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