Self-Publishing: Step 1. Print-On-Demand. What print company to choose?

If you’re going to self-publish, the first thing you need to find is someone to print your masterpiece, right? Lucky for you, the print-on-demand business is booming. All the motivated, prolific li’l writers out there are tired of banging on the doors of the creaking-in-its-casket publishing industry. Newly-written books are languishing tragically, gathering the proverbial dust. So, there you are, brushing off the proverbial dust, giving the proverbial finger to all the agents who turned down your brilliant book, and screaming at your computer, “FINE, I WILL DO IT MYSELF.” You look so cute when you’re mad!

Now, down to brass tacks: There are a lot of companies out there that want your self-pub business, which is extraordinary considering that the VAST majority of self-published authors will never sell more than 200 copies of their books. But for the Print-On-Demand printing houses, that’s about $1,000 of revenue per customer, which isn’t bad if they have a big pile of customers.

How do you decide which P.O.D. house to use? You could go with a small local one – there are plenty of those – but personally I don’t recommend it because they don’t have a direct line to the major online selling platforms like Amazon.com.

I’m sure there are other sites that are just as good (feel free to email me your experiences), but I can only tell you what I know about two of the most popular P.O.D. websites: Lulu (www.lulu.com) and Createspace (www.createspace.com). This is a great simple article that lays out some of the pros and cons of each: http://www.publetariat.com/publish/lu... .

Personally, I went with Createspace and I was very happy with it. Here are my reasons for choosing Createspace:
1. Createspace is Amazon’s self-publishing arm. This means that it’s SUPER easy to get your book on Amazon once it’s finished. And believe me, YOU WANT YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON. That’s where I do about 99% of my sales. Anyone who hears about your book will look for it on Amazon, so you’re at a major disadvantage if it’s not there. Lulu books get on Amazon as well, but I’ve read that it takes slightly longer to accomplish this.
2. It’s free (so is Lulu)
3. Customer service was great (I’ve read otherwise about Lulu, but let me know if you think I’m wrong).

Createspace will keep about 30% of the book’s list price (the exact amount depends on how long your book is, and whether it’s full-color). This is a good deal, considering there’s NO cost to you for printing. Plus, you pick your own list price! If you want to make a lot of $$, you can sell your book for 20 bucks, although nobody aside from your parents and your BFF likes you enough to pay 20 bucks for your self-published book.

Createspace will get your book on Amazon.com, which takes another 40% of the list price. So, what this means in practical terms is that you have to set your list price at a minimum of about $7.50 just to be able to cover Amazon’s share and Createspace’s share. This sounds like a lot, and it is, but remember, someone out there just printed hundreds of pages and a glossy cover for you at no cost to yourself.

I set my list price at $7.99 because I don’t care about making money – I just want people to read the book. I recommend this path unless you’re convinced you’ll have a big readership. You can also change your list price whenever you want. So you can start out selling your book for 20 bucks (which give you about $18 profit per sale), and then when your parents and BFF have already purchased the book and nobody else will, you can lower it to $7.99 (which gives you about 50 cents profit per sale) and then people who like you, but not quite as much, will buy it.

One thing I have learned for sure: The closer your product is to “FREE,” the more you will sell. I didn’t believe this at first, but it turns out to be true.

If anybody reads this blog, I’ll post another one next time about what you need to do to get your documents ON the Createspace interface. If nobody reads this blog, I’ll post another one next time with an absolutely glowing review of my own book. Maybe I’ll do that anyway. Maybe that’s the key to my own gigantic success.

To anyone still reading, I think you are the bees knees. Fuzzy cutest knees ever!