Real World POD
I’ve been considering telling some real-world stories from POD authors for some time—and David Snape’s new book is a natural place to begin. Dave was introduced to me a little over a year, part-way through the process of self-publishing his first book with Lightning Source. At the time I had just published DisasterLand, so we had a lot to talk about.
What You Should Know About Gum Disease is interesting for a number of reasons, perhaps firstly because David isn’t a dentist or indeed a medical professional.
I interviewed David via email over the past few weeks, and started out by asking him why he decided to write the book.
It’s been a while since I decided to write it. It may have been in March or April of 2007.
I was contacted by John Corso, an MD, who wrote a book called, Stupid Reasons People Die. John was having a book launch promotion. In this case his publisher had built a web page for his book launch and they offered a special. If anyone bought the book, they would get a number of downloadable bonuses to go with it. All they had to do was buy it from Amazon or another retailer and provide an electronic copy of their receipt and then they would be given access to all of the bonuses.
John asked me to contribute a compilation of articles I had written about gum disease that he had found somewhere on the Internet. His book speaks about heart disease and other common causes of death that can be mitigated by the right kind of detection early on.
There is much speculation now that gum disease may contribute to the condition of heart disease and a variety of other diseases as well. Therefore, he asked me to contribute some of my articles, compiled into a .pdf document. I was going to honor that request when I had a sudden impulse to go ‘one better’. I sat down that weekend and wrote what might amount to a very short book - it was about 60 pages as I recall.
I compiled it all in that weekend. I called it, “What You Should Know about Gum Disease”. I had my story to tell, as well as some of the tools I personally had used in my struggle against gum disease. John’s publisher seemed very happy and told me I had done a fine job.
I then decided to sell that shorter version of the book as a digital download and was content in doing that for a while. Then one day I thought it might be a good idea to turn it into a real book. But, I had no idea how to do that. How was I going to get it published? Who would publish it?
I didn’t relish the idea of going to publisher after publisher as a new, untested author. First I thought of going through lulu.com but I felt like something was missing. There had to be something more to this whole thing. I actually put the old copy of my book on lulu.
Then a very strange coincidence happened. I read an article on a popular writers site and followed the link to the author’s webpage. I arrived at the site of a professional book designer. I was impressed by the images of her work. There were a lot of cover art images on her page and I was fascinated.
I decided to contact her. That is when I began to learn how to self-publish the ‘right’ way. She explained that cheap cover art would pretty much relegate you to the realm of vanity publishing. There were so many steps in the process of self publishing that just didn’t make much sense to me. I couldn’t see how it all went together. She helped me little by little. Eventually, I saw the bigger picture. The only complaint I have is that she didn’t tell me everything at once. She revealed what she knew step by step. It was frustrating, but I trusted that all would be well in the end.
How does POD compare to e-books?
I’ve sold FAR more e-books than print books. The nice thing about an e-book is there is no print cost involved. You can actually sell your e-book for less and still make more money.
For example. Say the price of your print book is $21.95 and you offer your retailers a 55% discount. When all is said and done, you might make $6 off that book - if you are the publisher - less if you are not.
You can take the same e-book and sell it for 9$ and even after processing fees you still would make over $7 per book.
This is a selling point to your customers. The same book they can buy on Amazon for $15 they can get for $9 provided they are willing to read it on their computer rather than have a copy they can hold in their hands.
The customer gets it quicker too, they don’t have to wait for a book to be shipped to them. They can download the book immediately and start reading it immediately.
This is particularly useful for how-to books or books that solve a specific problem - like gum disease or ‘how to play poker’ or something like that.
People don’t want to wait, they want useful information now. That’s what makes an e-book attractive to some audiences.
Actually, it would probably work the same way for fictional works too. People don’t want to wait, many want to start reading ‘right now’.
After having gone through the process, what advice would he give for aspiring self-publishers?
I would tell authors to save their money on promotional materials such as press kits, etc. I found the press kit to be useless to me. I’ve also been told that radio interviews are pretty much useless for marketing books, so I would caution authors to NEVER pay for any radio interviews.
