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This article is reprinted by kind permission of Writers' Forum, Britain's leading magazine for writers. They can be contacted at Writers International, Suite 28, Wessex House, St. Leonards Road, Bournemouth, BH8 8QS or e-mail [email protected] www.worldwidewriters.com

Self Publishing

What you need to know to begin



Skills you will use
Writing
Editing
Proof Reading
Indexing
Type setting
Typography
Design
Picture Editing
Production control
Marketing
Selling
Book-keeping
Purchasing
Management
Distribution

not to mention
a business plan
credit control
the law of libel
stamina
first-class time management

The Wines of Chablis, see story below. Glancing through the list above you may be forgiven if your eyes glaze over words like business plan, book-keeping and typography.
And you may find the list a total turn-off.

Take heart. Few people have all the skills and what you lack you can learn or buy in. Think of these skills like a metered tap. You can turn on the tap and take as much as you like.

Just remember it has to be paid for. Three of our readers featured in this article did just that.

Before you go into self-publishing you must have a good and substantial reason. Frequently, the fact that an established publisher does not want to produce your book is insufficient.

If it is not good enough for Hodder or Random House, Kogan Page or Piatkus, why should it be worth a year of your time and money in addition to the labour of producing the manuscript?

A bad book, or one about a subject that interests few people, will still be a bad and uninteresting book even if you publish it yourself, Morroco-bound and printed on parchment.

Before you collapse in despair pour out a glass of Chablis, make a wholesome vegetarian snack, and read on.

Let's assume you believe in your book. You can see 3,000 sales as an achievable goal and you are determined to show'em:whoever'em might be. We are talking about a book published on paper between covers, either soft or hard, which looks like a book, smells like a book and reads like a book.

Forget about e publishing and the internet for the moment. That has a part to play in the marketing but little in the initial stages apart from its use as research tool.

We are starting from the premise that the manuscript is finished. Here is where the editing begins. There is no friendly agent, no publisher's editor to lick it into shape. Any tautology, poor grammar, shoddy spelling, non sequiturs, libels, gaps, illustrations to research, captions, acknowledgements to make, or permission to quote from other works must be dealt with by you.

You are wicket keeper and long stop. You have to be the most critical and pernickety editor as possible. Check every fact about which you are not certain. If you are not sure whether there are two effs in sophisticated, or the rate of fire of a 9mm. Browning automatic, or who was the last Hanoverian King, it's your job to find out. One careless mistake in your book may devalue pages of excellent material.

When eager readers buy your book there is an unspoken contract: their time and money in return for a book that either entertains or informs them. Preferably both. It's time for a plus point or two to keep you going. Remember that you are going to receive a much bigger percentage of the cover price then if you were dependent on Random House royalties and the shelf life of your book is as long as you care to make it. Books from main-line publishers last on average four months in the book shops if they are lucky. You can be selling your book for years.

Now is a good time to revise your original plan. Critical path planing in publishing is as important as it is in building.

Check the facts, grammar, punctuation and proof-read it. You can acquire these skills or buy them in. Let us assume that your book is non fiction and the manuscript ready for press on a disk.

MAKE A COPY ON ANOTHER DISC AND PUT THE COPY IN A SEPARATE BUILDING WITH A SPARE PRINT-OUT AND PHOTOCOPY ELSEWHERE.
In publishing and dealing with printers always assume if something can go wrong it will go wrong.

T.E.Lawrence lost the first manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom on a train to Waterloo station and re-wrote the entire story in a matter of days. Most of us are not that clever and would dissolve into tears, but T.E. was made of sterner stuff.

Now you are ready to talk to a printer. The chances are that you will deal with a relatively new technique called digital printing. This allows you to print far fewer copies at a unit cost that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Many offset printers have installed digital equipment and they will decide which is the most economic to use. Do reveal that you are seeking several quotations.

You need at least five quotations and each printer must be given the same specification so that you can compare like with like.

To quote, the printer will need the following details:
  1. number of pages
  2. page size
  3. run (the number to print)
  4. whether there is to be a four-colour book jacket
  5. number of illustrations if any
  6. whether you will supply scans
  7. whether they will be in colour
  8. type of paper required
  9. type of binding
  10. turn around time from receipt of manuscript to delivery of book
  11. how the manuscript is to be submitted (on a disc and what format)
  12. the number of words and characters
Liz Cook Run-on price from 3,000, the run-back price (if you change your mind on the quantity).

Reprint price if you sell out and feel the market would stand a further 1,000 or so. Remember that the reprint price will not be the same as the re-on price.

You can also ask his price for packaging if he takes on the warehousing.

Check how much of the task your printer will "put out to trade". Frequently smaller printers will put out the binding and typesetting, if any. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it does mean that you are greater risk from delays. Don't let him build up an excuse, "I've been let down by the binders".

