublished every year not because they are bad, but because traditional publishers don’t know how to find the book’s market in a cost-effective manner. That is where POD publishers like BookLocker can provide a real service, as long as the return on investment is good. And the return on investment is good if, and only if, the upfront costs to get into the market are kept low.