Don’t pay anyone for media contacts either. It is not so easy to reach the media, even when you know who to call. For POD authors with limited budgets, I recommend promoting via free methods only. Save your cash. If someone wants you to be on radio or TV, let them pay for everything - including your transportation and lodging. If they are not willing to pay, they are probably trying to make money off you. If Oprah invited you to her show - all travel costs and lodging would be paid for.
Book signings are different - that is a different animal. I have not done any, but I understand that they often want you to do your own promotion. I would recommend that authors join author groups on yahoo groups or gmail groups, you can learn a lot from some of these.
Testimonials and more information are available at David’s website www.gingivitiskiller.com
Print-On-Demand Comes of Age
On Tuesday I did my third Communiversity class on Self-Publishing with Print-on-Demand (POD). It was a time for me to reflect on the industry, and to take a look at what’s happened in the last year. The answer is simple: POD has hit the mainstream.
During class I had mentioned one way to identify POD books is the barcode on the last page of the book block. After class one student, a cartoonist who works at a local public library, came up and mentioned that he now understands what he’s been seeing lately: major authors’ backlist titles have been arriving in the library, in hardcover, with the barcode on the last page (he mentioned James Patterson). Another student then mentioned that she’s bought books at Borders with the barcode and also wondered why it was there. A third student then said he had written a backlist book at a well-respected publisher who was thinking about reprinting the book in POD. At first he was skeptical, but then said, “Well, since it’s POD, ship me one and let me check it out.”
The verdict from all of these students—who had real-world examples—was that POD titles are virtually indistinguishable from traditional paperbacks. They look just the same. Students coming to me having seen and/or purchased POD books is something new.
That James Patterson would be printed POD makes sense to me in this case. For backlist hardcover, the market must surely be institutions who want to replace books that have been damaged or lost. The demand is probably not strong, but it’s a core audience who needs to be served. Enter POD.
In fact, almost all aversion to POD seems to have gone by the wayside—the industry is now using POD even for bestsellers (albeit temporarily). As Publishers Weekly reported last month, PublicAffairs used POD to fill in a gap in supply for Scott McClellan’s bestselling memoir. And this too makes perfect sense.
My question is how antiquarian book dealers will approach this phenomena. Using the McClellan book as an example, will the very limited number (7,000 is mentioned) of titles produced POD, will this in fact add to those copies’ value? Or will it be treated the way any other printing is treated, despite the smaller numbers. Only time will tell.
Another unforeseen benefit to POD must surely be the re-Americanization of the printing industry. Almost all major offset printing is now headquartered in Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.), but POD printing’s virtue is On-Demand. And shipping from halfway around the world is anything but.
Everyone stands to gain from POD, except for distributors and warehousers. But Ingram was truly visionary and not only saw it coming but got in first, and now they’re going to benefit mightily.
Positivity: Alcohol Can Be A Gas!
I’m going to start a new series called, somewhat unremarkably, Positivity.
There’s a lot of negativity in this world, and if we each take a little bit of time out of our day to appreciate the amazing things happening on this planet and to give out some good vibes in return, things will change.
First (retroactively) in this series is my post on Jonathan Goodwin, next up is David Blume, and his book Alcohol Can Be A Gas!. For alcohol here, read ethanol.
I caught David Blume on Coast to Coast AM, a show famous (or infamous) for Art Bell’s exploration of the supernatural and unexplained. I’ve been a fan for a long time, but rarely listened for the last few years (the show is on late at night, with many commercial interruptions). Recently, my imagination needed a workout (shows you what not writing will do) and I subscribed to StreamLink. All that has changed.
David Blume is a long-time practitioner of Permaculture and the hour and a half he spent on George Noory’s July 17th show has possibly changed my life, but certainly changed my thinking. Radically.
This hit me out of nowhere—and listening to George during the show it hit him just as powerfully. This morning I went to David Blume’s site and his book is sold out almost everywhere. Of course my first thought was “wow, instead of having people wait for 3-4 weeks for the new printing to arrive they should be using POD”. But my second was “Good for them!” He’s clearly struck a nerve.
