Have you discovered The Alexandria Project?

In a blow to diversity and independence in book publishing and distribution, Google announced yesterday that it will discontinue its partnering portal with independent bookstores next January (reproduced in full at the end of this blog entry). Despite the fact that the program was only six months old and had already signed up 16 reseller partners around the world, representing thousands of bookstores, Google concluded that the reseller program “had not gained the traction that we hoped it would.” 

Have you discovered The Alexandria Project?

About two weeks ago I interrupted my current cybersecurity thriller series to post an essay I titled Intermission: The High Cost of Free. It could as easily have been posted as part of this series, but I wanted to make a point to the readers of that series. If you’re planning on self-publishing a book and haven’t read that piece yet, I believe that it would be worth your while to do so.

That post generated some interesting responses, some appearing as public comments and others arriving by email.  Two struck me as being particularly relevant to this series, because they suggest the goal posts between which the future of writing and publishing is likely to lie.

Have you discovered The Alexandria Project?

This series highlights aspects of my experience self-publishing The Alexandria Project.   If you'd like to read the book this series is based on, you can read the first three chapters for free here. 

We’ve now gone through all the steps of self-publishing a book, so this week is summing up time: I’ll try and pull together the most important things I learned along the way, and especially those that I wished I’d known before I started. I hope to revise, expand and then self-publish this series at some point, just for the experience of doing a book entirely on my own, without a POD publisher. If so, you can expect to see more chapters pop up here from time to time as I work my way through that process.

So where to begin? Might as well go straight to the bottom line - or lines, in this case.

Have you discovered The Alexandria Project?

This series highlights aspects of my experience self-publishing The Alexandria Project.   If you'd like to read the book this series is based on, you can read the first three chapters for free here. 

Last week we talked about the concepts and goals behind launching a book promotion campaign.  This week, we’ll get down in the weeds, and talk about the specific tactics you can use to spread the word.

The first thing to decide is whether you want to target brick and mortar, as well as on-line, channels of distribution. The reason is that while activities that target real stores will also help with your online sales, they tend to be much more time consuming, and usually require travel as well. Persuading individual book stores to carry your book also involves one-on-one selling (to the store owner or manager), while the pay off in sales per book store beyond your home town will likely be modest. The return on investment marketing directly to book stores is therefore low.

This series highlights aspects of my experience self-publishing The Alexandria Project.   If you'd like to read the book this series is based on, you can read the first three chapters for free here. 

Might as well come right out and say it. This is where the going gets tough. 

Up until now, everything about self-publishing has been pretty much under your control – what your book will be about, what it will look like, and how you’ll get it to market. But now, like Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, it’s time to learn that you can’t rely on the kindness of strangers. And that only in an Iowa imagined by Hollywood, if you build it, they will come.

So let’s talk about how you’ll go about getting those hard-hearted strangers to buy your book (or even download it for free, if that’s your choice), now that it’s up there for all to see at Amazon.

This series highlights aspects of my experience self-publishing The Alexandria Project.   If you'd like to read the book this series is based on, you can read the first three chapters for free here.

This week we’ll talk about how to come up with the “right” price for your book in each of the formats in which you plan to make it available (eBook, soft, and/or hardcover).  By "right" price, I mean a price that will make more, rather than fewer, people actually buy your book. My challenge will be to convince you that the title you see above makes sense.

But first, let’s cover the basics – how the pricing process works, and the factors that may put a floor under your book price.

And indeed, I’ve been amazed at how terrible some self-published books look. One of the guides I bought, which is something of a bible on self-publishing and has gone through many editions over the past 20 years, truly looks like …

 This series highlights aspects of my experience self-publishing The Alexandria Project.   If you'd like to read the book this series is based on, you can read the first three chapters for free here.

If your publishing progress has been keeping step with this series, you’ve now not only got the text of book all ready to go, but you’ve decided on how you’re going to bring it to market (POD, Google eBooks, or whatever) as well. So your next set of tasks revolves around this question: what would you like your masterpiece to look like? 

There are two main parts to this step: coming up with the cover design, and laying out the interior design. Those are both big topics, so this week we'll tackle cover design, and turn to interiors next time around.

So how do you go about coming up with covers that you can be proud of? Note that I say “covers,” because you’ll need up to three, depending on how many formats you want to bring to market. They are:     

This series highlights aspects of my experience self-publishing The Alexandria Project.   If you'd like to read the book this series is based on, you can read the first three chapters for free here.

For the last several weeks we've looked at how the various types of PODs differ in their business models and in the services they offer.  We've also looked at the importance of ensuring that your goals align as well as possible with the POD you eventually select.  This week we'll use that background to construct a decision tree and question list you can use to find the POD that's best for you.  I'll also suggest (from painful experience) how you can avoid some of the problems I've encountered.

As you'll recall, some of the ways in which PODs differ include price, personal service level, range of services offered, ability to place your book into all channels, and ability to make hard copies as well as eBook copies available.  If all of those capabilities are of importance you, then you'll want to look at one set of PODs.  But if not all of them matter to you, then you may decide to limit your review to a far smaller set of candidates.  Given how many businesses have jumped into this pool, anything you can do to narrow the field will be a time saver.

This series highlights aspects of my experience self-publishing The Alexandria Project.   If you'd like to read the book this series is based on, you can read the first three chapters for free here.

Last week we looked at how Amazon, Apple and Google make money by working with self-published authors, what they do for them in return, and what that means for you.  As promised, this week we'll take the same kind of look at the myriad POD outfits that provide a wider range of services.

As you'll recall, Amazon, Apple and Google each have quite different motivations, based on the significant differences in their overall business models.  One result of the fact that self-published authors generate a very small part of the revenues of each of these companies is that each offers very few services in return, and most or all of those services are automated.  Another is that none of the three companies has an incentive to make it easy for a self-published author to sell through any of its competitor.  Indeed, quite the opposite.

In contrast, for most POD publishers, helping you get your book to market in every logical distribution channel is their only business.  So that should be good, right?  Well, yes and no.  Here's why.