New media
Self-publishing
What are your options when publishing your own book, CD or DVD?
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Compose your work, upload the files, set the prices, and you can have your masterpiece printed and mailed to you, or make it available for sale to the general public.
Author Kevin Kelly writes: "To capture the full economy of on-demand printing, you need to ready your material digitally. You should do any scanning that might be needed. The book should end up in a layout program such as Quark or InDesign, with font and picture files inserted. Aim to deliver the entire book on a CD. Any book with pages larger than a normal 8 x11 will be problematic. There's a sweet spot in this technology at a page size of about 6 x 9, which is your standard trade paperback, so think that size."
At services such as BookSurge, iUniverse and Xlibris, authors pay an up-front fee of $300 to $1,600, book prices are set by the services and royalties range from 10 to 25 percent. At Lulu, by contrast, no money changes hands until a book is published, authors set the prices for books, and the royalty rate excluding production costs is 80 percent.
Here are some of the best options online:
Lulu
Lulu offers one of the most price-effective options for self-publishing. Submit a Word document with the text, JPEGs for cover art, choose the binding, and presto! You’re a published author. You can publish hardcover books, paperbacks, photo books, calendars, CDs, DVDs, brochures, e-books, images, downloadable files, and more.
According to an analysis by Business 2.0 magazine in June 2006, here are the costs that go into a $25 hardcover:
Traditional publishing:
Retail markup and discounting, $13
Printing, paper and binding, $3.13
Publisher's gross profit, $7.53
Author's royalty, $1.34
Lulu.com:
Production charge, $20
Commission, $1
Author's royalty, $4
Price: About $4.50 per book, plus 2 cents per page.
BookSurge
BookSurge, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, offers a wide variety of self-publishing programs, ranging from glossy PDF-style bound documents to full-length tomes worthy of Dave Eggers. Its Indigo digital presses, made by HP, offer quality similar to traditional offset presses, and can print maximum orders of about 5,000.
Prices: vary from $99 to $2,499 and up.
Xlibris
Xlibris is a full-service publishing house, offering everything from design, production and publishing to online distribution and marketing.
Price: $899 to $2,999
iUniverse
A service for the serious author, iUniverse caters to writers who want a hard cover book and professional editing. The iUniverse staff will provide feedback on your manuscript — practical suggestions on how to rework your plot, liven up your prose or rethink your characters. The service publishes not only novels but any kind of book — say, a book of poetry, cookbook, memoir or how-to guide. They'll also work with you to design a dust jacket. If you pony up for an ISBN, you can sell your book on Amazon.com.
Price: $300-$800
Café Press
Catering to shorter articles and stories, Café Press asks you to submit your work as a PDF file; it then produces high-quality copies and manages your online sales. Some of its most popular titles are graphic novels and bound editions of bloggers’ musings. And, of course, you can sell other items through Cafe Press, such as T-shirts, artwork, photos, knick-knacks and more.
Price: $4-$7 per book plus 3-5 cents per page
FlipClips
The FlipClips service lets users turn home movies into small flipbooks of up to 150 pages, with 30 seconds of motion. Upload an MPG or AVI clip of an event, such as a graduation or wedding, and they’ll mail you a full-color book of memories.
Price: $9 and up per book
Amazon
Once you get your book printed at a commercial printer or online service like Lulu, you'll want to consider putting it up for sale on the earth's biggest bookstore. Author Kevin Kelly has self-published several books and sold them on Amazon.com. (Here's one example.) To properly list your book with Amazon, you must go through the Amazon Advantage page to register; it cost $30 per year to join the program. Here are Kelly's tips on how to get your book, CD or DVD listed at Amazon:
1. Get an ISBN for a book, or a UPC (Uniform Product Code) for a CD or DVD. For one book it costs $125; $55 for a CD, $89 for a DVD. Here is how to get an ISBN or UPC.
2. Get a bar code based on the ISBN or UPC. Costs $10, or may be included in UPC.
3. Sign up with Amazon, $30 per year.
4. Produce multiple copies; include the bar code on the outside.
5. Ship two copies to Amazon. As copies sell, Amazon will send you orders to replenish its stock.
6. Send cover scan.
7. Track your sales via Amazon's website or a monthly email statement from Amazon.
8. You may want to register your book for free at the Bowkers mega-directory "Books in Print." This is the master list of all books available anywhere, which bookstores and libraries use.
If you want to approach independent booksellers about selling your book, See this BookWeb page for store locations and contact information for the American Booksellers Association. Artbookbindery has other tips on marketing your self-published book.
If selling a music CD or music video DVD, you may want to register with SoundScan. It's free.
Price: Amazon keeps 55 percent of the price you originally set (it may decide to offer discounts, which come out of its share). In addition, you pay for printing costs and shipping the books to their warehouse.
Apple
If you're simply looking to create a photo book, you can't do much better than Apple's iPhoto books. Available in three sizes — from small softcover books to large, hardcover keepsake editions — iPhoto books come standard with 20 double-sided pages.
Price: $10 to $30 per photo book
Sources: Wired magazine; kk.org; Business 2.0; Ourmedia
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