In any production schedule agreed - in writing - with the printer, building secretly for yourself at least 14 days as contingency for delays. Remember you will have to keep to the schedule. If you are two days late with the manuscript it does not mean that this will be reflected by a two-day delay in delivery. If you miss a booked machine slot that delay could escalate to month.

Now you may not know your Picas from your Breviers, octovo from quarto, coated stock from Basildon Bond or Bodoni Ultra from Century School Book... That does not matter. Find a book of standard size that you like. You are almost certain to read something like this in early pages:
Printed by Bloggs in Newport, set in Caledonia 10 on 11pt etc. Or it may be in TIMES 11 on 13pt, Garamond 12 on 13pt or something similar. Caledonia, Times and Garamond type faces.

If you find such a typeface in a modern book and like it, choose it. Please, please do not select a fancy type because it is different. You want your book to look like a book, not like a catalogue for the Tate Gallery or a Festival Hall programme.

Elegant, unusual type faces in the hands of experienced typographers and designers are a delight but seldom work in chunks on a normal page.

Do not worry if you lack any particular type face on your PC or Apple Mac it is a matter of moments and little cost for the printer to format your book and select a suitable typeface.

Count the number of words on a page of the book you like, divide that into the number of words in your manuscript, add the number of pages you think are necessary for illustrations and that will give you a rough idea of the pages in your finished book. You will find that it is best to work in multiples of eights or sixteens. You will need an additional eight or so for the forward, contents, fly leaf, dedication, index and acknowledgements.
You will require a separate quotation for a four-colour jacket. This is your shop window so it would be unwise to stint on this. A good design or picture is essential ensure that the front cover design makes a good handbill or A4 or A3 poster if reprinted.

Along with your quotation you should ask the printer to submit samples of stock (paper) for the inside text, the hard cover, and the jacket. You should also ask him to run off an extra 200 book jackets for you to use for promotional purposes.

If he can provide proof-reading and warehousing at no extra cost so much the better. After all, you do not want 3,000 volumes getting damp in your garage. Better if you can call off 200 at a time. He will almost certainly remind you about the necessity of an ISBN number and some copy for the jacket. Remember that the copy on the book jacket will be used by lazing reviewers who do not want to be bothered to read the whole book. Make every word count. For an ISBN number you can apply to: The Standard Book Numbering Agency, 12 Dyott Street, London. WC1A 1DF for an application form.

Stay focused Armed with the principle cost you are ready to draw up a business plan. Write down a cost for everything - even the tiny chores you do yourself like phone calls to libraries, travel to sources, lunch with contacts, postage, photocopying, stationery and an hourly rate for the writing. What are you worth per hour? A cleaner gets �5. A lawyer might charge �300.

It is, of course, notional but it will concentrate your mind on a fact which many authors who use writing as second string income tend to ignore. If you have written a book part-time in a year that could total 1200 hours at �20 per hour resulting in a "charge" of �24,000. Too much? Too little? Only you can answer that. Try a few simple headings for your business plan:

  1. author (writing, proof-reading, indexing, etc.)
  2. printing
  3. postage
  4. travel
  5. marketing (advertising, PR, review copies)
  6. order fulfilment
  7. professional fees (lawyer? accountant?)
What are you going to charge for the book? If you look along the shelves of any chain: Ottakars, Waterstones or WH Smith you will see many books marked up at �16.99, �18.99 and even �25. But the end of retail price maintenance, for which Mr. Heath deserves wholesale criticism, means that these prices bear little relation to reality. Hot titles justify their prices in the early weeks as they rocket to the top of the best seller charts.

But many are discounted even before they go on the shelves while others a year later remain tatty on the remaindered table. At least you will not end up remaindered because a main-line publisher wants to make room for the new titles.

If, as a new author, you are fortunate enough to persuade Bertrams or one of the other big distributors to take you on, they will want 50% of the cover price. Copies you sell to an audience if you give a talk may go at full price. Copies sold from your website may go at or near the full price. You can offer a slight discount and include postage and packing as an incentive.

Supposing you print 3,000.

About 100 will go out on review. A further 25 will go to friends and family as gifts. Miscellaneous will take up an unspecified number so let's look at selling 2,800 at �15.

  1. Allow 1,000 through the trade (less 50%) = �7,500
  2. 800 full rate through the web = �12,000
  3. 1,000, say at �12 = �12,000
  4. �31,500 total receipts
To achieve that sale I suggest you should be looking at a promotion budget of between �3,000 and �5,000. So you have to fund yourself, the printing and much of the promotion before a penny returns. Sobering thought, but if you believe in the book...

