My adventures in POD along with co-author Carmi Cosmos have resulted in precisely what we wanted: validation of our fiction skills. We printed 350 copies of our book, and sold all but 20 in one year. In addition, copies were also purchased on the internet and at bookstores. We did it by marketing like crazy.
Our book, “Out of Our Minds, Wild Stories by Wild Women” didn’t win when entered in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book contest, but did receive a comprehensive response from their editor who read our book and said in part, “this is a collection of serious literary stories”. That comment alone satisfied our objective.
Would we have liked to become wealthy selling our book of short stories? Sure, but we researched the market for short story fiction and knew getting rich off our book sales was unlikely. Regardless how they are printed, short story collections don’t sell in big numbers.
I just published my first book, “Naked”, via POD. I chose it as the best method of getting my book of poems to print, as there is virtually no market for poetry in North America unless you are already an established writer.
Sales are slow right now as I’ve not done any marketing, and that is the biggest hurdle of POD publishing. The writer must wear more than one hat, and many writers are not skilled at marketing. Yes, there are rheams of material online for marketing, but it takes time to digest all of this information, and that is time away from writing.
Still, POD is a good foot in the door. If your book can exhibit sales with only you as the marketer you can at least take that, and your book, and approach a real publisher who might see your book in a different light. Publishers want sales and if your book shows a modicum of sales potential via POD, imagine what sales potential there could be if marketed by a real publishing company!
That is my hope anyway. In the meantime I must begin promotion, promotion, promotions, with the full knowledge that this book will probably never sell in large quantities. It is an upward battle, but one worth fighting if you want to see your work in print.
I’d just like to note for Tallulah that Booklocker is a real publishing company. They are just one of several types of publishing companies that exist today.
What you are referring to are traditional publishers and you should be aware that even if one of them does decide to print your work, they will provide minimal marketing help at best. In fact, many require you to include a thorough marketing plan before they’ll even consider reading your proposal.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t go for it, I’m just trying to help you understand what to expect so that you can be better prepared.
I sit corrected regarding the publisher terminology. At the moment of writing my comment I couldn’t think of the appropriate term to distinquish between the two. Also, I was not aware of this marketing issue with traditional publishers. I always thought that a traditional publisher would have the mechanisms in place to handle marketing of a book. Thank you, Cheryl, for the information. I must say that the thoughts of self-marketing my work is far more daunting to me than the actual writing. Just one more hurdle for writers to overcome. Well, onward and upward!
Traditional publishers *may* have the mechanisms in place to promote a boo, but that doesn’t mean that they want to spend time or money doing it. More and more, they assume that most of that work will be handled by the author. So either way, you have to market and promote your own book.
I’m having problems marketing my novel, Lone Star State of Death, also self-published through BL, because bookstores can’t deal with the discount they get. So be it…I didn’t expect most of the books to be sold through stores anyway.
I will say that after publishing almost everything but poetry, it’s MUCH harder to promote a novel than it is a non-fiction book. MUCH harder.
Cheryl, just FYI in regards to Tallulah’s post, as someone who works in traditional small-press publishing, about fifteen percent of our budget each year goes to promotions and marketing. That’s tens of thousands of dollars shared between a small number of titles. We use that money for promotional mailings, advertising, author tours, etc. And we pay a full-time sales and marketing person to promote these books. So I wouldn’t agree it’s accurate to say “they will provide minimal marketing help at best.”
A question for the self-published fiction-writers? Did you seek CIP Data (Cataloguing in Publication) for your novel?? This used to be for non-fiction only. But I have seen novels lately with the CIP data published at the front of the book. It provides fiction with a subject tag, and once in the LC database a way of being found by researchers. This is a topic that intrigues me because years ago I published Traveler’s Reading Guide which included place-set fiction, and I had to search through various subject guides to fiction to locate titles. I always said then–there ought to be some standard way for finding novels (as you do non-fiction) by TOPIC, i.e., about alcoholism, or set in Brazil, or whatever. So if you have a novel on a specific topic or place, look into including CIP data when you get a Library of Congress listing.
Comment by maggy simony — March 19, 2007 @ 8:49 am
My adventures in POD along with co-author Carmi Cosmos have resulted in precisely what we wanted: validation of our fiction skills. We printed 350 copies of our book, and sold all but 20 in one year. In addition, copies were also purchased on the internet and at bookstores. We did it by marketing like crazy.
