The dangers of self-publishing

It turns out you're your own entire audience.

RIMSHOT

your superhero cape gets caught in the printing press and when your fans buy your latest book they are horrified to find it is made out of u

OUCH

u go to self-publish but it turns out your book is classified and you are detained by the fbi

u accidentally order the cover made out of mercury and are poisoned

Can anyone share any experiences or recommend a print house? I’m looking to do a small run of paperbacks

Don't do it. You'll regret it.

I've gone this route three times and have lots to say. Why don't you send me an e-mail via ILX?

That said, doing it through a local printer is probably fine. Just don't use Createspace

(so yeah, listen to clemenza basically, he appears to have done it right)

Thanks will do

Mine is more a mix of positive/negative. (I actually liked Createspace until they were bought by Kindle/Amazon.)

why not post your thoughts here, clemenza? i'm curious too

I guess I can. Some of them can be found here, the question about getting published:

https://musicjournalism.substack.com/p/phil-dellio-interview?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=end-post-cta&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy

That may or may not work...Anyway, it comes down to writing the book you want vs. making money. Self-publishing is great for the former: you can loosen up, not deaden (or artificially hype) the way you write, and publish exactly the book you want to publish. As I say in the link, that cuts both ways: I know I have 1,001 mannerisms when I write, all on display when I post here, and a really good editor would help get rid of those. But I'd rather keep them in than risk a bad editor who wants to turn the writing into someone I'm not. (I am, by now, pretty aware of those mannerisms and am able to catch most of them myself.) That's just stylistically--then there's the issue of content. I know that with the last one I self-published, some of the entries would have been dropped, entries I really wanted in there. And the book will look exactly like you want it to. The first book I ever did, with an actual publisher, my co-writer and I accepted a trade-off: we okayed a cover we hated so, we hoped, there wouldn't be much editorial interference. It worked...but wow, did we ever hate the cover. (We had a different idea that was so plainly obvious and a thousand times better...overall, though, the publisher was a good guy.) The self-published books all have covers I really like.

The money: forget it, unless you have the greatest idea ever (and even then you'll have to know how to promote it, something I'm terrible at) or hundreds of friends and family members who are committed to buying it--who are willing to go beyond a thumb on Facebook. Each of the three I've self-published have sold between 50-100 copies each. You won't lose money, because it can be done without any outlay whatsoever (or you can pay someone to design the cover, format it, etc.), but you won't make any, either. Because I've always had a good job, I didn't need to make anything; having the books exist was more important to me. But if you need the money, look for a publisher.

I've gone through Lulu and Createspace (before and after they were bought by Amazon/Kindle). Lulu I didn't like--it was my first time, and trying to get someone to help me through a couple of steps was an ordeal. No phone support whatsoever. Createspace, when they were an independent, was so much better. I was able to get someone right away, and they walked me through everything. Now that they're part of Amazon--and the pandemic figures in to a degree--they're terrible. Phone support is hit or miss (luckily, I have a better idea of what I'm doing now), and, infuriating, they stopped making discounted author copies available in Canada during the pandemic. So anytime I want a copy of the last one for whatever reason, I have to order it at full price (with some of that coming back to me as a royalty, but still ridiculous). If you're in the States or England (I think), you won't have that problem. The books themselves have always looked fine, and no problems with binding.

If you're just looking to publish an e-book, I think that's much easier, with a more in the way of choice.

"a lot more"

nice, thanks for sharing! (link is only for paid subscribers i think)

Recently found a novel called Rin, Tongue, and Dorner on a free table, found it unusually unreadable when I flipped through it, and looked it up out of curiosity. Turns out it might be one of the most widely-read (or widely-started) self-published novels of all time - dozens of reviews on goodreads, Amazon, etc, almost all negative, and explaining that someone gave them the book for free. Apparently the author is a venture capitalist who is desperate for people to read his novels, so he sets up stalls on college campuses giving the books away by the cartload.

Anyway if you want to “take a delirious hyper-metaphorical ride with a love triangle into a fiery cosmos” check it out.

Oh that has to be the Wild Animus guy, then.

Same guy!

I think I encountered Wild Animus from this list on Goodreads of books that have lots of poor ratings.

On the downside it's full of "I don't like the author" votes, and it's dominated by people who were famous in the US - and only the US - ten years ago, but there are some gems. There's a book from a posh woman who briefly worked in a storehouse, but very briefly, for which she was paid a lot of money for her insights, which apparently weren't very insightful. There's a Batman graphic novel in which the villain is rock and roll. There are lot of sequels to classic literature. And also there's Morrissey's List of the Lost. And a book written by a man who tracked down one of his negative reviewers on Amazon and hit her in the face with a bottle.

And there's a book called Manic Pixie Egirl, which annoys me because how do you capitalise it. eGirl? EGirl? Egirl? It doesn't have the book that was all about teddy bears in Venice because that was a hypertext, not a book. I think. It was self-published. This little part of the post is on topic.

Reading through the list I'm reminded of why I've never written a novel. Because it would be a huge amount of work and the end result would be like one of those Gerry Anderson shows where he tried to appeal to an adult audience e.g. it would be flat, with incongruous swearing. Ideally what I need to do is (a) travel back in time (b) assume the identity of Jerome K Jerome (c) publish Three Men in a Boat before him. I'm still working on the first part.

Never fun, just got worse.

"The Apprentice" streaming on Amazon marks the second deal the Jeff Bezos-owned company has inked with the Trump family just this year...The two deals showcase Amazon's big bet on the Trump family as tech and media moguls, especially by Bezos, who appears to be currying favor with the president. In addition to betting on the reality TV series, recent changes at Bezos' Washington Post may signal he hopes a kinder Trump will benefit his Amazon and Blue Origin holdings.

Five of my books are published on Kindle, owned by Amazon. Didn't start that way--in 2014, I published a book on Createspace and thought they were great. By the time of the next one six years later, they'd been bought by Amazon.

Taking them down and going elsewhere--to Lulu or somewhere else--requires far more energy and dedication than I have at 63. Sorry; just the way it is. If I do another one, I will make a greater effort, with everyone I know personally (from here to Toronto), to order discounted author copies--for which I'm supposedly charged printing costs and nothing more--and sell them individually, one by one.

Just rereading what I posted four years ago...Nothing much has changed, although Kindle did go back to making author copies available to Canadians (suspended during the pandemic), and they have been more attentive to emails and phone calls the last couple of years. But actually getting a book noticed, much less selling anything, is still like pulling Mount Everest or climbing teeth.

I wondered why The Apprentice was the banner show on Prime when I opened it to watch Reacher tonight.

I have three novels up on Lulu that I'm scared to even tell people about. Maybe when I finish the one I'm working on now, I'll make a single omnibus announcement. "I've written a novel! Actually, I've written four! The third and fourth ones are almost good, even!"

I found Lulu very frustrating--that's why I switched over to Createspace. That was 10 years ago, maybe they've gotten better.