The Introduction to my Self-Publishers Bible: A Handbook for Publishng Entrepreneurs follows:
Introduction
My name is Tom Williams, and I have written this book for you. I am doing this because I assume the following things:
1. You have written a book.
2. You want to self-publish and sell that book.
3. You want to earn profit thereby.
4. You may even want to support yourself as a full-time publishing
entrepreneur.
My goal is to help you do these things. To an outsider looking in, the publishing business seems to be a reasonably straightforward one. You print your book, you get it in on bookstore shelves, and you fatten your bank account and massage your ego as the money and good reviews come flowing in.
That simplicity is deceptive. The publishing world is indeed full of opportunity, but it is also full of hazards, roadblocks, and dead ends that you need to know about.
Some years ago I ghost-wrote and published the memoirs of my friend Carl A. Gray (The Bionic Octogenarian). Carl told me the story of how, just after graduating from college in 1921, he set out in a second-hand Model T Ford on a trip from Connecticut to California. It seemed a simple task when he set out. He was in one place; he wanted to go to another; and he would just hop in his car and go there.
In those days there were no interstates and even very few paved roads. Carl found that every day became an exercise in problem solving—avoiding sink holes, finding gas stations when you needed them, patching tires, jury-rigging water pumps—while still keeping his spirits up and his eye on his goal. Carl did get to California, but it took every once of determination, know-how, improvisation, and keeping on keeping on that he possessed to do it. It would have been much easier if he had had a map to go by, some foreknowledge of the spare parts he would need, and carefully plotted detours around the sink holes and mud pits.
What that map would have been for Carl Gray I intend this book to be for you. You are starting out on a road that you have not traveled before. I have been down that road many times. The Self-Publisher’s Bible contains everything that I have found out along the way and everything that I have learned from others who have also successfully traveled this way. With this book in hand you will know where you are going, the obstacles you will face along the way, and you will have in hand (or be pointed to) the tools you need to reach your destination.
What this Book Contains
The Self-Publishers Bible contains specific, how-to information on every step of self-publishing, from writing, to book design and production, to book marketing. It is arranged alphabetically for ease of use. Some entries are very brief, consisting of just a sentence or two or a definition. Others are quite long. Those on book design and typography, for instance, cover a great deal of territory, as do the entries on publication parties, readings, and book signings. This is because most first time self-publishers have a very sketchy notion of what good book design entails, and I try to give them what they need. I cover the book signings and similar events in detail because they are so vital in selling self-published books. A self-published book of poetry, for instance, has almost no other source of sales than at events where personal readings are given by the author.
Lucrative Secondary Profit Centers
I take a broad view of self-publishing. Although many self-publishers will be interested in a single book, important to them for business or personal reasons, others—among whom I count myself—would like publishing to become an important source, or even a primary source of income. They want to become publishers. For this latter group I include much information on secondary profit centers, things that you can do with your publishing knowledge you acquire along the way. These include quite profitable projects in business writing and publishing as well as the publishing of what I call specialty books—books that sell once, sell fast, and bring in immediate profit. I also give considerable space to the self-publication of advertising-based periodicals like city magazines and niche market tabloids.
My goal is not only to assist readers in successful self-publishing, but also to make a living at it if they wish to do so. Such secondary profit center as these little periodicals can certainly help you do it. These are little-known opportunities that any self-publisher can manage and that are almost always overlooked in other books on the publishing business. Entries on these projects have the words “specialty book” or “secondary profit center” immediately following the main entry word. Readers can identify them by the little “money tree” symbol that appears beside them in the margin.
Browsing Pays Off
The Self-Publishers Bible is compiled in an alphabetical format as though it were an encyclopedia or a dictionary, and some of the entries fit perfectly into that format. Others are much longer, more detailed food-for-thought entries. These, especially, should be read slowly, thought about, and mused over. Keep your Bible handy. Browse its pages. Let entries like Mind Harvesting, Book Design, and Autograph Party (How-to) not only inform you but stimulate ideas of your own.
Recommended Resources
No one book can be absolutely complete. For this reason I take care to refer you to sound and solid sources of further information when there is much more to know than I can tell you in these pages. There are hundreds of books out there on publishing and self-publishing, and I have read almost all of them. The few I tell you about are the best and most trustworthy of the lot. I call these referrals “recommended sources” and signal them with a pointing finger.
Warning! Muddy Road Ahead.
You may not recognize it ahead of time, but there are some publishing roads you don’t want to go down. You will find this out on your own as you venture further and further into unknown territories, but maybe I can help keep you on the straight way. The dangerous territories are marked in the text with my little “danger” sign.
Cross References.
Many entries contain cross-references to other entries. When this happens the cross references are italicized. A word in italics means “You will find more information on this topic by checking out the entry corresponding to this word.”
Online Updates.
The publishing business is going through a period of fairly rapid change as I write this book. Much of this change is the result of technological advances in the printing and production end of the business as well as in the marketing world. Print-on-demand for print books, the ever growing marketing of electronic books, and the vast opportunities for selling books via the Internet have all turned the formerly staid and traditional world of books upside down, and doubtless will continue to do so. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Well, readers of The Self-Publishers Bible can find out by visiting my blog, PublishingEntrepreneur.Com. If it is new and of interest to self-publishers I will report it there.
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