The Fine Print of Self Publishing

by: Mark Levine

INTRODUCTION

T he publishing world is changing. If you’re reading this book, you probably already know that. Most traditional publishers—those who front all the costs associated with publishing—are no longer risking dollars on new authors the way they did even five years ago. In 2005, traditional publishers offered 18,000 fewer new titles than they did in 2004, and the gap is only widening.1 If you have a shoebox full of rejection letters from publishers and agents, you’re living this statistic.

Luckily, thanks to advances in digital printing and the Internet, new authors are realizing that they don’t really need traditional publishers. The publishing industry is going the way of the music industry—individual artists are bypassing the middleman (the publisher) and going straight to the consumer.

Writing a book is an amazing accomplishment. I’ve published three books (six if you count the editions of this book), and every time I finish the process and hold that book in my hand, I’m still amazed that I actually did it. With the exception of my first novel, all of my books have been self-published. If you do it right and make smart decisions, you will produce something you’re proud of, make sales and have a pretty good time along the way.

Once you’ve decided that you are going to self-publish your book, your next decision will be whether or not you want to take on every step of the publishing process, including finding a printer, book formatter, cover designer, obtaining an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and UPC bar code, locating sales and distribution avenues, filing for a copyright registration and all the other details associated with self publishing a book. If you determine that handling every aspect of the publishing process on your own is a ton of work and that your time is better spent devising a plan to promote and market your book, you’ll want to let a competent and ethical self-publishing company handle the process for you.

The Fine Print of Self-Publishing reviews only self-publishing companies that provide the full range of book publishing services and not those that simply provide book printing services. All of the publishers featured in this book have these common characteristics:

Accept submissions from new or inexperienced writers without requiring the writer to have an agent
Publish the book in six months or less (in most cases 60 to 90 days)
Don’t pay an advance
Offer little or no marketing budget for the author’s book but sometimes provide these services for a fee
Pay higher royalties than traditional publishers
Charge up-front publishing fees.

I am proud to say that The Fine Print of Self-Publishing has been well received in the self-publishing community, especially by the ethical companies whose reputations have been unfairly soiled because of the actions of the “Publishers to Avoid” listed in Chapter 9. In the last edition, I sent out questions to all the publishers listed in this book. Many cooperated, some threatened to sue me, and some just ignored my requests altogether. I put all of that into the book. Eight of the publishers even agreed to remove language from their contracts that I deemed to be unfair for authors.

This time around, my editor contacted each publishing company discussed in this book as a prospective author—just like any of you would. The difference between you and her is that I armed her with the tough questions to ask, regarding justifications for 50%–200% printing markups, excessive publisher royalties, and more. You will be amazed at how some of these publishers treated a prospective author, and how they lied when we started asking the tough questions. We even submitted a book of poetry by a Jack Russell Terrier (yes, a dog) to some of the publishers who claimed they were “selective”—almost every “selective” publisher accepted it.

So, as you read this book, know that I’ve asked the questions you might not know to ask and, for the most part, got the answers—good or bad.

Note: After the second edition of this book was published, I realized that some of the issues I feel strongest about (like some publishers taking excessive royalties when they do nothing for your book and outrageous printing markups) were never going to be addressed. In late 2006, my company, Click Industries, invested in a new type of self-publishing company that agreed to try doing things the way that I believed they should be done. Mill City Press (http://www.millcitypress.net) is not reviewed in this book and will not be mentioned again. The publishers covered in this book that are ranked “Outstanding” and “Pretty Good” are solid choices. You may want to compare their services to those of Mill City Press when evaluating your options. Click Industries’ investment in this new venture has given me insight into the publishing business that I would not otherwise have had.

CHAPTER 1:
Don’t Wait Any Longer To Publish Your Book—Make Your Own Big Break

Whether your idea of a big break is to have your book published so your story can be read by family and friends or to become the next writer on the best-seller lists, you have some decisions to make. You can polish your query-letter-writing skills and spend the time it takes to get your manuscript into the hands of an agent or traditional publisher. You can also attend writers’ conferences to network with agents and publishing executives. Regardless of your talent, the odds will be stacked against you.

Or, you can take control of your writing career and spend a little money to publish your book.

Yes, it would be awesome to tell your friends that Random House just signed you. But, even if that happened, you’d still be a small fish in an ocean and likely worse off than if you’d published your book through one of the ethical self-publishing companies discussed in this book. Forget the agents and the publishers—you don’t need them.

How can that be? Simple.

If Random House publishes Joe Nobody’s book, it probably won’t dump a bunch of money into marketing. If Joe’s lucky, he’ll get $5,000 to $10,000 in marketing efforts from the publisher, but Joe still has to do all the real marketing on his own. And, if the book takes off through Joe’s efforts, Random House takes all the credit, and Joe only makes a 5%–10% royalty. Then again, if Joe’s book doesn’t sell, that’s the end of Joe and his book with the big-time publisher. The only benefit to Joe, in this scenario, is that Random House foots the bill for costs such as printing, editing, and cover design.

If you believe in your book, then publish it. Period.

If you have unrealistic expectations (e.g., “My book is the next Harry Potter” or “Everyone will want to read this!”) self-publishing will not be a pleasant experience. Set publishing goals that you can achieve, like selling 1,000 books in one year. It’s good to dream big, but when you’re paying to publish it’s smarter to live in the real world. Don’t mortgage your house to publish your book. Spend only what you can afford to lose. If you are calculating to the penny how many books you need to sell to recoup a $2,000 investment, don’t self-publish your book. Whatever you spend is an investment in you as an author. Please look at it that way. It might be book number two is the one that turns you into a star, but until you get into the game, you’ll never be discovered.

