Promotion and Persistence Pay Off for Self-Published Authors
PROMOTION AND PERSISTENCE PAY OFF FOR SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHORS by Sidney Allinson.
Face it, writing and printing your self-published book are relatively easy tasks, compared with all the other requirements. They can be so daunting, you need to be sure first whether you are even cut out to be a self-publisher.
So most importantly, ask yourself: honestly, what is your real reason for publishing a book? Is it to make a lot of money, or for public recognition, ego gratification, a need to communicate an important message?
Identifying your motivation up front can either dissuade you from taking the plunge or help you enormously to succeed. The emotional and creative satisfaction of producing your own book can be uniquely satisfying, so long as one realizes in advance what the process entails.
Expect it to involve five serious factors: 1. commitment 2. time 3. money 4. selling 5. persistence
Any self-publisher who simply goes to a neighborhood printer with a manuscript in hand to get a book produced is in for a long and arduous experience. That way, the hapless author must be prepared to do virtually everything for him or her self; all the design, editing, and proof-reading before, as well as the sales promotion afterwards.
A slightly easier route is via the better known print-on-demand service companies like Xlibris and FirstBooks. Even they are still technically not publishers; being actually just producers and distributors of writers' works. It is their author-customers themselves who must still perform every one of the necessary steps that a conventional publishing house provides for its authors.
The marketing of a self-published book is such a drawn out, complicated procedure, it can virtually take over an author's everyday life for a while, so it demands a very strong commitment. You alone will be responsible for buying copies, quality control, inventory, storing, publicity, selling, processing orders, accounting, packing, shipping, mailing, handling returns, publicity, invoicing, and bill collecting. Whew! Small wonder that many author-publishers commonly put in 80-hour work weeks.
As for hopes of making pots of money from sales, the fact is very few, if any, first time author-publishers ever break even. Recently hyped dreams of tapping the Internet for huge sales on-line are just that; and seldom materialize. Unless you are a "name" author, significant royalty profits are no more likely to occur on Web sites than in bricks and mortar stores. For instance, even a major player like Xlibris is reported to have never exceeded sales of 2000 copies for any title.
Modestly scuffing your toe in the dust has no place in a self-publisher's style. Unabashed publicity and promotion are vital to your book's success. By necessity, you'll soon learn how to blow your own horn, mainly because nobody else will do it for you. Study the sort of people who are your most likely prospective readers, and devise publicity that will appeal to them.
Write brief half-page news releases about your masterpiece and distribute them to appropriate media. Offer to speak on radio call-in shows, and try to arrange readings at local bookstores and libraries. You'll likely be pleasantly surprised at your own ingenuity and the receptiveness of people you approach for free publicity.
For useful hints about low-cost promotion, read John Kremer's excellent 1001 Ways To Market Your Books, or Jay Conrad Levinson's Guerilla Marketing series.
Nevertheless, in-person direct selling is about the only method you have to get your books onto store shelves. Encourage yourself by remembering that long before anybody ever heard of him, John Grisham used to sell copies of his self-published first novel from the trunk of his car. Be equally determined and imaginative. Always offer to leave batches of books on consignment, to be paid for after discerning customers buy them.
Keep up your selling efforts, come what may. Persistence is the one quality that every author needs more than anything else. It's what gets the manuscript completed in the first place, and stick-to-it-iveness continues to be the only thing that builds your self-published book's final success
Sidney Allinson is a freelance communications consultant who has over 30 years' experience as a copywriter and creative director with Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, author of six published books and many magazine features, who frequently presents seminars on the writing trade. Contact him at sidneya@shaw.ca
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