Our book, “Out of Our Minds, Wild Stories by Wild Women” didn’t win when entered in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book contest, but did receive a comprehensive response from their editor who read our book and said in part, “this is a collection of serious literary stories”. That comment alone satisfied our objective.
Would we have liked to become wealthy selling our book of short stories? Sure, but we researched the market for short story fiction and knew getting rich off our book sales was unlikely. Regardless how they are printed, short story collections don’t sell in big numbers.
Comment by bateswriter — March 7, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
I just published my first book, “Naked”, via POD. I chose it as the best method of getting my book of poems to print, as there is virtually no market for poetry in North America unless you are already an established writer.
Sales are slow right now as I’ve not done any marketing, and that is the biggest hurdle of POD publishing. The writer must wear more than one hat, and many writers are not skilled at marketing. Yes, there are rheams of material online for marketing, but it takes time to digest all of this information, and that is time away from writing.
Still, POD is a good foot in the door. If your book can exhibit sales with only you as the marketer you can at least take that, and your book, and approach a real publisher who might see your book in a different light. Publishers want sales and if your book shows a modicum of sales potential via POD, imagine what sales potential there could be if marketed by a real publishing company!
That is my hope anyway. In the meantime I must begin promotion, promotion, promotions, with the full knowledge that this book will probably never sell in large quantities. It is an upward battle, but one worth fighting if you want to see your work in print.
Comment by Tallulah — March 7, 2007 @ 2:53 pm
I’d just like to note for Tallulah that Booklocker is a real publishing company. They are just one of several types of publishing companies that exist today.
What you are referring to are traditional publishers and you should be aware that even if one of them does decide to print your work, they will provide minimal marketing help at best. In fact, many require you to include a thorough marketing plan before they’ll even consider reading your proposal.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t go for it, I’m just trying to help you understand what to expect so that you can be better prepared.
Best of luck.
Comment by Cheryl — March 7, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
I sit corrected regarding the publisher terminology. At the moment of writing my comment I couldn’t think of the appropriate term to distinquish between the two. Also, I was not aware of this marketing issue with traditional publishers. I always thought that a traditional publisher would have the mechanisms in place to handle marketing of a book. Thank you, Cheryl, for the information. I must say that the thoughts of self-marketing my work is far more daunting to me than the actual writing. Just one more hurdle for writers to overcome. Well, onward and upward!
Comment by Tallulah — March 8, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
Traditional publishers *may* have the mechanisms in place to promote a boo, but that doesn’t mean that they want to spend time or money doing it. More and more, they assume that most of that work will be handled by the author. So either way, you have to market and promote your own book.
I’m having problems marketing my novel, Lone Star State of Death, also self-published through BL, because bookstores can’t deal with the discount they get. So be it…I didn’t expect most of the books to be sold through stores anyway.
I will say that after publishing almost everything but poetry, it’s MUCH harder to promote a novel than it is a non-fiction book. MUCH harder.
bobbi c.
http://www.bobbichukran.com
Comment by Bobbi Chukran — March 14, 2007 @ 2:27 pm
Cheryl, just FYI in regards to Tallulah’s post, as someone who works in traditional small-press publishing, about fifteen percent of our budget each year goes to promotions and marketing. That’s tens of thousands of dollars shared between a small number of titles. We use that money for promotional mailings, advertising, author tours, etc. And we pay a full-time sales and marketing person to promote these books. So I wouldn’t agree it’s accurate to say “they will provide minimal marketing help at best.”
Comment by K — March 15, 2007 @ 11:34 am
A question for the self-published fiction-writers? Did you seek CIP Data (Cataloguing in Publication) for your novel?? This used to be for non-fiction only. But I have seen novels lately with the CIP data published at the front of the book. It provides fiction with a subject tag, and once in the LC database a way of being found by researchers. This is a topic that intrigues me because years ago I published Traveler’s Reading Guide which included place-set fiction, and I had to search through various subject guides to fiction to locate titles. I always said then–there ought to be some standard way for finding novels (as you do non-fiction) by TOPIC, i.e., about alcoholism, or set in Brazil, or whatever. So if you have a novel on a specific topic or place, look into including CIP data when you get a Library of Congress listing.
Comment by maggy simony — March 19, 2007 @ 8:49 am