As you’ll learn from reading about the companies listed in this book, publishing fees range from $299 to $40,000. A lot of companies have bait-and-switch packages, luring writers with no-frills $299 packages and then up-charging them for the additional services they need, such as cover design. To get a quality product (a custom cover design, professional layout, etc.) you’ll need to spend $1,000 to $2,000, at least. You’ll also need to budget some money for marketing.

Yes, you pay the up-front costs of design and layout, but you own the book outright, and if you choose the right publisher, your royalties will amount to at least three to four times more than what Joe Nobody’s contract with Random House would have paid. Plus, if you follow the tips in this book, and your book takes off through your marketing efforts, you can pull it from the self-publishing company and publish it on your own (and keep 100% of the profits) or shop it around to agents and traditional publishers. Once you’ve sold several thousand copies and proven your marketing ability, Publisher X and Agent Y, who previously rejected your book, may suddenly be clamoring to get it.

Publishing your book with one of the recommended publishers in this book is by no means a second-class way to become a published author. It is an opportunity to make your book available, garner the attention you deserve and tell your story. If you are a talented writer, readers, agents and big-time publishers will find you.

It took me six years to become proactive about publishing my first novel, I Will Faithfully Execute, through a small self-publishing company. In 1994, when I finished the novel, I put it into the hands of a few big-time publishing houses. They all told me the same thing, “We like the writing, but in order for us to sell it, you have to rewrite this and rewrite that, then send it back to us.”

I wasn’t about to start rewriting my book so that maybe some traditional publisher would take it. I didn’t have the time to invest in that gamble. My manuscript languished in my computer’s hard drive for six more years.

In 2000, I founded Click&Copyright (www.clickandcopyright. com), an online copyright registration service, and discovered the whole world of self-publishing companies. Back then, many of the self-publishing companies had business models that couldn’t work. They believed that they could make money solely on the printing and royalties, without charging up-front fees. My first publisher, Bookbooters Press, was one of them. I ultimately chose Bookbooters because they charged no publishing fees, offered free editing services, paid decent royalties, agreed to a nonexclusive contract, and expressed genuine interest in my manuscript. As you’ll soon learn, if you don’t know already, that business model no longer exists (neither does Bookbooters).

I Will Faithfully Execute was named Bookbooters Book of the Year for 2000–2001 and remained on its best-seller list until 2005, when the company went out of business. The novel is a political thriller that takes place inside a presidential campaign. In fact, it was one of the first books former President Clinton read when he left office (I have a handwritten letter in which President Clinton details his favorite parts about book).

My second novel, Saturn Return, a story about two 30-year-olds who discover themselves and who they’re meant to be with, was published in 2006. My company published it, arranged for distribution and used the Internet to generate buzz for the book.

Most everyone who reads The Fine Print has a completed manuscript and is wondering, “What do I do now?” Many of you probably have queried traditional publishers and agents, only to end up asking the same question. The answer is easy. Publish your book.

CHAPTER 2
Why You Need To Read This Book

If you decided to buy a television or a car, you might read Consumer Reports to find the best price and highest quality. Spending hard-earned money to publish your book should be approached with the same care. But, unlike buying a car, your book is an extension of you. If you choose any publisher ranked “Outstanding” or “Pretty Good” in this book, you won’t get stuck with a Lemon. This book is all about helping authors find and choose a publisher that offers a superior product at a fair price.

Here are a few reasons why you need to read this book:

To know what you need to look and watch out for when choosing a self-publishing company
To understand what these self-publishing contracts really say and how to negotiate better terms with a publisher
To get the most value for your money by not overpaying for services or book printing and by getting the highest royalties

I got the idea for the first edition of this book because a fellow author at Bookbooters contacted me about a shady publishing contract he had signed with another publisher. The contract gave the publisher the exclusive right to publish the book through the expiration of the copyright term (which is 70 years past the copyright holder’s life). My fellow author was a professor at a prestigious West Coast university. I figured that if this guy wasn’t reading the fine print of publishing contracts, there were probably thousands of other writers who weren’t either. This book makes sure that you understand what the fine print says and the ramifications of signing a contract that may contain unfavorable language.

If you were signing a contract with Random House, you’d hire a lawyer, right? But when you sign with a self-publishing company, your legal fees could exceed all the money you hope to make from the sales of your book. That’s why I wrote The Fine Print of Self-Publishing: to help writers understand self-publishing contracts and enable them to find the best publishing situations to fit their goals and expectations.

I can’t give you legal advice, but what I can do is use my legal training, knowledge and experience to show you what these contracts really say and which publishers provide the best service for the best price.

The reason I keep putting out new editions of this book is because, now that I speak to writers’ groups and at writers’ conferences all over the country, I always meet people who got scammed—really scammed. In May 2007, I met a nice man who had been conned out of $35,000 to publish his book. His $35,000 got him 3,000 hardcover copies of his book that he couldn’t sell, a lot of debt, and a series of lies from an unscrupulous publisher.

I can promise you that, if you follow the advice in this book, you won’t get ripped off by any self-publishing company and that you may, in fact, negotiate a better deal. If you don’t follow the advice here you may find yourself out a lot of money and involved with an unethical publisher.