That was easy. Now comes the difficult part. Writing a book is one task: Selling it is quite another. Most agents handling a non-fiction book would rather have a mediocre idea for a book with a brilliant marketing plan than the reverse. You should have both: a brilliant idea for a book and a brilliant marketing plan. If you have little money to spare you must make up that deficiency by sheer innovation and hard work.

Here is where modern technology is a help. Get a website. It does not have to be an all-singing, all-dancing, state-of-the-art effort costing thousands of pounds. If you are a "techie" you can do it yourself. If not, there are some excellent outfits advertising in the pages of Writers' Forum who will offer you a good deal and an updating service if you need it.

Any IT student who is fed up with �4 per hour part-time in Macdonalds will do you one for a modest price. Whoever you choose should be able to organise a domain name, register you with search engines and build in meta tags.

You will provide the copy, the book jacket to scan, and details for an order form. Within days you are in business with a three or four-page website. Sales will be greatly enhanced if you can offer a facility for payment by credit card. Talk to your bank about this. NatWest offer a neat package called Streamline.

Now you can advertise. Without a website you will be looking at large display spaces in the book pages of the national newspapers costing thousands of pounds. Instead you are booking three or four-line classified at around �30 - �50.

Let's suppose you have written: The Ghosts of Stonehenge. Your domain name could be www.stonehengeghosts.com. Hence your little classified ad should read: Ghosts of Stonehenge, a startling new book by Jilly Author, published June 2000 at �15 direct from author at PO Box XX, Cheltenham. Glos. or see website www.stonehengeghosts.com.

Every piece of literature, every poster, every handbill, every press release you put out should carry your address and website.

How much energy and initiative can you put into the marketing? How many societies, professional and amateur, are connected with Stonehenge-type settlements? How many county magazines cover the area? How many evening and weekly newspapers? Have you a batch of pictures ready to give out with Press Release? To how many publications are you going to send spare jackets and Press Release. Which radio and television stations cover the area? Which museums are nearby which might take your book on a sale-or-return basis?

How many societies are there which concern ghosts or the paranormal?

If you are the kind of person who likes, metaphorically, to get behind the wheel and drive yourself, if you are well-organised, self disciplined and inquisitive; if you are determined to succeed, Self-publishing is for you.

You can always buy in most of the skills needed - except one: the determination to sell the copies you have printed. If you have that, go for it

Owen Smith, Austen Bliss Austen Bliss and Owen Smith, who have written the definitive guide to the distinctive wines of Chablis, are newcomers to publishing. They have long been friends, sharing a love of fine wine as a hobby and tasting various vintages all over the world.

They belong to three fine wine societies and share an attraction for the unique appeal of the wines of Chablis and for the character and hospitality of its people. Austen first established Chablis in 1984 and Owen discovered its pleasures nearly 40 years ago.

In any discussion on wine it is wise to shut up and listen to them. For their book they travelled many times to France, tasted 1,100 wines and produced what wine-lovers will come to regard as a bible for the area.

Where to eat. Where to stay. What to buy. Where to drink, The Wines of Chablis is full of information laced with humour and well-qualified opinion. They have even persuaded the doyen of wine writers, Clive Coates, MW, to read the manuscript and write a most generous forward, describing the book as "the definitive guide to Chablis". It is a book that is equally at home in the library of a wine buff as it is as a companion on a touring holiday of France. What made them write it? A love of the subject and the fact that two leading publishers showed interest in the manuscript. They were commissioned, the manuscript was accepted. Requested editions were made. Pictures were selected. A generous advance paid. Then the publisher had a change of management and heart. Their original plan was dropped and the manuscript returned to the authors with all rights and agreed compensation.

But Austen, a chartered surveyor, and Owen, semi-retired from the same profession, were not that worried about the money but they were determined to publish the book.

And if self-publishing was the way to go, so be it. For both it was voyage of discovery. Could Writers International help? Yes...As partners. It was an interesting practical exercise. Did we disagree? Yes. We advise using the cover picture to bleed all over rather than be framed in dark blue. And we would have set the printer order at 3,000 and chosen a printer with more facilities in-house. But the beauty of self-publishing is that it is the author's book and they have the final say.

A printer was selected, a budget agreed, the outline of a marketing plan discussed and on May 2nd the book was launched in London.

Bertrams agreed to distribute it. A website has been established. Review copied distributed. Advertisements placed in Decanter and Wine, posters and order forms printed and leading outlets lobbied. These shrewd professional men went against our advice to print 3,000 and cut the first print order to 1,500.

There is no doubt that the book will be a success. It has that unique appeal: information palatable to the expert and the amateur.

Have a look at the website: winesofchablis.com. A simple 3 pages: picture of the front cover, details about the contents and an order form ready to take credit card payments. We'll drink to that.

Writers' Forum Self Publishing article by John Jenkins.
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