David’s spiel is this: Alcohol was the original fuel for cars. The Model A and Model T ran on alcohol. Later they became “flex-fuel” vehicles because city-dwellers ran on gasoline (interesting story in itself), while country-folk stuck to their roots of locally produced alcohol (there were actually controls in the car to properly control the carburetor’s mix on the fly). Prohibition wasn’t about drinking alcohol, it was about destroying the possibility of alcohol as fuel, funded by a $4 million “gift” from John D. Rockefeller. This made gasoline the fuel of a nation, and the scourge of the planet. The story goes on…
I must admit, George Monbiot, one of my favorite environmental journalists for at least the last 10 years, had been one of the first to decry ethanol for the simple reason that it’s taking food from people’s mouths. Many have since followed, and I’ve read since in the Financial Times and elsewhere that this is a fact—the rise in demand for food crops to use as fuel has indeed raised commodity prices and literally taken food from people’s mouths.
That, to me, isn’t cool. The solution is consuming less energy. But for many people, especially here in the midwest, is that really feasible?
But this is where David Blume shines—firstly, by each producing our own alcohol (or by doing it community-wide), we’re not interfering in world markets (except by decreasing our consumption of oil). Second, and more importantly, there are much, much better crops than corn for fuel—including Mesquite pods, which grow in the Sonoran desert and only require harvesting (mesquite pods, pressed, also produce the incredibly healthy Peruvian elixir algarrobina). Many of these crops aren’t food. So there’s no conflict.
Alcohol produces very little pollution, is much safer than gasoline to be around (imagine drinking gasoline instead of vodka and you get the idea), and burns more cleanly leading to longer engine life.
There must be a downside here, but I’m not seeing it. It revives farming and community, lowers dependence on oil, all while dramatically lowering air pollution and carbon offset.
David’s book not only shows how to produce alcohol as fuel (David likes to use left-over doughnuts—not only are they high in sugar, but the vegetable oil they’re fried in can be skimmed off the top and burned to power the distiller!) but shows how to legally obtain a license for a distiller (to manufacture for fuel, not consumption), the tax incentives for producing your own fuel as well as converting your car to alcohol (there are lots), and much more. Naturally, I haven’t read it but will very soon.
David’s permaculture.com site has some media clips, or you can pay the $6.95 for a month of coast-to-coast to download the .mp3. It’s well worth it for that show alone.
Here’s to positivity!
Lulu partners with Scribd, offers iPaper content
Earlier I had written a post about my experience integrating iPaper within an exisiting website.
On Wednesday, O’Reilly’s TOC blog announced that Lulu has teamed up with Scribd to offer online versions of Lulu’s free content. The only thing I’m surprised by is how long the deal has taken—let’s face it: how many other viable, affordable, options are out there?
My guess is the very few companies who have developed similar software and banked on large corporate licensing fees have misstepped.
In the article much is made of iPaper’s use of AdSense… something that wasn’t fully developed during my test. I still don’t think AdSense makes sense for my site, but I can see it working for certain publishers. What’s more interesting indeed is that Google has seemed to give a passive ok.
UK: Bloomsbury + Microsoft = Print-On-Demand
I just came across a very interesting tidbit in London’s Telegraph paper.
The article, “Penguin will publish new book titles as ‘ebooks’” was mostly about how Penguin will be releasing e-book editions simultaneously with the printed titles, sold from their own website and for the same price as the printed book (the last bit is, in my humble opinion, a mistake. The Kindle has already taught us that e-book prices should be less).
The most interesting part of the article was the last two paragraphs, however. Is this being covered anywhere else?
Bloomsbury, which publishes the Harry Potter books in the UK, recently signed a deal with Microsoft to be part of its Live Search programme, where users can find books and have them printed on demand.
The publisher hopes that the print-on-demand market, in which customers can have one off copies of out of print titles printed, bound and posted to them, will give older books a new lease of life.
Though backlist publishing via POD has been Big Publishing’s dirty little secret for a while now, Bloombury is coming out of the closet. Let’s face it: POD makes sense.
