Dear Prospective Self-Published Author

Be Encouraged! Self-Publishing is a great thing, an industry that opens you up to a world of possibilities. Just watch out for a few things.
You may be searching for a self-publishing company right now. Good. Now take a few moments to understand this industry: Self-publishing companies make money off of you, the author, not from selling books. They'd be glad to never sell a single copy of your book so long as you buy thousands of dollars worth of resources from them that might help you sell books maybe someday. This is a perfect set up for taking advantage of eager people who have a genuine desire to "get heard" or make a living doing their passion.

One of the main strong points of self-publishers is that they are efficient. Efficient like machines. And they give you options. They give you control. They will publish whatever you tell them to publish. Many POD (print on demand) companies will answer your questions over the phone, via online messenger or through email. They will make your book look however you want it to look. They will probably finish your book and put it up for sale on Amazon before three months are up (or as soon as one month if you pay them enough).

The main downfall of self-publishing companies is that they don’t care whether or not you sell any books. They’re main goal is to sell you tons of extra crap that anyone experience in the publishing industry would know is crap. Sadly, their business depends on your ignorance. They’re hoping you’ll spend three times more than you have to. I spent an extra $6000 on marketing add-ons for my first POD book because I thought (and the representative talking to me over the phone heartily agreed) that throwing money at my book will make it sell more. I now realize that it would have been cheaper throw away a few hundred dollars worth of pennies into a lake. This would have been more fun, it would have provided me with physical exercise and, best of all, it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper.

Do Not purchase marketing packages from self-publishing companies. Do you want press releases? Then write one for yourself, make copies of it yourself, and then distribute it yourself. Keep in mind, you are a SELF publisher. You wrote the book yourself. You will most definitely have to market the book yourself. Even traditional publishing houses leave the marketing up to you in many cases.

Again, do not buy pre-made marketing kits. These amount to overpriced copies of the front page of your book. You're a SELF publisher. Don't hire someone to do something that you can do yourself (like print out copies of the front of your book).

Take the aforementioned example, how I wasted $6000 on superfluous marketing add-ons. Suppose I had bought $6000 dollars worth of books and just given them away? I would have been able to give out hundreds of books for free! Copies of my books would be all over the place. Or I could have given away half and sold the other half.

Investigate the discounts POD companies offer authors who want to purchase their book in bulk. BookSurge is an example of a company that offers good author discounts: 70% off if you buy a thousand or more. (65% off if I buy 500-999, etc.).

Do not buy advertising space for your book in periodicals. This might work for people selling cars or houses but, as for your obscure little book, such an investment will not pay for itself because no one has ever heard of your book, no one cares about your book, and no one is going to start caring about your book from a brief advertisement in some periodical.

Watch out the physical quality of the books a self-publishing company produces. You don’t want books with a cheap cover that curls over onto itself. You would never buy such a cheaply constructed book off a book store shelf, so don’t expect others to buy it.

Investigate royalties. Some places will offer higher royalties if you sell books directly from their homepage only to turn around and charge extravagant fees for shipping. This is another reason by BookSurge is ideal: Authors get 25% commission from anything sold through Amazon.com (this is outstanding). Shoppers can purchase your book and the latest season of Grey’s Anatomy on DVD in the same shopping cart to get their shipping for free. There are also many marketing advantages to selling your book through Amazon.

Be wary of book return packages as well. They’re supposed to guarantee that a bookstore can return any unsold books they might order from your POD company. This totally jumps the gun. You would like to think that you’ll need it, but it will end up being a complete waste. How about getting the books into a bookstore in the first place? First thing's first, get a bookstore to stock your books before you worry about whether or not your books are returnable.

And watch out for any marketing package that offers to send out a lot of announcement emails for you. The deal is, you pay extra for your self-publishing company to send out thousands, millions, maybe even billions of emails about your book. What do we normal people call this? Junk mail. Spam. Not worth the time it takes to delete.

Financial Synopsis of my first self-publishing experience: What I spent: about $8000 What I should have spent: maybe $2000 (for the customized book design, nothing else).

Financial Synopsis of my second self-publishing experience, after I learned a thing or two: What I spent: $1500 (including binding and a custom front cover) What I should have spent: $1500 (if I spend anything else it will be to buy actual books).

by Patrick Roberts www.BooksByPatrick.com

Patrick is an average Christ-seeker. His goal is to turn people to Jesus Christ.