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Contents ...
You and Your
Manuscript
The Publishing
Decision
Getting It
Printed
Give Yourself a
Promotion
Far and Wide ... Or
Not
Capitalize on
Your
Potential
Manuscript Preparation
Guide
Effective Advertising
Guide
RealityIsBooks
Services
About
RealityIsBooks
Click Me ...
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Getting It Printed
Third is the manufacturing
stage, the printing of the book. Printing options are not unlimited
(unless your budget is), but are broad enough to accommodate practically
any requirements you may have. While some books such as cookbooks,
atlases, automotive manuals, calendars or datebooks may require
specialty printing and binding to suit their uses,
most books will be either perfect bound with a paperback cover or have
some version of a sewn binding with a hardback cover and dust jacket.
Which is suitable for a given book depends on cost, presentation, primary
audiences, and in the case of a self-published work, the author’s
preferences.
A
trade publisher will, upon acceptance of a manuscript, calculate the most
commercially advantageous format for the book, and print a number of
copies which they anticipate will sell. To keep the per unit cost down,
this is often done on large printing presses using
well-established printing and binding techniques. Specialty
trade publishers will likely use smaller equipment, but similarly
calculate a profitable ratio of overall costs to predicted sales. These
print runs create stock on hand from which to fill orders. Book printers
contracted by the self-publisher will likely fall into the smaller press
category. Terms offered by these printers may be payment in advance, half
in advance with the balance on delivery, or net thirty days if you have
otherwise excellent credit.
It is important here
to understand the term “Print On Demand” or POD, since this term is often
used by both vanity publishers and printing sources. Print on demand is
simply a variation in printing technology that allows a single book to be
printed and bound on the equipment used. Instead of requiring large print
runs to bring unit costs down, POD prints one to few hundred books to
order, only when they are needed. This reduces costs for production and
storage, and eliminates tying up your money in large over runs. Further,
since POD books are manufactured only when an order for them has been
received, all direct sales (book sales placed with you by mail order or
by website customers, for instance) should be prepaid. Bookstore sales
ordered through their regular wholesalers (these orders are usually placed
at a trade discount) may return your profit to you in about thirty to
ninety days.
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Most books will be produced
to common physical standards. The main reason for these standards is cost
effectiveness, and it is disadvantageous to stray too far from the
physical norms in production without good reason to do so. For one thing,
keeping your initial production costs low allows you the flexibility to
spend your available budget as other anticipated and unanticipated needs
arise. Your book’s particular specifications (along with several other
considerations) will determine whether it is more cost effective to use a
small book printer or a POD printer.
As to
actual costs for production of your book, these can be determined with
some degree of accuracy once the physical specifications and quantities
involved are known, both for the initial run and for reprints.
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Give Yourself a
Promotion
It is tempting to
believe that your book will miraculously get “noticed” by someone
influential, who will then undertake to push it to all the right people
and organizations. It is also easy to talk yourself into relying on “word
of mouth” to get your  book widely circulated.
While these things can and occasionally do happen, the fact that trade
publishers and successful writers, with their long lists of best sellers
and their impressive reputations, do not rely on these methods alone
should tell you something about their effectiveness as your sole means of
publicity.
The fact is, your book will become
known largely due to your own efforts, direct and indirect, regardless of
what version of printing/publishing you choose. For example, even if you
have a trade publisher deal, the local radio host doesn’t want to talk to
the publisher’s rep, she wants to talk to you, and the same is true for
all other media, appearances, and obviously, book signings.
Promotion should not be seen as only occurring
after your book is published and ready to sell. Advance publicity, once
you know what you are promoting, is key to securing attention for your
later efforts. Practically every technique mentioned here will be more
effective if it is set up with phone calls and mailings before you make
your pitch for publicity, request for help, or proposal to speak.
Regardless of how you decide to promote your
book, whether with personal appearances, direct mail, contact with
organizations, a website devoted to your work, or through a publicity and
public relations campaign (to cite only a few), you may need advertising
and handout materials, website development or enhancement, or other
services. These should be developed specifically for you, your book, and
your audiences if they are to have maximum effectiveness.
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Far and Wide ... Or
Not
Physical distribution of
the book is another aspect of publishing your book to consider. Since the
other steps occur first, we have placed distribution in fifth place here,
but make no mistake about its importance. Getting your book into the hands
of your readers is critical, and how you will do so deserves plenty of
thought.
The people involved in moving your
books from the printer to the customers’ hands can include the publisher
or yourself if you are the publisher, yourself to people you contact
personally (through seminars, lectures, etc.), book wholesalers, online
and storefront retailers (independent locations and chain stores),
bookstores, libraries, and various organizations if yours is a title that
is tied in with their purposes. Each has particular requirements that need
to be met in order for your book to work with their system. Anticipating
your distribution methods in advance of publication will allow you to
prepare for these needs.
So far, we have focused primarily on printed books. Book lovers
understand there is something special about holding a printed book in
your hand or seeing it on your bookshelf among many others. Perhaps
this is why e-books, either on the computer or on a reader such as
Amazon’s Kindle, have not caught the public’s imagination as it was
once thought they would. But other aspects of the internet have
developed which also affect both the printed book and its distribution.
Most significant is the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) which provides
access to an unlimited library of books and prints the customer’s
choice on the spot in just minutes, anywhere in the world. The EBM
allows distribution of any book in its catalog anywhere a machine is
installed.
Since all of these
considerations can affect the design, content and physical form of the
book, they need to be considered prior to the production phase. The point
is that distribution must be planned for just as you would plan any other
aspect of your book marketing project. If you prefer to handle these
things if and when they come up (after all, you may not know at this stage
which of these will apply), that can be a perfectly workable strategy,
too. It will be useful, however, to know that they can come up so these
circumstances and expenses are not a surprise.
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Capitalize on Your
Potential 
The sixth phase is capitalizing on the
potentials created by the published book. While this is not
strictly one of the steps to publishing your book, it is helpful
and instructive to visualize what you will do after the book is
published and a great success, whatever that may mean to you. It is not
coincidental that so many philosophers and self-help gurus advise that if
you want to accomplish something, you must write it down, refer to it
often, and visualize it as already being a reality. Not only is it good to
fix your goals in mind, but having an idea of where you are going also
allows you to make decisions along the way as to how to use
your resources, what is important among all the demands on your
time, and when you need to accomplish various aspects of the work in order
to reach your objectives.
Only you can
decide what results you want from self-publishing. After writing your
book, getting it published, and getting it to your audience, what will you
do then? Will your life change, will you be a different person? Will you
publish another book? None of this can be predicted with certainty, of
course ... except that whatever you envision now will be different then.
In the meantime, imagining the future not only helps to create it, but
also helps one to prepare for it and can provide some useful
perspective.
This finishes our brief overview of
printing, promotion, distribution, and planning to capitalize
on the potential of your self-published book. To go back to the
information on the basic services needed for getting your book
ready to self-publish, click here.
To contact RealityIsBooks, please click on the RealityIsBooks Services
link below where you can review the help we provide and the charges for
same, and contact us to discuss your project.
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My Own Tree: A Healing Experience 
